God is With You

God is With You
For the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring the blessing that has closed our services together for the past couple of years. God created you, God loves you, God is with you and God blesses you. Next week, we’ll be blessed to have Rev. John & Barbara Meyers with us to explore our faith visually. Our first week, we looked at the beginning—God created you and we saw creation from the beginning and creation within the waters of our baptism when we became a new creation and were commissioned into the ministry of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Last week, we explored God loves you and heard the story of Jonah and how God loves us right where we are, but loves us enough not to leave us there. This week we look at God is with you.
Now this one seems, just like some of the others, seems to be pretty self explanatory…God is with you. God is with you always…There are times when it just doesn’t seem like God is there…Like God is around…Like is with us. The movie A Walk to Remember is based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks about the relationship between Jamie & Landon—Jamie is the daughter of the preacher in town & Landon is the bad boy who Jamie sees something good in. After a rocky start, the two begin dating and fall in love, and is not without bumps in the road. Jamie has leukemia and gets very sick, but her faith never shakes. Landon’s faith was minimal before, but questions God as Jamie helps him to understand the faith that she has in God and helps him come to know the God that she loves so much. This scene comes at the beginning of Jamie & Landon’s relationship where they both realize that they are in love…(Clip)…Love is like the wind—I can’t see it, but I know it’s always there…That’s what God is like—we may not be able to recognize God’s presence, but God is always there…
In the passage from 1 Samuel, we get the call story of Samuel—Samuel is the son of Hannah & Elkanah…Samuel was so prayed for by Hannah as she didn’t have children. She prayed to God for a child and then became pregnant with Samuel. In thanks, once Samuel was weaned, he was sent to the temple and given back to God in service…Samuel studies and learns under Eli, whose eyesight is going bad and he’s just getting older…So, as a young boy—probably between 10-13 at this point, Samuel is laying in bed, when he hears a voice. “Samuel, Samuel” and of course the only logical explanation is that Eli needs him, so Samuel rushes to Eli and discovers that Eli is still sleeping and didn’t call for him…So he goes back to bed and a second time he hears his name called and he goes to Eli and discovers that Eli didn’t call for him so he goes back to bed…And a third time, Samuel hears his name being called and rushes again to Eli, but this time Eli tells him that the next time he hears his name, he should say, “Speak for your servant is listening” because God is speaking to him…
Can you imagine how scared Samuel must have been? The passage tells us that Samuel had never heard the word of the Lord and did not know the Lord…And yet, here God is speaking to Samuel…For those who know God, to hear God speaking is quite frightening! Maybe you’ve had an experience like Samuel where you’ve heard the voice of God or felt the presence of God so strongly that you were convinced that it had to be something else—the person in the next room calling or some other logical explanation. Sometimes the only logical explanation is that God is speaking…And maybe you haven’t had an experience like Samuel where you’ve heard the voice of God, but you have felt God’s presence strongly or you could tell that there was something different about a particular circumstance…maybe the hairs on the back of your neck stood up or you got the chills for no apparent reason. God is with you…
Now the 4th time came around and Samuel heard the voice calling his name again. And here’s the choice that Samuel had to make—he had to decide whether he would listen to Eli and say, “Speak for your servant is listening” or he could roll over and put a pillow over his head and pretend like he couldn’t hear…Both are honest reactions and I think a lot of people would be content with rolling over and putting a pillow over their head and pretending like they can’t hear or can’t feel the presence of God. Maybe you’ve done it yourself…I can tell you for sure that I have! There are times when I haven’t wanted to hear or feel God…There are times when I’ve been angry with God and didn’t want to feel God anywhere near me…There have been times that I’ve been ashamed in front of God and although I knew God had forgiven me, I was embarrassed and like Adam & Eve, I hid from God…There have been times when I am so convinced that I am right about something that even God can’t convince me otherwise or that I am so focused on something that even God can’t draw me out…And I roll over and put the pillow over my head and pretend like I can’t hear or feel God…Have you felt that way before?
Well Samuel has that same choice…roll over or listen…and Samuel chooses to listen. He chooses to listen to this God that he doesn’t even really know, but has just heard calling him by name…And he hears his name a 4th time, “Samuel, Samuel…” and he says, “Speak for your servant is listening.” Can you put yourself in the emotions of that room? Maybe it feels like a time in your life or maybe you can imagine the fear that Samuel must be feeling…Are his hands shaking? Is his breathing faster? Is he lying down afraid to move, or sitting straight up trying to take everything in? How would you feel?
We don’t get any of what Samuel’s emotions must have been in that moment, just what we imagine or put in from our own experiences…but we get the message of God to Samuel…And it’s not a happy message, but it’s a message against Eli and it’s a message that God really isn’t happy…If Samuel was okay with hearing God’s voice, I can’t imagine he’s very okay with hearing a negative message about his teacher & mentor. Well, he’s so not okay with it that he doesn’t want to tell Eli about it…Now, Eli knows what happened because he was partly involved the night before…Eli knows that Samuel heard from God and that God had a message from Samuel and the next morning, Samuel doesn’t want to tell him what God had spoken.
Sometimes it’s like that for us too…maybe God has spoken something so powerful or frightening that we just can’t tell anyone…We’ve had an experience with God that others just won’t understand and so we don’t tell anyone…Maybe we think others will think we’re crazy or we’re not even sure if we should believe it ourselves…So we keep it to ourselves and don’t share…Samuel would have been content to do it that way, but Eli convinces him to tell everything that God said…
It can’t be easy for Eli to hear the message that Samuel has—that Eli hadn’t been doing what God wanted and God wasn’t happy with Eli…It had to be painful for Eli to hear that…Eli who had been listening and serving God for his entire life—sometimes faithfully and sometimes not, was just told by this young boy—a child that God told him that Eli wasn’t doing his job…It must have been very painful for Eli to hear this and recognize his own shortcomings…To see where he had fallen short…And just like Samuel, Eli had a choice in what to do as well…He could pretend like Samuel couldn’t possibly have heard that kind of a message or tell Samuel that he was crazy or even told Samuel that he was wrong or that he was listening to something other than God…I’ve been in that position too—Where I’ve been Eli and have been held accountable and I didn’t want to hear it…and I’ve been Samuel having to tell an Eli that they’re not doing what God called them to do and to be and things have to change…It’s not an easy position for either to be in…And Eli has a choice—he can lash out at Samuel and tell him he’s wrong and go about doing things the way that he’s always done them…or he can listen to Samuel and what God has to say and pass the mantle…If you were Eli, what would you do? What have you done?
Eli says to Samuel, “It is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him.” And we don’t hear from Eli much after that…But we know that Samuel listened to everything God said after that…
Now we have much to learn and experience through this story of Eli & Samuel…Much that we can incorporate into our own lives and our own faith development as much as we can point out where we have been like Eli or Samuel…And although we have much to learn, there may be some of you who have been stuck thinking, “I want an experience like Samuel had.” I want to hear God’s voice…I want to feel God’s presence…I want that! How do I get that?
Well, there are no magic words to say or a particular place to be in…There’s nothing that you can set up to make sure that this is the time that you hear God’s voice…But you can set up the space to hear…You can silence yourself enough to hear God’s voice…Because God’s voice isn’t always audible or able to be heard above all of the noise of our lives and all of the noise of our minds…Sometimes we just don’t want to heard God, because we’re afraid of what God might say to us…I heard a song lyric recently that said, “ I don’t want to be the girl that has to fill the silence…The quiet scares me cuz it screams the truth.” How quiet are you making your life in order to hear God? In the morning, before I have my cup of coffee, I have my morning devotions. There are times when it comes quite easily and I can hear and feel God strongly…and there are times when I really don’t want to, but I pretend like I do because I feel like I should…I come away those times and think, “Well, God just wasn’t talking this morning.” But the truth is, God was talking, I just didn’t want to listen…God is with you…God is with you always…Are you listening for God? Are you looking for God’s presence? If you look, you’ll hear and you’ll see…God is with you always…Sometimes the message that God has for us is not easy or one that we necessarily want to hear…Sometimes it’s difficult, sometimes it’s painful, but it’s always told and shared in love…God’s love which is perfect and can see beyond our own understanding and our own comprehension. God is speaking—are you listening? God is with you—are you looking? Don’t be afraid of what you might see or what you might hear…God is with you…God created you…God loves you…God is with you…God blesses you…

United Methodist Women

Due to the weather, United Methodist Women was cancelled last Thursday. The meeting will be this Thursday at 12:30 pm at Sheridan UMC.

God Loves You

God Loves You
For the next few weeks we’ll be exploring together the blessing that has closed our service for the last couple years together…The blessing: God created you, God loves you, God is with you, God blesses you. Last week, we explored together the first part: God created you and saw the connection of Jesus’ baptism to God’s creation and making us a new creation to fulfill our mission as Christians—to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Now, within in creation, we saw the love that God had for creation…that God created the world out of love, God redeemed the world out of love, and God sustains the world out of love…
Now, I have to confess that this part of the blessing brings about a story…When I first started using this blessing with a group of seminary students, I had done the blessing first and as our time together progressed, we decided to bless one another. One of the women there was so concerned about getting the wording just right. I wrote it on the white board for her and she was practicing all day on how to say it. When it came to be her turn to use the blessing balm, she got visibly nervous and kept looking at the white board… “God…” she began and took a deep breath… I told her that it was okay if she didn’t get it in the same order; whatever came out of her mouth was the blessing. She nodded and looked like she started to feel comfortable. “Okay…Created, loves, with, bless…I got this.” She turned to the person next to her once again and took the blessing balm still repeating created, loves, with, bless…and then she started the blessing… “God loves you…NO!” Well…Yes, God indeed does love you.
Throughout Scripture we have stories of this love that God has…We saw it through creation, in the waters of baptism, and of course the story of Jesus is full of love. In our Gospel lesson this morning we have the story of Jesus calling his first disciples…The men that Jesus called were not men of high stature at all…they were fishermen—men who had to work hard in order to survive. These weren’t people who had the freedom to leave work for a few years to follow Jesus…They were men who took great risk to do this…And they weren’t men who were close to being kings or other royalty…Jesus’ first disciples were ordinary people—people who made mistakes…people who had families…people who questioned who Jesus was…Ordinary people…Out of love, Jesus called them to be his disciples and told them that he would make them fishers of people. That’s a pretty amazing love…the love that chooses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. That’s the love of God. God loves you.
Now, this is the same God throughout all of Scripture…God is the same yesterday, today, and forever…So, this is the same God of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Many times people will say that it seems like there is a different God in the Old Testament because God is always so angry…But there are many stories of the love of God throughout the Old Testament and just as many stories of human beings denying and rejecting that love. The parable of Jonah is one of those stories. The parable of Jonah is an incredibly beautiful love story…Many people may have heard of this story…Jonah was a prophet. Now, a prophet was someone who shared a message from God. These were people who were deeply connected to God and shared messages that were really controversial—they were messages of God’s displeasure in their rejection of God…they were challenging messages encouraging God’s people to follow God once again. They were messages that were not well received at all…Mostly because they were often telling people what they were doing wrong and how they weren’t following what God had intended. Many people didn’t want to hear that kind of a message and honestly, not much has changed because most people today don’t want to hear that message either! Prophets were often killed for sharing this message—John the Baptist was a prophet who literally lost his head…most other prophets often met a violent death because people were so opposed to hearing their messages of truth. So, Jonah was one of these prophets and he often went from town to town sharing these messages from God. Then, God tells Jonah that Jonah needs to go to Nineveh because Nineveh was a wicked city…Now if you’ve seen the Veggie tales version of the Jonah story, you would have seen Nineveh as the city that slaps people with fishes. Well, in reality Nineveh was much worse that a city that slapped people with fish…Nineveh was a city full of violent people, it was unwelcoming and not a place that anyone would willingly go…. At the entrance to the city you would find stakes with the heads of the unwelcomed people lining the entrance…So it may make a little bit more sense as to why Jonah was not interested in going to Nineveh to tell them that God was displeased with their behavior. If Nineveh took the heads of people who were just visiting, what would they do to someone who told them they were wicked?? So Jonah goes the opposite direction of Nineveh and goes out to sea where it is the furthest he can get and once out in the sea, it is made clear that God wants Jonah to go to Nineveh…The boat is rocky and the storm is fierce and as Jonah is tossed overboard, he finds his way to the belly of a great fish. When Jonah emerges, he finds himself on dry land ready to go to Nineveh. Sometimes it takes us to be alone and only able to rely on God to realize that we really do need to do what God has called us to do…Jonah is still not excited about this mission, but he figures that he’ll preach this message of repentance and share God’s message with the people and then they still won’t repent, so he’ll get to watch God destroy the city. And that fuels Jonah—so he goes to Nineveh and tells the people of Nineveh that in 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown. Well, something clicks with the people of Nineveh—through Jonah’s message…the grace of God…Something clicks and the people of Nineveh believed God, began to fast and repent. They turned around and went a new direction from what they were doing. And God was true to God’s word too…God saw what they had done and that they had turned around and so God decided not to destroy the city. See because God loved the city of Nineveh before this…God loved the city of Nineveh so much that God was so hurt by what they were doing—their evil and wicked ways…That God wasn’t going to leave them in their wickedness…So God sent Jonah to remind them of who God is. See that’s what God does…God loves us right where we are in the middle of all of our brokenness and giftedness…God loves us in spite of and because of our brokenness…But God loves us too much to leave us there. Just like the city of Nineveh—God wasn’t going to leave them in their wicked ways, but show them there was a better way through Jonah. And it happened! And God stayed true to God’s word…the city repented and God didn’t destroy it.
That’s where our passage ends for this morning, but that’s not the end of the story for Jonah…Because you see, Jonah believed in the love of God and the grace and forgiveness of God. He was constantly preaching it to different places…And he certainly believed in God’s mighty power and forgiveness and grace and love…But he thought that Nineveh was much past that. So, after proclaiming this message, Jonah saw what happened to Nineveh—that they repented and God didn’t destroy the city, so what did he do? Did he celebrate with the people and join in their repentance or share in the good news that they had been redeemed? Actually no…Jonah gets mad at God…Jonah gets angry with God for being faithful. So Jonah tells God, “That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Jonah is mad because God stayed faithful! Jonah is mad because God did exactly what God promised and Jonah is mad! So Jonah goes east of the city and says it would be better for him to die than to do something like this again…Did you hear that? Jonah would rather die than to see God’s love in action—to see people repent and believe and live their lives differently because of God’s love! So, he goes and starts to do just that. And God provides a bush to Jonah to give him shade and ease his discomfort and Jonah is so happy about that—he’s thrilled about the bush and the shade and is resigning himself that maybe this way of life he’s choosing won’t be so bad. Well, the bush withers because of a worm and the wind blows hot and the sun beats hard…And Jonah has more compassion for the bush that withered than for all of Nineveh. And God says, to Jonah—“You are concerned for this bush, that you had nothing to do with—you didn’t create it or sustain it…It was there a day for you and in a night it was gone…Don’t you then see why I am so concerned about Nineveh? That in this great city there are more than 120 thousand people who didn’t understand what they were doing and needed to be shown my love.” God is telling Jonah that even in their wickedness & brokenness God loved Nineveh and wanted them so much to understand that and turn around and believe that. And they did! And Jonah doesn’t want to accept that…Jonah doesn’t want to accept that God loves Nineveh as much as God loves Jonah.
I think that we can behave like Jonah sometimes…Oh we believe that God loves us—I mean we don’t do anything really wrong for the most part right? So of course God loves us more than God loves those wicked and evil people? Well, actually…God loves everyone—that doesn’t mean that God loves what people are doing and their actions, but God loves everyone and loves us all in the middle of our weakness and our brokenness and our hurting and God loves us enough not to leave us there…All of the world. All of creation…No matter how many times we break God’s heart by what we do, God still loves us. And there are times when we want others to love God the exact same way that we do using the exact same experiences and the exact same words…and sometimes that just isn’t possible. People experience God differently and that’s okay. It’s okay that you had an amazingly powerful experience of God’s love and you want to share it with others, but they will experience that same love on their own in their own time and in their own ways. When we try and force someone to have the exact same experiences that we do, it’s sometimes more harmful. In this clip from the movie Dan in Real Life. Dan & his family are on vacation at a cabin and & his daughter Cara’s boyfriend has taken a bus and snuck up to the cabin in order to spend time together. When Dan finds them together, he sends the boy right back where he came from leaving his daughter with a broken heart…(Clip)…God’s ability to love far surpasses our own…God loves you with as much passion as Cara running after the car…With as much protection as Dan doing what he thought was best for his daughter…With as much wisdom as Will sharing philosophies on love…with as much gentleness as Marie softly correcting Dan’s way of thinking…God’s love encompasses all of that and more!
And guess what—there’s nothing that you can do to repay that love. You can love back and you can worship and you can turn your life around and do what God has called you to do. That’s very important and that’s what we do in response to God’s love and grace for us. Because we have been offered the gift of salvation, we respond to all of God’s people to meet their needs…But we don’t do it to pay God back for what God has done or to earn salvation or earn more love from God. There’s nothing that we can do that Jesus hasn’t already done for us. So, we don’t do good works to earn God’s favor and God’s grace…We do good works because God has already loved us. God loves what we can be and what we are. God loves who we were and who we will become…God loves you.
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement spent some time in America and his mission was to come to America and share the message of the Gospel and see how God’s grace moved and worked. He was different from Jonah in that he really wanted to see this change happen. Well, John Wesley was a brilliant and faithful, but complicated man and through a series of circumstances John Wesley made some mistakes and was issued a warrant for his arrest…So, John Wesley fled America returned to England where he felt defeated—he didn’t do what he had set out to do at all and in fact may have done more harm than good…John continued to remain faithful to his vows as an Anglican priest, but he was really just going through the motions…He believed in God’s love and forgiveness, but he was struggling to believe in it for himself. Until one day he went to a worship service where he heard God’s message of love proclaimed in a way that he finally heard it for himself. And at Aldersgate, John Wesley said that his heart was strangely warmed as he realized that Jesus died for me…Yes, even for me. That’s the love of God…To realize that God loved the whole world so much that God sent Jesus Christ…And that you as an individual of sacred worth are who God had in mind in doing that…God loves you.
It is overwhelming to think of God’s love because quite honestly it is way too big for us to even imagine…God loves you. Don’t worry about figuring out all of the intricacies of God’s love—don’t worry about figuring out how you repay God for God’s love…Don’t worry about doing everything perfect so you can keep God’s love…Just stay in love with God. And let God love you…and that love will change you because that’s who God is…God loves us right where we are and God loves us enough not to leave us there. God loves you.