God’s Big Backyard (06/15/08)

God’s Big Backyard

(Exodus 19:2-9, 16-19; 1 Peter 2:9-10; Matthew 9:35-10: 8 )

Today’s sermon theme, of course, was also the theme of this past week’s Vacation Bible School. Forty children were enrolled and by Friday, I’m told, we had even more children than that. Usually, you see, it works the other way. That is, you lose students as the week progresses. But we gained! Which is a testament to the hard work, and superlative efforts, of our Director of Family Ministries, Emilie Bush, and her dedicated staff. And so it also seems fitting, therefore, that a week of bible school with a theme like “God’s Big Backyard” would then culminate, as it has today, in a worship service out here in God’s creation.

John Ortberg, in his book The Life You Always Wanted, once offered an “alternate version” of the bible’s creation story. In Ortberg’s version, in the beginning God went to work because it was nine o’clock and he had to. And the first thing God did was to fill out a requisition form to separate the light from the darkness. That completed, God considered making stars to beautify the night, and planets to fill the skies, but then reconsidered. It sounded like too much work; and, besides, God thought, “That’s not my job.” So God decided to knock off early and call it a day. And he looked at what he’d done and he said, “It’ll have to do.”

On the second day, God separated the waters from the dry land. And he made all the dry land flat, plain, and functional, so that – behold – the whole earth looked like… Idaho. Now God thought about making mountains and valleys and glaciers and jungles and forests, but he decided that it wouldn’t be worth the effort. And so God looked at what he had done on that second day and said, “It’ll have to do.”

And then God made a pigeon to fly in the air, and a carp to swim in the waters, and a cat to creep upon the dry ground. God also thought about making millions of other species of all sizes and shapes and colors, but he couldn’t drum up any enthusiasm for these other animals. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even too crazy about that cat. Besides, it was almost time for the Late Show. So God looked at all he had done and God said, “It’ll have to do.”

And so it went for the rest of that week of creation. And when it was over, God was seriously burned out. So he breathed a big sigh of relief and said, “Thank Me, it’s Friday!” And then God rested from all his labors on the Sabbath…

Of course, the book of Genesis doesn’t describe creation in this way – fortunately! Instead, it describes God taking great care, and being wonderfully creative, and exhibiting a true sense of joy and satisfaction in all that he had made. At each step of the way, in fact, rather than simply concluding, “it’ll have to do,” the bible says that God stopped and surveyed what he had just created and saw that, “it was good.” In fact, when it was all finally complete, God saw everything that he had made and, indeed, “it was very good.”

And, thus, it was into this “very good” creation that God placed us, and called us to be caretakers of it. That is, to “care for” and to “protect” everything God had made: the mountains, and seas, and forests, and jungles, as well as all the plants and animals and creepy-crawly things which inhabited these various ecosystems.

But even more than that… God also gave us a “special” calling; a calling he first extended to the people of Israel. As we heard in our first reading, after God had delivered the Israelites from bondage and led them out of Egypt into the wilderness – out there, out in that wilderness, out in God’s big backyard, if you will – he said to them, “if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession… you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”

“Imagine how the Israelites must have felt hearing these words,” writes Judith Carrick. “Out of all (the) nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests… Against all odds, and surely even against their own expectations, God had allowed this group of slaves to escape the domination of… Egypt… Now here they were, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, after three months of hard travel, hearing through Moses the unbelievable words from God himself, telling them that they were chosen and precious in his sight.”

Then, over a thousand years later, the letter of 1 Peter encouraged and inspired the early Christian community with virtually the same words, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people…” And then our reading from 1 Peter also reminded us exactly why we have received such a calling; that is, “in order that you may proclaim the might acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Which is simply to say, that with this “special” calling came a “special” responsibility. The reason why this priestly people and holy nation has been called and set apart by God is so that it can proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom and what God has done (and continues to do) in Jesus Christ.

And so we also heard this morning how Jesus summoned his followers and gave them authority to cast out unclean spirits and to cure every disease and every sickness, and then he sent them out into God’s big backyard to love and to serve in God’s name.

This past week, the children in our Vacation Bible School learned, through the daily bible stories, that we are called to love and to serve in a variety of ways and a variety of situations. First, they learned that we are called to “serve family” and then to “serve friends.” But they also heard that we are called to “serve our neighbors” and to “serve our community” as well.

Last, but not least, we are called to “serve Jesus.” But as I tried to remind the children in our closing on Friday, when we serve our family, friends, neighbors, and community we are serving Jesus. Because Jesus taught us, over and over again, that the very best way we can possibly serve him… is to serve others.

We’re special people, you and I. Now there are those who remind us of this all the time. Almost every day, in fact, when I come home from church and check the mail, or the phone messages on our answering machine, I keep hearing how truly special I really am. “Edward, you’re a winner! You’ve been chosen to receive a free, all-expense paid trip to Disney World.” Or, “Mr. Kroppa, would you please take a moment and complete a survey for us in order to get your special prize.” Or, “Mr. Edward, call now and we’ll send you and Mrs. Edward on that dream vacation you’ve always wanted to take.”

Three or four times a day, I hear that I’m a pretty special guy.

So are my kids. Ever since she graduated from high school, our daughter Sarah has been hearing weekly from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, as well as the reserves and National Guard. I guess she’s pretty special, too!

But, of course, these kinds of letters and phone messages are simply a marketer’s ploy to make us feel special or important, so that we can do something for them; buy their product, or answer their survey, or, in the case of our daughter Sarah with the armed services, fill their quotas.

However, it doesn’t work that way with God. God, the creator, the owner of this “big backyard” we know as earth, called the Israelites and told them they were special – even when they had absolutely nothing to offer him! They possessed absolutely nothing that the creator of this universe could possibly have desired from them!

In a sense, God said, “You can’t do anything for me. But I can and will do something for you. Out of all the peoples in the world, I will make you my treasured possession. Out of all the peoples in the world, I will make you a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

I will bless you. And even more than that, if you keep my covenant, I will make you a blessing to others as well.”

And, in Jesus Christ, God simply repeated and expanded this promise: to bless us so that we could then be a blessing to others. So whatever it is that we have to offer the world as the church, it is not something we possess. Rather, it’s something from God that we are called, and privileged, to share with others.

As Mike Wilkins reminds us, “The church is not a religious institution, it is not a service provider, it is not a retail outlet: it is a community of faith. The word for church in the Bible is ‘ecclesia’ from which we get the word, ‘ecclesiastical.’ It comes to us from two other Greek words, ‘ek’ for ‘out’, and ‘klesis’ for ‘a calling.’ (So) when the Bible calls us the ‘ecclesia,’ it is calling us the ‘called-out community.’ …The ‘ecclesia’ is not an organization or an institution, it literally means a gathering of the people – a gathering of God’s people! Church is not a place – it is a people.”

And it is a people who, through absolutely no talent or effort of their own, are nevertheless sent out into the world to serve God, and to proclaim his mighty deeds.

Now what does this mean? Well, it means that being the church and serving God is not about us. It’s about the God who called us out of the darkness of our own making… and into the light of his marvelous love and grace.

It’s about not taking ourselves too seriously. After all, keep in mind, as I pointed out earlier, that we have absolutely nothing that God could possibly want from us. Because, remember, once we were not a people. We were of no account or consequence. But now we are God’s people. Once we had not received mercy,

and we were instead mired in the muck of our own sin and unworthiness. But now we have received mercy. In other words, we should never take ourselves too seriously because – whatever it is that we have, whatever it is that we are – comes from God, not us.

There’s a story told about Pope John XXIII. One of his advisors, apparently, was constantly nagging him to fix this problem or that problem. This official lived as though he alone saw the severity of the challenges facing the world and the church, and that, without, his warnings and efforts, the entire world would collapse. Finally, the Pope had had enough. So he took this hyper-conscientious advisor aside and confessed that he, too, was sometimes tempted to think and live as though the fate of the entire world rested on his shoulders. He said he was helped, however, by the angel who would occasionally appear by the side of his bed and say, “Hey there, Johnny boy, don’t take yourself too seriously.”

After all, the people God calls and then sends out into the world are not necessarily the “cream of the crop,” if you know what I mean – popes included. Instead, keep in mind that the people God has chosen, and continues to choose, are often very flawed.

For instance, in a quick review of some of the great men and women in scripture, we find one who confessed that he was willing to give his wife to another man to sleep with. Another plotted to kill the husband of the woman he lusted after. Still another murdered a man and then had to run from the law. One was a prostitute. Another had a lifestyle marked by violence. And still another cheated his own brother out of that brother’s inheritance. And, finally, one not only persecuted the early church, but actually stood by as the first Christian martyr was stoned to death.

So what do Abraham, David, Moses, Rahab, Samson, Jacob, and Paul have in common? Despite their many sins and shortcomings, and obvious flaws – God still managed to use them to further and to fulfill his gracious will.

Well, it’s no different with us. We are not worthy of the calling to which we’ve been called. But worthiness has nothing to do with it. It’s all about mercy. And what better way for God to communicate his mercy than to illustrate it through the lives of those to whom he has been merciful…

The second thing to keep in mind is that, since it’s not our own talent or ability or righteousness at work when we serve God, the only thing God requires and asks of us is commitment and dedication. When Jesus sent his disciples out to heal the sick and to cast out demons, it was his power and his authority at work – not theirs. They were, and today we are, simply “laborers” sent out into his harvest.

Once, at a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Bobby Richardson, the second basemen of the New York Yankees back in the 1950’s and 60’s, expressed this kind of commitment and dedication in a prayer marked by both its brevity and also its poignancy. “Dear God,” said Richardson, “Your will; nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Amen.”

The implication here, of course, is that we have to stake everything we have, and everything we are – on God’s call. As someone once pointed out, a husband or wife who is only 85%, or even 90% faithful to his or her spouse is not really faithful at all.

What’s needed, instead, is 100% devotion and faithfulness. It is said that when Julius Caesar landed on the shores of Britain with his Roman legions, half a century before the birth of Christ, he took a bold and decisive step. Ordering his men to march to the edge of the cliffs of Dover, he commanded them to look down at the water below. To their utter amazement, they saw every ship in which they had crossed the channel from Europe engulfed in flames. Caesar had deliberately cut off any possibility of retreat. Now that his soldiers were unable to return to the continent, there was nothing left for them to do but advance and conquer.

Nearly 1600 years later, the Spanish explorer, Hernando Cortez, did the very same thing. Landing at, what is today, Vera Cruz, Mexico in the spring of 1519, he set fire to the 11 ships which had brought him and his 700 men from Cuba. Like Julius Caesar before him, the commitment and dedication of Cortez was absolute…

Can it be any less for us? God, the creator of the universe, this “big backyard,” has actually chosen us – as unworthy as we are – to be his priestly kingdom and his holy nation. Therefore, can we even contemplate anything less than 100% devotion in response?

Fritz Kreisler, the famous violinist, once said, “Narrow is the road that leads to a violinist. Hour after hour, day after day, and week after week, for years, I lived with my violin. There were so many things that I wanted to do that I had to leave undone; there were many places I wanted to go that I had to miss, if I was to master the violin. The road that I traveled was a narrow road and the way was hard.”

In fact, a woman once came up to Fritz Kreisler after one of his concerts and said to him, “I’d give my life to play as beautifully as you do.” To which Kreisler replied, “I did.”

You know, you can almost substitute the word “disciple” for “violinist” in that passage written by Fritz Kreisler and come up with something very similar to what Jesus had to say about the way of life for those who dared to commit themselves to following him. The way is not easy. It is not without self-sacrifice and single-mindedness. The road to be traveled is, indeed, a narrow one.

But the rewards are unmistakable… and they are eternal.

For Fritz Kreisler, of course, it was all about the opportunity to master a musical instrument, and to be acclaimed throughout the world for his prowess. For the average Christian, the rewards – at first glance – would certainly seem to be much more modest. But when you step back, and stop to think for a minute, you realize how untrue that really is.

Because, for the Christian, even the average Christian, the reward is this:

• knowing that you have contributed to a cause greater than yourself – to God’s cause,
• that you have been a blessing to others simply by sharing the blessings of God with them,
• that through the power and authority of Jesus Christ you have helped make this world – in the here and now – a better place,
• and that you have lived your life as that good and faithful servant whose real treasure still awaits in heaven.

God created us and set us loose in his big backyard. But God also called us with a “special calling” to serve others. And to make that big backyard a better place.

Amen