Sermon for February 4th 2007

Step Two - Watching, listening and being disciples ...

Our readings begin with the words of Isaiah. Harsh words. Words that lack comfort. Words that are not hopeful, but filled with apprehension at what might lie ahead. The prophet is clearly warning the people that God’s judgement would soon be harshly laying across the people, and things were not going to be pleasant and wonderful like they hoped …

BUT, the prophet ends with a faint glimmer of hope … from the stump that remains will come the holy seed … After the devestation, after the destruction, after all of it … a tiny glimmer of hope will come from that holy seed and something new will come …

The problem we confront in a reading like this, is that we don’t like to think of God as anything OTHER than meek and mild, loving and caring, warm and friendly. We don’t want God (or our preachers) to challenge us. We don’t want to come to Church to be cajoled about our faith. We want everything sewn up in a neat little package, and left to simply praise a warm and loving God. We don’t want to hear that God is threatening his judgement on us, or others.

Yet, here it is … what has been will pass away … and something new will come into being – and it won’t be what we expect.

One commentator looking at the reading from Isaiah asks “What is the message you have been given? People today are chasing after idols and false gods as surely as in Isaiah’s day. Can this message be framed in such a way that a very secular church can hear it? Does our world need a totally different message? Is there something missing from the message as it stands? What do you think people are hungry for?”

What are the people hungering for from the Church?

What are the people of the Church hungering for?

When we begin to wrestle with these questions by looking around ourselves and asking what people out there, beyond the doors of the sanctuary, want from the church we begin to move, not only from the first stage of faith that we looked at last week, but we even begin to move beyond the second stage of faith that is mythic and literal …

It is at the second stage that many within the Church are mired, perhaps without even knowing it …

The mythic literal faith stage is what operates in the vast majority of the Church as we know it today, and in our community. At this stage, the person takes on the stories, believes and observances that are part of the community. All of it is understood literally and in concrete terms. Communion and Baptism are HOLY and must be protected. The robe clad minister is HOLY and speaks for God. The Bible is HOLY and the LITERAL word of God – Jonah was swallowed by a whale and spit up days later thousands of kilometers from where he was swallowed, the world was created in 7 days, Jesus walked on water and turned water into wine, and all the stories in this (BIBLE) happened EXACTLY as they are recorded.

BUT, undergirding this stage of faith is the understanding that if you are faithful, if your heart is pure, if you pray enough, if you are a GOOD ENOUGH person, NOTHING Bad will ever happen to you or to your family and loved ones, and if something bad happens it is because you are NOT being faithful enough, you haven’t prayed enough, you have been a good enough person …

It is a terribly unpleasant place to stand in faith … it is concrete and black and white and there is only Good and Bad, and no ambiguity, and no room for doubt and questioning and discussion …

I first encountered, and rejected this world view when I was about 13 years old and our morning Sunday School session had a guest speaker leading us. He started off by telling us that we had to believe the Bible as the literal word of God and “if it is printed in here, it is true and MUST believed.”

Now, to be fair, I am the kind of person who when they hear the words – “you must” is immediately up for the fight, so too speak … and so I began to challenge him. I don’t remember much of the conversation (or argument) until he, no doubt exasperated by the mouthy 13 year old know it all, said – “God loves us and because God loves us, everything that happens in the world is an expression of God’s love …”

“Everything?” I asked.

“Everything,” he said, a smug smile crossing his face.

“Everything?” I repeated. He nodded and against said, “everything.”

“Okay,” I took a deep breath and said, “If God is so loving and caring and so wonderful, and if everything that happens in our lives happens because God loves me so much, Why did my father die before I ever got a chance to know him? What kind of love is that??”

To this day I do not remember the answer. A friend once told me it was some sputtering about – “God loves you, but accidents happen … but God let it happen because of that love …”

I didn’t buy it then. And I don’t buy it now. To state in broad terms, God is a loving God and all that happens in our lives and in the world happens because God loves us is offensive. That means God has caused hunger and poverty and diseases like AIDS and God has caused wars and conflicts … Yet, many of us hold to that kind of understanding of God without even realizing it.

God is out there somewhere, rewarding the good, and punishing the bad, and God seems to play games with our lives and our world … It is not a God who is any more comforting than the God of Isaiah who is about to bring judgment down on the people.

Yet, both are the image of God we encounter over and over in our world.

The judgmental God is the God of people of “good faith” who advocate positions of pro-life, and see no problem shooting and killing doctors who perform abortions.

The judgmental God is the God who seemingly blesses bombings and ethnic cleansings …

The judgmental God is a God who is rendered unrecognizable by people who value their faith as a place to share the stories of why that faith is important and how that faith has allowed them to move into the world with care and compassion …

The people out there, are NOT hungering for a judgmental God. They are no hungering for the easy answers that come with a mythic-literal God. They want more. They want the God who works through this character named Jesus and turns 150 gallons of water into the finest wine … they want the God who’s word so enrages a tiny town they want to throw their favoured son over a cliff … they want the God who works through Jesus and fills the nets to overflowing after a long night with no luck at all … They want the generous, giving, and over the top God that causes lives to be revisioned and transformed …

That morning many moons ago drove me OUT of my home church. I couldn’t abide in a God who would in His love cause the death of my father, and it took a long time before I came back … but when I did come back I was welcomed home, I was allowed to voice my questions and my hurt, and in my home congregation people not only listened; they shared their stories and their experiences and their questions and hurts … and I began to see and experience God in bold new ways …

In time, I not only came back to the church, my wrestling with that image of God and that understanding of God, and the learnings I experiences and lived, lead me here …
My path to the leadership in the pulpit is a meandering line form that moment when I personally rejected the creedo – “God loves you, and everything that happens happens because God loves you …”

I’ve never doubted that God loves me … I’ve never doubted that God exists … I’ve never doubted that God’s love is there in times of distress and trouble … but I have on many occasions doubted whether God’s Church lives that value and understanding as its primary focus.

The mythic-literal stage of faith cripples us into complacency. We trust that what we know and experience and what we believe is enough … we are like Peter and the others, who have spent all night fishing only to bring their nets up and their boats home empty …

Then along comes this radical voice, who speaks of love and new ways of understanding and experiencing God, and then he says – “put back out to the deep water and let down your nets …”

One can visualize Peter beginning to argue with Jesus – “I’ve been fishing my whole life, and we’ve NEVER fished in the day time. You only catch fish on this lake at night when they can’t see you or the nets. We’ve fished here for years, and that’s NOT how it’s done …” Jesus would, smile and say – “just put down your nets …”

And when Peter did, his nets were full to bursting … the nets were so full that it threatened to swamp his boat and that of his companions who had rowed out to help … The nets were full to overflowing …

Stage Two is thinking inside the box. Being comfortable with the notion that life is divided into Good and Bad … us and them …

The best thing about stage two, is that is it stage two … there are a few more steps to go … We can sit in on the shore moping because we’ve had no luck – our nets are empty, there are no fish … or we can take seriously that ditty we learned as a child – “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men … I will make you fishers of men, if you follow me …” And truly have the courage to follow Jesus and his teachings.

Moving from stage two means we are willing to let down our nets in broad daylight, when common sense say – “no, that’s not how WE do it …”

Moving from stage two means being open to God’s presence in our lives where God wants it to be … not where we’ve tried to contain it …

Moving from stage two means trusting in God to show us the way … a God who is so loving that we will never be abandoned nor forgotten …

May we have the courage and the maturity of faith to let down our nets into new waters and at new times of the day … and may we be utterly transformed by that experience …
May it be so … thanks be to God.