Giving Thanks

Scripture:

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Philippians 4:4-13      

 

Preached 11/24/2013

 

Something to think about as you sit down for your Thanksgiving meal later this week- If you had been among the pilgrims at what we now call the first Thanksgiving, would you have been giving thanks?  Think about what those men and women had been through.  The voyage from England was no vacation cruise.  It was so hazardous that the published guides advised travelers to the “New World” to make their will before they started the journey.  The crossing was rough, and the Mayflower was blown off course.  Instead of reaching Virginia, where a settlement had been made 13 years earlier, these Pilgrims ended up in the middle of nowhere—Massachusetts.  By the time they found a place to make their home—what they called Plymouth—winter had set in.

The storms were fierce.  Shelter was rudimentary.  There was very little food.  And, within weeks, nearly every settler was sick.  Within three months, almost half of the Pilgrims had died.  Of the 102 original passengers, only 53 were left at that first Thanksgiving meal.  They were poor, cold, and exhausted, having to work themselves to the bone to survive.  They were probably afraid, and grieving the loss of loved ones, and the life they had back in England.  Life wasn’t exactly what we would call good.  And yet, they had this three day long meal of fellowship and thanks that we still remember today.  Would you give thanks?

Back it way up to Deuteronomy, that first scripture Linda read for us this morning.  Though it was written quite a bit later, Deuteronomy is written as if it’s addressed to the Hebrew people, freed from Egypt and wandering in the desert.  The part we read this morning is still from their wandering days, as they are on the cusp of the Promised Land, but still not quite there.  As the story goes, they’ve been wandering in the desert for 40 years, a lifetime for many people back then.  They’ve been hot and they’ve been cold, they’ve been hungry and thirsty, they’ve been over run by snakes. . . it’s not been a vacation for them either.  And yet, what is the text focused on this morning?  How to give thanks to God.  Would you give thanks?

Fast forward from Deuteronomy to Philippians, as we did with our scripture readings.  Philippians is one of Paul’s letters, and one he wrote from prison.  Roman prisons were not pleasant places to be.  They were often cave-like, damp, cold, and hard.  Treatment was bad and food and drink were limited.  Paul didn’t know whether or not he was going to make it out alive.  And yet, he writes to the Philippians, yet again, about giving thanks to God.  The Philippians to whom Paul was writing didn’t have an easy situation either.  Any early Jesus followers would face suspicion and some level of pressure and persecution because of their faith.  Would you give thanks?

I’ll admit that my answer is no.  When I’m exhausted, scared, sad, uncomfortable, hungry or thirsty, God-forbid damp, which is the worst feeling in the world, I’m not too prone to have thanksgiving spilling off my lips.  Should I be afraid for my own life, I’m pretty confident that I wouldn’t be full of thanksgiving then, either.  I’m pretty sure it’s not just me.  Thanksgiving just isn’t a natural instinct.  This year, for the first time, we had trick or treaters come to our door.  And, over and over again, parents with their children reminded the kids to say “thank you.”  If you’re a parent, or you’ve been around children very much, I’m sure you’ve noticed a very similar happening.  Over and over, we remind children to say “thank you” when they receive something.  And we do this because giving thanks doesn’t come naturally, to any of us. 

If you notice, we tend to remind children to say “thank you” only in response to being given something pretty easily tangible—a piece of candy, a birthday present, even a compliment.  That’s when we realize that thanksgiving is in order.  That’s when we maybe hear some significant person from our childhood’s voice in our heads, reminding us that a thank you is in order. 

But the rest of the time—the times when we aren’t being handed something—thanksgiving gets harder.  We don’t have the natural instinct, and we don’t have the training-- who teaches a child to say thank you when they’ve scraped their knee?  Or when they’ve accidentally let go of their prized balloon outside and will never hold it again?  Or when they’re hungry, or thirsty, or tired?  I can’t say that no one does, but no one I’ve ever met teaches thankfulness in those kinds of situations.

Except, of course, for God.  We have the people of Israel wandering in the desert, and God, through human words, tells them to give thanks.  And this isn’t just thanks for the coming Promised Land, but for God’s presence and action their whole faith history, even the awful part of being slaves in Egypt.  Even though it goes against the kind of thankfulness we’ve been taught—that thankfulness is the appropriate response for getting something nice—the instructions we get here are to give thanks even when we look around and aren’t particularly thrilled with what we see.

Paul models this well.  Sitting in that jail cell, not knowing if he would make it out of prison alive, what are his words to the Philippians?  Rejoice always.  He even repeats himself, just in case they didn’t catch it the first time. Rejoice, don’t worry, pray and give thanks to God in all situations. And why do we do this?  Not just because someone told us to, not even just because God told us so.  But because, as Paul writes, the Lord is near. 

No matter what situation we find ourselves in, Jesus is with us and we are not facing the trouble alone.  Right here, at Calvary church, in this time and this place, with the strengths, resources, and even the problems we have, the Lord is near.  When our air conditioner is stolen, perhaps, and we’re worried about security and paying for replacements, the Lord is near.  When we sat down and filled out our pledge cards and our time and talent sheets, maybe we worried that we weren’t able to give enough, or that we just didn’t feel like we could part with as much money as we wanted to, and the Lord was near.  Maybe you forgot about the pledge card and time and talent sheet and are wondering if you can still fill one out, and the Lord is near, and yes, there are more cards and sheets.  Maybe you’re just bogged down by responsibilities, worried about health problems, or stressed out about the coming holidays.  And yep, the Lord is near.  The point is this—whatever situation we are in, the Lord is near, the Lord is with us, and that alone is more thank enough reason to give God our thanks.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the only emotion we’re allowed to have is happy and the only words out of our mouth can be gratitude.  Trust me, I’ve been a counselor and I’ve seen what this kind of artificial happiness can do to people after some time, and it isn’t pretty.  We can still be mad, angry, hurt, sad, afraid—we can still feel whatever we feel.  The point is just not to get stuck in those, or any feelings.  To feel them, maybe to do something about them, and to realize that they aren’t the end of the world.  They are they, they are real and deserve to be felt and expressed.  But, right along with them, so does thanksgiving.

Even as thanksgiving is something that God asks us to do, thanksgiving isn’t just about benefitting God.  Paul knew this—thanksgiving helps us, too.  It helps us see Christ right with us, even in the difficult times.  And, as Paul writes, being able to see Christ with us has great benefits.  Paraphrasing Paul a bit, seeing Christ and giving thanks helps us to receive “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guarding our hearts and our minds.”  And that is certainly a precious gift.  God’s peace is how we can make it through hard times without unnecessary alarm.  It’s how we can look at something like a church budget with a deficit and see possibility and opportunity instead of just problem.  It’s how we take a chunk of our money and our time and give it to the church, rather than keeping it all for ourselves.  I’m sure the God’s peace is what’s helping all of you doing New Beginnings take an honest look at this church and this neighborhood and be unafraid, knowing that God has a future planned for us, even if that future looks pretty different from our past.

Look around you.  Really—look around you, not up at me.  Look at the people sitting here, and this building we’re in.  Think about the neighborhood around us, and the people who live and work and go to school as our neighbors.  Think about everything that makes this church what it is and who it is.  We have a choice to make.  Will we give thanks?  Will you give thanks?  Thanks be to God.  Amen.      

                                               

MapQuesting the Holy Mountain

Scripture:

Isaiah 65:17-25

1 Thessalonians 5:12-23   

 

Preached 11/17/2013

                                          
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. . . No, just kidding.  It was about nine years ago, and it was in Wisconsin.  Rob and I, and our friend Nate, had just left a concert we all went to together.  It was late, and it was dark, and we were all exhausted.  It was one of those shows with way too many people crammed into way too small an area, and we were all hurting.  We were ready to go back to our homes, and go to bed.  So, the three of us piled into Rob’s Explorer, and started the three hour journey back to Iowa.

To be fair, nine years ago was a long time in the world of navigation.  Now, when I’m taking a trip, I simply put part of the address into my phone, my phone comes up with the rest, and it gives me three or four different routes I can take to get there.  Nine years ago was before this kind of technology existed.  It was before Rob, Nate, or I owned a GPS.  It was back in the dark ages of MapQuest, when we had to print off directions before we went somewhere.  And- brilliantly-- we had done that.  But it was dark, and it was hard to read those directions, as we began our journey back to Iowa. 

Rob was driving, and Nate was in the front seat with him, attempting to read the directions.  Now, Nate is a wonderful guy.  He’s still one of Rob’s and my closest friends, and we love him very dearly.  But Nate is not so helpful terms of navigation because he’s directionally challenged.  But, he was sitting in the passenger’s seat up front, which is clearly the navigator’s seat.  This seating choice may not have been the wisest, but Nate is 6’8” tall, so he was not going to fit in the back.

So, in our less that wise seating arrangement, we drove home.  And as we drove, we came to an exchange in the interstate.  We had two choices—we could pick north, or we could pick south.  Not having read ahead in the instructions, Nate was scrambling to figure out what step we were on, and what way to take.  He couldn’t find it in time, so he just went with what made sense to him at the time.  We were in Wisconsin, North of Iowa.  So, he logic-ed, should just take the south option to get home.

Who needs directions when you can just go with your gut, right?  Well, we realized a few hours later that something seemed off.  The interstate signs were directing us towards cities that were nowhere near where we wanted to go.  We started to get a little nervous.  And then, off in the distance, we saw something strange.  Used to heading back to Iowa, we were expecting to see nothing in the distance, because Iowa pretty much looks like nothing at night.  But we definitely saw something. A tall, tangled and twisted mass of metal—a roller coaster. A tall skinny tower—one of those rides you go up and then drop down quickly, and then the  giant sign.  It was Six Flags, in Chicago. 

Instead of directing us home, where we wanted to go, Nate’s instinct had taken us, in several hours, to a dark and locked up Six Flags.    If you look at the map, we started at that top point.  We wanted to go to the point on the left, where the purple line goes.  What we actually did was go to the point on the right.  We were far away from home, and, without any helpful directions, it seemed like we were hopelessly lost.

I’ll admit that it’s not just Nate.  I am also directionally challenged.  I need that little voice on my phone’s Google Maps app, telling me when and where I need to turn to get where I need to go.  But even for those of you who are really good at maps and directions and getting where you want to go, I bet that you’ve felt really lost, at least at some point in your life.  And, in terms of our spiritual life, I am confident that we have all felt a little, or a lot, lost too.

Our Isaiah reading this morning lays out our intended destination, our spiritual home with God.  And it’s a beautiful vision, one of the most beautiful and most powerful in the Bible, of God’s intentions for all of creation.  Along with that beauty though, this vision is also strange.  It’s foreign to us because this intended destination is definitely not a place with which we’re familiar.  We don’t know that place Isaiah describes.  We don’t know a world where there is no weeping, and no cries of distress.  We don’t know a world where babies don’t die sometimes, where people don’t die before their hundredth birthday.  I bet all of us do often feel like we labor in vain.  And I’ve never seen a wolf and a lamb feeding together, or a lion eating straw like an ox.  Isaiah’s vision is definitely strange, but oh so beautiful at the same time.

I want to go to that Holy Mountain where none will hurt or destroy.  As much as I wanted to get back to Iowa that night nine years ago, I want to go to that Holy Mountain a whole lot more.  My guess is that all of us would like to go there too.  So let’s go.  But wait.  First things first.  If we don’t want to get lost, to end up outside of Six Flags in Chicago, so to speak, we need some directions to get to this new place.  So where are our directions to it?  MapQuest isn’t going to help, my phone won’t tell me, and for those of you amazing people who can actually still use paper maps, it’s not going to be on there either.

Thanks be to God that we have our 1 Thessalonians text to give us some guidance, huh?  And, as it tells us, to get to that Holy Mountain where all God’s creation is at peace, we need to start, not with the biggest leaps we can take, going the furthest we can go, but with small steps, within ourselves, and the community around us.  I suppose, as Lao-Tzu would put it, our spiritual journey of 1000 miles begins with right beneath our feet.  And this letter to the Thessalonians helps us start that journey to the Holy Mountain of God’s peace right where we are.

Rather than even venturing to the ground below our feet, this text has us start within ourselves.   It starts with the attitudes we hold of others.  “Respect those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; ¹³ esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.”  Respect, esteem, love, are the foundations that will lead us to that peaceful mountain.  It doesn’t sound all that hard, until, of course, we get into the actual practice of it.  And then there are people who drive us nuts, people who don’t seem to respect us, people working against us, people who don’t treat us with these same attitudes of respect, esteem, and love.  And it’s really easy to go off the route that leads to the Holy Mountain at this point, when we deal with these people.  It’s really easy to stop respecting, esteeming, and loving. 

And Paul, the author of 1 Thessalonians, was well aware of this.  As you can clearly see as you read his many letters, Paul was familiar with conflict.  It was really why he wrote most of what he wrote—the churches he or others had started, with the best intentions of respect and love, had gotten lost.  They were not doing the things they were supposed to do, they were doing things they weren’t supposed to do, and they were at war within themselves.  It’s the reality of every church, even this one, that at times, we stray from the peaceful path.  So Paul, in this letter, gives us some more instructions to get us back on the path to God’s Holy and peaceful mountain.

 I’m not really going to touch the part about admonishing the idlers—actually meaning people who are making trouble-- right now.  That verse really deserves a sermon of its own.  For now, it will suffice to say that when you see a brother or sister making trouble, if you really, really need to respond, do so out of that place of respect and love.  And of course, Paul goes on.  Encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, and be patient with all of them.  For us today, that might look like visiting those members and friends who can’t make it to worship with us all the time.  It might look like praying with or for those who are sick.  It might look like holding someone’s hand when they’re afraid or offering a kind word to someone who needs it.  It honestly looks a lot like doing our best to imitate Jesus—who served, and cared, loved, and encouraged tirelessly, to everyone he met.

And it takes a lot to follow in Jesus example, or, since we’re talking in terms of maps, to follow in his footsteps.  So Paul gives us some ways to strengthen us in our faith journey, and to keep that foundation of respect and love for God’s creation and all our sisters and brothers strong.  Pray without ceasing.  Remember to thank God a lot.  Make room for words from others and movement from the Spirit in your life.  Avoid the things you know are bad.  Hold on to what is good tightly, and don’t let it go.

And then, knowing that even with all that, we will probably still get lost in our journey to God’s Holy Mountain of peace, Paul gives us one last thing.  “May the God of peace sanctify you entirely.”  So basically, even though we try our best and get lost on the way to the Holy Mountain, Paul blesses us, and asks God to make us holy—sanctify is a fancy word for making holy—wherever we are on our journey to that mountain.  And not just make us kind of holy or part of us holy, but all of us.  Because without that, we are just going to keep getting lost.  To make it to that glorious destination, our journey to that Holy Mountain must involve our whole selves, and our whole lives. 

This includes the part of ourselves that we tidy up for worship on Sunday morning, and the part of ourselves that we really hope others don’t see.  It includes what we do in this building, and what we do when we’re away from here.  It includes how we use the gifts God has given us, and yes, stewardship of our money is included here.  So as we are asking you to take home your pledge cards and your time and talent sheets home this week and return them next week, let these texts help guide you.  Your financial and time commitment to this church is important, because giving of our money and ourselves is a spiritual practice.  It’s a way of expressing gratitude for all that you have and all that you are being sanctified by God, and belonging to God.  And it’s also a way to help being that Holy Mountain a little closer, through.

We don’t get to that Holy Mountain by kind of sort of partially committing to going there.  That’s trusting ourselves rather than the directions that our wise God in Christ, and Paul, have given us.  And that’s how we end up by a random Six Flags on accident instead of the Holy Mountain.  So I encourage you to take this opportunity to sit down, think, pray, and talk about how you are going follow God’s guidance and Paul’s help to that Holy Mountain.

At the end of that night, actually, in the early hours of the morning of that day nine years ago in Wisconsin, all three of us did make it safely home.  Wherever you are on your journey to God’s Holy Mountain of Peace, know that God will guide you there.  This pledge card and time and talent sheets are good tools to use to assess where you are on that map—if you’re headed to Six Flags, and need a route change to get to the Holy Mountain, if you’re stalled on the path towards the mountain, or if you need to pick up pace to make it before daybreak.  So use these tools, and when we consecrate these cards next Sunday, we can rejoice in knowing that we are all a little closer to arriving at that new heaven and new earth of God’s and our rejoicing.

Trick Questions

Scripture:

Job 19:23-37

Luke 20:27-28 

 

Preached 11/10/2013                                                             

Remember a few weeks ago when there was a pop quiz?  Well, you might want to get used to that happening occasionally.  This time, brace yourselves.  It’s math related.  I’ll give you a math problem, and you figure out the answer as quickly as you can. It’s a two question test.  First one. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.  The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.  How much does the ball cost?

What was your instinctive answer? I’m guessing it may have been that the ball costs 10 cents.  That can’t be right though, can it?  The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.  So, if the ball costs 10 cents, and the bat is $1.00 more, the bat would cost $1.10, and our total would be $1.20 rather than the $1.10 it’s supposed to be.  So, the right answer is that the ball costs 5 cents.

Let’s try it again, with a different problem.  It takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets.  How long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?  The right answer is 5, but the setup of the question tempts you to say 100.  Be honest- were you tempted to say 100?  Did it at least come up in your mind, even if you later dismissed it?

Trick questions are the worst, aren’t they?  They set you up so carefully, just so you fall into their little trap.  I’m pretty sure this is what the Sadducees thought they were doing to Jesus.  They had been trying to trap Jesus into saying something wrong for a while, and now, with their question on marriage and the resurrection, they thought they’d finally done it.  It was a carefully crafted question.  The Sadducees were Jewish scholars, and were also literalists.  If it wasn’t written in the Torah—basically what we call the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament—the Sadducees didn’t believe it.  And, not seeing any reference to a resurrection in the Torah, the Sadducees didn’t believe in it.  They thought it was absurd.  And, with their carefully crafted question, they sought to make Jesus look absurd too.

I keep imagining them coming up with the question in the first place.  In my head, they’re all sitting around a table, looking a little sinister.  They’re throwing out the most absurd things they can think of, and laughing as the absurdity grows.  And this question they finally land on—with the woman marrying seven brothers while remaining childless—clearly took some effort.  The woman could have married two or three brothers, but no, they had to go with seven.  The traditional number of perfection and completion.  And, in their heads, they had the perfect, complete best trick question that would finally show Jesus to be as absurd as they thought he, and his beliefs and teachings were.

 And I keep imagining them, after landing on this perfect question, snickering as they go to find Jesus in their little group.  And I have a hard time believing that the Sadducee who actually asked the question did it with a straight face.  Maybe he was smirking the whole time, or he had to get the last part of it out between giggles.  And I imagine the very pregnant pause before Jesus began his response, with the expectation and the giggles of the Sadducees growing inside them.

And then, Jesus answers.  And, much to their dismay, he doesn’t fall into the trap.  In fact, he pretty much dismisses the question they so carefully crafted and delivered.  Rather than being stuck i as they so hoped, Jesus gives a brilliant answer, even poking some fun at the Sadducees his reference to resurrection from the Torah.  It ends up being the Sadducees who get caught in the trick, not Jesus.  How did this happen?

Well, first, the Sadducees wanted a very simple answer to their question.  If life after death exists, they asked, tell us what it looks like, in relation to this specific marriage thing.  It’s still a question we ask today—not the marriage part specifically but what life after death looks like.  I did a quick Google search for images of heaven, and thousands and thousands of images popped up.  What does heaven look like?  Well, maybe it’s a golden city, like the cities we know today.  Maybe it’s choirs of angels, who look a whole lot like people with wings on them.  Maybe heaven is a floating city, or a garden.  Maybe it’s all kinds of strange things, or maybe it’s something very familiar.  Or, as an Iowan I can’t resist saying—maybe it looks like a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field.

But do you catch something similar in all those images, and in all our concepts?  When we’re trying to figure out heaven, we do the same thing that the Sadducees did.  We fall into the same trap.  We try to take the things we understand—so the Levirate marriage in the case of the Sadducees, or perhaps cities, gardens, or baseball in our case—and we then attempt to make God’s reality fit around our own concepts.  We try to insist on a simple, relatable answer.

And then, Jesus and his wisdom come along, and remind us that the simple answer isn’t the right one.  Think back on Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees’ question.  It definitely isn’t simple.   Jesus doesn’t really tell the Sadducees what the resurrection will actually be like.  He tells them that there won’t be marriage, or death, as we understand them.  And there will be people who were dead, now raised, and now alive to God.  He doesn’t say how it works or what it looks like.  His answer is not simple.  It doesn’t make for a cute answer to a riddle like the Sadducees wanted.  It doesn’t exactly make for an easy to picture pretty image either.  I Googled these specific verses too and mostly got random pictures of cats, soccer, and Japanese cartoons.

 To those of us who like things to be explained clearly and wrapped up simply and neatly, Jesus’ answer isn’t very satisfying, at least at first.  But here’s what I’ve come to realize, in my week of wrestling with this text.  Even if Jesus’ answer doesn’t give us an easy to see visual, or a simple to understand explanation, it does give us something a lot more real.  Because, honestly, when is anything in real life easy and neat?  When is the easiest option the best?  Reality is messy and complicated, and only when we fall into the same trap that the Sadducees did can we be fooled into thinking that easy and neat will be the perfect answer. 

We’re living this messy and complicated reality right now, as a congregation.  That’s part of why we’re going through the New Beginnings meetings now.  And if you missed that, that’s my subtle push for you to sign up and go to those meetings.  We’re doing these meetings because your session leadership has realized that the simple questions and the simple answers aren’t right for us any more.  Doing what we’ve always done isn’t going to get us where we want to go.  And the methods we’ve tried in the past—those house meetings and the mission study—didn’t let us explore our current, messy reality in the way we need to do now if we’re going to figure out that future life thing.  New Beginnings is a way that we, as a congregation are following Jesus’ example and refusing to get caught in the trap that insists on simple answers to life’s questions.

We clearly don’t want to die as a church, or we wouldn’t be here this morning.  And New Beginnings is giving us a chance at new life together, perhaps resurrected life, the kind of life where we as a church are reinvigorated, changed, and moved to a fuller and more vibrant connection to one another, our neighbors, and to God. 

Jesus doesn’t give us a very clear picture of what resurrected life looks like.  And honestly, I like that.  I like that he leaves open the possibility that it looks different for everyone, and that it’s dynamic and changing. So, with New Beginnings, we have a chance to figure out what we want resurrected life to look like, here and now.  We get to take an honest look at where we are, who we are, and where we want to go.  And, just like Jesus leaves our imaginations open to wild and wonderful possibilities, New Beginnings is designed to open up bigger and bolder things for this congregation.

I know I’m not going to get all of you to go to the meetings, and that’s okay.  Thank you to those of you who are.  And to those who aren’t, please pray for your sisters and brothers in faith who are.  Because they’re going to be doing some hard, messy, and very faithful discernment work on behalf of us all.  We won’t find easy answers to the questions we’re asking.  It’s not going to be easy to figure out what we want our resurrected life as a congregation to look like.  We’re working hard to avoid falling into the trap the Sadducees did, and insisting that there’s an easy answer with the work already done.

And we’re actually working hard to be more like Job.  I know, it sounds kind of strange.  Job has had a whole lot of awful things happen to him, and he’s in a hard place in his life.  That’s not what we’re going after though.  The Sadducees saw resurrected life as something very simple, and also far away.  However, Job sees resurrected life as very complicated, but also very near.  Job sees the current situation very clearly, and yet has faith in redemption, and in seeing the face of God, even in his destroyed flesh.  That’s what we are called to emulate.  Trusting in redemption, resurrection, and hope even when the answers don’t come easily and the work is hard.  So may we all stay out of the trick of the easy answer, and find the beauty in the hard work.  Because there too, like Job so certainly believes, we can certainly believe we will see the face of God together.

Faith of Mosquitoes

Scripture:

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

Luke 6:20-31

Preached 11/03/2013                                                         

Mosquitoes are fantastic.  Yes, I know, they’re annoying.  They buzz around and bite and swarm.  And still, they’re fantastic.  Think about this—mosquitoes love damp climates, which clearly means they spend a lot of their lives in the rain.  And, as you know, mosquitoes also have tiny little bodies, and next to no natural defenses.  So, living in those rainy places, they get hit by falling rain drops.  Those drops weigh 50 times more than they do.  And yet, mosquitoes take that kind of pounding all the time.

Who here hasn’t felt like a mosquito caught in a rain storm, at least once in a while?  We all have times when the winds and rains of life pound us from every side, and every time we turn around we’re bombarded by something that seems bigger and more powerful than ourselves.  It’s easy to feel like a mosquito- tiny, and defenseless.      Habakkuk definitely felt like this.  He’s definitely caught in a storm.  Historically, his city was being sacked by the Babylonians, and it wasn’t going to win.  He and his people are in trouble.  There are violence and destruction all around. It seems like the good people can’t win and the bad ones are getting away with murder.  Sound a little familiar?  Except being sacked by the Babylonians, these are all storms we continue to find ourselves stuck in today.

So what do we do when we’re stuck, as Habakkuk and mosquitoes, in rain storms?  Well, if you remember our scripture reading, Habakkuk’s first response was to cry out and accuse God of neither seeing or caring about the storms and their destruction.  We kind of skip the part where God responds to that accusation in the text, but I’ll summarize very quickly by saying God disagrees, God sees and cares what’s going on, and isn’t particularly happy about Habakkuk’s accusation.  So, instead of taking our cue from Habakkuk, we’re actually going to look at mosquitoes, and their remarkable, and yes, faithfully rich way, of weathering storms.

So how do mosquitoes do it?  What researchers have found, and yes, there are people who research mosquitoes—and what these people have found is that there are three main ways a mosquito survives the pounding of rain and wind.  First, the mosquito has a strong exoskeleton.  Second, the mosquito has low mass.  And third, the mosquito does something that those mosquito researchers describe as an insect form of Tai Chi.  And with the help of the findings of these mosquito researchers and the wisdom in our scripture, we’re going to look at the tools we have in our own spiritual tool boxes that will help us, too, make it through life’s rain storms.

 Clearly, we don’t actually have exoskeletons, like mosquitoes do.  But, we do have something that, like an exoskeleton, helps protect us from the force of the storms that pound on us.  As Jesus reminds us in this passage from Luke.  We have sure knowledge that the storms we experience are temporary.  Those who are poor will inherit the kingdom of God.  Those who weep will laugh.  Those who are hated and excluded will be rewarded greatly in heaven.  Things might look dark in a storm, but God promises there will be holy, healing light.  And, as God’s rebuke to Habakkuk reminds us, God is not just there in the light after the storm.  God is there with us, right in the middle of the storm, taking the pounding right along with us.

Now, maybe you’ve guessed this already by my repeated referencing of scripture, but one of the tools in our spiritual tool box that helps strengthen this spiritual exoskeleton is scripture.  Not just listening to scripture on Sunday morning, but reading scripture on other days too.  And not just when the storms are already upon you, but in the sunny times too.  That’s the way the exoskeleton helps a mosquito, right?  It’s already strong before the rain comes.  So, to strengthen your own, immerse yourself in scripture as much as you can, even if it’s a psalm before bed or a Gospel story with your morning paper.  In scripture, you find so many wonderful reminders, assurances, and enactments of God’s constant care, presence, and promise, and those will certainly strengthen that spiritual exoskeleton to help you withstand the pounding of the rainstorms of life.

 On to the second way that mosquitoes survive rain storms—they have a low mass.  Because of this low mass, when a raindrop hits a mosquito, the raindrop doesn’t lose much momentum, which means it doesn’t transfer much energy.  The hit that the mosquito takes isn’t as powerful as it would be if the mosquito were larger. 

The lesson we learn from the mosquito here is to lessen our own mass.  This isn’t about physical size at all.   The mass that we can help ourselves by lessening is about stuff.  We can lessen our mass in life by not holding on to so many material things, and all the worries and misplaced love that can go along with them.  As Jesus warns us in Luke, woe to those who are rich, who are full, who are laughing, and to those of whom others always speak well.  Jesus isn’t condemning all material possessions and happiness here, but he is warning us of the danger of having too much. 

Too much money food, or fame—that’s people speaking well of you—can all lull us into false senses of security, and independence, thinking we have it all, we earned it all, and we don’t need anyone else, including God.  On the even darker side, an excess “mass,” or material possessions and ties to them, can even trick us into thinking we are invincible, and the storms of life will never touch us.  And when the inevitable storms come, if our “mass” is too great, we will take a much harder hit from the storm.

And so the practice here is pretty self explanatory.  If you have an abundance of stuff, have less.  Reduce your mass.  Of course, I think the Church is always a great place to give money ant time to, if you realize you have more than you need and maybe haven’t been tithing.  And this church supports many wonderful organizations—like Isaiah 58 and Feed My People-- that accept donations of food and clothes, if you find excess there.  By reducing mass in this way, we not only help ourselves make it through storms, we can help others do the same.

So, the mosquito’s third and final way of surviving rain storms—insect Tai Chi.  Believe me, I love doing yoga and am super tempted to have us all do some actual Tai Chi this morning.  You’re lucky it’s communion Sunday and I’m keeping this short.  But back to mosquitoes.  The mosquito Tai Chi is the way the mosquito responds to a direct hit from a rain drop.  Instead of attempting to push through the rain drop and go forward or up, the mosquito, falls with the rain drop for about 20 body lengths.  And then, because the mosquito and the rain drop have traveled together, the force of the raindrop on the mosquito is again greatly reduced.  The raindrop and the mosquito kind of release each other.

For us, this looks like, not letting rain storms define us, or force us into a fight we won’t win.  As Jesus tells us, loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, praying for those who abuse us, giving to those in need, and turning the other cheek—which, by the way, is not nearly as pacifistic as it sounds, but that’s another sermon for another time.  This is not letting the world ultimately get us beaten down or discouraged.  It is responding to adversity in a realistic and healthy way, not reacting in panic, desperation, or anger.

So, looking to our spiritual tool boxes, how do we do this in real life?  Since the mosquito does Tai Chi, I’m drawing on another eastern, still Christian tradition.  We can have a mantra—that is, a phrase that we repeat mentally or out loud-- that helps us let the force of life’s storms go through us, but not destroy us.  And, since this morning’s scripture reading has my absolute favorite verses from Habakkuk, I have a suggestion, if you don’t want to find one on your own.  “³For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”  Or, if you want a shortened version, “It will come.” Use one of those phrases, or find a different one that works for you, maybe from the Luke reading if that’s more your style, or maybe from that scripture you’re reading to strengthen your spiritual exoskeleton. 

Repeat the phrase out loud or in your head, write it on sticky notes and post it where you will see it, and let the phrase become part of you, so that when you take a hit from a big drop of rain, you can remember to let it go through you.  You can respond without reacting, and you can fall but not get beaten down.     

God still has that vision for the appointed time, and it’s still coming.  You will get there, and we’ll all get there.  So as it seems to tarry, keep waiting for it.  Keep using those mosquito tools in your spiritual tool box, and you will be able to live through the rain by your faith.