Our God Is a Consuming Fire

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 1: 4-10 and Hebrews 12: 18-29 Sermon Title: Our God Is a Consuming Fire Preached on August 25, 2019 The amount of communication we’ve received from our children’s teachers this year has been impressive. Among many other messages, this past week we received one teacher’s newsletter, which began this way: Last week was a very busy week of learning new routines and diving right into this year’s assigned concepts and standards. The students have had a lot of new responsibilities and expectations and many have already eagerly been working to take them on. It is important that we, as the community and families that surround these students, frequently encourage them, remind them how much we believe in them, and maintain the high expectations that we know they are capable of achieving. I thought this message was quite inspirational, but in light of today’s Scripture Lessons, I’d like to reframe some of her language to what might be even more motivating. I wonder how it would feel to parents if their children’s teacher sent home a message like this: Your children are in dire need of reform. They stand on the cusp of abject failure and doom, performing so far below their assigned concepts and standards that their minds are like a deep darkness. So, while today my classroom is all gloom, like a tempest, I will drown their misconceptions and pluck up and pull down their laziness. Some might tremble with fear at the sight of me, but parents, please encourage and remind them that my class is a consuming fire to burn up their ignorance, that wisdom might shine out of each one of them. I don’t imagine such a message would be received well, while again and again this is the message of Scripture. Radical change is necessary. Old habits must be left behind, and there is no time for mincing words. Even Jesus, when he walked the earth said, among other things, “I will separate the wheat from the chaff. I will put a new heart within you [because (to paraphrase) the heart you have isn’t getting you where you need to go].” The Prophets, especially, used the same kind of language to describe God’s work in the world: Amos spoke of the plumb line used by God to measure the crookedness of our society’s walls, that we might be rebuilt with justice and righteousness. Malachi said that our God is like a refiner of silver, who will heat us and refine us until we reflect his image, or that He is like a fuller who will scrub us with fuller’s soap until all impurity is bleached out of us. These are images that are familiar enough in Scripture, but teachers can’t talk this way. Or can you imagine if your doctor looked over your blood work and quoted from the prophet Isaiah: “You have become like one who is unclean, and all your righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. You are fading like a leaf, and your iniquities, like the wind, are going to take you away.” That’s just not how people talk, but why? My sense is that in our world today, it’s because parents who received a harsh message from their child’s teacher would move their child to a different class as soon as possible. Likewise, we want our doctors to be nice and we’ll change doctors if ours isn’t, which is normal enough, however where is the line between being nice and tolerating bad behavior? Where is the line between being kind and mollifying those who are hurting themselves? Where is the line between lying and telling the truth? We are a people who need to change and we live in a world that needs to change. I know it, you know it. But who among us wants to be corrected? Isn’t it much nicer to be affirmed? This week President Trump re-tweeted a quote about himself from Wayne Allen Root who said, “President Trump is the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world.” According to the Washington Post, encouraged by these accolades the President said, “I am the chosen one,” which is a bold statement. It might be going out on a limb a little bit, but this morning I’d like to say that, maybe he’s not exactly right about that. However, this is how we all are in a sense. Even when reform is needed, we’d rather be patted on the back. What must be addressed are the bad habits that clog our arteries, but we don’t want to change our diet. On the road to education, what must be confronted first is the reality of ignorance in a culture of persistent denial, but critical words are hard to hear, and I wonder if that’s because we fear that we are either wheat or chaff, not both. That’s been a problem of mine for a long time, though I’m learning to deal with it. I left Marietta High School thinking that I was all wheat, thought there was plenty of chaff to deal with. I graduated with a 3.7 grade point average, which at first, sounds pretty good. Then I arrived at Presbyterian College and realized that maybe padding my Senior year with two periods of shop and one of weight training hadn’t been such a good idea. I tested right into remedial English where I had to face the reality that there were big holes in my education. For example, I didn’t understand how to choose which article, “a” or “an,” should go before an adjective of noun. My teacher noticed this and when she suggested I go and get some help from a tutor it was a blow to my self-esteem. I faced an important decision then: heed her advice or try to change teachers. You know the right answer here but think about how some people view higher education. I could have just gone back home telling my parents that, “grandpa was right. The academy’s been taken over by the liberals who teach evolution and insist that I use the correct determiners in my sentences.” If Jesus said he will be separating the wheat from the chaff, before we can deal with such a challenge, we must first be assured that we are not the chaff. If the prophets said that we are in need of reform, first we must believe that we are worth reforming. If our God is a consuming fire, first we must know that they hymn has it right: it’s our dross that he’ll consume and our gold that he’ll refine, because our God doesn’t want us going up in smoke. Too many of us can’t hear criticism, because when we hit walls in life, when we make mistakes, we think we’re the mistake. Far too many of us confuse correction with condemnation and refinement with rejection. That’s true. We think of grades on a test the same way we think of grades on an egg carton. Some are “As”, a lucky few “AAs”, but once one is labeled as a “bad egg,” he’s fed to the pigs in the slop bucket. Not so with God. Such labeling might make sense with eggs, but don’t be confused. It’s never that way with God. With God, redemption and not rejection is always the point. Consider our First Scripture Lesson. Here we have that great story of Jeremiah the young prophet. He’s only a boy. Then God came along and spoke right to him. A special responsibility He gives Jeremiah, to “pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow,” which sounds quite violent, unless you understand the character of God. For God treats His people the way a gardener weeds his garden. God looks upon the plot and says, “Sure, there is work to do.” “Sure, weeds must be pulled and rocky soil tilled,” but God isn’t going to reject the garden for its defects. God is going to refine the garden until it bears fruit. In the book of Hebrews, it’s the same story. In our Second Scripture reading there is a blazing fire. Darkness, gloom, and a tempest. The sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken. The message is terrifying but remember that this message to us comes from God, who doesn’t give up on His people. You see, by the testimony of Scripture, what becomes clear is God’s intention, that we, be not condemned, but corrected; not rejected, but refined. Our God is a consuming fire, and knowing His character what will be consumed? We fear it will be all of who we are. Only, according to Hebrews, it is for the removal of what can be shaken, that what cannot be shaken may remain. This is how we must understand hardship and trials, test scores and doctor’s appointments, divorces and lawsuits. If life is hard, let us let go of the parts of ourselves that hold us back. If there are bumps in the road, let them shake off our baggage, not derail our journey. When we are tried and persecuted, let us give up on our broken ways of doing things to learn something new. But, to do that, something has to change. We can’t turn back to the old ways; like the Ancient Hebrew people, to have new life we must leave Egypt behind. To bear fruit, we must allow our weeds to be pulled. To receive the Kingdom that cannot be shaken, we must allow the removal of what can be shaken that what is eternal might remain. I believe that’s true, and I believe it’s just like that for a lot of new parents. It’s not all smiles and cuteness, for a baby requires a parent to leave an old life behind. So, when some people call babies little bundles of joy, I don’t. I can think of baptisms that were like trying to baptize a racoon, and I see most babies as wreaking balls who renovate their parents’ lives completely. I think parenthood is something like an old State Farm Insurance commercial. This one featured a man who says he’s never getting married in one scene, and in the next he’s buying a wedding ring. Then he tells his wife in an airplane surrounded by crying babies that they’re never having kids, and in the next scene his wife is delivering their first child. As he cleans a crayon drawing off the wall of their house he says, “we’re never having another kid,” to which his wife responds: “I’m pregnant.” The commercial ends with this man who made all these declarations about what he was never going to do, but on the couch surrounded by his wife and children he voices one last never: “I’m never letting go.” If our God is a consuming fire, then a father must often decide whether or not he will allow the motorcycle to be consumed, because there isn’t room enough in the garage or his life for that and the minivan. Those who go off to school face the same decision. If our God is a consuming fire will they allow their ego to go up in flames that they might learn more than they already think they know? Will politicians listen and change or just go on defending what’s always been? As we age will we allow our freedom, independence, and our driver’s license to go up in flames that we might still hold onto dignity and safety? Our God is preparing us for a new life, so what will we hold onto? Our old life? Our career? Our pride? Our innocence? Our fear? When the earth shakes and the flames come, let go of vanity, that what cannot be shaken, that what is eternal might remain. Amen.

Strangers and Foreigners on the Earth

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 1: 1, 10-20 and Hebrews 11: 1-3 and 8-16 Sermon Title: Strangers and foreigners on the earth Preached on August 11, 2019 My new friend Van Pearlburg asked me if I was going to be preaching from the book of Galoshes again this week. I told him that “It was Colossians, not Galoshes. And no, this week the sermon was about faith based on a passage from the book of Hebrews.” But what is faith? According to our Second Scripture Lesson, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Such a definition as this one broadens the way we think about faith, for we generally confine any talk of faith to the world of religion. In reality, there are all kinds of things we don’t know for certain are there, we just know they are. We have faith that they’re there. Take snakes for example. Jim and Flora Speed had a snake in the house week before last. They told me this story knowing they might hear it again, and here it is. They suspected it was in the catch-all room of their house. Their catch-all room came with a door that opens to the side yard, and do you think Flora needed proof that a snake was in there to avoid going into that room? No. Faith is the assurance of things not seen, and she didn’t have to see the snake to know that it was there. That’s faith. It’s not faith in God, per say. It’s faith in the existence of a snake, but my point is that so often we don’t need to know for sure that something is there to act as though it is. That’s faith. To act on her belief all she needed was the rumor of a snake. The shadow of a snake spotted by her husband. The skin of a snake discovered by a woman named Amanda who came over to catch the snake. Amanda from Animal Control came over to the house. Looked around the room where the snake was thought to be, and she said, “It’s under that book shelf.” “How do know that?” Dr. Speed asked. Could she see it? No. Amanda just knows enough about snakes: where they like to live and how they act, so after moving the books from the bookshelf, Amanda got her reward. A fat black rat snake that she took back to her property to reduce the rodent population. You see, you don’t have to know something for certain to be right. That’s faith. You don’t have to see something for it to be there. That’s faith, and we can apply that way of thinking to understand what faith in God is all about. Do we know for certain that God is at work in the world? Can we see God’s hand moving? All we need is to understand better the character of God and we will know well enough what God is doing and where God will probably be, but do we know God as well as Amanda knows snakes? Maybe not? It’s a story that’s been told again and again, that a man full of doubts went to visit his pastor in her study. “Pastor, I’m afraid I’ve lost my faith. I just don’t believe in God anymore.” His pastor responded, “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in, because I’m willing to bet that I don’t believe in that God either.” The God described in our Second Scripture Lesson is one who makes promises. Those who embody what it means to be faithful are the ones who believe that once God said it will be done, it will be, regardless of whether or not they can see it in plain sight. Abraham was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. Isaac and Jacob, were heirs with him of the same promise, but lived their lives in tents. Sarah was barren, [but] considered him faithful who had promised, even though her husband was as good as dead. And through them [Sarah and Abraham] descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” What is faith in God then? Is it holding fast to the belief that the Earth was created in seven 24-hour days? Is it never relenting on the conviction that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible? Or that Jesus was able to walk on the water as on the land? Believing all those things is just fine, however, do not be confused. For faith in God as defined by our Second Scripture Lesson has to do, not with some exacting standard of fundamental belief, but the absolute conviction that God has promised us a city, and while we have yet to arrive, while we can’t yet see it, we are still on our way there. Sometimes we make faith out to be some big, high academy, theological word. It’s not. It’s tangible. Then, at other times we make faith out to be some backwoods, anti-science, word. It’s not that either. It’s required of all of us, especially today. In our world today, to send a child to school is an act of faith. A new school year has begun. I’ve been walking our Lily to school each morning. Her little sister is now going to the magnet school out on Aviation, but Lily and I still walk to school together until we get to the corner of the school yard. That’s where she stops, gives me a hug, and walks on without me. I stand there and watch until she makes it inside. Most days while I’m standing there, she’ll turn around to wave at me. When she does that sometimes I’m overcome with emotions. How much I love and care for her. I’ll imagine what it will be like to drop her off at college. I stand there staring as she walks into her school and think about all these things that I can’t yet see or control, and I’ll pray that God will watch over her and all the other children in that school because ours is a world of uncertainty where anything could happen on any day. It takes faith for me to let her go. Only now I’m not sure that I’ve had enough. That’s because of what I learned just last Friday. Sara dropped Lily off, and on the way to school she said, “Mama. Did you know that when Daddy drops me off at school he just stands there and stares at me the whole time I’m walking? I know he does, because I turn around on my way to the doors, and wave for him to go on, but he just stands there.” What am I to say about these things? What I’d say is that too often this father is more controlled by fear than guided by faith. Of course, it’s easy to be afraid as a father. Maybe it’s impossible not to be, but when we give into our fear all we can do is stare. Immobilized, all we can do is hold our children to our chests. Controlled by terror, we react to the world without hope, and lose sight of the new world that God has promised. So, don’t look to my example. Look somewhere else. Look to Abraham, who could have turned back, but kept going. To Isaac and Jacob, who lived their whole lives in tents, but were preparing for something else. Look to Sarah, who was barren, but never gave up hope. Look to them and know that while around us is fear and hatred, Violence and war. While just walking into the Walmart takes courage – those who never fail to believe that a better world is coming and are bold enough to walk on toward it, are those who will have their reward. That’s what faith is all about, you see. Though tempted surely, they did not settle in and grow used to some reality of fear, terror, death, racism, ignorance, and hatred. No. They were not, nor are we citizens of this world of shadow, for God has promised us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. This afternoon at 1:00 our Mayor, Thunder Tumlin, has called on Marietta’s churches to assemble in prayer, especially for those cities most recently ravaged by gun violence. He called and asked me to help him pull it together, which I was glad to do, though I’m tempted, like many, to grow frustrated with a society who offers “thoughts and prayers,” but not much else. Today I feel differently, however. For if we all just stop to remember that God promises us a new heaven and a new earth, our thoughts are open to a different world than the one we have now, and if we are just bold enough to raise our voice in prayer, than, like the great heroes of our faith, we have called on God to help us make it so. Indeed, He will. So, let us have faith enough to follow. Amen.

Seeking What Is Above, Tied to What Is Below

Scripture Lessons: Hosea 11: 1-11 and Colossians 3: 1-11 Preached on August 4, 2019 Sermon title: Seeking What Is Above, Tied to What Is Below I recently had lunch with two great leaders in our church, Mary Margaret and Clem Doyle. Over the course of lunch, in addition to just catching up and enjoying time together, Clem wanted to know what obstacles I thought we might need to overcome as a church in the next few years. What is standing in the way of our progress? This was a question I wasn’t really prepared to answer. So, I’ve been thinking about it and talking about ever since. Buck Buchanon said it best. That the great and obvious obstacle standing in the way of growth, evangelism, and the spread of the Gospel here at First Presbyterian Church are the two front doors. Most every church has doors like ours. Nice doors that swing right open. Ours even have someone like Harry Vaughn with a smiling face who will open the doors for you. Still, there are a lot of people out in the world who are afraid to go through them. Now why is that? I believe it’s right there in Colossians: being a Christian demands that we change. There are habits we’ve grown used to that we must leave behind. A requirement of the Christian life is that we don’t stay the same as we’ve always been, so Paul charges us in our Second Scripture Lesson: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth… Put to death, whatever in your is earthly.” Christians have to be different. We have to change, and change is hard, so not everyone is just going to walk through those doors. Grace abounds and new life is here, but change is required and change is hard. It’s hard for all of us. And I want to do it well. I am a pastor after all. But more than that, I want to be a Christian, and I know that our religion calls me to a different standard of behavior modeled on the life of Christ. Now what does that look like? His first miracle in the Gospel of John took place at a party. When the wine ran out, his mother called on him to do something about it. You remember what he did. He didn’t take this opportunity to preach. He didn’t scold anyone. He told some people to fill up the great empty vats with water, and he turned the water into wine. We have to remember that image as we read our Second Scripture Lesson, for when Paul talks about the difference between seeking the things that are above and not on things that are on earth, what he’s really talking about is the difference between being selfish and being mindful of the needs of others. He’s not talking about being antisocial, but how we can be a loving part of the party. We not called to be more judgmental or self-righteous, but kinder and more charitable. When we consider what it means to be earthly, we must keep in mind the way of life that Jesus modeled and compare it to the way of the religious authorities whom he opposed, for while Jesus never left the wedding party, still today there are still plenty of Christians who will tell you that to follow Jesus we must leave having fun behind. Think about Miss Watson in Huckleberry Finn. Miss Watson was telling him about heaven. How he must stop being so bad so when he dies he can go to the good place, which she described as a place where “all a body would have to do was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.” Hearing that, Huck didn’t think much of it. To make matters worse, he asked Miss Watson if she thought his friend Tom Sawyer would go there. When she said, “not by a considerable sight” Huck was glad to go to the bad place, where there might be more exciting things to do, and at least he’d have a friend. Plenty of people think like Huckleberry Finn. When they hear what they have to give up, they don’t want to change. Then, the doors of our churches become obstacles that the likes of Huckleberry Finn don’t want to go through, and who can blame them? I don’t want to play the harp with old Miss Watson either. Later in the book it becomes even more challenging for Huck. Later comes the moment in Huckleberry Finn where he makes this very important choice. He’s run away with Miss Watson’s slave, Jim. The heavy weight of stealing, what Huck and so many others believed was her property, weighs heavy on his shoulders. In an attempt to do what was right, he got a piece of paper and a pencil “all glad and excited” to tell her that a Mr. Phelps has [Jim] and will give him up for a reward if she’ll just send it. After writing this he said, “I felt good and all washed clean of sin.” He thinks he’s finally set his mind on what is heavenly. But, then, he doesn’t send it straight off, but lays the paper down and sits there thinking. Mark Twain writes that “he got to thinking over their trip down the river. He could see Jim before him all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms; they were a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing.” So, after considerable thought, finally Huck said, “all right, then, I’ll go to hell” and tore up the letter. We get confused this way sometimes too. What is it that we must give up? What does it mean to be earthly? What does it look like to seek the things that are above? Only, consider how right-side up Huckleberry Finn had it when he thought he was doing it all up-side down. The Gospel does call us to a new way of life. The Gospel does call us to change, but in reading this passage from Colossians, recognize that the way of life that we are called to is being able to see that Christ is all and in all, even in those society has called property or worse. That’s what it means to leave behind what is earthly. That’s what it means to set our minds on things that are above. For down here on the earth we are so often blind to the humanity of our neighbors. When Paul writes, “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed,” Know that being earthly means gratifying our desires at another’s expense. Being earthly means cheating our neighbor as though money were more important than people. Being earthly means using faith to justify slavery or so many other abominations. Being earthly is being foolish with our words. Saying things like, “I wish they’d just go back where they came from.” This phrase and so many like it that we hear more and more these days, keep us tethered to the earth and trapped in the past. It’s not just that our words can hurt or be used to demean and devalue and disempower. It’s that it’s not where we’re from that matters but where we’re going. We Christians must speak using the language of heaven. Our words must reflect the values of that place where, according to our Second Scripture Lesson, there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free. We are called to see, not only the humanity of our neighbor, but the Christ who dwells within him. I could see how important it is to live that way as I was checking out at the Kroger last Friday. It was a hot day. You remember. So, when I was at the Kroger at about 5:00, the woman in front of me had taken off her wig while shopping and put it with her produce in the cart. The reason I know that is because the cashier bagged all this woman’s groceries, then got to the wig and said, “Mam, you forget your hair.” This was at the busy time of the day in the grocery store. Everyone was in there, and when that’s the case it’s easy to be rude to the cashier. It’s easy to forget that Christ dwells within her, but we have to slow down, look her in the eye, value her as person regardless of her station, race, or citizenship status, because we never know, she might be the one to hand us back our hair. “Christ is all and in all” proclaims our Second Scripture Lesson. Remember that and know that how we treat the cashier matters more than whether or not we have beer in our shopping cart. How we treat each other determines whether we are trapped in the prison of selfishness or on our way to the Kingdom of Heaven. I wish the 21-year-old gunman who walked into a Walmart yesterday in El Paso, Texas, killing 20 people wounding 26 others had thought about that. He didn’t. He didn’t understand that what we have done to the least of these, we have done to Him. Consider the One Whom we serve, for though He had every right to rub shoulders with Kings and Queens, instead he washed his disciples’ feet. While he could have come to judge the world, instead he came to save it. He ate with sinners, tax collectors, and all God’s children we fail to see as precious. And He still does. The table is before us. All that is required is that you leave what is earthly behind, and step towards the Kingdom of Heaven. That you give up on status, for here, all are one. That you give up on self-righteousness, for here, all is grace. When we all choose to live this way, the doors of our churches become no obstacle, for the grace we receive here is what all people long for. Amen.