Sunday, August 14, 2022

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 23:16-29
Psalm 119:81-88
Hebrews 11:17-31, 12:1-3
Luke 12:49-53 (54-56)

Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Mothers have this way of knowing what is going on without even having eyes on the situation. I have been known to tell my children that I have eyes on the back of my head. The children often believe this because we seem to know things we should not know. We are able to see things beyond the reasonable scope of our senses. We are really not omniscient, but we hope they will believe that we can see everything and that it will make them think twice about doing something disobedient when they grow older. We can’t be everywhere, however. Step by step they grow up and move on without us, often testing the limits of our omniscience.

We often think of God as a human parent who is limited by human constraints. The gods of the ancient peoples were local entities, superhumans that could do things regular humans could not do. They were somehow greater, and the people sought help and salvation through them. Yet, it was convenient to ignore the local gods when they weren’t needed, as if anything beyond their scope was outside their jurisdiction. Who needs a rain god when the weather is perfect? Why bother seeking help from the hometown god when you are on the road?

Our God is different. He is greater than all of creation. Sometimes, though, we treat Him as nothing more than a local god, as if He can be controlled. We think we can ignore Him when we do not need Him. We think we can hide from Him so He doesn’t see our wrongdoing. However, God is not just a god who is nearby, like those local gods of the ancients. He is also not a god who is far away. He is not some disconnected being that set the world in motion and then disappeared. In verse 24 of the passage of Jeremiah, He says, “Don’t I fill heaven and earth?” He is everywhere and actively involved in every aspect of the lives of His people.

When we discount the Lord God Almighty and make Him less than He is, we easily fall prey to those who would use and abuse His power for their own benefit. In Jeremiah’s days there were prophets on every streetcorner, prophets who claimed to know God’s mind and His intensions. They cried, “I had a dream” and interpreted the dream to their advantage. By claiming to have received their message directly from God, they sought to gain power and influence over people. Yet, their message was lacking. It led people astray. It brought people to the altar of false gods and made people forget the Creator and Redeemer God. They cried “Peace” because the people wanted peace; it met their needs so much more than warnings of God’s wrath. The false prophets popular because they said what the people wanted to hear.

In the passage from Jeremiah God asked, “What is the straw to the wheat?” Straw is part of the wheat; it is the stem that is left after the wheat kernels are taken. Straw has value; it can be used for bedding, for warmth, for building. Yet, straw is limited. Wheat, on the other hand, is life giving. The kernels can be used for food, or they can be planted to grow more wheat. God’s word as compared to that of the false prophets is life giving. It is forgiving. It is filled with grace and hope and peace. God’s word might be demanding. It might be powerful, like the hammer that breaks the rock into pieces, but it is healing and transforming. Most of all, God’s Word reveals His faithfulness. We can know the difference between the false prophets and those who are faithfully speaking God’s message to the world, because God’s word brings life and growth and hope. God’s Word never contradicts itself.

Who do we believe? This is a question we have to ask ourselves daily. Which news is real news? It is becoming very difficult to know what is true. I’ve watched too many videos of people who can’t answer simple questions correctly because they’ve trusted what they have heard without searching for what is real. People will continually repeat misinformation until it becomes “known fact” despite being untrue. With the viral character of the Internet, this type of misinformation can ruin people’s lives and reputations.

Take for instance the old saying, “God will not give you any more than you can handle.” We think this common refrain is scriptural and that God will keep us away from the hard stuff. Ask Jeremiah if God gives people more than they can handle. His life was rough. It was lonely to be persecuted and rejected. Jeremiah remained faithful not because he thought God would take away the difficulty but because he knew that God would get him through. We believe the refrain because we want our lives to be easy. It doesn’t show that we trust in God; it is a claim that we can do what needs to be done. Yet, we know that we can never make things right. That’s why we need Jesus.

Our scriptures lately have focused on trusting in God and having patience to wait for His will to be clearly known in our life. We looked at Abraham and Sarah whose faith in God’s promises gave them a vision of the future that they would never see during their lifetimes. They saw the beginning in the birth of their son Isaac, but they would never truly see the offspring who were as numerous as the stars in the sky. They still had faith. We are amazed by the examples of faith as we see in passages like today’s epistle lesson from Hebrews, but we almost wonder if they are truly historic stories or just merely myths to give us confidence in our own lives.

The promises become real when we see that these saintly, divinely inspired faithful people were not perfect. Even after Abraham was reminded of God’s promise over and over again, he still went to Hagar for a child. In the list of the faithful given to us by the writer of Hebrews, we see others who were faithful but imperfect. Rahab was of questionable morality. Gideon demanded proof from God. Barak wanted things to be done his own way rather than according to God’s will. Samson fell to the temptress. Jephthah made a deal with God which meant the death of his beloved daughter. David’s indiscretion brought death to a man and a child. The people who crossed the Red Sea did not remain faithful to God. Samuel and the prophets failed in their own ways.

The story of Jericho shows us that sometimes we have to experience the same things over and over again as we wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled, taking us to a place where we truly trust God. Would the walls have come tumbling down if the Israelites had blew their horns on the first day? No, God led them through a period of patience and obedience. The daily parade seemed worthless and ridiculous but in the end they believed, and the walls fell.

We learn through repetition both what we are doing wrong and how to do it right. Our life of faith is a growing, maturing journey that lasts our entire lifetime. We have an advantage over those people of faith in days gone by because the Good News of Jesus shows us the promise has been fulfilled in His life, death, and resurrection. Yet, we still fail. We still have doubts. We still forget God’s promises and need to be reminded daily to trust in Him. There are lessons we still need to learn. God leads us through periods requiring patience and obedience that sometimes seem ridiculous, but then one day He’ll tell us to blow our horns and the walls will come tumbling down.

Brooke Astor was a very wealthy socialite. When her third husband Victor died in 1959, Brooke inherited his vast estate, and then she spent the rest of her life giving it away. Her motto was, “Money is like manure, it should be spread around,” and she was willing to get down and dirty in the effort. It is estimated that she gave away $200,000,000 by the time she died in 2007, and she still left a sizable estate. She did not just write checks to those charities; she actually visited the places that received the funding whether it was an opera hall or a drug-infested neighborhood. She felt at home in any situation and believed that philanthropy was not just about throwing money at problems. She got right into the midst of them when she could.

Brooke Astor used her husband’s fortune to ease human misery, but she faced her own suffering in her last few years. Her son misused her money and abused her. She had dementia in those last days, and he took advantage of her inability to care for herself; he even withheld her medications so he could keep control. He was tried and convicted of many counts including grand theft and elder abuse. Brooke’s grandson fought his own father, risking his own portion of her estate, to ensure that her life was respected. He didn’t care and he succeeded, guaranteeing his grandmother received proper medical care in her final days. He began an organization that helps protect elders from the very things his own father did to Brooke.

These stories are more common than we would like; battles over inheritance often divide families. It is amazing how much, or how little, can get in the way of family harmony and peace. This doesn’t happen just among the rich. Many families battle over insignificant things like a few acres of land or a special memento. I’ve heard stories of family members rushing to the home of a recently departed person just to grab whatever they could get. These games destroy families.

The peace of a family is not always destroyed by stuff. How many of us have experienced broken relationships because of words? How often have we dismissed a family member or a friend because their opinion is different than ours? Sadly, this is happening more and more these days. Many families agree that there are certain topics that will not be discussed at family gatherings because those topics cause tension and division. Politics and religion are often put away for the sake of family unity because we know that those two subjects are met with passion. It is not easy to agree to disagree, and those discussions can lead to a lifetime of dispute.

In Jeremiah God says that His Word is like fire and in the Gospel Jesus says that He has come to bring fire upon the earth. We are uncomfortable with these images because we would much rather think of Jesus as coming to bring peace. However, the peace Jesus brought is not necessarily a lack of conflict. Faith in Jesus will cause division, it will bring tension. Those who are passionate about their faith, about Jesus, will stand up for their beliefs under any circumstance, even risking relationships with family and friends.

When we live with this kind of conflict in our lives it is understandable that we wonder when we will know the peace that God has promised. Yet, this is a misunderstanding of the peace that God intends. The life of faith is not a life without conflict; it is a life of joy in God’s kingdom. Trusting in God means allowing the fire that dwells within us to burn brightly to light the world in which we live.

Sometimes we will need to face more than we can handle. Sometimes we will parade around our problems over and over again until God finally says we can blow our horns that will knock down the walls. We are called by faith to risk the division that might be caused by the Gospel. True peace is found in trusting God and living according to His Word, whatever the risk. God’s peace is not without conflict; it comes to us when we live in trust and hope for God’s promises.

Brooke Astor did what she believed was right to do: she gave everything she could to create a better world. She didn’t try to establish accounts to build or save the wealth, she spent as much money as she could, answering every need she saw. She trusted that someone else would provide for tomorrow while she was providing for today. I can’t find any indication of Christian faith in her biography, but she had a heart for those in need and did whatever she could. Others tried to stop her, but she didn’t care what they thought. She did what she did in memory of the man who gave her the responsibility.

We are called to live in our faith in the same manner, to be faithful for God’s sake no matter the consequences. We might think that a martyr’s life was not blessed because they died in suffering and pain. Yet they are so often described as having had an unearthly joy and peace come over them in those final moments, even as they were being burned or beheaded. God is everywhere and He can see everything. He is so close that He can count every hair on our head. He is so far that we can’t keep Him under control. God is with us. He is in our hearts and in our lives. As He said, He fills the earth. And He is constantly working in our world to make things right, to reconcile people to Himself and one another, to heal and grant peace to those who believe.

Texas is dangerously dry. Again. Drought is not unusual in Texas, after all our environment is semi-arid. We normally have several months a year without a drop of rain. This year we have been too dry for too long and we are also dealing extreme temperatures. That’s a consequence of the drought. There is a small hope for rain, perhaps some people will see a brief shower in the next few days. I’ve lived in Texas for nearly nineteen years, and I still do not really recognize the signs of impending weather. Some of it is obvious, but I can’t count on the old wives tale I knew in Pennsylvania about cows lying down before a rain. They might lie down for rain in some places, but here they lie down whenever they are tired.

I’ve also noticed that the clouds sometimes look “wet” as if they are about to burst, but then the sun evaporates the water, and they disappear into the big beautiful blue sky. I saw a storm cloud the other day that looked like it might actually come our way. It turned out it was fifty miles away and disappeared long before it could have reached our house. I’m not always very good at interpreting those signs.

In the Gospel lesson Jesus said, “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky, but how is it that you don’t interpret this time?” They knew what the temporal signs meant for their lives. Their agricultural livelihood depended on knowing the right time to plant and the right time to reap. The desert heat can be dangerous for travelers who might be on a dusty road for days at a time. Knowing the signs meant the difference between life and death.

We look at the stories of Jesus and wonder how they could have been so foolish. After all, Jesus did miraculous things; He made a difference in so many lives. How could they reject the Messiah that was standing right in front of them? Well, they had false prophets like we do. They had people claiming to be the Messiah. They had become cynical because the false prophets were never right. Besides, Jesus did not fit into their expectations. He was not the Messiah they thought they were looking for. He was not the Savior they predicted. They couldn’t read the signs because they were looking for all the wrong things. It was like me trying to understand the weather in Texas by using the signs that meant one thing in Pennsylvania that have no validity here.

They did not know how to interpret the signs. He did many miraculous things, but there were others who seemed to do miraculous things. They missed, or refused to acknowledge, that Jesus did signs that no one else was able to do. Jesus’ miracles were more than supernatural events. His work pointed to the grace of God. He would be faithful to provide the salvation that He promised to those who recognized that Jesus was the One. Too many, even today, put their own spin on those signs, but they have a skewed understanding of God.

Jeremiah had a lonely life. He was a prophet who had a very unpopular message. The other prophets of the day were promising good times to the people. They were promising sunshine and roses, peace and prosperity while Jeremiah prophesied the coming destruction. He was persecuted and rejected because he did not speak words the people wanted to hear. Would we have been any different? After all, it is much better to hear about peace and prosperity rather than destruction. How many preachers today are guilty of similar warm fuzzies when they should be calling people to repentance? How many of them have a skewed understanding of God?

Jesus said, “I came to throw fire on the earth. I wish it were already kindled.” This sounds almost like the boast of a warrior king who has come to bring destruction and wrath. Jesus’ message becomes more difficult to hear as He moves closer to the cross. Life in God’s Kingdom will not always be easy; there will be persecution. The Gospel is not a unifier, it is a divider. But Jesus comforts His disciples with the promise that they will not be alone.

Last week Jesus warned His disciples to be ready. Ready for what? The religious leaders were already pressing Jesus to catch Him in some crime so that they could be rid of Him. The inevitable end of Jesus’ ministry would be on the cross. Jesus certainly wanted the disciples to be ready for what was soon to come because His passion and death would be trying on them as well. But Jesus constantly reminded them not to be afraid. “They can’t really kill you because your Father in Heaven is willing to save you unto eternal life.” No matter how wonderful this message sounds to us, there are many who refuse to hear and believe.

That’s where the division happens when Jesus throws His fire on earth. He divides hearts; some are inflamed with the divine love of God, but others are left cold. The fire is not a fire that destroys, but one that fills the hearts of God’s people with His love. Jesus wishes that it was already burning, but it would take something very radical for it to happen. Jesus had to die on the cross, and then after His resurrection, the Holy Spirit could be thrown upon God’s people, filling them with everything God has promised to those who believe.

Jesus stood before the people in Israel, presenting the Kingdom of God and they could not see Him as He is. He was showing them the signs that pointed to the truth so that they would turn back to God and follow Him as those who walked in faith throughout the ages. Even now too many do not recognize the signs because they expect God to fulfill their expectations rather than be faithful to His truth.

See, God’s Word is good, and it is the word upon which we can live and dwell in peace not only in this world but for life eternal. The Psalm for today is part of that lengthy hymn praising God’s Word. Each of the stanzas in Psalm 119 use words that describe God’s Law. Many people are uncomfortable with this psalm because it seems too legalistic. However, when we study the words we realize that this psalm is really a comfort to those of us who trust God because they remind us that God’s Word is more than rules we must obey.

We are called to speak God’s word to those around us. Jesus expects us to be passionate about our faith, so much so that it just flows out in our everyday experiences. The fruit of the Spirit is not something that should be quelched for the sake of unity. Unfortunately, not everyone will agree with our passion, and this will bring division.

We trust in God’s salvation because He has said He will save us. When we are let down we can look to God’s promises. When we struggle with the life we are living in this world we can see how God’s boundaries will guard and protect us even from ourselves. When we are being persecuted, we can trust that God will provide justice against those who do us harm. Those who are against us are actually against God, but God is faithful. Even when the world means to destroy us, we can look to God’s authority for peace. God’s testimony is worth obedience because He will protect us by His mercy.

Our passion for Jesus Christ might bring discord even among our families. The world will not approve of the choices we make. We might suffer. We might die at their hands. But we are called to take our faith into the world no matter what might happen. So, let’s be ready every moment to do whatever it is God is calling you to do. This means acting as Jesus taught us to act, doing what Jesus commanded us to do. Jesus invites us to follow in His footsteps, even though the circumstances may be difficult. It won’t be easy, but He has called us to share the Gospel that will bring reconciliation, healing, and peace to those who believe.