HOW IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD?
A sermon by Rev. Jack E. Skiles

August 3, 2008

How's Your Relationship with God?

Twenty six years ago my son, Aaron, was born on a hot humid day.  I remember so much of the day so very vividly.  I remember the trip to the doctor's office at 7:30 AM followed by the doctor saying to Aaron's mother, “You should be in the hospital, not here.”  I remember that period in the birthing process called “transition.”  It is often marked by vomiting, which Aaron's mother did all over me.  A thunderstorm was raging outside the delivery room and seemingly at the moment of his birth, the storm clouds broke, the humidity dropped, and the new life began crying in earnest, along with a multi-year chapter in the life of his parents. 

Last evening I was a very proud father as he stepped forward to receive his bride, Anne, a marvelously talented and beautiful woman that our family have all grown to love and count as one of us.  Twenty six years ago I was twenty eight and, of all the future possibilities I pondered that day, I did not anticipate his getting married and being nearly as old as I was when he was born when he got married.

It is stunningly wonderful to me the great cycles of life that I continue to be graced to experience.  Thirty-three years ago this month I performed my first wedding ceremony and in October I will officiate at the wedding of one of the children from that marriage in 1976.  With any luck, I might still be working when the third generation children get married.

In the twenty six years of my son's life, I have been more consciously aware of life's experiences than I was the first twenty-eight.  I have grown up a lot, matured, and purposefully reflected in what has been my second half of life.  I mean all of this as a word of encouragement to those of you who are younger.  Life, in my humble opinion, has only gotten richer and more fully enjoyable as the years have added on.

My son and I talk nearly every day.  Some days, twice a day. He, as a political science major and now IU Law student is much more informed than I on any number of contemporary political and legal issues.  I count on him to keep me apprised in areas that I don't have as much inclination to spend time in.  He still uses me as Dad in a few areas and he still lets me hug him and our relationship if anything is more tender and loving and equal than at any time in our twenty-six years together.

You can, as listener to me this morning, just write this off as little more than a nostalgic walk through a romantic realignment of memories by an aging father around the marriage of his son.  But, what I find myself wonderfully in the midst of is the reality, that my children love me, perhaps as much as I love them.  We have, in addition to our times of tenderness, growth times.  You know, times of significant disagreement and rearrangement of really who knows best and who really needs the space to grow up and mature…..which most of the time is both my kids and their parents.  I really love and find so invigorating having the opportunity to grow up with my children and for all of us to be able to thrive individually while being a family that continues to expand and grow.

I am a lucky person in so many ways.  But, I have also relentlessly sought to be in meaningful relationship with my kids.  That has meant through the years hours upon hours and weeks upon months of bridling my naturally very selfish nature.  Parenting is such a disciplined art form.  I'm talking to the choir here this morning.  Most all of you are people of great discipline who know that without the form and the structure of any discipline there can be no art.  Parenting, like any other field, when there is too much structure and rigid adherence to rules there can be often no growth and new discovery and ongoing relationship.

I have two foundational stories, both which are very short and then I will stop. 

There are two moments seared into my psyche with my children that are holy moments for me as father.  My son and I used to bicycle together when he was very young and on training wheels.  I can still see in my mind's eye the day he, with helmet on, rode down the sidewalk without me the first time, yelling at me over his shoulder, his bike weaving back and forth, “Dad don't follow me this time, I'm going to play with my friends.”

That moment hurt and was so good all at the same time. 

My daughter did it to me also.  I walked her to school every day beginning with pre-school.  We would go out the front door and our neighborhood school was about 200 yards away.  From preschool through third grade she would take my hand and we would walk to and from school hand and hand, at her insistence.  In third grade she began to not want to hold hands anymore. That hurt but I was respectful.  At the beginning of fifth grade she turned to me the first morning of school and said, “Dad, I don't want you to go to school me, I'll be just fine.”  At that she ran out the door before she could see the tears of happiness forming in my eyes. 

Our kids' growing up does not mean an end to a relationship, but a deepening of one.  Letting go at the level of holding hands does not mean we or they are letting go at the deeper levels where relationships matter the most and where new levels of development and growth are just eagerly awaiting opportunity for development. 

Let's jump over to our relationship with God, the divine, the power greater than ourselves.  We all have one.  The biblical story of Jacob wrestling through the night with that dark unidentified stranger is understood by many to be a reflection of Jacob's relationship with God, one that leaves him wounded at the end of the story.

Jacob was not a nice man.  He was a powerful man.  He would light up a room, he would energize a meeting, he would provide purpose to any interaction and ten out of ten times he was doing it to control and manipulate an agenda toward his benefit and liking.  It was great to be with Jacob when you were on his side, but Jacobs are never on anybody else's side except their own and occasionally we get to hang on, always to their benefit, only ever to someone's else's advantage by coincidence.

Jacob was part of “the family” in ancient Jewish faith stories.  All the advantages of life were his.  Granted, if you know the rest of the stories, Jacob manipulated and stole most everything he had, including his father's blessing, which he stole from his twin brother, Esau, by deceit.  Nobody really liked Jacob, they just had to go along with him because it was with Jacob that all the power and resources resided.  Jacob claimed God was on Jacob's side.  It was all bombastic verbiage on Jacob's part.

Jacob had always arranged to be several steps ahead of those he used and abused.  In this morning's story, everything is about to change out there in the wilderness.  Jacob is coming face to face with his brother, Esau, for the first time in years.  Everyone is aware that Jacob is in the wrong.  Everyone is aware, even Jacob and it is fair to say he is scared.   Esau could legally take not only the life of Jacob but could also kill his extended family of wives and children and servants and cattle and sheep.

Jacob decides to test the waters and sends his wives and children and livestock a full day ahead him to see what Esau will do to them.  Jacob is not showing any amount of maturity at this point.  He is expecting to be treated cruelly by his brother, the way he would treat his brother if the tables were turned, one might guess.  Jacob is willing to sacrifice his wives and children to perhaps have the time to run away if need be.

Jacob, finally after sending everyone else a day ahead, is out alone in the wilderness.  He is no longer surrounded by those who will take care of his every whim.  No longer is he protected by those whom he had sent ahead to perhaps be killed for his sins against his brother.  They know they have been sent ahead to perhaps be killed.  Jacob has spent his last dime and sent it a day's walk ahead of him.  He lies down to sleep, and finally, with nothing left but him and God ----- it happens.  Jacob encounters God and cannot get away until there has been a reckoning of relationship.  (Folks, I do not recommend waiting that long to make peace with God.)

There are two ways that I know of to nearly guarantee having trouble finding the Divine and being in intimate relationship with God.  First is to try too hard and go out hunting for God.  You know how it goes: “I am going to have a relationship with God no matter what.  God where are you.  Come here now!”  The other way of not having a relationship with God that works is to be so busy, so filled, so in control of our every moment of existence.  When we live our lives overly full we don't really leave time for the holy to be noticed.  It is not that we aren't in relationship with God, it's just we aren't noticing anything other than what we want to control.  God cannot be manipulated into relationship and waits for us to be quiet.

It happens twice this morning.  In our Genesis story, it is when Jacob is all alone, not surrounded by his make believe life in which he is actively playing every angle and game; it is only when all of that has been stripped from him, that a spiritual encounter that is life changing happens. (It didn't have to be that way.)

In Matthew's story of Jesus this morning we have a tendency to focus on the feeding miracle rather than what drew him out to where the crowd ended up.  John the Baptizer has been brutally murdered by Herod.  There was a feast going on at Herod's place and what ends up being served is the head of John the Baptist. 

The last several weeks we have been served up a platter full of parables, the weeds in the wheat, the pearl of great price, the yeast hidden in the bread, the story about the miraculous mustard seed and tree.  There are a ton of these -- “the kingdom of heaven is like, or the Kingdom of God is like.”  What Matthew and Mark are telling us are not only cute stories, but also they are sharing, for those who have ears to hear, that the political situation was so grim at this point in greater ancient Israel, that neither Jesus nor John the Baptizer could speak plainly out of fear of death.  John wasn't as careful.   It was a time in Jesus' ministry when it made common sense to talk in parables rather than be in active resistance to the powers and principalities of their day, Herod and Caesar, the Roman occupiers and oppressors, the ones Jesus and John felt were the Rent-a Rulers, not the real ones.

John the Baptizer was Jesus' mentor.  It was under the ministry, the schooling, of John that Jesus came to understand his own ministry.  Word comes to Jesus through a messenger in today's reading that John has been killed and Jesus retreats alone into the wilderness, we have to guess to grieve and perhaps be safe from Herod's possible actions against Jesus.  Jesus it appears needed some space from teaching, from helping the multitudes, from his everyday pace, and he pulls himself away where he can focus on what it means that “his prophet, ” his mentor, his friend and companion in his work has been taken away from him.  Jesus goes out to the wilderness where not only has he been tempted previously, but where his relationship with God is most easily nurtured.

A few weeks ago five of us from First United were up in northern Michigan and Wisconsin bicycling around the northern half of Lake Michigan .   I have been doing extended bicycle touring for over twenty years.  One of my comrades on this particular tour rode up beside me one morning and asked, “Jack, why do you do this?” 

It is my wilderness.  It is my place to go and be with God.  I find that on a hot summer day with a twenty mile an hour wind in my face and eighty miles in front of me to accomplish is where I go empty of all my worries, all my cares and my body carries me methodically into a meditation type space where God and I can talk or at least I listen and I find my very soul refreshed and revitalized. 

A lot of people worry that if they are to quiet themselves to God and them alone that it will be a fight like between Jacob and God.  It is for some folks.  The fight is what happens when we spend a lifetime doing it our way and then we have to fight, really, ourselves, to get to God.

There are some very arrogant, narcissistic, gruff, mean spirited, relationally abusive, extremely selfish people who probably are going to have to fight to allow God to be fully in relationship with them.  Some folks have to fight themselves to near destruction in order to discover that ultimately we must spiritually give ourselves freely and unreservedly to God. 

A lot of us are not perhaps that extreme; we quietly and very politely restrain God in our lives.  We would be embarrassed to have it known how privately reserved we are about allowing ourselves to be all absorbed in our relationship with God.

Perhaps what we need to focus on is that God -- the Spirit, the Divine, the Power that is greater than us -- is already fully present and tugging on us every moment of every day and wants nothing more than to be loved by us and for us to know how very much God already loves us.  God wants with me, God wants with you, what I am finding with my son, with my daughter, with my partner. 

Love between people and with the Divine requires active attentiveness to the

relationship.  It requires listening to each other, wanting and finding the time for each other, doing special things for each other, committing ourselves to one another and growing together.  It has its ups and downs….any intimate relationship.  It takes humbleness and I don't know anyone who does humble better than God.

When Jesus was out in the wilderness, his disciples found him, the crowds found him and the demands of the world were waiting for him.  You know the experience.  We always have to come back to the real world. 

Jesus' disciples said, “Let's send them all away to find food, it is getting late.”  Jesus said, “You feed them.”  You know the response: Jesus there are five to twenty thousand people out there, if they were to count the women and children, which they didn't. 

Rosemary Radford Ruether, a Roman Catholic scholar, writes about this experience by saying that the reason there was enough food to not only feed everyone, but for everyone to take home leftovers, was because Jesus wasn't afraid to deal with and recognize the sharing of abundance of the women in the crowd.  She says no woman would have left home without not only enough food for her family but enough to share with those who maybe forgot.

God knows where the abundance lies and calls upon it to be shared in relationship with those in need.  Come into full unreserved relationship with God, with the Divine. Every one of us in this sanctuary has already a lifetime's relationship with God, but few are those who are letting God love us fully and freely.

Love God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. God is already so doing to us. Then the world will be fed by us and it will be a miracle.