A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

RELIGION: Got God?

Psalm 128, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, September 27, 2009

Here's a list of several variations of the "God Speaks" billboards. “Tell the kids I love them. – God. Let's meet at my house Sunday before the game. – God. C'mon over and bring the kids. – God. What part of "Thou Shalt Not..." didn't you understand? – God. We need to talk. – God. Keep using my name in vain, I'll make rush hour longer. – God. Don't make me come down there. – God. Loved the wedding, invite me to the marriage. – God. That "Love Thy Neighbor" thing... I meant it. – God. I love you and you and you and you and... – God. Will the road you're on get you to my place? – God.
My way is the highway. – God. Need directions? – God. You think it's hot here? – God. Have you read my #1 best seller? There will be a test. – God. Do you have any idea where you're going? – God.” Maybe we should put up one of these billboards. I wonder how much it costs.

One of the things that I always really liked about the United Church of Christ, or Congregational churches—I grew up in one—was that we had a healthy skepticism about how much we can ever know about what God's view is on many topics. Growing up I never felt as though the church possessed absolute and complete knowledge about what God wanted, thought, and liked. Now to some that may feel like that’s a bad church. But to me then and still today, it is the right stance, the humble, human stance before the Lord our God. Now I’m not saying we don’t know anything about who God is and what God wills for us and the world—children not starving to death is an obvious one. We do, but it is right and good to realize how great God is and how not like God we are. 

And still, even we want to be able to keep God close to our view of things in life, in politics, in social values. So do we ever get God? Of course not, we respond. But seriously now, or rather, religiously, don't we try to get God? We even say it just this way: "I need to get God in my life (again)." If you don't have God in your life, it means you're a mess. If you somehow get God in your life, things will work out. Yeah, we definitely think we are supposed to get God. A few years ago, one of America's biggest department stores tried marketing a doll in the form of the baby Jesus. The advertisements described it as being washable, cuddly and unbreakable, and it was neatly packaged in straw, satin and plastic. To complete the package, the manufacturer added biblical texts appropriate to the baby Jesus. To the department store executives, it looked like a sure-fire winner, a real moneymaker. But they were wrong. It didn't sell. In a last-ditch effort to get rid of the dolls, one of the store managers placed a huge sign in a prominent display window. It read: Jesus Christ, Marked down 50%, Get him while you can.

This obviously isn't meant spiritually; this is just marketing a Jesus doll. But you know what, we do tend to have an issue with our psalm when it says, "Happy is everyone who fears the Lord...." That just doesn't sound like God, not our friend, not our easy-going good guy of a God. It shouldn’t be like this, we think. “Happy is everyone who respects the Lord,” or “reveres” the Lord. But “fear” the Lord is much more like it. The whole fear factor, we think, takes religion too far back into the old days. Where most people are today is that if we just treat our family right, go to work and do our job, come to church, help out a bit, give some money, well that should do it. Now I don't mean to be, well, a killjoy this morning. After all, this sermon series has been about the family. I have tried to show how a new and most powerful form of love occurs to give birth when a child is born; and where sacrifice for each other is the glue that keeps the family in love together in love. The second week, I expressed my disfavor toward corporal punishment as an appropriate form of discipline, because an intensive and engaging relationship with our children doesn't require such physicality to win their hearts and change their behavior. Last Sunday, I wanted to help us see that parents are the ones who share and pass on to their children the ability to find the light at the end of the tunnel and the advantage of even being at a disadvantage. Our character becomes their character.

And so this morning, why don't we just say that the last piece of the puzzle is a nice, friendly, deity called God, who looks after our family and bestows blessings upon us, when we walk and talk right? Someone akin to a patron family god. Then we can go to brunch and have a nice Sunday service. Well we could, but today we're not going to. Why not? Could because I'm feeling ornery, but it might also be because this view of God is ultimately, ultimately untrue. The truth is that life isn't that easy for many families, and when we honestly look at things, it doesn't help to try to tie it all up in a nice little bow called God. Basically everything you see that occurs in the world, occurs to a family. That 45 second splash of news at 11 PM at night that we watch on TV occurs to a mother or a father, a son or a daughter, a brother, sister, aunt, uncle. If it happens, if drugs happen, it happens to a family; if someone becomes an alcoholic, it's a family who has an alcoholic; addictions happen in families; mental illnesses strike a family, as does job loss, loss of house, abuse, prostitution, murder, suicide, death. It's not true or best to talk in terms of a little god and teach your children that God is like a tooth fairy or Santa Claus. How are they going to deal with what may come their way? The Lord our God, the God we rise up to worship here, is God Almighty, El Shaddai in Hebrew, the one whose will is sovereign, whose love is eternal, and who alone is the first and the last.

One of the reasons I became a pastor was because of the joy I feel in leading worship. To put it wrongly, at least for today, I really want you get God in your life through worship; not that I know much good this is doing you, which reminds me of the son who asked his dad, "Dad, did you go to Church when you were a little boy?"  "Yes son, every single Sunday." "Thought so," his boy says, "Bet it won't do me any good either." No, it definitely does you and me some good.

Did you know that in ancient Judaism, only one person could enter the third and final portion or room of the Temple, what they called the holiest of holies, the place where the ark of the covenant was situated? And did you know that this only happened once a year on Yom Kippur? Today, there is no real separation between the sanctuary and the chancel. Look, we let anybody up here! There's no holy of holies. But without a sense of the holiness, who is God any longer? Perhaps fear isn't so wrong. You know, we are the ones who still worship in pews, with a cross, and stained glass window, organ, and hymnals. Why don’t we have that old time religion? We aren’t the ones who make everything cozy and comfy in plush theater chairs, auditorium setting, devoid of a Communion table, Cross, or anything relating to God, so that those who come won’t be scared off. We aren’t making things easy and comfortable for others. Why shouldn’t our God reflect uncomfortable demands and awesome dimensions? We’re not supposed to get God. God’s supposed to get us.

This was precisely how Abraham felt as he walked to Mt. Moriah with his son Isaac. The angel of the Lord, if you remember, had told Abraham to take his son, his only son, the son who God promised to give to Abraham and Sarah late in their life, the son who would be the only way to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the father of multitudes. God told Abraham to take Isaac, bring him to the mountain, and sacrifice him on an altar. Abraham has the most uncomfortable demand in the whole Bible placed on him. And Abraham takes Isaac, some servants and donkeys, and sets out on the three day journey. When they get to the foot of the mountain, he takes Isaac alone with him. Isaac actually carries the wood that is to be used to burn the offering. When they get closer to the top, Isaac notices they don’t have any lamb or anything to sacrifice, and animals up at that height are quite scarce. H turns to his father and ask where's their animal is. Abraham answers, simply, cryptically, faithfully, “God will provide.” They reach the spot; the father binds the son, lays him on the altar, and raises his arm, his hand clutching the knife. That's when the angel of the Lord stops him, tells him he has proven his obedience to God, and then shows Abraham the ram caught in the thicket.

Strange, strange story. Contradictory story. Kill the one who was the promise? Sacrifice a child at all. Of course we should remember that way back then, there were religions that did that, and this may have been one way of saying to the Jews that we don’t do that. God provides another way. But why would God ask this at all of Abraham? Was he really just kidding around? This is so brutal and ugly. Poor Abraham. Heck, poor Isaac. What can you say about a God who would ask such a thing? Now before we go too far down this path. Don’t forget we also “ask” our sons and daughters to sacrifice themselves, to “give their last full measure of devotion,” for us when they fight for our country. And often we do it for reasons or at times when we are not in clear, present, and mortal danger. We have sacrifices them for ideas and ideals, out of fear for what might happen in the future, but what is not happening at the moment, and for territory. So then maybe we shouldn’t be so shocked that God could ask such a thing from us. But still we are.

The reason why is this: We forget that God is sovereign. Only God reigns, not another god, not some idol, not some really important idea. As Jesus pointed out not even the family reigns above God: “Those who love father or mother more than me are not worthy of me; and the one who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” This may be upsetting to us; it was to the Lord’s contemporaries, but when it comes to God, what do we expect? When it comes to God, what is our hope truly? It is in a God who calls us, tests us, demands from us, and commands us: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Each of us lives to the Lord, dies to the Lord, and must answer to the Lord. We must not domesticate the Lord; it never works.

 At the World Council of Churches in 1954, the main theme was “Christ—the Hope of the World.” Here is a small portion of the writing that resulted: "Multitudes ask themselves, 'What is coming to the world? What is in front of us? What may we look forward to?' The answer to those questions has been given to us in the Gospel. To those who ask, 'What is coming to the world?' we answer 'His Kingdom is coming.' To those who ask, 'What is in front of us?' we answer, 'It is He, the King, who confronts us.' To those who ask, 'What may we look forward to?' we answer that we face not a trackless waste of unfilled time with an end that none can dare to predict; we face our living Lord, our Judge and Savior, He who was dead and is alive forevermore, He who has come and is coming and will reign for ever and ever. It may be that we face tribulation; indeed we must certainly face it if we would be partakers with Him. But we know His word, His kingly word: 'Be comforted, I have overcome the world."'

Our hope is in the one who alone can overcome, the one God who should stand above all other interests and ideas in our lives, and in our children’s lives.

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