Better Than We Found It

Scripture Lessons: 1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8 and Deuteronomy 34: 1-12 Sermon Title: But You Shall Not Cross Over There Preached on 10/25/2020 What do you think was going through his mind up on Mount Nebo? What do you think Moses thought as the Lord showed him the whole land, the great plains, palm trees, and the flowing river Jordan? It was that land flowing with milk and honey which he had been looking forward to seeing. Up on the mountain he looked over into it. Surely it was with tears in his eyes that he heard the Lord saying, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” This is what you’ve been dreaming of. This is what you’ve been looking forward to. This is the vision that’s been keeping you going. Now you see it, “But you shall not cross over there.” What did that feel like? The feeling that comes to mind from my personal experience, albeit incredibly minor in comparison, is what I felt at the end of my hardest week as a camp counselor. I was a camp counselor for one summer up at Camp Cherokee on Lake Allatoona. My sister still loves that place, maybe more than any other place on earth, but for me, I was always happy to be there while also being happy to go back home once each session was over. That was especially true after the hardest session of the summer. This one week was with middle schoolers. Middle Schoolers are hard enough, but these were “serious about camping Middle Schoolers,” who actually chose to sleep in tents for the whole week, away from running water and electricity. We were a mile or so away from the main camp. We cooked all our own food. We lived in the wild, and when it was finally over, I was ready to go home. So ready that I could taste it. I sat down in my car with such relief at the thoughts of a hot shower and my own bed, only my car wouldn’t start. Do you know that feeling? You say to yourself, “It’s finally over,” but fate or bad luck or God says, “No, it’s not.” Why does that happen? What are we supposed to learn from something like that? Doesn’t it make it easier to do hard things if there is a promise of receiving a blessing in the end? What changes in your life if you accept the truth that the outcome is not guaranteed? Sometimes we act as though it were. Have you ever worked overtime in expectation of a promotion that never came? Are you pushing through this time of quarantine with the hope that a vaccine will be here in March? Guess what, there’s no guarantee. So, we must ask: Had Moses known he would never cross over into the Promised Land would he still have left Egypt? Which is sort of like asking, “Would you have moved to New Zealand back in April if you knew it was going to take us so long to get our act together?” Or thinking of not our present, but our history, “What was going on in the mind of the first 12 members of First Presbyterian Church who started meeting in an old log house in November of 1835?” Would they have left their established homes and already built churches to break ground right here had they known what it was really going to be like? Had someone told them about raids, droughts, and dysentery would they have laid the foundation that we now stand on? They were but four families who started this church: Mayes, Simpson, Hamilton, and Lemon. Leonard Simpson was one of our two first elders. He also ran the local tavern, and he died in 1856 at the age of eighty-seven, which gave him about three years to worship in the brick sanctuary that wouldn’t have been there without him. Just three years to sit in such a beautiful place for worship, a sanctuary built to seat 400 by a congregation that numbered 96 at the time. The land on which it was built was donated by Rev. John Jones, their preacher. Only it wasn’t finished until after his resignation. What was that like? What is it like to work so hard for something, yet never see it come to full bloom? What is it like to look forward to something that you never see materialize? What is it like to make sacrifices, not for yourself and your immediate gratification, but for those who come along later, maybe long after your lifetime? God’s story is a long one, but we are like grass. That’s a hard truth to accept. A friend from Tennessee, Neeley King, wrote me a line she read or heard in a sermon, or she’s so witty she probably came up with it herself: We live in a microwave society, but we have a crockpot God. That’s a hard truth to live with, maybe especially for her husband John, who used to let me know that the service was running too long by putting down his hymnal, waving his arms, and pointing to his wristwatch from his pew in the back. Like him we’re an impatient people. Scripture calls us to be patient all the time, but we can do all our Christmas shopping on-line and it will be on our doorsteps by the end of the week. People say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” but ask a contractor how many customers patiently wait for their renovation to be complete. The truth about humanity is that we want it now. We love immediate gratification, but so much of what we have, so many of the gifts we enjoy, were not thrown together in a moment or even a lifetime but passed down through the generations. Moses was not permitted to cross over, but when he died, generation after generation has inherited his blessing. So, “The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days.” If you can see today’s worship bulletin, that’s what’s painted on the cover. For thirty days the Israelites wept for Moses because he had brought them so far and had given them so much, yet he died before his feet could touch the Promised Land. Does that make you sad? It does me, but not if I think about it this way: a friend of mine named Roben Mounger has a rug in her house. Her grandmother started it for her when she was just a little girl. She wanted it to be in her granddaughter’s home, when she grew up, which must have seemed to little Roben, at the time, as a future so far away that it would never get here. She was just a child, and what is having her own house to a little girl other than a far-off dream? Christmas takes forever to get here when you’re young. When you’re young you’re so short-sighted that you turn a crank to make ice-cream, but it feels like ice cream might never happen. Still, it does happen, and in Roben’s house is the rug her grandmother made her. Her grandmother died before she ever saw it in there, but is a piece of her grandmother not with her always? Our daughter Lily is named after my grandmother. My paternal grandmother painted with oils, and still, whenever I smell them it’s like I’m in her house again. Some of her artwork hangs in our house, and I point them out to Lily, saying, “Your great-grandmother who you’re named after, painted that, and she would have loved you.” What does it mean to pass something like that down? What does it mean to invest in something so far into the future? I tell you, it’s this great act of faithful giving that helps us to remember that there will be a future. This year we’re completing the final phases of that capital campaign you funded two years ago. We’re going to expand the playground on Church Street. Do you know the one I’m talking about? Do you know how good it is to think about expanding that playground? Do you know how good it makes me feel to think about kids playing on it, without having to wear facemasks. Someday it will happen. Someday it’s going to be better than it is right now. Someday we’re going to look back on this moment, and we’ll tell those who can’t remember what it was like, “Yes, we really did have to wear masks. Yes, the restaurants could only do take out. Yes, the toilet paper really was all gone. Yes, we were scared, but we made it. We made it. And now, look where we are.” Moses knew where he was going, and even though he never reached it himself, I know that he died a happy man, because a congregation of 96 people built a Sanctuary that can now seat 400. Four families were so determined to have a Presbyterian Church in Marietta, GA that now we have this place and each other. Just the idea that our children might have a better life fills me with so much joy I can’t help but smile, because while I might not step into the future with them, knowing they will have a better future gives me hope. What we do today ensures that this church will be an institution which will outlive us all, and that won’t be true for all churches. Some have said that one in five will close during this pandemic, but I know that from this pulpit, the Gospel will be proclaimed by preachers who aren’t even born yet. And that from their heavenly home, the generations who came before us will rejoice knowing that this church which they invested in will be a home to their descendants in the faith, for while we are the stewards of this great legacy, we are building on what they started. I’m asking you to take your pledge card and to make an investment in the future. Why? So, we will make it another year? Sure. But more precisely, so we can pass the gift of this great place down to the coming generation, better than we found it, which is fitting, for it’s because of this place that we are better now than when He found us. Isn’t that right? Who was I when I wandered into this church as a 3rd grade kid? Who was I when I stacked bricks on a mission trip to Mexico as a high schooler? Tim Hammond, who was there on my first trip with our youth group, reminded me that inspired by our bad behavior, the van my friends and I rode in down to Mexico was nicknamed the Paddy Wagon by all the adult advisors. Well, I’ve gone from the Paddy Wagon to the Pulpit, and it’s because the Gospel I heard here has made me better than I was. How then can I not want to leave this place in better shape than I found it? We increased our pledge this year. Why? It’s because we’ve been blessed by this place, and the blessing of this place must be preserved for those kids who would be in the nursery. Will you help keep it going, for their children, and our children’s children? For I tell you that as this day turns into the next, and as the far-off tomorrow turns into the day after that, how we live now will resound through a future we’ll never set foot in. But they’ll remember the gift they received, and we will rest knowing we left this place better than we found it. Presbyterians are weird about money. We don’t like to talk about it, so I’m just going to say it as plainly as I can: Everything you have comes from God, and in Scripture we are called to give 10% of what we have away. Take your pledge card and invest a portion of what you have into this church and Her bright, ongoing future. Not only will this church be stronger and better for you having done so, but you will be stronger, better, and more hopeful for having done so. Amen.