Sermon 6/12/05
Silly God - Matthew 9:35-10:8, Genesis 18:1-15
(view lectionary notes for this text)
I haven’t seen one recently, not since, perhaps, I stopped watching Saturday morning cartoons, but I remember fondly, and I’m sure most of you will as well, the commercials for Trix cereal. The commercials always involve the rabbit trying to get his hands on some of the fruity sugary cereal, but somehow he can never get a bite. The children always get their cereal back from him, and they declare to him, “Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids!” I have to admit, I always felt a little sorry for the rabbit. One time, I remember, the cereal ran a promotion where kids could vote: should the rabbit get the Trix? I voted yes. I’m a bit of a softy that way, and I thought surely the rabbit, after so many years, could get at least a bowl of Trix. “Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids!”
Today, we find that God is met with a response to a promise that is a bit similar to the response of the kids to the Rabbit. Perhaps rephrased, “Silly God, babies are for younger women!” Our story from Genesis opens with God appearing to Abraham in the form of three men. Abraham, smarter than we are sometimes, is able to recognize God in these three men, and invites them immediately into his home. He and Sarah make a gracious welcome for God into their house. One of the men, speaking as God, says to Abraham, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” Sarah, we read, was sort of eavesdropping on this conversation, and she has herself a good laugh at this news. She’s already hit that age in her life when she knows she won’t be having more children. “After I have grown old,” she reflects, “and my husband is old, shall I have this pleasure?” Sarah reacts perhaps not out of lack of faith, but out of a gut-reaction of realistic expectations. God is good, but a baby for Sarah? Silly God!
God seems confused by Sarah’s response though. “Why did Sarah laugh?” God asks Abraham. “She will bear a child. Is anything too wonderful for God?” Suddenly, Sarah wants to deny having laughed at all – she can see God is serious. But God is already on to her – God is aware of what her first response had been. Fortunately, God doesn’t hold this against Sarah – later in our story from Genesis we read of the birth of the child of Abraham and Sarah, a child named Isaac.
More often than not, I think we’re exactly like Sarah. God makes to us some crazy proposals, but we’re ready with our response: God, it’s not possible. God, you’ve got the wrong person. God, we’ve tried that, and it has never worked here before. Silly God, we can’t do that! It is not really that we are trying to be dismissive of God, or that we don’t want to be faithful and believing Christians, it’s just that we can’t help but be realists too. I think we’re wondering if God has forgotten how faulty and limited we humans are – why would God try to use us as vessels for accomplishing such crazy tasks? We plead with God – God, you are our creator. Don’t you know how incapable we are?
As usual, though, our focus is misguided. Last weekend at Annual Conference, Nina and I got to enjoy the wonderful preaching of retired Bishop Daniel Solomon. In his first message, which he titled, “The Reason for our Hope,” he gave us three ‘handles’ for our text, and the first fits perfectly our text for today. He reminded us that the question is not whether or not we as humans are able to accomplish the tasks God sets out to do. Instead, he said, we must respond to the awesomeness of God. He asked, "are you more occupied with the weakness of the church than you are with the greatness of God?" Bishop Solomon said that we tend to do plenty of blaming for what’s wrong with the church. But our question should not be in our abilities, but in God’s. "Is God able?” he asks. Yes, God is able. And if God is able, then we must simply be willing, willing to respond to God’s awesomeness.
It is easy and tempting, as Bishop Solomon suggested, to focus on the weakness of the church. I find myself doing it. I’m sure you do too. I worry about our attendance at worship – I sometimes think it’s practically impossible to hope that our attendance in worship will increase – the best we can hope for is that our attendance won’t decrease too much. As a church we struggle with our finances and paying our shared ministries to support our denomination – we say we’ll be lucky if we meet the 75% that we managed to reach last year, but certainly 100% payment is out of range for us – those days are gone by when St. Paul’s could meet and exceed their financial askings. Perhaps we doubt, too, that our Sunday School classrooms will be filled to the brim, or that our youth group will draw in teens by the dozens. Maybe we doubt that people will be clamoring to become leaders of committees, and maybe we are skeptical that we’ll have more volunteers than we know what to do with wanting to lead Bible Studies. We try to come up with ideas, but sometimes we reject them before they are even out of our mouths, because “that won’t work here” or “we tried that once before” or “we’ve never done it like that before.” Too often in our church, our response is based on our ability to accomplish the good news in the world, instead of on God’s ability to bring the kingdom near to us on earth. Is God able? God is certainly able. God says nothing is too wonderful to conceive in God’s mind.
So if God is able, we must ask – are we willing? Will we respond to God’s awesomeness? How will we respond? When will we be ready to respond? Bishop Solomon told us that “our personhood is redefined by Jesus Christ, and we are to be representatives of Christ in the world.” That’s what we see happening in our gospel lesson today. A group of twelve is ready to go out and be representatives of Christ in the world. Did they feel able to do what Jesus was asking them to do? I doubt it. But they knew that God was able, and if God was able, they were willing. So they went out and proclaimed the good news that God’s kingdom had drawn near at hand. Do you think they could see when Jesus sent them that someday there would be churches all over the world? They probably could not even conceive of what the whole world entailed. Do you think they imagined their names would be written in a book and translated into every known language? Do you think they thought some among them would be named saints? I doubt it. But they were willing to go because they knew God was able to work, even through them. Sarah may have been amused by God’s plans for her at first, but she too became willing when she saw how serious God was about plans for her. We, too, have an opportunity to respond – as individuals, and as a church. Nothing, God says, is too wonderful to be possible for us in God’s plans. We can’t conceive, even, of what God has in mind for us. But we can respond with our willingness to be led by God’s awesomeness.
Today, as we share in communion together, I ask you to search your hearts, and open them to God’s plans for you and to God’s plans for St. Paul’s. Who would have thought that a simple meal of bread and juice could have meant so much more to a community of faith? But in the sharing in this meal, we share in Christ, and we commit to be the body of Christ, his representatives in this word that needs to experience God’s love and God’s grace and God’s awesomeness. Friends, nothing is too wonderful for our God. God is able. Are you willing?
Amen.
Be blessed!
In the name of God who forgives.
In the name of God, who loves.
In the name of God who daily calls us to action,
in God's life-sustaining, liberating
and transforming grace. Amen. (from Rev. Rex A.E. Hunt)