At some point in the future, I am going to preach a series on Moses, and when I do this story from Exodus and this image from Herman Wouk's The Lawgiver will play an important part in sermons. I love the image of Moses immediately recognizing God's voice. I also think that image could be played with in a variety of ways.
Sunday morning had a major revision to the sermon. The three points in the original sermon did not work. Thankfully, I stumbled into organizing it under challenge, risk, reward. The good news, it seemed to work; the bad news, late changes often do not stand up to theological reflection.
This sermon was preached a bit differently than it was written as I went off notes more than I normally do.
As an aside, we began the "Grab bag" Time with Young Disciples where a youth brings me an item from home that becomes the focus of the message. not sure it worked very well Sunday. I'll try to figure out how to make that more effective for next week.
“Grab Bag: Talking to
God” 5/26/13; FPC, Troy
Introduction: This sermon grows out of a person
going to Kroger's and noticing that everyone the person saw was talking on
their cell phones. I bet everyone was not talking on their cell phones; I bet
some of them were typing on their cell phones as they texted. At least the ones under the age of 25. The
questions arose: "If people would talk to God as much as they talk on
their cell phones....."
Finding time to talk to God in this
busy, technological world in which we live.
The challenge; the risk; the reward.
Move
1: The challenge
a. Of
course, that takes some time.
1.
“A
2012 study found that 63% of women and 73% of me ages 18-34 who own an
Internet-connected “smartphone” say they don’t go an hour without checking
their smartphones fro messages. Even among the 55-plus crowd, 36% say they
don’t go an hour without checking their phone (and that percentage goes up
every year). “From Church Web ‘site’ to church Web ‘presence,” Neil Macqueen, The Presbyterian Outlook, 5/13/13 (13).
2. Or, if you are your computer at work with
Internet and email accessible, how easily you can get distracted by checking
the latest headlines or your email.
3. I was speaking with a person this
week about Internet banking, and she
told me that the first thing she does each morning is check her bank account to
see if everything is ok.
4. I suspect that checking the Internet first
thing in the morning has replaced starting the day with prayer for many of us.
b. Takes effort.
1.
Martha and Mary story. Martha
busy preparing her home for her guest Jesus.
2.
Mary sitting and listening to the guest
Jesus.
3.
Busy-ness
of our lives.
2. The effort to stop!
We know the challenge of finding
time and making the effort to communicate with God.
Move
2: Communicating with God is also risky.
a.
Move beyond what I would characterize as the
FB mentality.
1.
One way communication.
2.
Surface comments in which we can state
whatever we want.
3.
Even
texting feels more like autonomous conversations.
4.
you can respond when you want.
5.
You can ignore if you want. Or, better yet, just type, “OK”
b.
Relational (almost every week I see an article
about how the church needs to take advantage of these relational
opportunities), but it is often not intimate, and there is almost no
accountability.
1.
You do not have to engage.
2.
Drive to hospitals or meetings in Dayton
3.
Talk with brother. Probably weekly. Lots more than I used to (maybe monthly or
every couple of months). I called; he
was distracted; I commented; he said, “Well, you’re only calling because you’re
on the road driving somewhere. I knew it
wasn’t important.”
c.
To take on the task of communicating with
God means taking on the vulnerability of engaging God.
1. Admittedly, conversation with God can feel like that, at
least on the surface.
2.
Do
not hear god’s voice.
3.
Do you
want to be the one who days, “I think God is telling me to do this?”
b.
this is Trinity Sunday
1.
Celebrate the mystery of God in three
persons.
2.
Sometimes I think we prefer to speak of God
as some theological mystery than act on our belief that God is alive and in our
midst.
3.
how much easier to speak of the mystery of
God coming in flesh, than seeking to follow Christ.
4.
How much easier to speak of the Holy Spirit
in theological terms than acknowledging you can sense the spirit calling you to
a new place or new task.
Great risk in communicating with
God.
Move
3: The reward
a. Herman Wouk (rhymes with joke) has the screen
play writer in The Lawgiver
describe the Moses’ encounter with the burning bush this way: “He [Moses] is grazing his flock in a
mountain wilderness, sees a bush on fire – strange enough in this uninhabited
pasture – and observes that the fire keeps flaming and flaming, doesn’t burn
out, and approaches for a closer look.
‘Moses, Moses!’ a disembodied voice calls. Is he startled? Not in the least. He recognizes that Voice! For forty years, alone under the sun and
stars, he has been meditating on the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph,
the whole sacred family history taught to him by his mother, before she had to
relinquish him to the princess. ‘Here I
am,’ he says to thin air, and the epic begins” (Wouk, The Lawgiver,
42-43)
1.
I love this Sense of intimacy.
2. the idea that Moses readily recognizes
the voice of God because Moses has been talking to God and about God all these
years.
3. the intimacy it reveals.
b. Imagine knowing God that well.
1. I bet if we had a contest
between our young adults texting and some of us more mature texters, the young
adults would win.
2. In fact, I would be willing to bet that the younger adults could be
blindfolded and text faster and with fewer errors than the rest of us.
3. Why? Repetition and practice.
4. That’s the image we are given of Moses.
5. The reward of communicating
with God is that we can hear God’s voice.
b. that changes us
1.
Moses goes from taking
care of the flocks in a country away from his family with no responsibility
beyond his flock and his immediate family to leader of God’s people.
2.
What opportunities does
God have waiting for you? If only you
could recognize God’s voice.
Conclusion: The Story of the Forest
Barbara
Myerhoff, 1935 - 1985
Jewish
story: in times when they needed God to intervene, the rabbi would go to a
special place, light a special fire and say a special prayer. And it was sufficient.
The
lighting of the fire went by the wayside, and the rabbi says, “I cannot light a
fire, but I come to this special place and offer this special prayer.” And it was sufficient.
As history
moved on, the special prayer was forgotten.
The rabbi said, “I cannot light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but
I am in this special place.” And it was
sufficient.
Finally,
the place is forgotten, the prayer is forgotten, and the fire cannot be
lighted. And it was sufficient.
I do not
know the prayer, I cannot light the fire, I do not know the special place, but
I tell my story to you.
And it was sufficient.
http://jwa.org/womenofvalor/myerhoff/story-of-forest; This story of the forest is also told in Elie
Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters,
trans. Marion Wiesel (New York
The place where we talk to God; the mode in which we use; the words we say; all matter less than the fact that we talk with God.
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