February 25 2018 "Love Commits?"

February 25  2018 Romans 4.13-25 *Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16 “Love Commits” Pastor Jacqueline Hines

A father told the story about his two children who were fighting like kids often do. [slide # 1 kids fighting] He concluded they both had something to do with the problem so he took them aside separately and asked “Your sister is terribly wrong, what should her punishment be.” And the child would suggest the greatest punishment they could think of. Then the father took the other child aside and said quietly “Your brother did not do the right thing. How do you think he should be punished?” The second child also angrily suggested harsh punishment. The father then brought the two children together and offered them each the punishment that they had demanded for the other, in which case they both argued how unfair the punishment was. They were beginning to learn to appreciate sharing mercy to others that they wanted for themselves.

So it is for this Lenten season. We are aware of our shortcomings and the shortcomings of our neighbors. We are learning to be merciful because God is merciful to us.

In God’s great mercy, God appeared to Abraham when Abraham was 99 years old. [slide # 2 God appears to Abraham ]  When you are ninety–nine years old, you have experienced a whole lot of water going under the bridge. However, God may appear to us at any age. In fact, throughout our lives, God appears to us many times in many different ways and for many different reasons.

We are made in God’s image, so we can understand God’s motives for coming to us, just as we have motives for coming to God and coming to one another. Sometimes we appear for political reasons; we have a wonderful cause that we want to encourage and advertise. We want to spread the word about our mission or our bible study or our elevator project or our community meal or our bake sale. God appears to us, too, like a well-dressed politician smiling nicely and shaking hands so that we can appreciate the many things that need to be done in order to do God’s good will.

Sometimes we appear to God and to one another in order to fix something, to work on a problem or to prevent a problem. God appears to us with step by step directions and solutions that help us in the short run as well as the long run.

Sometimes we appear to God and to one another with gifts and pleasantries and opportunities that delight us and unite us, that encourage us to support one another, keep in touch with one another and stay in relationship with one another.

This day, according to Genesis 17, God appeared to Abraham, as God had appeared to Abraham many times. God appeared with a gift, a promise, a covenant to multiply the good in his life.

The longer we keep the faith, the more we appreciate those who work alongside us doing good deeds because no one is an island. An octogenarian came to Bethel a few months ago. He looked around the building and rejoiced that all the many years he had worked in the church were appreciated and continued by many faithful believers who had come after him. We all rejoice when our efforts are carried on by the next generation, carefully and faithfully. It is very rewarding to see the good we have done last for years and maintained for the benefit of others.

“ ‘Walk before me,” God says to Abraham. “and be blameless 2And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.’” God invites Abraham and his companion Sarah to make a commitment to God – to walk with God and to be blameless, to make room for the great blessings God wanted to pour into their lives.

Last week I went to the store with a gift card I received for Christmas gave me for Christmas. It did not go through. Already my Lenten journey has included an invitation from God to receive more patience than I have because finding out that the card was not processed correctly has taken a lot of time on the phone. I also have an invitation from God to receive more readiness to forgive the goofball giver and to receive more acceptance of myself as one who is not 100% patient or willing to forgive a debt. Sometimes a grudge feels sooo good, or a grudge gets stuck comfortably in our craw and we are slow to remove it on our own. Lent is a time when God invites us to deal with our grudges and any other grime we have gotten used to.

You wonder if Abraham and Sarah had to think twice before taking God up on God’s offer. Like any of us, every invitation we get is not necessarily one that we want to take. [slide # 3 invitation] Every party is not one you want to attend. Not every picnic is a picnic for you.

There is a commercial with 4 or five people gathered in a living room, each on their smart phone or tablet. The announcer says “You can do this …or you can just talk to each other.” and everyone stops texting and scrolling and they all laugh out loud as if to say, “Talk to each other rather than text… what a ridiculous idea.” [slide # 4 eople on cell phones at table]

We have come to value our technology. Yes, we often take time to talk with one another, but we are also absorbed with internet technology -  from smart phones to smart televisions to dumb criminals putting their crimes on Facebook with selfies. Last Saturday, we were able to live stream of our service so family and friends around the country and in Europe were grateful to watch the service first-hand.

When we do talk to one another, we have a lot to say because we have been exposed to the 48 hours of YouTube video that is uploaded every minute, to the 269 billion emails and 8.6 trillion text messages sent daily around the world each day, not to mention countless news channels, cable dramas, docudramas, judge shows, and entertainment series, my favorites being the Residents, The Good Doctor, MacGyver, Wonder Woman, Touched by an Angel, Matlock, and Bull.

We sink ourselves down in an easy chair enjoying those moments when with one press of the remote or a mere swipe of the screen we can go a thousand miles away and find something that gives us whatever we want in that moment whether it is to laugh or cry or buy or learn or squirm or rally or dally. It is all there completely under our control. [slide # 5 man on sofa with remote]

We need some leisure in our lives. We need easy ways and lazy days sometimes because life can be stressful. At other times we must search diligently for God’s way and wisdom and we must get off of our rusty dusty and do God’s will with all our heart, all our mind, all our strength. There are times that sitting down in our spiritual easy chairs has to be replaced with taking a strong stand to protect the poor and innocent and working up a sweat running away from temptation.

God is as easily seen everywhere as all the stuff we see through modern technology, and if our eyes are open, we do not miss God appearing to us with a wonderful opportunity to commit to God in ways that will bring many blessings.

With one word or whisper of prayer we connect to God with ease. [slide # 6 prayer] That prayer may be a prayer we have repeated for decades. That prayer that connects us to God may be a song we have sung again and again – for those who know it best, seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. Our prayer may be from words from family and friends have said that resonate with our inner thoughts and ring irresistibly true in our hearts. That prayer may be down to earth and deeply personal, it may be long or short; prayer can be spoken from memory, written, read, recited, silent or as Romans 8 says loaded with sighs too deep for words. Prayer may be strategically poetic and liturgically strong like the hundreds of prayers we find in the psalms and the gospels and the epistles.

The question is do we trust that connecting to God in prayer will lead to something more blessed than what we can create on our own. Though prayer is no more a guarantee, no more magical than a mortgage or a marriage, do we think this whole faith in God thing is worthy of our time and attention? Would our hearts get as restless for prayer as our fingers do without texting? Would we feel as lost without prayer as we do without our television or computer screens in front of us or do we avoid prayer as if it were a scam designed to diminish us in some way or another? [slide # 7     two children praying]

After the Florida shooting, I heard that there were many people trying to scam others, asking for money for so-called victims. Others with too much time on their hands to do mischief started sending out fake news stories about the students who witnessed the shooting. The stories were lies, but they seduced hundreds of thousands of people into thinking that they were true.

Getting scammed is easy. I’ve been scammed a couple times. Perhaps you have been too. There is one scam organization these days that calls people up saying your grandson or friend is in jail or kidnapped and needs you to send them money or something bad will happen. Another scam says you won a large amount of money and if you send in a few hundred dollars in processing fees within 24 hours they will send you a big check. They have gotten over 10 million dollars over the years. I heard of a woman this week named Gladys who was scammed for a fortune and left with only $69 dollars in her bank account.

God’s ways of holiness are not designed to scam us, we learn this as we walk this Lenten journey. We learn the truth that sets us free from paths of destruction as we connect to God in prayer. [slide # 8  truth sets us…] God appears to us, no matter our age or stage in life. As often as the sun rises, God appears to us with an invitation to commit to God’s will that lights the way to more blessings than we can count for ourselves and the world around us. Let us all commit to walk in the light.  [slide # 9 man bowed humbly] Amen. [slide # 10 Mother Theresa quote]