A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

god's actions ...

1Samuel 1:4-20, Congregational Church of Boca Raton, November 15, 2009

A man is hitchhiking and gets picked up. His benefactor squeals the tires pulling back onto the road. The hitchhiker glances over at the speedometer. "Wow!" he says, "Slow down, you're going 67 in a 35 miles per hour zone." "Don't worry," is the reply, "God is with us." They zip through an intersection, not slowing a bit. "Hey! You just ran that stop sign!" "Don't worry; God is with us." Finally, after taking a corner on two wheels, the hitchhiker shouts, "STOP THE CAR!" "Why? Didn't I tell you? God is with us." "Yeah, I know. Stop the car anyway," the hitchhiker repeats, "God and I want to get out."

This driver has that God is everywhere, behind everything, and always with me type of faith. He has what you might call a 110% faith. And of course there is the opposite, the 0%, the God is nowhere, do nothing, and at its extreme, doesn't even exist. We probably fall somewhere between, which brings up a specific hardship for our faith. If God isn't behind, if God isn't the one who is acting, doing, 100% of the events in our personal lives and the world, then we have to judge which ones are God's and which ones aren't. This isn't easy. We are hardly smart enough to do this very well; and so many people, either tired of finding God nowhere, and believing themselves on their own, or tired of trying to make this judgment call, go to the extreme. They become 110%ers, which resolves one's mental anguish when it comes to this matter. But of course no good deed goes unpunished, for it is rather difficult, it is quite undigestable really, to make God the one who was behind for example the massive tsunami of 2005 that killed 250,000 people, including children torn from their mother's arms and pulled out to sea. That's a really bad day for God's PR department, if you believe God is behind all acts, big and small. But aren't we supposed to? It certainly seems like it, especially when we meet someone who has that 110% faith; they can make others feel unbiblical, incomplete, or lukewarm in their faith. But I'll tell you something: Christians, even 110%ers, don't go around saying: "God's will be done. God's will be done," as if everything that happens is God's will, God's action. Our faith tradition, our Christian faith tradition has an ambiguous relationship to what we are talking about here.

Our text this morning relates Hannah's sad situation at home that arises out of her childlessness. When the family takes its annual excursion to Shiloh for communal worship, her rival Peninnah always takes the opportunity to remind Hannah of her barrenness. Overcome with grief after years of being reminded of her situation at these annual celebrations, Hannah "takes it to the Lord in prayer." She weeps bitterly, promising that if a male child is born to her, she will give him to the Lord. Eli, the priest at Shiloh, misinterprets her prayer as drunkenness. Upon Hannah's protestation, however, Eli realizes his mistake and prays that her prayer might be answered, relieving Hannah's sadness. And as scripture says God remembered Hannah. God answers the prayers of a childless Hannah with the birth of Samuel, who will minister to Israel prior to Saul, during King Saul's reign and David's ascension.

Scripture is clear that one, God did not let Hannah give birth, and two, God eventually let Hannah have Samuel--after she prayed for him. God is in complete control here. What's interesting is that somehow, finally, for whatever reason, Hannah starts to pray about this situation. Finally, she lets the anxiety and pain go, and gives it into God's hands. Perhaps she doesn't want to have to bargain her child away, and so she hasn't wanted to start down that path. Hoping that God would relent. But when negotiations between her and God finally begins, she knows what she must give in order to get.

A small ship was tossed to and fro in a storm. The crew did its best to ensure the safety of those on board. As the storm worsened, an anxious passenger asked the captain if there was anything else to be done. "All we can do now is pray," he replied. "Has it come to that?" the passenger asked in alarm. Yeah, sometimes, exactly, it comes to that; sooner than we often believe it does actually. Because here's the thing: We don't have nearly the amount of magic or power that we fool ourselves into thinking we have. We are definitely not the ones in control. So, if we aren't, then we ought to go to one who has a lot better chance at succeeding than we have.

Terry Anderson was held hostage in Lebanon longer than anyone else. As one might imagine, life was horrendous for Terry and the other hostages. But it was while he was in captivity that Terry began reading the Bible and engaging in some serious soul-searching. I was not a good husband, Terry confessed. He drank too much and was unfaithful to his wife. He had plenty of time to reflect on his marriage and why it failed. Terry prayed about his problems and promised God he would do better if he were given another chance. I'll go to church, he promised God; I'll give to the poor, spend my life on good causes. I'll read the Bible, try to understand what's being asked of me. During his captivity, Terry felt enormous anger; he hated his captors. He tried to pray for them, but it was hard. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but Terry knew how hard that was. How is it right to feel anything but revulsion toward your kidnappers, your tormentors? he rationalized. But all this changed when God became real to him, and he renewed his faith in Christ. There were times when he would almost chuckle, his spirit became so light. Terry says God used his captivity to deal with his sins and weaknesses. I drank too much--no alcohol here. I chased women--no women here. I'm arrogant--what better than to put me in the hands of these arrogant, uncaring young men. I've been careless of others' feelings--these people give not one tiny thought to mine. I've been an agnostic most of my life--my only comforts here are the Bible and my prayers. During his captivity, there were times when Terry felt like giving up. I can't do this, God, he would pray. I'm finished. I surrender. It was at that point Terry learned to place his total trust in God's hands and let God have the last word for him. Den of Lions

True faith comes from the inside out. There is no way we are going to be bean counters, accountants of God's ledger of things done good and things lacking and ever get to faith. A chaplain in World War I came across a dying soldier. "May I pray for you?" he asked. The soldier, seeing the chaplain's crucifix, said, "But Father, I do not belong to your church." The chaplain replied, "But you do belong to my God." And he prayed with him. That chaplain witnessed to a God who wants most clearly to be permitted into our life, not sectioned off from it, no matter what you believe, no matter what you've done.

A seven-year-old girl came to her mother with the age-old question, "Mother, what is God like?" Her mother hesitated. "Ask your father," she said. Her father also hesitated. Later, her mother found a scrap of paper on which she had written, "I asked my mother what God was like. She did not know. Then I asked my father, who knows more than anyone else in the world, what God was like. He did not know. I think if I had lived as long as my mother and father, I would know something about God." She's got a point, doesn't she?

I saw the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets on TV the other night. In it Nicholas Cage is trying to crack the code on the back of a Civil War era letter. He needs the five-letter cipher, the key, to the code in order to read what is encoded says. He and his father go over the stories the dad heard about his great, great grandfather, the writer of the letter. Cage hears what the great, great grandfather said on his death bed. He shook the hand of his good friend and said, "I am to pay the debt which all men must pay." The five-letter cipher, the key, to the code is "death."

Maybe our lives, what happens to them, what happens in our world, is like a code. Maybe all this is written, is acted out in God's code. This is why it doesn't make sense easily to us. This is why we can't really say God does everything, but then again, we don't want to get too far away from this idea either. We need a cipher, a key, to figure it out. "Death" is hardly what I am thinking of however. And in this case, I believe we need two ciphers; one for God and one for us. These are the things we might teacher our seven-year-olds about God, and by doing so, teach them well. The first is "Reigns," as in God reigns. It is not always apparent; it doesn't seem to our eye that God's will is being done at all times; and that's because it is not. Nonetheless, "God reigns."

In 1930 William Temple preached at the opening of the seventh Lambeth Conference. This is part of what he said: "While we deliberate, God reigns; when we decide wisely, God reigns; when we decide foolishly, God reigns; when we serve God in humble loyalty, God reigns; when we serve God self-assertively, God reigns; when we rebel and seek to withhold our service, God reigns, the Alpha and the Omega, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."

Only a few may see it this way; and certainly only a few view it this way in the toughest of situations and under the most dramatic of conditions. Mogopa, a village to the west of Johannesburg, was to be demolished and its inhabitants forcibly removed at gunpoint to a homeland in apartheid's forced population-removal schemes. On the eve of their departure, a vigil with church leaders from all over South Africa was held in Mogopa. The village clinics, shops, schools and churches had already been demolished. At about midnight, an elder of the doomed village got up to pray, and he prayed a strange prayer considering the situation. He said, "God, thank you for loving us so much." Several years later, apartheid died and the people of Mogopa have returned to their village, which they are rebuilding. God indeed reigns.

The second cipher is "Thanks." In John Reynolds' Anecdotes of the Rev. John Wesley, he tells the story of Wesley's student days at Lincoln College in Oxford. A porter knocked on Wesley's door one evening and asked to speak with him. After some conversation Wesley noted the man's thin coat--it was a cold winter night. Wesley suggested that he had better get another coat. The porter replied, "This coat is the only coat I have in the world and I thank God for it." Wesley asked the man if he had eaten, and the porter replied, "I have had nothing today but a draught of spring water ... and I thank God for that." Wesley, growing uneasy in the man's presence, reminded him that he would have to get to his quarters soon or be locked out. "Then what shall you have to thank God for?" Wesley asked. "I will thank Him," replied the porter, "that I have dry stones to lie upon." Wesley was deeply moved by the man's sincerity and he said to him, "You thank God when you have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, (and) no bed to lie on. I cannot see what you have to thank God for." The man replied, "I thank God... that he has given me life and being, and a heart to love Him, and a desire to serve Him." After the man had left with a coat from Wesley's closet, some money for food and words of appreciation for the witness he had made, Wesley wrote in his Journal: "I shall never forget that porter. He convinced me there is something in religion to which I am a stranger."

Find the way to give thanks. Incline your heart to love the Lord. Follow your desire to serve God. And remember, you belong to the Lord, your God, our God.

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