Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The natural heart of man, darkened by sin, has a very poor understanding of God and what he is like. We can’t help but apply our own standards and think that they are good enough. So, for example, we might think, “I’ve gone to church my whole life. I must be among those who will be saved.” Or, “I’ve never murdered anyone. I’ve never done drugs. I’ve never done this, that, and the other thing that I see everybody else doing.” “I’ve been able to keep a job. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve worked hard.” We, that is to say, our flesh, derive a great deal of comfort by weighing and comparing ourselves over and against others. We might not be the best people, but there are a whole lot of people who are much worse than us. These thoughts, which come so naturally to us, are very powerful. The only thing that can break them is the Word of God. Even then, for most people, the Word of God goes in one ear and out the other, as Jesus speaks about with his parable of the sower of the seed. But these vain thoughts about ourselves and about our salvation must be broken if the Holy Spirit is to dwell in us and we be saved. Our natural thoughts do not come from the Holy Spirit who is always magnifying Christ. Our natural thoughts are always singing our own praises, assuring us over and over, that we must be fine just the way we are. Our stupid fallen flesh has been the same ever since the fall into sin. Thus the flesh of the Christians in the town of Corinth was the same as that of Adam and Eve’s. It is also the same flesh as ours. It should not be surprising, therefore, that what Paul has to say to the Corinthians is directly applicable to us. The Corinthians were a lot like us. They were rich. They were surrounded by temptations. Their surrounding culture was full of sex and merchandise. They relied upon their proud Greek heritage as much as we rely upon our proud American heritage. They became distracted by all that the world had to offer. Their faith, hope, and love in God grew cold. They thought, “What can it hurt that this person or that person should fall into sin? Aren’t we all sinners? God can’t condemn all of us, can he?” Paul is speaking to these kinds of thoughts in 1 Corinthians, chapter 10. He brings to bear the example of the ancient Israelites to counter their foolish thoughts. The Corinthians were thinking, “We’re fine. There’s no problem. Haven’t we been baptized? Isn’t Paul the one who founded our congregation?” Just before the portion of this chapter that we heard this morning Paul lists the credentials of the ancient Israelites. They were all under the very cloud of God’s presence. They all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. They ate spiritual food. They drank spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them—and that rock was Christ, Paul says. Just think of all the amazing sights, sounds, and miracles that these people witnessed! If anybody should be able to brag about their credentials, then it should be these ancient Israelites, shouldn’t it? Then comes this sobering statement: “Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. He had them die in the wilderness.” What was wrong with these people? What kind of horrible monsters were they that God killed them in the wilderness? They weren’t too bad by most standards, and when they did sin it seemed somewhat understandable, to say the least. One time they made a golden calf as a way to honor the Lord God, then they had a big festival at church, full of fun and interesting things to do. Everybody thought it was a smashing success. Then there were those times when they grumbled because they completely ran out of money. They couldn’t get any food. They couldn’t even going to get any water. There was one time where they watched some movies that they shouldn’t have watched and God slaughtered 23,000 of them. Then there was that time when they were afraid that they were

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: July 25 is the day that has been set aside in the church calendar to commemorate James the Elder or James the Greater. Calling him the elder or greater differentiates him from James the Younger or James the Lesser. There are two men named James in the New Testament who are rather important. The James who is commemorated today is one of the twelve apostles. The other James is known as the brother of Jesus. He ends up becoming the bishop of the congregation in Jerusalem. This other James is also the author of the book of James. But today we are focusing on James the Greater. Let’s begin by briefly reviewing what we know about James. James was one of the twelve. He was also part of that inner circle among the twelve who were with Jesus on a few occasions where the other nine were not. The other members of this inner circle were John, his brother, and Peter, his cousin. Peter, James, and John were all called to be apostles at the same time as we heard several weeks ago. They were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. When Jesus ushered the fish into Peter’s nets so that they began to break, it was James and John whom Peter called out to in order to help him. After that all three of them dropped their nets and followed Jesus. James and his brother, John, were sons of a man named Zebedee. They also got the nickname of being sons of thunder. It is believed that they got this nickname because they were exceedingly earnest and zealous. One time when they came upon a village that did not receive Jesus they asked him if they should call down fire upon it. Also in our reading today they ask Jesus if they can sit at his right and his left—a rather cheeky thing to do, which we will speak more of in a minute. Obviously these two were not wilting daisies. In our first reading today, from the book of Acts, you heard about how James died. James was the first of the twelve who was martyred. He was executed by King Herod. This might have been as soon as only a couple years after Pentecost. Jesus had asked James whether he was able to drink the cup that Jesus drank, and to be baptized with the baptism Jesus was baptized with. So it happened. James died because he testified that this world is evil, God is good, and Jesus is the Savior of sinners. For disrupting the party, which all the Herodians seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed, he was put to death. And yet, even though he has died, he lives. Whoever lives and believes in Jesus never dies. Whenever the Christian church commemorates the saints it is different than when the world remembers someone. For the world, when someone dies, that’s it. Fiery James, faithful unto death, is alive with his soul with Jesus. His body awaits the great Day of the Lord. Whatever fame or recognition he might have from men is unimportant. He has received his reward from God. There is nothing better that any creature could hope for than to hear these words from the Creator: “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your master.” Now let’s turn to our Gospel reading where we heard about this interaction between Jesus and the brothers James and John. Mark tells us that James and John came to Jesus with an unusual request. Let me quickly note that Matthew adds a significant detail. Matthew tells us that James and John came to Jesus by sending their mother—which is what the art on the cover or our bulletin depicts. Sending your mother as an ambassador only makes the situation more unusual when they say: “Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask.” Whenever a conversation begins that way, you can be sure that something unusual is about to happen. “Make it so that we sit at your right and your left in your glory,” they say. Something we might expect is that Jesus would not be pleased with such an idea. The world is always hungry for glory and honor. The Bible teaches that this honor and glory belongs to God. We are told over and over again in the Scriptures that God opp

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Over the centuries there have been a lot of different ideas about what an ideal human existence might be like. The Egyptians had their views. The Greeks had their views. So on and so forth. There is also a certain view of what our existence as human beings should be in our own time and place. An important component of our own views that we should mention right off the bat is that we don’t really care about those ancient views because we have advanced far beyond them. The ancient people were primitive and stupid. We are advanced and brilliant. So unless you want to be primitive and stupid, you had better think like all modern people think. We are essentially taught that there is only one right way to think about how we should exist as human beings. Let’s speak a little bit about the content of this modern view. Perhaps its most important idea is that we are masters of our own destinies. We are competent, and we have been empowered. We have invented marvelous machines, marvelous drugs, marvelous systems of government, marvelous financial tools, and so on. All of these marvelous things allow us to shoot for the stars—literally. One day we might discover some wormhole in space-time that will allow us to colonize other planets. We have the potential to dominate. The only thing that can stop us is if we quit trying. But all of this dominating doesn’t come without a cost. It’s not very popular to talk about these costs. It hurts the narrative. But you can judge for yourselves whether our belief in ourselves hasn’t come back to bite us. This miserable plague that has afflicted our planet for the last 18 months seems to have been cooked up in a virology lab in Wuhan. Scientists from around the world thought it would be a good idea to engage in some “gain of function” research. What “gain of function” means is that they take normal viruses that have appeared in nature and they see if they can somehow soup them up and make them more contagious and lethal. Why? Who knows? Another important example of the price we’ve had to pay is with more immediate ways of destroying ourselves. Surprisingly we have managed to refrain from baking whole cities at a time with our thermo-nuclear bombs. We’ve had the technology available for 76 years. We’ve had the bombs on hand, ready to go, ready to mutually annihilate one another, for about 60 years. I wonder if some day there might be someone who believes that he has the potential to dominate, and he will stop at nothing until he has brought it about. Perhaps it’s better to rule over a wasteland than be a small fry, lost in the shuffle of history. A few years ago a massive machine called the Large Hadron Collider was brought online in Switzerland. This machine smashes together atoms and parts of atoms at tremendous speeds, just to see what might happen. The theoreticians said that what might happen is that they’d create a black hole. The possibility was ever-so-remote, but just maybe. The problem with a black hole, though, is that they don’t get smaller. They suck into themselves whatever might be around them. They are very mysterious, unimaginably powerful things. A black hole in Switzerland would crush this planet in short order. As Christians who confess what the Bible teaches, we believe that this world is going to end. To be sure, it is God who is going to bring that about. It seems fitting to me, though, that the way that God might do that is by us destroying ourselves. In mankind’s relentless pursuit for the dominion and the power and the glory, perhaps one of these experiments is going to blow up in our own face. Perhaps they already are. So if this is the modern view of how we should exist as human beings, what is the Bible’s view? Our Old Testament lesson gives us some insight into that question. This reading is from Genesis chapter two. Here Moses is speaking about life in the Garden of Eden prior to the fall into sin. God created Adam. He made trees gr

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Why do people sin? Isn’t it because sinning gives us pleasure? It can feel good. It might be more convenient or easier than doing what is right. It might be more interesting than plain old vanilla. Simply put, people sin because they want to. There is a certain view of the Christian life where this love of ours for sinning doesn’t have to change. According to this view of how we can live as Christians we can continue to live in sin and God’s grace will abound so as to cover over all those sins. The way those sins are taken away is by coming to church. Make sure that you use the means of grace, and you won’t go to hell. So long as you know this and make use of it, you can otherwise live your life just like everybody else. All good lies have truth in them, and this one has more truth than most. It is true that Christians are sinners and will remain sinners this side of the grave. It is true that Christians continually must be forgiven until they die. It is true that the means of grace forgive sins and thereby prevent sinners from going to the hell that they deserve. So, then, what’s wrong? What’s wrong is that this false view of the Christian life has the Christian going in the wrong direction. It has Christians pursuing sin instead of pursuing righteousness. In our Gospel reading today you heard him say, “Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law and the prophets. I have not come to destroy them but to fulfill them.” The goal is not that we should continue to live in sin, neither is it that we should live like everybody else, and then, at the end, get a free pass. Instead, God’s law should be fulfilled in us. God’s Law is good and holy. Its essence is love. It protects life so that God’s creative activity may thrive. God’s Law protects every part of our life. He wants our souls protected, our physical bodies protected, our spouse protected, our possessions protected, our reputation protected, our spirits and emotions protected. It was the devil who deceived our ancestors into thinking that God’s Law was a drag. Ever since then our natural minds have been darkened so that we cannot believe that God’s Law is as good as it really is. Meanness, despair, oppression, adultery, murder, and so on, are assumed to be the spice of life. Consider all the greatest works of art in literature or movies. At the heart of practically all of them is either murder or adultery. This is not just with our present-day, decayed, and decadent culture. It’s true of the greatest ancient works. In fact it can be traced back all the way to Lamach, a descendant of Cain. It appears that he was the first polygamist. His work of art is recorded by Moses. In his poem he brags to his wives about how he had killed a man for crossing him. So if anybody else starts getting ideas, they better have another thought coming! Ever since the fall into sin we can hardly think of anything higher than standing on the top of the heap, or accumulating for ourselves the greatest amount of pleasure with the least amount of pain. Paul speaks of this ambition and greed as being enslaved to our flesh. Slaves have no choice, and so it is with us. We can’t help it. We don’t have a will of our own. We’re always going to choose what’s best for us. Not being free to choose for one’s self is in the nature of being a slave. That is why Paul speaks of our Old Adam as being enslaved. We are enslaved to our desires. Whatever they say we do. Notice that this is pretty much the opposite of the way that we normally and naturally think about freedom. We think that freedom is having the ability to choose to do whatever we might want. Freedom is the ability to watch whatever we want, eat whatever we want, drink whatever we want, charge whatever we want, say whatever we want, and so on. But what kind of freedom is this, where we are always only doing what are sinful desires dictate to us? Our desires say, “Do this,” and we say, “Coming right up.” If o

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The message of the cross is that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Jesus brought about a change by his death on the cross. We have a couple special, theological terms for what happened at the cross: redemption and atonement. With the cross God redeemed us from the devil to whom all human beings belong because of the fall into sin. The sinless Jesus was handed in, thereby all human beings were set free. The devil lost his right to own any human being. This is what is meant by redemption. The other word for the message of the cross is atonement. To understand this word you can break it apart: at-one-ment. Atonement brings together and makes those who were separated one. The ones who are brought together by Christ’s cross are the righteous, holy, almighty God on the one hand and poor, miserable sinners on the other. The way that these two are brought together is by Jesus paying the penalty for our sin. He who knew no sin became sin. As sin he was punished with all of God’s wrath, all of God’s righteous punishment, for the sins that all human beings have committed. Through faith in Christ we receive the forgiveness that he has worked for the whole world. Although we are otherwise sinful and unclean, we are forgiven and righteous through faith in Jesus. Christ the crucified is the alpha and the omega of the universe. The world was created through the Word who became flesh in the womb of the virgin Mary. A time is coming and now is when this world will be brought to an end. All things will be brought into subjection under Christ’s feet. The last enemy to be destroyed and placed into subjection is death. This will happen with the great resurrection from the dead. Then all things will be handed over to the Father so that God will be all in all. At the heart and center of this is the crucifixion. Through Christ’s sacrificial death we are reconciled to God, even though we should be his enemies because of our sins. Christ the crucified is also the alpha and the omega of our lives as Christians. When we are baptized we renounce the devil, and all his works, and all his ways. We are united with Christ by being baptized into his death. We die to sin and are raised to newness of life. Jesus says: “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” This is the beginning of our life as Christians. The end of our earthly lives as Christians is the same. A blessed, Christian death is where we confess that we are poor, miserable sinners, who have deserved God’s punishment now and eternally in hell because of our sinful thoughts, words and actions. But we pray that God would be merciful to us for the sake of Jesus’s holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. Whoever dies this way, whoever dies with this faith in Christ, will find that the grave is but the door to everlasting life. This is because Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Christ the crucified is the beginning and the end of our lives as Christian. He is also everything in between. There is no better way to start your day and live your life than to remember that you have been baptized into Christ’s death. You have died to sin and been raised to newness of life. There is no other way to be forgiven and acceptable in God’s sight. Jesus’s cross alone accomplishes this. We live in this daily. It is what makes us Christians. The word of the cross is the beginning and the end. It claims supremacy over everything. However, it is not the only word. There are a lot of other words. When we get up in the morning we probably think about a lot of other things besides our baptism into Jesus’s death. The other things we think, the other words that we meditate upon, hold out promises that we will be happy if we are obedient to them. To put it into religious language, we believe that we will be blessed by these other words besides Christ an

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: That we already understand forgiveness is something that we can take for granted—particularly as Christians. There is nothing more central to Christianity than the forgiveness of sins. Accordingly, we talk about forgiveness a lot. Since we talk about it a lot, we assume that we must already understand it. But maybe familiarity is not enough to understand forgiveness. For example, if forgiveness is to be forgiveness it seems to need to be somewhat surprising. If it is not surprising, then it turns into something else. In Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, the prodigal son is forgiven. It is surprising. He was hoping that his father would take him on as a hired hand. Instead he is received back with love and honor. This is a delightful surprise. But suppose we change the story a little bit. Suppose we have this younger son who has wasted his father’s estate with prodigal living. He’s off at a bar, far away, chatting away with his buddies. He tells them he has to make a trip home: “I’ll just go back to the old man. He’s got plenty of money. He can give me some. I’m his son, after all, and he has to give it to me.” Relationships like this are by no means uncommon—especially with rich kids. Rich kids get a taste of the good life, and they assume that they can always get some more from dear old dad. Sometimes dear old dad gets sick of this and cuts them off. This, then, is another surprise. The rich kid has certain expectations about what the father will do. He’ll always forgive—that’s just the arrangement that we have in place. Then, all of a sudden, there’s no more forgiveness. But we probably shouldn’t call this forgiveness. Forgiveness that is assumed is not really forgiveness. Probably a better word for this kind of arrangement is abuse. The rich kid abuses his father until the father won’t put up with it anymore. And sometimes, even when father doesn’t want to put up with it anymore, he can be compelled. Fathers can be weak. If the father tries to cut off the kid, and the kid is psychologically brazen enough, the kid can intimidate and threaten the father—crush the father, if you will—until the father has no other choice but to continue with the gravy train. What if we tried to do this kind of thing with God? What if we thought of God as a rather weak character who could be bullied into forgiving our sins? Our theology says that God has to forgive. It’s part of the rules. In such a situation a person could assume that it doesn’t matter how much a person sins. God will forgive. He has to. While this might be what some theologians believe, Jesus plainly teaches something different. You cannot bank on sinning as though you can always count on be forgiven. Jesus says, “Strive to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. Once the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock on the door saying, ‘Lord, open for us!’ He will tell you in reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence and you taught in our streets.’ And he will say, ‘I don’t know where you come from. Depart from me, all you evildoers.’” God is not like the weak father in our pretend scenario. He cannot be bullied into letting us into heaven. If we haven’t cared one bit that our sins have angered him, then it seems that he won’t care one bit when he bars us from heaven and sends us to hell. The Bible says, “God cannot be mocked.” Therefore we should not take Jesus’s gracious, merciful parable today as though some kind of principle of inexhaustible forgiveness is being laid down that enables me to sin with reckless abandon. If that were what the parable were teaching, then the father would be a ridiculous, lazy, weak coward.  I assure you, God is not like that. So what is our God like? He is just like he is portrayed in this parable. He is not lazy or weak. He

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 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Birds of a feather flock together. People with the same tastes or interests gather themselves together. Oftentimes you can just look at a person and know a lot about them. What kind of clothes do they wear? How is their hair cut? Do they have piercings or tattoos? With simple questions like these you will have a pretty good idea of what their social class is, what kind of work they do or don’t do, who their friends are, what their family life is probably like, etc. You will also know if you are one of them. If they are from your class of people, then you are more likely to interact with them. If they are from a higher social class, then you might be a little bashful. If they are from a lower social class, then you mightdistain them. Nobody has to teach us to do this kind of thing. We all do it. We were already doing it by the time that we were in middle school. By the time we got to high school the social classes were almost set in stone. There were the rich kids, the poor kids, and the kids in between. Each group dressed and acted in a different way. Each group protected themselves from the others. Each group regarded themselves as the best for one reason or another. It was therefore dangerous to go from one group to another. If you left your own group and started associating with another group, you might not be accepted by the new group. Plus, you might not be welcomed back into your old group. Haven’t you ever heard the saying, “Be careful who you associate with”? If you start hanging out with losers, other people will see it, and then what will they think of you? People will start to say, “Oh, you’re one of them!” Some people don’t care what others think of them, but most people care intensely about such things. Let’s apply this to Jesus’s story in our Gospel reading. A man put on a great banquet. This must have meant that he was a man of means. It also appears that there were formal invitations that went out. This also indicates that the man was from a certain class. Finally, the excuses indicate that the people to whom the invitations went were probably from the same class. These were people who could afford to buy new fields and big machinery. But the man’s invitation was rejected by these people. Then an entirely different class of people ends up getting invited in. The servant is told to go out quickly into the streets and alleys. “Bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” The man needed to have more guests. But the servant had already done that! Now what? “Go and beat the bushes! Compel them to come in!” You won’t find members of the country club hanging out in alleys and in the medians of highways. If you round up people from such places you are going to find that they have different problems than the country club variety. So perhaps, when everything is said and done, everybody ends up being happy. The man who puts on the banquet ended up with a bunch of losers. They’re happy enough, getting a free meal out of the deal. Those originally invited are happy too. They weren’t hurting for food. If they could afford those big ticket items, certainly they could go to a nice restaurant. Plus they didn’t need to pollute themselves by hanging out with people who were poor, crippled, blind, and lame. They probably laughed at the man who had invited them when they heard about that ridiculous gathering. They thanked their lucky stars that they hadn’t accepted it. Everybody’s happy. But Jesus is not just talking about social dynamics with this story. He is talking about the kingdom of God. This banquet, you might say, is the wedding feast of the Lamb in his kingdom which has no end. These people are not being invited just for a meal. They are being invited to salvation. But there are social dynamics involved, even with the invitation to salvation. The old saying, “Birds of a feather flock together,” holds true here too. The thing that is different is the feather. What tas

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript:One reading sticks out more than the others today. What sticks out in that reading is punishment. The rich man is in torment in hell. He just wants one drop of water from the tip of Lazarus’s finger. This is what you might call the ultimate punishment. Punishments have a way of capturing our attention.I remember as a kid that Mom and Dad didn’t really care too much about seatbelts. That is, they didn’t care too much until the law added punishment. They didn’t want to get a ticket, and so we all had to start wearing our seatbelt.Punishments have an effect on people’s behavior. We don’t want to be punished, so we will change our behavior accordingly. But normally and naturally there is some resentment that goes along with this. Criminals resent the state for having caught them and punishing them. Children resent being punished by their fathers. Sinners resent being punished by God.So, what might we do about this? How about we just get rid of punishment? That, in fact, would be wonderful. It is truly desirable. There’s just one problem: People do things that they shouldn’t do. They do bad things rather than good things. If everyone just did what they were supposed to do, there would be no need of punishment. Since people do bad things, there will always be a need for punishment so that people’s lives and livelihoods may be kept safe. The evildoer has to think twice about whether he should carry out what he wants to do, because the consequences might not make it worth it.Now let’s think about the punishment that we heard Jesus speak about. The rich man is being punished, but one might wonder whether the punishment fits the crime. We are not told much about the man except that he lived well, and there happened to be a beggar who lived outside of his estate. When he died he went to hell and now lives in torment.Although we might not be so sure that the punishment fits the crime, the rich man does not seem to doubt the justice of it. His thoughts turn to his brothers. He knows that they are living just like he did, and so he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn them. If they were to find out about the punishment that is in store for them, then they would change their behavior.Maybe; maybe not. Threatening punishment will not always work. The best that it can ever do is to make someone conform outwardly. Even then, the whole thing has to make good sense. It is arguably more comfortable to ride in a car without a seatbelt, but seatbelts make it much more likely that you will survive in a car crash. That is why the law was passed, punishing those who weren’t wearing their seatbelt. Pretty much the whole population was brought around to wearing seatbelts—and it wasn’t just punishment that did it. People came to see the good sense of it.It’s not always like that. There was once another law in this country (in fact, it was an amendment to the constitution) that prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol. The law carried with it punishments, but it never took hold of people the way that the seatbelt law did. This is because the sale and consumption of alcohol can be a harmless pleasure. Regardless of the punishments, people broke the law. They wanted to do what they wanted to do. Punishment just made them get sneaky about it.When it comes to the way that the rich man was living, we are dealing with things that are perhaps even less harmful than alcohol. The man liked nice things. He accordingly took good care of himself, while the beggar sat outside his gate. I doubt that threats of the severe punishments of hell are going to be able to reform most people into mere outward compliance in such a things. Perhaps if a person could see the punishments, that might work. But even if the threats somehow did work, there would be a great deal of resentment. People don’t want to give their money away. Perhaps you can make them do so by holding a gun to their head so to speak, but they will remain awfully bi

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: In many situations in life we are able to disassociate ourselves if we really want to. We can leave. It might be hard to leave, but if things get bad enough we can do it. If our work gets bad enough, we can quit. If our church does things we don’t like, we can quit going. If our marriage gets dysfunctional enough, we can get divorced. If our own children get unruly enough, we can cut them off from our lives. These are terribly dreadful things, and hopefully we never have to do it. But the option is there if we ever really need it. Having the option of getting out of a situation gives us a lot of peace and comfort. There are some situations, though, where we are no longer in control. These are the most frightening situations for us. Not being able to get out of a life-threatening situation is very scary. Not being able to get out of a terminal illness is very scary. These things can be so scary that people will deny the reality of the situation right up until the end. They will hold out hope that somehow, someway, they will regain control of their lives and leave behind whatever it is that is threatening them. What about our relationship with God? Is God someone we can leave behind? Is God someone we have the freedom to disassociate ourselves from? The way that we all think by nature is that we can. Ideally our lives will be such that we can just be glad that God is who he is and we are who we are so that we can peacefully coexist. This is how we are with our other relationships in life. Hopefully they go how we want them to go, then we won’t have any problems. But sometimes there are problems. Then what? We’re not unreasonable people. We’re willing to negotiate. And so we might negotiate with God. “I’ll do this, God, if you’ll do that. I really don’t like the situation I’m in, so please get me out of it, then we’ll go back to our happy relationship.” With this understanding of the situation we still have our rights. We have our say. We hope that God will come around to our way of thinking. We can take this one step further. We still believe that we are in control when we essentially tell God to take a hike. If God does or says something that we really don’t like, we can say, “Well, if God is like that, then I don’t really want to believe in someone like that.” There is a belief that God is kind of on the hook. We can threaten to leave him if he doesn’t do what we think. We act as though he were just another one of the relationships that we have otherwise. We don’t want to have to disassociate ourselves from our work, church, or family, but if it gets bad enough we will. Then God will be sorry. Well, not really. That’s not how it works. If it did work this way, then God would not be God. You would be God. You would be the one in control. You would get to decide whether God’s words and actions are acceptable. You set the tone, and it’s up to God to decide whether he has the good sense to agree with you. The fact is that you aren’t in control. You can’t disassociate yourself from him. You can’t leave the situation. This is always a very uncomfortable position for us human beings to be in, as I’ve already mentioned. We don’t like being in a situation where we can’t get out. We can see this with Isaiah’s experience in the temple in our Old Testament reading. God revealed his glory to Isaiah. He was high, and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the immense building. Strange creatures appeared to him, angels, called seraphim. The word “seraph” means “to burn.” These burning ones had six wings. With two they covered their face. With two they covered their feet. With two they flew. One called to the other and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Saboath! Heaven and earth are fully of his glory!” Their voice was such that it shook the doorframes. The building was full of smoke. Imagine that you are seeing all of this. It would be one thing if you were sitting there with a bowl of popcorn