Choosing this Day

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Joshua 24:1-28

Care of God's Creation: #6

(you need to move to about minute 3:25 before the sermon begins!)

What was the first choice you made this morning?

Well, likely it was something along the lines of: “Do I get out of bed or do I go back to sleep?”

But probably once that all important decision was made, your brain probably went on autopilot, your feet following the path of habits you have chosen a long time ago: 

bathroom, shower, breakfast, teeth, clothes.  Or

bathroom, breakfast, teeth, shower, clothes.

If you put morning exercise or a time of prayer, good job.

And then the question:  church, or no church?

I bet for many of you that seems like a question with a forgone conclusion.  Sure, church.  That’s what we do.

But what accompanied that subtle choice?

Dread, because you don’t know how hot it might be in the un-airconditioned sanctuary? 

Resentment, because a bunch of other people you know are probably sleeping in or enjoying another cup of coffee?

 Relief, because what you need right now is to be with other people who care about you? 

Eagerness, because you need to hear some word of God right now that you just don’t get in you regular 9-5 life.

Now I may disappoint you, here: you may predict that with this line of reasoning I will say that since you chose to come to church, you made the right decision.  When faced with Joshua’s question, “Choose this day whom you will serve” and you say “OK, I’ll go to church”, you may think I will say choosing church means you chose God.

Well, I’m not.  Because Church does not equal God.

Not necessarily.

I hope I didn’t rain on anybody’s parade.  And please don’t walk out the door.  Because, while church does not equal God, I can assure you, you can find God here.

You have made the choice, consciously or unconsciously, to go to a building, to sit with people, to let words of prayer and poetry of song wash over you and bless you and yes, God is here.  And God is present to you here, in this place because you made the choice to be here and accept it.

Choice.

It is something of a human right, we might think, isn’t it?

We certainly see choice as an American entitlement.  Those without choice we think of, are those in autocratic regimes. We think of words like dictatorship.  communist. totalitarian.

Have you ever felt that maybe, just maybe, we have too many choices in our contemporary lives?  From the apps to our phones to varieties of yogurt in the dairy case, the choices we face can make our lives more complicated, rather than more liberating, as the clever marketers would have us believe. 

This is the premise of the 2004 book called the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.  The premise in this book is that Americans are given so many choices, that our brains are actually exhausted and he argues that all the choices we have to face actually go a long way in eroding our psychological well being.

Just think about that as you flip through 900 cable channels and wonder why there isn’t anything on. 

Here’s an interesting fact for you I read this week: you know the craze of the K-cup coffee?  This is the process of making single-cup coffee comes in individual portions, encased in plastic capsules or packets that you put in a special coffeemaker to brew one cup at a time.  The draw is people can choose the type of coffee they want.  It appeals to our contemporary notion of choice, doesn’t it?

Apparently, with about 12 % of US homes have a single-cup coffee machine, approximately 100 million plastic cups are trashed…a day.  That’s 36.5 billion a year.  A small glimpse at the environmental impact of some of our choices…

But no one wants to give up choice.  We could perhaps do with fewer choices, but the capacity to choose is part of who we are.  And choice, and the blessings and woes of the results of our choices, have been present since the beginning of the Biblical story: God chooses to create…something.  Adam chooses the names of the animals, humans choose to eat of the tree of knowledge, Cain chose to murder Able.  Noah chose to listen to God and build an ark.  Lot’s wife chose to look back.  Miriam chose to lead her people with a tambourine into the promise land. 

And here we are.  Now in the promise land.  Joshua has taken over for Moses, who died just before reaching this land of milk and honey, after 40 years of wandering in the desert.  Joshua has the dubious task of setting before the people…yet again…another life or death situation.  As if the past 40 years weren’t enough.

OK, we’ve come this far, says Joshua.  Now here is the real test.  A clear either or choice.  Black and white.  Now that we are here, choose: who will you serve. 

As we sit here, together, we have been summoned.  Summoned to this moment.  Not to look to the future or to dwell on the past, but like the people summoned by Joshua we sit in a moment pregnant with potential. 

In this moment, I ask you the question: Who will you serve? 

Who will you serve? [pause]

*scoff* that’s easy!  We’re in church, of course you’re going to say God!  Who wouldn’t say God?

Now this moment we are in may not seem as momentous as I pictured Joshua, expansive above his people.

It may not be as momentous as the time you made a decision to follow Christ at age 8 or 16 or 25 or older.

This moment may not be as meaningful as the time you dipped your toe into the baptismal waters, or felt the cool water sprinkled on your head.

But this is what life is.  Moment to moment decisions of allegiance.

OK, I know that sounds dramatic, a flash back to the early days of the War on Terror when George W. Bush gave us the ultimatum: you’re either with us or against us.  So, I’ll take it down a notch:

 In each moment, with each action

            with each purchase we make

            with each person we choose to look at

            with each person we choose to avoid

            with each bite of food,

Joshua’s question is sealed in our hearts: who am I serving?

Am I serving the God who sent Christ to love the outcast, to turn fear into abundant joy ,to reach out to the margins, to bless God’s creation

Or I am going to serve and to value…something else.  Something maybe a bit easier

a bit prettier.

A bit more comfortable.

We think that the choice of following God comes with the big, dramatic decisions, but it is probably more in the small, unconscious decisions that we daily encounter this question, an faithful opportunity respond to Joshua’s invitation

Torin and I are learning about these unconscious decisions quite clearly these days.

Our family is ten days into  a “No Spend” month.  We are trying to not spend any money.

Now, the name “No Spend” month is a bit inaccurate.  We pay our bills, we buy groceries and gas, but that’s about it.  Apart from those, we are trying not to spend any money.

And the grocery thing is hard, because you know, we love our food! 

So this month we are giving ourselves $500 dollars for our family of 5 to spend on food and gas.  That is $100 less a month than we usually spend on groceries alone.

That belt gets tighter and tighter.

The first week down went pretty well, but I hear it’s the second and third weeks that are the hardest.  I’ll let you know on September 15^th how it went, if you’re interested. J

So why are we doing this?

Yes, it’s a way to save money, to kind of scale back a bit after the summer vacations

Yes, it’s a way to feel a little more in control of our spending.

But what is exciting for me in this No Spend month…at least 10 days into it…is that it forces us to step back and evaluate our habits.  This week I thought, “oh, I’ll go down to ZenClay, spend $5 on a drink and type my sermon there.”

Great idea!  Except…we’re not spending this month.

Alistair asked if we could go to Ogawa, our favorite restaurant, for lunch this week.  My initial thought was  “what a great way to celebrate Alistair going to PreK, one last lunch out!”

Great idea!  Except…that  will make it pretty hard at the end of the month when we have $25 less to spend on groceries.

But what I’m noticing, is that this is not just an exercise in deprivation.  It’s an exercise in observation.  An exercise in choice.  In consciousness.  And that somehow, feels like the opposite of deprivation.

I’m taking those regular reactions and spending habits out of the realm of the unconscious, and putting them into the light of choice, and it shows me something about myself.

In today’s culture of choices everywhere, for everything, that just may be the take away from Joshua’s speech to the realities we face: every choice has an impact no matter how small.  But every choice does have an impact.

An impact on the environment.

An impact on our relationship with others

An impact on our financial situation

Every choice has an impact on our self-worth

An impact on the self-worth of others.

And ultimately, an impact on our spirits.  Our souls.  The place where God resides in us.

And yet, it’s not just about me…or you…as individuals.

Joshua was speaking to a community.  His tribe.  Joshua is talking to the group.  He is talking to us, as a congregation.

Our decisions.  Our words.  Our worship.  Our resistance.  Our embrace.

With these things…what choice do we make? 

May we find courage to take our decisions out of the realm of

            routine and  the unconscious

And hold them up as momentous, every day responses of faith.

Amen.

 

 

 

Holy Abandon

sermon by Torin Eikler

Leviticus 23:33-43      Matthew 6:25-34

 

 

At different times in our lives, different things seem to live in the front of our minds.  When I was in High School, I was focused on what was cool (even though I probably wasn’t).  In college, conversations about the meaning of life and what I was going to do with it seemed to catch my attention.  Later on, I was caught up in all the problems with society and the environment and the possible solutions to those issues.  And at this point in my life I seem to be tuned in to the word parenting (I wouldn’t know why…).  So, last week when I heard a story on the radio about the rise and fall of oppressive parenting, my ears tuned right in.

It was a misdirection, though.  The story wasn’t really about parenting.  It was about the discovery of a new gene or complex of genes that can have an effect on parenting styles as well as many other parts of our lives.  The gene could be called the resilience gene, I suppose, but given our tendency to focus on the negative possibilities, the commentators were talking about it as the worry gene.  It seems that this gene has a pretty big hand in determining how we react to the stresses and threats that come at us from the outside.  Some people are pretty good at taking them in stride.  Others have a visceral response that can come out in any number of ways, including hoarding, taking out their insecurity on others, and self-medication among others.

The link to parenting came in the way that some parents have become more oppressive in the face of the added uncertainty brought by the recession, but focus of the conversation was how understanding this gene could help us to deal with the growing number of illnesses and social problems that seemed to be linked to stress.  If we could somehow control the way it changes our physical and emotional responses (perhaps with drugs or gene therapy), we might be able to reduce the amount that people worry about the future.  That would reduce our stress levels.  And that would make us healthier and happier people.

 

The way that Jesus was speaking to the people gathered for the Sermon on the Mount makes me think he was addressing a similar problem in his own culture.  Maybe the people were stressed out about the Roman occupation.  It wasn’t a great situation for them with soldier in evidence all over the territory, oppressive taxes, and other requirements that could be imposed at any time.  On top of that, there was a feeling in the air that the Messiah was coming soon to set Israel free, and imagining the confrontation between such a leader and the empire would certainly have raised the stress level.

It could also have been that the people were simply worried about how they were going to survive.  There wasn’t as much surplus food around back then, and there was no real social net other than alms-giving to support those who found themselves on the bottom of the economic pyramid.  Most people weren’t too far from the possibility of homelessness and starvation.

And to these stressed out, worried people Jesus says, essentially, “Don’t worry.”  That’s all.  Don’t worry.  Don’t let your anxiety about the future take over your life so much that you become preoccupied with getting enough to eat or what to wear.  Don’t let that happen because life is about more than that and if you focus too much on providing for the future, you will miss out.

I’m sure there were a lot of people there who would have been thinking, “okay … that sounds good, but it doesn’t make it any easier to find dinner for tomorrow.”  That’s kind of our reaction when people say things like this to us, isn’t it.  It’s easy to say, “don’t worry,” but it is a lot harder to let things go when the future is uncertain.

But before they even have much chance to think that objection, Jesus takes them down a different path.  Think about the birds of the sky and the weeds in the fields.  They don’t worry.  They do what they need to do to get through the day, but they don’t squirrel away food or gather up leaves and feathers for the future.  They get all that they need from the God who created them, and they trust that it will be enough.  If God takes care of them, won’t God take care of you too?

 

Ah, those rhetorical questions.  Sometimes they have easy answers and sometimes they have no answers, but they always get you thinking.  I think that must be why Jesus was so fond of them.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Well yes, but ….  If God supplies the birds, … will God not also supply you who are worth much more than birds?  That makes sense, but …. 

It’s hard for us to understand how to answer those questions.  We are so keyed in to our need to take care of ourselves.  We are taught from the time we are little that we can only really rely on ourselves.  Or, that even when there are other people around who could help out, we should do our best not to let them.  We certainly should ask them unless we absolutely have to.  How are we supposed to imagine that we don’t need to be so self-sufficient let alone go so far as to believe that all we need to do is rely on God.

The people gathered on that mountain probably had some of the same issues.  Their culture was definitely more communal … or “familial” at least.  So, they were used to thinking in terms of families working together to support each other.  I think it would still have been hard, though, to hear the promise of God’s care as real and significant except ….  Except that there is the story of the forty years wandering in the wilderness.

That story was a part of the history of Jews, and for them it wasn’t just a story in a book.  They kept it alive and fresh by remembering and celebrating the Festival of Booths.  Every year, they built huts out of flimsy materials – temporary housing that was only strong enough to last a week.  They lived in those huts for part of each day, eating and sleeping there under a roof open to the stars, gathering there to pray and tell the stories of the people on their long journey to the Promised Land – telling stories of exactly how God supplied the people with all that they needed on the way.

But it wasn’t just about God’s care for the people.  The festival of booths is nestled in between two others: a season of repentance and a celebration of the story of God’s intimate involvement with the people as told in the scriptures.  All three together remind the people of how they learned to trust in God and listen to what God wanted them to do.  During those 40 years in the wilderness, they learned to abandon everything they had learned about taking care of their own needs and their own futures and to rely on following God.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole scene – the sermon on the mount, I mean - if that whole scene took place just before or just after the three festivals.  Even if it didn’t, going through those weeks of remembering and celebrating every year would have kept the experience near the surface.  And Jesus’ words, “seek first the kingdom of God” would have played right into the people’s awareness.  They would have reminded them not just of the teachings about relying on God but also of the actual experience of the people … experience that proved for them just how true it could be that listening for and following the guiding voice of God was all they really needed to worry about.  I think they might have heard the words as encouragement – that they might have heard Jesus saying, “Let go of your worry and your fear, and God will take care of you.  Let go and hear God rejoicing over the birds and the flowers – over all creation – and, especially, over you.”

 

I wonder … do we have a memory or an experience that brings us to the same place?  I don’t mean individually, now.  I’m sure some of us have had those moments.  …  I mean as a community of faith.  Are there moments in our history that we can look back to … moments that can remind us of how God cares for us.  And not just how God cares for us all the time, but times when we have chosen (or been forced to) abandon our own desire to be self-sufficient, when we have chosen to rely wholly on God, when we, as a community, have let go of our worries about the future and focused on following the Spirit’s leading voice into paths where God has provided all that we need.

If there are those stories, I haven’t heard them ….  Though, I wonder if we aren’t in one of those times right now.  Maybe this is a moment when we need to let go of our worries about the future … to set aside our need to plan and control.  I think that might free us from some of our preoccupation and anxiety … free us to listen and to step forward in trust and hope. 

 

When I was in Brethren Volunteer Service I knew a woman who was a worrier.  If you didn’t really know her, it would have seemed like she moved through life just like most of us do, but that wasn’t really the case.  She did her work well.  In fact, she was exceptionally good at planning and taking care of details.  She spent time with friends and had other interests that filled her time.  But she was never really joyful, and when she faced bigger life choices or came upon opportunities that would have been expensive or required a large commitment of her time and energy, she struggled.

It wasn’t that she completely froze up, but she had such a hard time making those decisions.  Her worry about what she should do and how her decisions would affect the future bogged her down so much that she that she missed out on many wonderful experiences and let quite a few opportunities that might have made her quite happy and fulfilled pass her by.  Sometimes, her preoccupation with providing a secure future for herself even blinded her to doors that were open to work or life changes that might have made her quite happy and fulfilled.

I went to a concert with this woman once (her parents were supporters of the band and so the tickets were free).  She really enjoyed all of the music, but toward the end, the group performed a song called “Abandon” that changed her life.

The lyrics included the phrase: “Abandon … hear God rejoicing over you.”

It repeated those words over and over:

          “Abandon hear God rejoicing over you. 

                   Abandon … hear God rejoicing over you.

                         Abandon ….”

After that concert, she did just that….  Oh, she didn’t give up thinking about or planning for the future.  She still worried about it some, and I think that’s okay.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking care for our futures.  The problems come when we hold on too tightly and there’s no room for God there.

That’s what she let go of … her need to control everything.  And as she grew more and more comfortable in her trust, as she let God take care of more and more parts of her life, she became more and more comfortable with herself and content with her life.  She found joy and hope in the midst of holy abandon.

 

I hope that we, as a congregation, can find our way to that same place – the place where we balance our need to prepare for the future with a letting-go of our preoccupation with control.  I see us taking steps toward that, but we have a long way to go.  I am trusting that the Spirit will lead us through and into holy abandon … if we can just let go a little more … and a little more … and a little more.  And there, … there we will see ourselves for what we are – a wonderful creation of God.  There, … there we will hear God rejoicing over us.