SUNDAY SERMON

A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

August 31, 2008

GO AHEAD!  SAY "NO" TO GOD!

Exodus 3:1-15; Matthew 16:21-28

Labor Day 2008.  This weekend is the unofficial end of summer, like Memorial Day is the unofficial first day of summer.  I find as I get older I am flooded with memories around certain days.  I actually enjoy sitting still for a moment or two remembering the depth of memories that surround Labor Day in my life including getting married nineteen years ago tomorrow.

Back home on the farm where I grew up they knew about Labor Day, but they were confused by it.  Labor Day is really a union holiday used historically to highlight labor verses management issues with a bent toward the positive attributes for hourly workers as the result of unionizing efforts.  My father, the farmer, the manager of a large family, just thought it was a day when you labored twice as hard.  That's Labor Day!

Tomorrow, Labor Day Monday, was in my childhood through my 18 th year the day when we were forced by the manager of my family to pick not just one 8 ton load of red ripe tomatoes for Del Monte, but two loads, sixteen tons and what did we get, another year older and deeper in debt.

I love this time of year.  Out on the farm there is not a lot of activity and everything is getting ripe.  Really for the most part the growing season is complete.  When you walk across your farmland what you smell is green becoming brown, the finishing touch of the summer season.  The harvest for farmers with corn and soybeans is still a few weeks away. 

So if you visit a farm not much is happening.  Those Hoosier farmers are just beginning to awaken from their late summer siestas.  There is no more planting, cultivating, weeding or making hay.  They're giving some serious thought to starting their harvesters, their combines, to begin to cut through row after row, acre after acre of golden ripe kernels.

But, if you listen carefully, you can occasionally hear where farmers are…. From across the fields of seven-foot-high corn stalks, over in the woods comes the crack of a 22 caliber rifle, maybe two cracks…; this is the beginning of squirrel season.

Farmers sit all alone out in the woods; they sit on the ground or up against a big old sycamore tree.  They bring nothing with them to eat, nothing to read, they will sit or stand leaning absolutely still for hours, waiting to blend into the tree, to become one with the tree in the squirrel's eyes.

You can blend too much sometimes.  My farmer neighbor, Glen Royer, a German immigrant's son, had leaned against his tree for nearly an hour, looking out toward an old grove of apple trees, an orchard from a previous era, just waiting for the squirrels to come hunting an apple for dinner.

What occurred happened in seconds, though it will take a minute or two to describe.  In the warm last summer sun, Glen had done a Vulcan mind meld with a hickory tree that he was leaning against.  That was probably why the squirrel that came running up behind him, chased by another squirrel, did not even think twice before running up his Carhartt bib overalls.

Now Glenn's wife and kids were back at the house across the creek working out in the garden picking tomatoes.  What they heard was a strange combination—first, there was this scream, then a gunshot followed by another scream, and two minutes later they saw Glenn running across the creek out of the woods toward the house.

They had never heard a squirrel scream before and usually the hunter doesn't scream before he shoots.  Maybe afterwards, but not normally.  Such shows of emotion are generally frowned upon down on the farm.

Well what happened was this:  the squirrels were chasing each other behind Glenn, running after each other as squirrels are prone to do.  Glenn was nearly asleep so he didn't hear them coming.  Granted, the shock of an unknown animal climbing up your bib overalls is significant, but in addition, you have to remember that squirrels don't have soft little padded feet but claws that help them grip the tree as they go up and down.

Now there were two squirrels.  The first one climbed all the way up Glenn's backside before Glen could hardly even react.  By the time he did react, he did so by turning around, which meant the other squirrel, before it could turn on the brakes, was already committed to climbing up Glenn's front side, and it stopped literally in front of his nose with the other squirrel perched on top on his Sedalia Feed Store Cap with his bushy tail hanging off the rear like an old Daniel Boone raccoon-skin hat.

Glenn screamed a wide-open-mouthed holler.  Luckily, the front squirrel didn't see that big cavernous hole as a home to be explored. Glenn fired off his gun just because he had his finger on the trigger.

Now this is a true story. The shot went off and struck an old dead limb up above him.  Glenn fell over, shaking his body to free it from the squirrels, which by this time had jumped to safety.  Now on this limb over Glenn's head had been perched an old mother raccoon who out of fear had not moved, thinking Glenn was hunting her.  The shot caused the old mother raccoon to move out on this dead limb, which broke off, and both limb and raccoon landed right next to Glenn's head.  When he was able to focus he was looking into the bandit face of mother raccoon and both she and he screamed, for what was now the second time, this wide mouth scream of terror.  He rolled over and commenced running away just in case anything larger and meaner was yet to come in his direction.

Hoosier farmers would never let these stories become public if at all possible.  They practice damage control over their treasured stoic Hoosier farmer nature at nearly all costs.  No farmer wants stories of his being out of control around squirrels and raccoons to become part of the public record.  But, not only had his wife and kids seen this happen, but farmers three fields away heard the scream, shot, scream scenario.  Glenn knew it was better to tell the story than try to cover it up.

Now Moses, who had grown up in Egypt as a powerful man, who then killed an Egyptian, fled to the desert and connected himself to a well-to-do Jewish sheep farmer.  Moses was out walking to work one day as a shepherd and a bush burst into flames and the flaming bush called out his name and the voice of God's first request was for Moses to take off his shoes for Moses was walking on holy ground.

How many times in all the years of walking in that territory do you figure Moses walked by that bush and never paid any attention to it at all?  Was it burning every time and Moses just noticed it this time? This story of Moses and the very presence of God in this burning bush is called a theophany or a divine encounter that not only serves to call Moses to the vocation of the rest of his life but it also serves to tell us a great deal about the nature of God.

I cringe whenever I hear people say that the God of the OLD TESTAMENT is a mean God of legal requirements calling regularly for the death of women, children and anybody that is not on Israel's side, while the New Testament is about how God is now in love with God's creation because God's anger has been soothed in the redemptive death of Jesus on a cross. 

First it is not an old testament.  It is a testament of folks who were trying to make sense of God and the world.   It is old, very old in fact. But, the Bible is to be taken, both testaments, as a whole.  It is safe to say and to insist the recognition that God is given some very bad PR in the Hebrew Scriptures.  The people, who wrote, like all historians, get to slant the story from the position of the winners who write the history.

God never called or calls for the destruction of anyone.  Kings and Queens , Generals and Presidents call for war.  God does not believe in war.  It is safe to assume that Jesus spoke the nature of God most clearly and unambiguously when Jesus said we are to love our enemies.  Now that is a faith statement from the very heart of God that is not easy to live.

You know that is true.  Had we reached out in love rather than in revenge seven years ago, we would be a great light unto the nations.  When one walks as if we are on holy ground, ground sacred to God, and offer lovingly to listen and share what we have with integrity; some folks who walk in love may have been killed before our enemies knew that we were coming in peace.  But the death toll would have been 99.9% less and the resources we are using to destroy Afghanistan and Iraq could have been used to reinforce and build up in loving concern toward those who felt threatened by us.  Like Gandhi, I think Western Civilization is a great idea that we should try sometime.

Let's go back to that crazy story of a burning bush.  What does it take for God to get your attention?  How many people here are wondering what you should be doing with your life, when you grow up?  We live in a college town.  Thousands of people, amongst the sharpest and brightest in the world come to Bloomington, feel called to Bloomington and are hunting, seeking to determine while they are here in Bloomington, Indiana, of all places, they're wondering and hoping that God will make known to them what their purpose in life is.

Bloomington , Indiana , no less than the Vatican in Rome or the Ganges River in India or a sacred mountaintop in South America: Bloomington is a burning bush place.  God is alive in this town, in this place, this is holy ground and many of us, if not all of us, are called upon to be aspects of the flame of God, the burning presence of God that is calling each one of us to vocation and service in the ways of God.

The story of Moses and the burning bush is not a mere children's tale.  It is not a story of a once in many lifetimes.  It is one particular story of a person who was running away from their vocation, their purpose and when they turned from running because of their encounter with God, their movement in faith saved a people, led a people, and lured a people to become a people of God. 

Now the story is written with the bias that they become God's chosen people.  Gag me with a spoon. Such an interpretation is abhorrent to God.  God chooses everyone and everything in all of creation, human and non-human and the very earth itself.  All are chosen; everything is chosen and valued and loved and are in a deep and intimate relationship with God.  You know that is true.  I love a lot of people that don't actively, consciously love me back.  That doesn't stop me for a second from fully loving them, wishing for them the very best; being ready to pick them up if they fall, if they let me.  You're the same way.  Loving people who have yet to respond back is part of the very nature of God.

This story from the second book in the First Testament tells us so much about the nature of God.  The next time someone suggests that the God of the Old Testament is one mean dude, be ready to point them to the 3 rd chapter of Exodus.  This God experiences the suffering of the world.  This God feels the suffering and the hurts of the creation and is moved by it, changed by it.  This God hears the cries of the oppressed and organizes a creative response of caring.

This God of the First Testament, in contrast to apathetic, unfeeling deities who have chosen the course of the world without our input, the God that Moses encounters in the bush, is touched by pain and moved to action.  John Cobb and David Griffin describe this as “creative-responsive love.”  The God that Moses encounters is changed by what God experiences.  God so loves the people of Israel and, I believe, all people, and seeks a solution by calling on a most unexpected leader, Moses, raised in Egyptian royalty, on the run for murder and plagued as he was by a speech impediment.

This God reveals breath and fire, gentleness and wildness, serenity and adventure and calls us to be both contemplative and active in response to the God we follow.  Moses' encounter is an inspiration to seek God in the ordinary moments, recognizing that such moments are always God-filled and that in the midst of the ordinary, we, like Moses, may be called to do extraordinarily ordinary things.

Everyone here has a vocation and a calling that is particular and peculiar to us.  God is fully in and invested in each person here in this room and no matter if we are in our nineties or if we are merely nine, God is calling and expecting much out of us.  There are folks who are retired from their jobs, but I don't believe for a second that we can ever be retired from serving God fully and completely.  God is calling you this morning.

Go ahead and say, “No,” to God.  God understands our reluctance to be our true selves, to give ourselves completely and fully.  God will not stop asking, not to worry.  God will follow you out into the desert, if need be, and ignite bush after bush, story after story, intellectual pursuit and contemplative quiet time and say, “I am God and I have a deal for you, but it will cost you.  No matter if you don't think you can or feel that you should.  Moses had a very distinct speaking problem, he stammered and was not quick on his feet and still he stood before the greatest power in the world and said, “Let my people go!” 

My old neighbor Glenn Royer's experience was pivotal for him.  He has never gone squirrel hunting again.  He believes that it was God running up his backside, front side, and dropping down from above to get his attention.  He thinks that he was living life too quietly, just melding in, doing a good job…, but, he believes today that God calls us to be like a lamp shining in the darkness, bold, bright, believable and enticing others with lives lived full of as much integrity as we can pack into them.  He tells me that there is not a profession or lifestyle or mindset or song or design or computer program or administrative procedure that is not calling forth from us the presence of God.

We are called to serve God, to bring common sense and joy and hope and intellectual freedom and professional expertise and management of resources and people so that this world might fully express the lure of God.

Leave this place knowing that God is right there ready to run up your backside or front side or drop down from above and that even the ground we walk on is God's holy ground, and feel and know and think the reality of God in the choices that are ours alone to make.  God cares deeply and is surrounding each of us with loving concern and creative license to be the unique folks we are.  Light up your life, our world with the brightness and hope of God. 

God chooses you.  Now, choose God.