Nov 22, 2020 Montevallo sermon: "Given"

 

Sermon:   “Given”

Wayne McLaughlin

November 22, 2020 

Montevallo Presbyterian

Deuteronomy 8.7-18 NRSV

 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. 10 You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.

11 Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12 When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15 who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16 and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. 17 Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.

                The Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Psalm 65 CEV

1 Our God, you deserve praise

in Zion,

    where we keep

    our promises to you.

2 Everyone will come to you

    because you answer prayer.

3     Our terrible sins get us down,

    but you forgive us.

4 You bless your chosen ones,

    and you invite them

    to live near you

    in your temple.

We will enjoy your house,

    the sacred temple.

5 Our God, you save us,

and your fearsome deeds

    answer our prayers for justice!

You give hope to people

everywhere on earth,

    even those across the sea.

6 You are strong,

    and your mighty power

  put the mountains in place.

7 You silence the roaring waves

    and the noisy shouts

    of the nations.

8 People far away marvel

    at your fearsome deeds,

and all who live under the sun

    celebrate and sing

    because of you.

9 You take care of the earth

and send rain

    to help the soil

    grow all kinds of crops.

Your rivers never run dry,

    and you prepare the earth

    to produce much grain.

10 You water all of its fields

    and level the lumpy ground.

You send showers of rain

to soften the soil

    and help the plants sprout.

11 Wherever your footsteps

touch the earth,

    a rich harvest is gathered.

12 Desert pastures blossom,

    and mountains celebrate.

13 Meadows are filled

    with sheep and goats;

    valleys overflow with grain

    and echo with joyful songs.

SERMON TEXT:

Our Scripture Readings today are the appointed readings for Thanksgiving Day. In the Deuteronomy passage I see three elements of gratitude.

After being in the desert for forty years, the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land. A land where there will be no scarcity. They will have everything they need. Verse 8 says, “where you will lack nothing.” That echoes Psalm 23: “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.” That is, I shall lack nothing. The Promised Land will be the green pasture where God feeds the sheep.

PART I

Given

Moses looks backward and forward. Look back and remember, he says. 

Verse 11: Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep God’s commandments. 

In verse 14: then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 

Verse 18: But remember the LORD your God, for it is God who gives you the power…

I can’t over-emphasize the importance of memory in the Bible. The Jewish and Christian traditions are built on memory. 

To forget is to take a wrong turn. 

To forget is to dry up like a withered flower. 

To forget is to be confused and run in circles.

Spiritual amnesia is the enemy of faith; it is the enemy of gratitude. If we forget God we lose awareness of the given-ness of life. 

The key word—“given”—is in verse 10: You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD  your God for the good land that God has GIVEN you.

Life is a “given.” Everything is gift. If we live with the continual awareness of the given-ness of life, we will live a life of gratitude. 

Thanksgiving is giving thanks for the given.

Everything is gift. Our whole existence is a gift. We have been given our being so that as human beings we can give praise to our Creator by the way we live.

We might begin each day by thinking, "Another day has been given to me. This day is a gift. I will open it to see what opportunities God lays before me. I will live this day as God’s gift to me."

Every day we could say to ourselves, "Today I will remember who I am. I will remember where I came from. I will remember who I belong to. I will remember my Maker and my mission. I will not forget."

If we remember the given-ness of life we will not fall into the trap of anxious striving to be worthy—to be “enough.” Because everything is a gift, our worth, our dignity, and the meaning of life is also a gift. The Bible calls this “grace.” We are worthy by grace. We have dignity by grace. Our lives have meaning by grace. Meaning is not something we invent. It is a given. We are saved by grace.

If there were no God, we would have no worth, no dignity, nor would life have any real meaning. Artificial meaning is just that—artificial. Real meaning comes from God. It is a gift.

PART II

Turtle

I said Moses looks backward and forward. As he looks to the future he warns the people. He says, "When you have eaten your fill and built your fine houses…do not exalt yourself… Do not say to yourself, My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth" (vv.13, 14, 17). 

You’ve probably heard about the proverbial turtle—you know: If you find a turtle on top of a fence post, you know it didn’t get there by itself. The fact is, we are all turtles on fence posts. None of us got here by ourselves. There are no self-made men or self-made women. 

Just as God brought the people out of Egypt, we have all been “brought” to where we are.

Everything is “given.”

The 19th century pastor, professor, and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, called the father of modern theology, taught that we know and experience God by the “feeling of absolute dependence.” He wasn’t talking about an emotion, a psychological feeling, but a deep existential “feeling” in our bones. To know God is to acknowledge our complete dependence upon God.

Sure, we accomplish great things by our own efforts. We work hard to get where we are. We use our brains and our muscles to create and build and make money and establish a career. I did this all by myself! God didn’t have anything to do with it. When I walked across that stage to get my diploma, they didn’t give it to God, they gave it to me!

Moses says: Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” But remember—remember the LORD your God, for it is God who gave you power to get wealth, so that God may confirm God’s covenant.

The covenant is a partnership. If we forget our partnership of God, we become arrogant. And arrogant people are not thankful people. To give thanks is to recognize the partnership of God.

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh holds up piece of paper. He asks, “What do you see?” After someone says, “Paper,” the monk says, “If you look closely you will see a cloud, because the tree from which the paper is made needs rain. You will also see the sun. And there is a lumberjack there, and the pancakes he had for breakfast—you can see that in the paper, and you see the farmers who grew the food for his breakfast; and the lumberjack’s mother and father are in the paper too.” 

There is nothing we do or accomplish that doesn’t have thousands of people and the earth’s resources involved in it. We are not self-made. We are part of an interrelated web of life that supports and sustains us. 

Everything we accomplish is accomplished with the help of God, and the help of other people. Let us give thanks for God's help, our family's help, our colleagues' help, and the resources of the earth.

PART III

Test

Moses says one more thing. "God made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the desert with manna that your ancestors did not knows." Why did God do this? Moses says, "in order to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good" (vv. 15-16).

We never get out of school. All of life is a classroom. There are tests to pass. We can all think back to some event in our life, or some period in our life when we were tested. It might have been…

an illness, 

a failure, 

a broken relationship, 

or some other kind of difficulty. 

God tested the Israelites by taking them into the desert for forty years, through times of thirst and hunger and scarcity. They had to learn to trust God and God’s Word. The testing was for their own good. Through the various trials and tribulations the Israelites were formed and shaped as God’s people. They had to be ready to accept their identity at Sinai.

Many of the tests we go through are simply the result of being human. As biological animals living on planet earth, we naturally struggle with disease, disaster, and all the ambiguities of life. That’s just the way life is. Most of the tests we go through are random occurrences with no meaning. It’s just life.

But occasionally God will step in and put an obstacle in our way to see how we deal with it. Just as a good parent might give a challenge to a small child for the purpose of the child’s development, so God our heavenly Father and Mother challenges us through situations that we have to learn to overcome.

Then there are those circumstances or events in life that we think God should step in and stop, but God allows them to happen. And that is another way God tests us—by not doing anything—by permitting things to happen to us. St. Augustine once said that part of our faith is trusting God’s “permissions.” That is, to keep trusting God when bad things happen to us, and God doesn’t do anything; God gives permission for the bad things to happen.

It’s difficult to know if God is actively involved in some situations in our lives. It’s usually only later when we look back at those circumstances that we discern God’s hand at work. Most of what happens to us is just “life.” 

It is not for us to tell anyone else that they are being tested. It is only for ourselves that we can judge something as a test; and even then, it is usually only by looking back.

But even tests give us a reason to be thankful. There is a prayer in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer that goes like this:

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone. (p. 836)

CONCLUSION

Our reading from Deuteronomy gives us three elements of thanksgiving.

First, we can thank God for everything God created. Every day is a gift. Every breath is a gift. The meaning of our lives is given to us. Our existence is given. All good things are given. Thanks be to God for the given-ness of life.

Second, whatever we may accomplish in life is not our doing alone. We have help from other people. We have help from natural resources. We have help from God. Arrogance does not lead to gratitude. Humility is the road to thanksgiving. Thanks be to God for the strength and know-how to accomplish good things.

Third, we can give thanks for even the difficulties, the frustrations, the pain, and the sufferings we have endured. Because through those difficulties we have been drawn closer to God, and we have been strengthened. Thanks be to God for the tests that we have been given for our own good.

Religious Jews begin every morning with a prayer of thanks. The first words are: Modeh ani—I thank you. That’s the male form of the prayer. If you’re a woman it is: Moda ani.

Men: Modeh ani. Women Moda ani. Say it with me: “Modeh/Moda ani.” Whether we use the Hebrew words or English words, starting every day by thanking God is a good practice.

This Thursday is a national celebration of the American Experience. We, as Christians, will join our fellow citizens in that day of gratitude. But our gratitude goes beyond this nation since we are members of a global community called the Body of Christ.

I wish you a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving Day… 

where turkey is on the table and politics is off the table; 

where family celebrates kinship and wounds are healed; 

where diversity is appreciated and our common humanity is recognized; 

where thanks is offered up to God, our Creator and Redeemer; and all good gifts are received with joy.

Thanks be to God

who has given us the victory

through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Psalm 56 -- Sept. 16, 2001 -- Tears in a Bottle

 Tears in a Bottle

a sermon by wayne mclaughlin

Psalm 56

(This sermon was given the Sunday following the 9-11 attacks)

**********************************************

During the 1930s, at the depth of the Great Depression, a play called Green Pastures was setting a new record on Broadway. It ran through 1,653 consecutive performances until its leading actor, 70 year old Richard Berry Henderson, collapsed and died.

The play depicted God and the angel Gabriel in heaven, peering down at the earth. It was a delightful interpretation of God’s care and concern of a world in which God had allowed humans the freedom of choice, and of how God was despairing over the terrible consequences of the choices which humans continued to make.

In the play, God watches over the world and tries to prepare humanity to meet the demands of life. After Moses and the prophets, God sends Jesus Christ, who shares the suffering and the heartaches of God’s people. But it all seems for naught. Again and again Gabriel wants to blow his trumpet and bring an end to it all.

“Now Lawd, now can I blow the trumpet?,” he asks. And always God holds out in patience, knowing that something far better can come out of it. Poor Gabriel keeps getting more and more exasperated as he watches the chaos and confusion of the people on earth, and he finally yells out, “Everything nailed down is coming loose!”

That’s the way our nation felt last Tuesday when terrorist attacked the symbols of our power. How could this happen in America? It seems like “everything nailed down is coming loose.” That’s why we need to turn to God’s Word and listen to what God has to say.

************

I’ve chosen Psalm 56 this morning because I think God will speak to us through this portion of His Word. There are four things we need to hear from this Psalm of David.

ENEMIES

First, David has enemies.

Verse 1 - all day long foes oppress me.

Verse 2 - My enemies trample on me all day long.

Recently I did an experiment that helped me understand the Psalms better. I read five Psalms a day for thirty days; through the entire Book of Psalms in one month. And one of the things I couldn’t help but notice was how often David or the other authors of the Psalms talk about their enemies. Over and over again the author of the Psalms complains about the people who are “out to get him.” It almost sounds paranoid after a while. But we have to realize that in the Middle East then and now, it pays to be afraid.

Since last Tuesday we too have become more aware of our enemies. They are out to get us. This isn’t a war movie, this is real life.There are people out to get us. The Bible pulls no punches. It tells it like it is. There are enemies in the world. Always will be.

It’s nice to be idealistic and talk about non-violence and everyone getting along. But the Bible warns us not to have our head in the sand.The Biblical bird is the Dove, not the Ostrich. We are to be peacemakers. We are called to work for the reconciliation of the world.But we aren’t called to live with our head in the clouds.

We can be so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good.

While I was at Montreat for Interim Pastor Training, we worshipped together everyday. One morning we sung a hymn in our Presbyterian Hymnal that I haven’t sung very often. I note in my hymnal in my office that we sung it last January, I suppose at the ordination of elders. But I  guess I wasn’t paying attention to the words, because when I sung them at Montreat, one line jumped out at me. 

I’m speaking of hymn no. 522, “Lord, When I Came Into This Life.” Words written by Fred Kaan in 1976. Let’s look at verse three to get the context for verse four:

Verse 3 -- In all the tensions of my life, Between my faith and doubt, Let Your great Spirit give me hope, Sustain me, lead me out.

Verse 4 -- So, help me in my unbelief, And let my life be true: Feet firmly planted on the earth, My sights set high on You.

That last line is important for us today. 

Feet firmly planted on the earth, My sights set high on You.

With our “feet firmly planted on the earth,” we know we must be realistic. Terrorists are not stopped by nice words about peace.They must be captured and imprisoned for life. Or they must be stamped out.

Having said that, let me also say that the way the United States relates to Islamic nations in terms of our rhetoric, our financial aid, our just dealings, our compassion--these factors are of continuing importance for our peace at home.

We do have enemies. We can’t stick our heads in the sand.

The Biblical bird is not the ostrich, it’s the Dove.

*******************

FEELINGS

The second thing Psalm 56 teaches us is that angry feelings are natural when being attacked.

Verse 7: So repay them for their crime; in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!

My feeling last Tuesday was one of anger. I can’t even tell you in church what I was thinking. Anger is an emotion that overlays another emotion, namely, Fear. When attacked, we are naturally afraid, which translates quickly into anger.

Anger can translate quickly into a desire for vengeance and retaliation.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructed those who are His followers to never take revenge; to never retaliate. Of course He wasn’t talking to governments; He was talking to individuals.

As Christians, we are commanded by our Lord to never retaliate or be vengeful toward another individual. But when it comes to whole nations and governments, that’s another animal altogether.

Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 12 gives us God’s Word about our relationships with other individuals. Paul says:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.Live in harmony with one another... Do not repay anyone evil for evil...If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” [selected verses, NRSV]

That’s a clear teaching. Leave vengeance to God. Leave room for the wrath of God. Let God take care of those people.

There is justice in the world;

        sometimes we see it take place;

                sometimes it will wait until the final judgment

                    before God.

But God will take care of it. That’s not our job.

But when you turn to the next chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans (chapter 13), you see a clear teaching about the role of government.

Here’s what Paul says about the role of government:

For it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for [the government] does not bear the sword in vain. It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. [v. 4, NRSV]

The government is God’s instrument for justice. Protecting people from attack is part of the government’s ordained role.

In verse 4 (ch. 13), where it says, “For it [the government] is God’s servant,” the word for “servant” is diakonos, which is the same word for “deacon.” Paul is saying that the government is ordained to be God’s Deacon to carry out certain functions. Sometimes God’s wrath is executed through a properly ordained government.

Individuals are not authorized to carry out vengeance. But governments are authorized to carry out justice and self-defense.

David, in Psalm 56, has feelings of vengeance. That’s a natural feeling. But notice that he places the responsibility for vengeance in God’s hands, not in his own. We can learn from that.

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TEARS

The third thing we can learn from Psalm 56 comes in verse eight:

You have kept count of my tossing; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record? [NRSV]

It may sound like a strange thing, keeping tears in a bottle. But in the Middle East there is a custom of mourners catching their tears in a little bottle, a symbol of their sorrow. They sometimes place the bottle in a tomb or casket. Perhaps that was a custom in David’s day, though instead of a bottle it would  be a leather bag.

There have been a lot of tears shed this past week in our country.Thousands and thousands of people have been personally affected by the death of a spouse, a parent, a child, a sibling, a relative, a friend, a co-worker, an acquaintance, a fellow church member, and by fellow Americans.

I found myself crying on Tuesday. I felt attacked as an American. I felt the sorrow of those family members wondering if their loved one had escaped, or knowing that they had not.

It seems such a waste...

         a waste of life,

              a waste of tears.

But not so.

Psalm 56 tells us that God does not forget. In fact, God catches every tear and (as if were) puts it in a bottle. And that becomes part of the record of that person’s life. Nothing is wasted with God. God never forgets what we’ve been through.

This past week God has filled tons and tons of gallon bottles with the tears of the grieving and the angry. Those tears will not be lost.

You know the shortest verse in the Bible, in John 11...

“Jesus wept.”

God knows about tears. Because He has come among us as a human being in the life and death of Jesus, God knows what it’s like to cry.

Our God is no distant, uncaring God. Our God is as close as our breath, and has walked in our shoes.

Our tears are not wasted. Don’t you love that great Resurrection Chapter in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 15?

I love how it ends... 

Therefore, my  beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Or as the New Century Version puts it,

...because you know that your work in the Lord is never wasted.

God’s filling up those bottles. I don’t know what He’s going to do with them. Maybe He’s going to plant something new, and water it with those tears.

Maybe in the New Heaven and the New Earth God will use the stored up tears to water the Tree of Life which has healing in its leaves.

****************

 

FAITH

The fourth thing we learn from Psalm 56 is about faith.

Verse 11 -- “In God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?”

In God I trust.

Do we trust God?

Can God be trusted?

There will be those, of course, who will respond to a tragedy like these terrorist attacks, not with faith, but with skepticism. They will say, “Where is your God now?” They will see this atrocious action of innocent people killed as a sign that there is no God.

It all comes down to this: Do we trust God? Can God be trusted?

There’s that verse from James Russell Lowell that Martin Luther King liked to quote a lot:

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.

 Yet that scaffold sways the future,

   and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow,

   keeping watch above his own.

      [from The Present Crisis]

Listen, God’s Word assures us that somehow, mysteriously, all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. [Rom. 8.29, KJV]

Jesus said to His disciples, In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. [Jn. 16.33, NKJV]

The rock bottom assurance that we stand on is the Cross and the Resurrection. In His death on the cross, Jesus sucked the power out of evil and death. The powers of evil and death now have only short-term effects. The long-term effects have been conquered by the Cross.

And in His resurrection, Jesus showed us the mighty arm of God and the victory of God over sin, evil, the devil and death. Christ’s resurrection gave us a glimpse of what is to come.

We have seen the future, and it belongs to God.

There is no other basis for hope. But praise be to God, who has given us the assurance of salvation and deliverance through the life, death and resurrection of His Son, our Lord, Jesus the Christ.

*****************

Which brings me back to where I began...

It seems like everything nailed down is coming loose. But the only thing nailed down that is loose in the world is Jesus the Lord of all. They nailed Him down. And they thought, “That is that.” But you can’t nail down love.

You can’t nail down the eternal power of God.

You can’t nail down Resurrection Life.

You can’t nail down the Holy Spirit.

Make no mistake about it,

there’s something been let loose in the world

that is more powerful than all terrorists on the planet.

In the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, God has done something that can never be undone. It doesn’t matter how clever evil people are; it doesn’t matter how much money terrorists have; it doesn’t matter how much hate is directed toward innocent people by the powers of the devil...

            there’s SomeBody that was nailed down

             and has got loose!

Death has been swallowed up in victory!

Where, O Death, is your victory?

Where, O Death, is your sting?

Thanks be to god,

       who has given us the victory

               through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immoveable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain.

And nothing is wasted!

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!