Choose your gods wisely

Scripture: Joshua 24:1-15

            This reading from Joshua is a perfect example of what the Old Testament is like, which means it’s also a perfect example of why we don’t read the Old Testament. Seriously. It’s 20% laws that we don’t know how to (or if we should) apply to our lives, 5% stories that are mostly familiar to us, 120% recap of stories that have already happened and 1% wise, pithy sayings that we can put on t-shirts. And that’s only the first 146% of the Old Testament!

So, it’s sometimes hard to know what to do with the Old Testament. We tend to zero in on those few wise pithy things in the text and ignore the rest, which is pretty much what I am going to do today. We have fourteen verses in Joshua chapter 24 before we get to the payoff; fourteen verses that nobody is preaching on this weekend. It’s all about the wisdom; all about the nugget that reads: “…If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

That last half-sentence is the snippet for your t-shirt; the Bible quote in your “About Me” on Facebook; the verse on your door; or for those 9^th graders who are starting to think about Bible verses for their faith statements, you could do worse than Joshua 24:15. Oh yeah, it’s also on our bulletin cover. Nothing about the Perizzites and the Girgashites; just this little bit of wisdom. Funny how that works.

            So I am going to talk a little about the preceding fourteen verses today, because, as much as we cite Bible verses like Joshua 24:15 in our daily lives as evidence that we are good Christians, the real payoff is in how we get there. It’s not the destination, right? It’s the journey. The Israelites need this long recitation of the history of their people because they are so, so stupid when it comes to worshiping other gods. Yeah, Yahweh, you sent plagues on Pharaoh and brought us out of Egypt, and parted the Red Sea, and you made Balaam into a donkey, and you fed us in the desert from absolutely nothing, and you gave us this land that we did nothing to earn, but, really, Yahweh, what have you done for us lately?

Law, love, power, and death; the commandments pretty much have it all

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17

A transcript of today's sermon
I’m going to do something crazy… I think I can do this out here… I don’t know [stepping outside the pulpit].

I’m going to do a recap of what we did on Confirmation on Wednesday. This is going to be a sermon, but it’s going to be a recap of a lot of what we talked about on Wednesday, so if I happen to drop dead in the middle of the sermon any of our ninth-graders here could finish it for me. So, I’m expecting really good sermon notes.

We talked about power on Wednesday—and we especially talked about power in terms of law and gospel—and today we’re reading about the Ten Commandments, which are fundamentally about the law. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about some of the same things we talked about with our ninth-graders. And they seemed to be able to wrap their heads around it a little bit, which was really kind of neat, so I hope that some of you can too.

When we talk about law and we talk about gospel we are really talking about two different kinds of power. The law is right-handed power. The gospel—Jesus dying on the cross—is left-handed power. 99% of our lives happen in the right-handed power world, so it’s actually really difficult for us to imagine any other kind of power. Right-handed power includes everything we do—studying for a test, playing sports, the work that we do. Anything that we do; anything that we are; anything that we work hard for—whether it’s a new job or a marriage, or whatever it is that you’re working at in your life—this is the right-handed kingdom. We live in that world 99—maybe 99.9—percent of our lives, and that’s what the Ten Commandments speak to.

The Ten Commandments are telling us how to live in that 99% of our lives. The insufficiency in the Ten Commandments is that they leave us there. They leave us in the right-handed kingdom, and they don’t themselves bring us across to the left-handed kingdom, which only happens when Jesus comes into the picture.

Remember the good ol' days?

Scripture: Exodus 14:10-14, 21-29

             I love the Israelites. They invented the “good old days.” Remember how great it was back in Egypt? Didn’t we tell you we wanted to stay in Egypt? We told you this would never work, Moses. We have always stayed in Egypt. We tried to leave Egypt before and it didn’t work; it never works. Please allow us to go back to Egypt… please, pretty please?

            Has anybody ever heard anything like this?

            These were slaves. They were in slavery in Egypt—there’s no way to spin it otherwise. Never minimize our ability to delude ourselves into thinking that the past was better than it was. Remember the good old days? Yeah, sure, we were worried about getting drafted into the war, and the family farm was barely making enough food to feed us (let alone anybody else), but it was a simpler time then—a better time. The church was filled with kids—never mind that they were only there because there was literally nothing else to do and their parents would do things to them if they didn’t go that today would be illegal. People weren’t more faithful back in the day—they were more bored and they were more scared; and maybe not all of that was so bad, but better? Was it really better?

Many of you remember those days because you lived through them. Today we are afraid of terrorism… then we were afraid of communism. Today we are afraid of dwindling numbers of people… then we were afraid that we couldn’t support the people that we had. Today we are afraid that our church no longer matters in our culture… then we were afraid that our church had too much stake in our culture. Every age has its advantages and disadvantages, but certain times—like the Israelites on their way out of Egypt—we delude ourselves into thinking something that clearly isn’t true. Egpyt was never the “good old days.”

"Unconventional" Prayer

I wish I did prayer better most of the time, especially these days. With an infant at home and long days at the church it is more and more difficult to find time to be still, let alone to intentionally spend time in prayer. Like most people, I have a lot of things in life, and the fact that I'm a pastor doesn't necessarily mean that prayer is high up on that priority list. But I also know I need it. I'm not the same person when I'm not reflecting, taking the time necessary for God to work in and through me.

But one thing I've discovered in the last few months is a realm of "unconventional" prayer. I put that in quotation marks because I'm not sure it's actually all that unconventional. I think more often we assume prayer is either spoken petitions in a community or silent petitions on our own, but just because that's our predominant view of it does not mean that those are the best ways to pray. Often, I think they are not.

My unconventional praying has happened most often lately when I'm riding my bike or on a long run. That might seem convenient--I thought so at first--and so I was always trying to excuse myself for a workout and thinking, "Oh crap, I need to get back to work and then I need to find time to reflect." What I've discovered, though, is that exercise often offers a great cover for reflection. This doesn't happen all the time; I wouldn't say that when I'm racing it's a great time for prayer. It happens more often on the days where I ride long but not hard, or run far but not fast. But it also doesn't happen all the time.

The thing that seems most important is the intention. There are days I spend my whole ride looking at my bike computer and how fast I'm going, or worrying about what I have to do when I get home. Those aren't prayerful rides. But other days I set out with the intention of reflecting. That doesn't mean I'm not going to get a workout (I'm terrible at moseying), but I find on those days that I finish my workout more refreshed than tired. More importantly, when I come back to my office I do so with renewed perspective.

Individual purpose? Meet the body of Christ.

Scripture: Genesis 12:1-9

            When I was in high school the big thing in the world of pop Christianity was Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life. In some ways, that book branded what it means to be a Christian in the 21^st century with its emphasis on God’s purpose for your life. Warren tapped into something that resonates deeply with our culture, something that leads more people than ever to consider Jeremiah 29:11 as one of their favorite Bible verses, “So I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper… and a future with hope.” Purpose. That’s what we’re looking for. A purpose and a plan.

            At around the same time that The Purpose-Driven Life was becoming a best-seller, The Matrix Reloaded was hitting theaters. The Matrix movies might not seem to have much to do with The Purpose-Driven Life, being as they were about a computer-driven world, virtual reality, and the like, but at its core The Matrix is a story about fate and purpose. And in The Matrix Reloaded we get this great line from one of my favorite actors, Hugo Weaving, who plays Agent Smith and says, “We're not here because we're free. We're here because we're not free. There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist. It is purpose that created us. Purpose that pulls us. That guides us. That drives us. It is purpose that defines us. Purpose that binds us… We're here to take from you what you tried to take from us. Purpose.”

            I’m a child of the 90s and so you sometimes run the risk of getting all sorts of references from my youth, but I think I’m right in believing that this obsession with purpose is not limited to one generation. In fact, I find people of all ages concerned with this question in different ways. Young people who don’t know what they want to be in life. Middle-aged folks who feel like they haven’t accomplished enough. Older folks who have lost that sense that they are productive members of society. Finding our purpose is sometimes a challenge.

Downstream of the flood: Water, Death, and Resurrection

Scripture: Genesis 9:1-17

           This morning’s readings are bookends to the very familiar story of Noah’s ark and the great flood. They are a perfect new beginnings text for a September day when school has started, Sunday School and Confirmation are in short order, and we are all beginning to settle back into the familiar rhythm that the summer seems to take away. We all know the story: People were bad, God sent lots of rain (maybe this hits too close to home), the world floods, and then the water recedes. What’s left is just Noah and family, the creatures on the ark, and God’s promise to Noah, signified by the rainbow, that he would never again destroy the world—at least by means of a flood. This is a story about a promise, and it’s a more wide-reaching promise than we often consider. This is the only covenant God makes anywhere in the Bible that is with not only human beings but also with every living creature that lives and breathes and moves on this earth, above, and below it.

            Every time I read this story, especially with young people, there’s always that one kid who looks at you skeptically, because this is a story that elicits many, many questions. For goodness sake, when Noah gets off the ark the first thing he does is sacrifice a handful of birds. After 40 days on a boat, you can imagine what the birds were thinking, “Oh boy! We made it!” …

Then there’s the matter of the people who appear on the scene after the Noah story. Who are they and where did they come from?

            And then there’s the question that’s more on the subject I want to talk about today, which is the one you get from the smart kid who knows a bit about earth science, and asks: “Where did all the water come from?” This is about when I long for the glory days when pastors just told kids like these to shut up. The problem is that this is a great question, because if you understand nature a bit you know that water doesn’t just appear from space. We have evaporation and precipitation. Sometimes water is in the ground, or in the air, or in glaciers, but water doesn’t just appear. So, how do you flood the whole world?

Lakes Country Triathlon Recap

It's not often that I have a race that's an after-thought. Normally, I tend to obsess over these things, but in this case the Lakes Country Triathlon was really just a sideshow to Kate's first triathlon the day before in the Cities. I'm going to let her recap that one (she said she would!), so we'll pick up the action the evening after Kate's triathlon, the night before mine.

The part where I eat like an idiot:

This part is pretty self-explanatory. We went to Olive Garden in Baxter the night before the race because... well.. I'm not very smart. Now, eating pasta the night before a race is not a bad idea. However, eating cheesy, loaded pasta and a ton of breadsticks and more raspberry lemonade than a person should ever drink is definitely not very smart. I waddled the rest of the evening.

The part where I'm not sure the race is going to happen:

It stormed overnight--like thunder and lightning and winds and heavy rains and all that business. So, when I got up around 5:30 I was less than sure that the race was going to happen, but a check of the radar showed that the heavy storms were just passing. It just looked like rain ahead. So, we packed things up and headed down to the race, which was 15 minutes away from our hotel.

As we pulled up to Whipple Lake the rain had slowed to a drizzle and things were looking up. I was racing. So, I had better figure out pretty quick what the heck I was doing. Thankfully, I now have a checklist, so setting up the bike in the transition area wasn't nearly as difficult as it used to be. Things were pretty well organized. I had some extra time to ogle the super nice bikes that signified this was a race with actual fast people, and then Kate and I walked around for a bit, and I used the port-a-potties a half dozen times because of nerves (this is, as far as I can tell, completely normal).

The part where we race: