Sacred Struggle

Scripture:

Genesis 32:22-31

2 Timothy 4:1-5

 

Preached 10/20/2013

 

 

No time like Sunday morning for a pop quiz, right?  I’m going to give you a short description of a famous historical person’s life.  And your job is to tell me who this person is.  Really- I am asking for congregational participation here, so don’t leave me hanging.  I’ll give you the description of their life, then you tell me who it is.  Here’s the description:  At 22 years old, they failed in business.  At 23, they ran for legislature, and were defeated.  At 24, they again failed in business.  At 25, success!  They were elected to legislature.  But then tragically, at 26 their sweetheart died, and then at 27 they had a nervous breakdown.  In case you didn’t catch that hint, this was a time they were still using the phrase “nervous breakdown.”  Two years later, after their mental health was in order again, they ran for Speaker, and were defeated.  They ran for elector at 31, and lost that election too.  They ran for congress at 34, and also lost that.  Then, at 37 they were elected to congress.  However, they were defeated for re-election two years later.  They ran and were defeated for senate twice, at 46 and 49.  And, in between those unsuccessful senate bids, at 47, they were also defeated for vice president.  

So- who is this person?  It’s Abraham Lincoln.  All that struggle, defeat, and even what most people see as failure, are part of the life story of the man that led this country through war, fracture, and re-union, arguably the most difficult time it has ever faced, and arguably one of the leaders this country has ever had.

 It seems strange that a man we view as so successful, so great, has so much we don’t consider great in his life story.  After all, we live in a culture that is increasingly focused on getting what you want when you want it, which is of course,  now.  I recently heard a story on NPR in which scientists studied young children, struggling with a math problem.  After 30 seconds, most children had quit.  Of course, it isn’t just children who dislike struggle.  Weight loss companies make millions, even billions of dollars a year selling pills, powers, and shakes that promise to take the struggle out of slimming down.

This desire for ease and distaste for struggle isn’t a problem unique to our culture though.  Even in the 2nd Timothy reading, we hear about the same thing.  As the letter puts it “the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires.”  I doubt very highly that that statement would have made it into the letter if the desire for hearing only what we want to hear, or having what we want to have how we want to have it, weren’t already occurring.  It seems like it’s almost human nature to think that what is easy must be good and right.  And, as a counterpart, struggle, or anything that’s hard, must be wrong or bad.

Except, of course, we all know that isn’t true.  Struggling doesn’t mean anything is wrong.  Struggling itself isn’t wrong or bad.  Struggling is how we learn to walk, and talk, and take care of ourselves.  It’s how we learn to read and write, and how we really acquire and new skills.  And, as our scripture reading this morning reminds us, struggling can actually be very right, very powerful, and very sacred. 

 I absolutely love the way the author of our Genesis text takes pains to set the scene for the sacred struggle between Jacob and God that we read.  This story is actually a sudden break in the narrative that’s been happening in Genesis, so our attention is already alerted.  Jacob is heading to see Esau.  The last time Jacob and Esau were together, it didn’t go well—Esau cursed Jacob for taking his inheritance.  So, there’s an air of fear hanging over the story as the two are set to meet again.  And it’s night time.  And Jacob is dramatically alone, by the side of a river, an ancient symbol of chaos and change.  And then suddenly, with no warning, we have a stranger appear and start wresting, struggling with Jacob.  And the struggle continues all night long, with no winner prevailing. 

And though I don’t think any of us have physically fought with a stranger for hours and hours on end, we do know struggle.  We struggle in our personal lives as we learn to be in relationship with others, and with ourselves.  We struggle to adjust as we adapt to the changing world around us.  We struggle as a congregation to figure out what it means to be faithful to Christ and yet relevant to the community around us.  I don’t think I need to go too in depth here, because the reality is that each and every one of us knows what it’s like to struggle.  We have all gone through difficult struggles, as individuals, and as part of a community.

I’ll admit that I’m a fixer at heart.  I love to make things better.  And part of me really, really wanted to offer you some words this morning that would make all of your, and all of our, struggles simple go away, or at least get easier.  I wanted to say that faith in God would make all our struggles go away, or at least get easier.  But in being faithful to our scripture, I can’t do that.  As the 2^nd Timothy text puts it, that would be turning away from listening to the truth and wandering away to myths.  And in truth, Jacob’s struggle wasn’t easy.  I can’t even imagine how tired he must have been, traveling all day, worried about what would happen when he met his brother, then up all night fighting with some strange, strong being.  And God didn’t make Jacob’s struggle easier.  In fact, being engaged with God is what got Jacob into the struggle in the first place.  And our journeys won’t be easy either.  As we seek to faithfully follow God in this world we will keep coming across struggles too. 

So while I can’t say anything to get rid of the struggles, what I can do is point us back at the scripture for some valuable wisdom as we go through those inevitable struggles.  Our 2^nd Timothy text gives says this: “Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. . . always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.”  And, just as a note since the word “sober” probably caught your attention and can be confusing.  The Greek word—“Nay-pho” in the original text is referring to what we would say is figurative sobriety—not alcohol related.  It means to be free from confusion and excess, and could also be translated as “have self control”, be “clear-headed,” or “keep your balance.” So, if you want to have a glass of wine, our text doesn’t have a problem with that.

What it does have a problem with is giving up, or getting all bent out of shape about struggle.  Struggle just is.  It’s an inevitable part of everyone’s life, and it’s an inevitable part of our faith life.  So instead of giving up or freaking out, our texts tell us to just carry on.  And to keep going with our ministry—proclaiming the Gospel, teaching, and encouraging one another, and everyone we encounter.  We will struggle, but with the Good News of the Gospel—that Jesus struggled just as we struggle, and Jesus struggled even to the point of death, and still, God triumphed through him and his struggles—with that good news, and its teachings and encouragement, we will make it through our struggles.

  But it’s even better than just being able to make it through.  Jacob insisted that God bless him before the struggle was over.  And God did indeed bless Jacob.  And that blessing that Jacob received wasn’t just for him.  God changed his name to Israel, “one who struggles with God.”  That name, Israel came to represent a whole group of people who continued to struggle with God.  And we, as Christians, claim our faith heritage from this group of God strugglers.  That blessing that God gave Jacob is for us too.  We will struggle.  And we will not be alone.  We have a whole faith community around us, and most importantly, we have God struggling with us.  And God will not let us go until she blesses us.  Through all our struggles, God will somehow find a way to impart blessing upon us. 

A little disclaimer here: I don’t want everyone to go out and attempt to struggle and suffer.  But you will encounter struggle.  So no matter how long the struggle is, or how bone tired you might be, remember this.  God is with you.  God will bless you through your struggle.  It was through struggle that Jacob became Israel, conquered fear, and lived into his full potential as our ancestor in faith.  It was through the struggle even to the point of death that Jesus became our risen Lord and Savior.  It was even though struggle that Abraham Lincoln was able to become president.  

 

And though struggle we, too, will find victory.  We will become more than we were before.  And most importantly, we will surely encounter God and God’s blessings for us.  Our path to God’s promised blessing isn’t easy.  But with prayer, with faith, and with a lot of encouragement and persistence we will make it through.  God will not let us go without a blessing. 

 

Selective Attention

Scripture:

Jeremiah 29:4-7

Luke 17:11-19

Preached 10/13/2013

It was a cold January morning.  A man stood at a metro station in Washington D.C.  Then he bent over, and began to unpack his violin.  He tightened the bow, rosined it up, put the instrument on his shoulder, and began to play.  He played six Bach pieces that morning, for about 45 minutes.  It was rush hour, and in that 45 minutes, about 1,100 people went past him in that station, most of them on their way to work.  A middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing.  He slowed his pace, stopped a few seconds, then hurried on his way to keep on schedule.  Four minutes into his performance, the violinist received his first tip.  A woman threw a dollar into his open case without even stopping to listen to the music.  A little bit later someone leaned against the wall by the violinist to listen to him, but then looked at their watch and started to walk again. 

The one who paid the most attention was a three year old boy.  His mother tried to drag him along, but the little boy insisted on stopping to look at the violinist.  Finally, the mother gave him a very firm push, and the boy continued to walk, turning his head back the whole time.  This action of stopping to look and listen was repeated by several other children.  All the parents, without exception forced the children to move on.

In the 45 minutes the violinist played, only six people stopped and stayed for a while.  About 20 people gave money, but kept walking at their normal pace.  The violinist made $32.  When he finished playing silence took over.  No one applauded.  No one noticed.  And no one knew, but the violinist who had just finished playing was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world.  The Bach pieces he had just finished playing were some of the most intricate ever written.  He had been playing on a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.  And, two days before, Joshua had played to a sold out crowd in Boston, where the average seat to the performance cost $100.

It sounds like an urban legend, right?  But it did actually happen.  On January 12, 2007, violin virtuoso Joshua Bell took a cab three blocks from his hotel and set up shop, so to speak, on the landing of the Plaza Metro Station in Washington, D.C.  Gene Weingarten, a literary historian and journalist chronicled Joshua’s experiment for the Washington Post, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the article.  A world-class violinist really did give a free concert in a crowded train station, and almost no one noticed or appreciated it.  How could this happen?  How could more than a thousand people miss the incredible experience right in front of them?  Maybe they were busy, running late for work, looking at their phones or listening to their own music on head phones.  And maybe, in the middle of a train station, they just weren’t looking for an incredible experience in the first place.

What we look for has a powerful effect on what we see.  It’s not just that Joshua Bell experiment—lots of scientists have studied this phenomena, called selective attention.  MRI techs miss gorillas put into scans.  People miss curtains changing colors, people leaving screens, bears walking across stages, all because they weren’t looking for them.  We all do it.  Selective attention is how we can hear our friend talking to us in a busy restaurant.  It’s how you can hear your name called in the middle of a conversation with someone else.  It’s even how parents can wake up to the slightest sound that their child makes in the night, while sleeping through sirens blaring outside the window.  With selective attention, we cue ourselves into certain stimuli—like our names, or perhaps, for those DC commuters, the signs to their trains.  And since our brain can only process so much information at one time, when we’re cued into one kind of stimuli, we don’t notice things that don’t fit.

Selective attention impacts more than just whether or not we hear our name in the middle of a party or notice a fantastic violin concert on our morning commute.  Selective attention impacts our faith lives, and our relationship with God too.  Let’s go back to the Jeremiah passage.  The passage that Neal read for us this morning needs some historical background to make sense to us.  So, as the reading itself says, this part of Jeremiah is a letter that Jeremiah wrote to the exiles.  Jeremiah was from Judah, which was the southern kingdom of Israel.  When Jeremiah is writing this letter, Judah is being taken over by Babylon, though it’s still trying its hardest to resist this conquest.  Judah had already been paying tribute to other nations for years, and Israel, the northern Kingdom, had been crushed about 150 years earlier.  Judah saw what happened, and did not want to be part of the same.  However, Babylon is clearly winning the fight, and has already sent some of the people into exile. 

For these exiles, and for the people left in Judah to watch its conquer and destruction, there was a theological crisis.  The two main schools of theological thought were this:  Judah’s defeat meant that God had abandoned it, or Judah’s defeat meant that God had been defeated by the Babylonian gods. The tangible symbols of God being with the Judeans—the king, their land, the temple—were all being taken away by the Babylonians, and the people of Judah couldn’t stop the destruction.  It seems as if they were surrounded by it on all sides.  And so, perhaps it seems natural that their attention would be focused on threat, destruction, and pain, as a way to protect the little that they had left.

 And Jeremiah tells them that this isn’t the place to put their attention.  Instead wallowing in their pain, Jeremiah tells the exiles to focus on living their lives in the place they are.  Jeremiah tells them to live full lives—to build houses, plant gardens, to marry and have children.  And, most importantly and most revolutionarily, Jeremiah tells exiles to start looking for God where they are.  Rather than buying into the common notions that God must either be defeated or absent, Jeremiah tells the exiles that God is indeed among them still.  And he tells them to pray, even though they’re in a foreign land.  He tells them to pray for this land, essentially telling them to focus on love, hope, and possibility, and find God in these rather than in a king, a temple, or land. 

 And then, there are the ten lepers who Jesus healed.  If we were the intended ancient audience of the story, we would have known the focus of their attention.  Since we’re a bit removed from the writing of this gospel, I’ll bring us up to speed.  Jesus had told all of them to go and show themselves to the priests.  Lepers only went to priests for two reasons.  First, to be diagnosed with leprosy.  We can assume that the people with leprosy in the story were past the point of needing diagnosis.  So, the second reason that a person with leprosy would go see a priest: the celebration, cleansing, and re-integration ritual after leprosy had been cured.  The priest wouldn’t be the one to cure leprosy here.  The priest would just be the person to do the celebration and cleansing ritual that allowed a formerly ostracized person to return to life in the Jewish community.  And so, the nine Jewish lepers continued on their way to the priest, focusing their attention the socially acceptable thing to do after healing. 

But not the Samaritan.  For him, presenting himself to a priest for the cleansing and re-integration ritual wasn’t an option, since he wasn’t part of the Jewish community in the first place.  And, without that societally dictated acceptable focus, his attention was freed.  He saw what Jesus had done for him.  He saw that Jesus, a Jew, had healed him, a Samaritan man with leprosy.  He cried out with joy.  He was grateful. And, with his attention focused on joy and gratitude, he saw Jesus once again.

And isn’t this our goal too?  To see God, to see Jesus, to see the Holy Spirit moving in our daily lives?  No matter if we feel like the exiles and the lepers still diseased and ostracized, or the triumphant, healed lepers, God is there with us.  And if we focus our attention on the right things—as our scripture readings put it, joy, gratitude, the life that goes on in the midst of pain, we can see God in our midst too, no matter what else surrounds us.  . 

If we focus on the ways we have been conquered, we don’t see God’s victories in the middle of our difficulty.  If we focus on what society says we should to, we don’t see that new life that Jesus offers us.  If we focus on the mundane—perhaps our busy schedules and making it to appointments or catching the train—we miss the beauty and the miracles in front of us.

No offense to Joshua Bell.  I’m sure he really is a magnificent violinist.  But God is a much better artist.  We are all surrounded by God’s miracles at this very moment.  Can we see them?  Can we see how the people sitting next to us are more than a collection of cells, but miraculous, living expressions of God’s love?  This room is more than wood and metal and glass, but a true sanctuary where we encounter God through the Spirit’s movement in simple words and musical notes.  Can you see it?  This community around us is a wonderful collection of people and places where we can show God’s loving, constant presence. Can you see it?

God is here.  Let us keep ourselves open for God’s presence.  Let us keep our attention focused always for that presence moving, acting, and guiding us to see more beauty, more hope, more love, and more miracles, that we’ve ever thought possible before.  Amen.

Faith in Action

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Preached 10/06/2013

Emma Dobson

Eugene was nervous.  He stood in front of the middle school classroom, looking out at the 59 sixth graders sitting before him.  He shuffled the notes in his hand. He was many years removed from sixth grade.   He was a successful business man, and yet he was still unsure of himself as he stood before these students.   The notes for the speech he planned now seemed painfully inadequate.  He contemplated the reality of the students in East Harlem.  Statistically, less than half of them were likely to make it to their high school graduation.  He had been asked to speak to them to motivate them to stay in school.  These students and their families were deeply mired in poverty, and desperately needed income.  Full time jobs that provided this income often took precedence over a high school diploma. Eugene felt he had to offer them something more than what he had planned to say.  He had to offer something radical if he expected something radical from them. 

So, dropping his notes, he looked up at the students.  “Stay in school,” he said “And I’ll help pay the college tuition for every one of you.”  There was a stunned silence in the room—and you know what a feat it is to accomplish silence in a room full of adolescents.  Eugene’s offer made no sense.  Statistically, most of these youth wouldn’t even finish high school—why would he talk about college?  What was Eugene doing? 

Well, perhaps as our scripture reading suggests, what Eugene was doing was being faithful.  And here’s a question that’s always good to ask—what does that really mean?  What does it really mean to be faithful?  Well, let’s start by figuring out just what our Hebrews is talking about when it uses the word faith.  The text laid out its definition in the first verse: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  So, faith is an assurance and a conviction.  This means that faith isn’t wishy-washy.  It can’t be swayed by the storms of life, or whatever difficulties life throws at it.  Faith doesn’t look at the classroom of sixth graders and figure that they’ll probably drop out at the same rate that statistics suggest. 

Faith, as Hebrews describes it, is absolutely certain that the bleak reality it sees is not final.  Remember, faith isn’t an assurance and conviction in the things in front of it.  Faith is about that assurance and conviction in precisely what it can’t see.  Faith is assured and convicted that success is possible when failure is all it can see.  It is assured and convicted that there is hope, when all it can see is hopelessness.  Faith is assured and fully convinced that God intends something better than what it sees.  And, not only CAN something better happen, something better WILL happen. 

But faith doesn’t stop there.  Our scripture reading does go on after that first, definitional verse.  And as it goes on, it shows us that faith can’t sit still on its assurance and conviction that there is more than meets the eye.  Faith acts.  Hebrews uses Abraham for the example of what faith in action looks like.  Maybe we don’t all have Abraham’s story memorized, so here’s a short synopsis.  As Hebrews says, God speaks to Abraham, and tells him to go to Canaan because God will give land to Abraham and his family.  Abraham, rather nomadic at the time, is on his way to Canaan already, and he obeys God as he keeps going there.  There is a famine, a family split, a battle. . . all kinds of bad things happen to Abraham.  And yet, Abraham keeps trusting God’s promises of good things to come.  And he keeps on going to the promised land, and doing the things God asks him to do. 

Now, this isn’t to say Abraham always believes God’s promises are likely, or does a wonderful job of doing what God asks.  In fact, he struggles and most definitely gets it wrong sometimes.  But, what is important to the author of Hebrews, and is important for us as we try to figure out this whole faith thing is that Abraham does not give up.  He keeps looking for God.  He keeps listening for God, and attempting to go about the work that God asks him to do. Our example of being faithful doesn’t sit around.  He acts.  He journeys to the promised land rather than waiting for it to drop in his lap.  And, in going about that journey, he participates in making that something better God has promised him a reality.

It’s probably unlikely that God is going to ask any of us to go to Canaan in order to inherit a vast amount of land for our ancestors.  We need a little more contemporary example of faith in action.  So, keeping Abraham’s example in our minds, what does this faith in action look like in more contemporary terms?  Well, it looks a lot like what Eugene did.  He had the conviction that those sixth grade students could do better than statistics told him they would.  He was sure that what he hoped for— those young people staying in school—though he couldn’t see it—could and would become a reality.  He had faith in them and faith in something better.  And then he moved to being faithful.  He moved to action, offering them scholarships.  This being faithful is what our Hebrews text challenges us to do, too.  Our assurance and conviction are like the gas that fills the tanks of our cars. If everything with the car is in working order, the gas will certainly make the motor run.  And the motor can run while we sit in idle, or while we move.  And as we read, Hebrews says we need to move.

 Even though when we look out at the world around us, it might look bleak, we cannot be discouraged by what we see as wrong.  If Abraham had given up at the first difficult time in his journey to the promised land, he would have gotten stuck in Egypt and lost his wife to the Pharaoh.  So in the face of difficulties, Hebrews challenges us to keep going.  To keep on acting.  To keep being faithful, and falling back on assurance and conviction in those results we can’t yet see in front of us, but, as the texts puts it, we can see from a distance and greet.

It is our assurance and conviction in those promises that we, like Abraham, have heard God whisper to us that will help us faithfully make it through to the promised land.  In the face of whatever discourages us—perhaps hunger, homelessness, or discrimination, we can be faithful.  We can feed the hungry.  We can shelter the homeless.  We can work for justice.  In the faith of illness, death, addiction, or depression, we can be faithful.  We can seek cures, comfort, peace, and freedom.  And in all these situations we can most certainly cry out to God with honest anger and indignation, while seeking the something better God intends.  In being faithful and living our faith, we participate in and help bring about the “something better” that we believe God promises us.

Let’s go back to Eugene again.  In acting on his conviction that there was something better for these sixth graders than dropping out of high school before graduating, he did indeed participate in making his conviction a reality.  More than 90% of those students in East Harlem went on to graduate high school, overcoming what seemed like impossible odds and insurmountable obstacles.           

 It isn’t just Abraham and Eugene.  For all of us, faith can accomplish what seems impossible too.  Of course, being faithful doesn’t guarantee the results we want to see.  Obviously, if 90% of those sixth graders in front of Eugene went on to graduate from high school, 10% did not.  Faith doesn’t fix everything.  But faith can keep us from getting stuck on everything that is wrong, and move us to seeing what could be right.  And in being faithful we can participate in the Godly “right” that we can see God promising us, just as God promised our ancestors.

And, even in the short time I’ve been here, I can see that this congregation is already doing this.  Calvary feeds the hungry, gives clothes and shoes to the needy, prays, worships, and seeks God’s presence.  And as a congregation, you have continued to do this through many hard times.  And I bet a lot of you are tired, but still, Hebrews encourages you to keep going, to keep doing God’s work on earth because this sacred work that you do is how all of us, and all of our sisters and brothers, will be able to see that holy city God has prepared for us.

Yes, God promised Abraham a place to live in.  And we are heirs of the same promise from the same God.  God promises us, too, that we can live in peace, in a place where there is enough for everyone, and through Christ, we are family with all around us.  Even though that isn’t what we see now, God promises us that what we see is not all that we get.  There is something better.  As our scripture puts it, there is a better country, a heavenly one, and indeed, God has prepared a city for us.

We have a whole journey of being faithful to make it to that heavenly city.  And, thanks be to God, we have a holy meal prepared before us to give us strength for the journey.  So as we ready ourselves to receive this holy meal, let us pray.

God, you are the master architect.  We believe you have plans that are far more incredible than we have ever imagined.  Open our ears and eyes so we can hear and see more and more of what you intend for us, and for all of our sisters and brothers.  Help us trust in your gracious promises.  Move us to acting on them, so that we can help make your plans, your promises, a reality.  Keep your gracious intentions for us before our eyes, and always in our hearts, as we seek to help you build that heavenly city that we now greet from a distance.  In the name of Jesus, who showed us that your plans can defeat even death, we pray.  Amen.

 

Odd Couples

Psalm 146

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Preached September 29th, 2013

Emma Dobson


What I’m about to say needs to come with a preface, or, perhaps, a disclaimer.  Here’s the disclaimer: I’m all ordained and installed now, so you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.  And here’s why I need that disclaimer. . . I’m about to make a confession.  Back in high school, my friends and I all shared a guilty pleasure.  It was a TV show we liked to watch, and then talk and gossip about on the phone, or the next day at school.  The show was Maury, a talk show that I think is still on today.  Some of the shows were nice—they were inspirational makeovers on deserving people, surprise reunions of long lost family or friends, stuff like that. 

But the shows we really liked to talk about the most weren’t these fuzzy, feel-good stories.  Instead, and this is why it’s a confession and I’m reminding you again that you’re stuck with me, we liked the shows about the strange stuff.  These were shows about people who had strange phobias, crazy habits, or amazing abilities. 

And then, there was my personal favorite kind of Maury show.  These were the “Odd Couple” shows.  This was an hour of Maury devoted to couples who just didn’t seem to fit together at all. 

Let me paint you a little mental picture of how this worked.  Partner number one would come out on the stage, and sit in a chair next to Maury.  Maury would talk to partner number one and find out who they were.  So, for instance, partner number one would be a middle aged woman, dressed conservatively, who taught kindergarten during the week and then Sunday School for the young children at church.  Her parents had been pastors or something like that, and she liked to read and listen to classical music in her spare time.  So, once we get a good idea of who partner number one is, the best part happens.  They bring out the other partner from behind a screen.  And he’s someone like a 25 year old biker with a big grizzly beard who’s covered in tattoos.  He plays drums in a rock band, and he spends his free time with his biker friends at a bar.

The couples were always incredibly different—one person would be a 6 and a half foot tall football player, the other would be a diminutive person who hated sports.  One would be in law enforcement; the other would be an anarchist who was frequently arrested.  Always, always, they would set up expectations for who the second partner should be, and then shatter them completely. 

This is what happens with our lectionary readings this morning too.  Our expectations are shattered.  First we have partner number one—the psalm.   It’s exhorting us to praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord—it’s an exuberant song of joy.  We would expect its scriptural partner in the lectionary to be similarly joyful and full of life. But, instead, with our happy Psalm we have what I’m going to call our Debbie Downer 1 Timothy passage, which reads “The love of money is the root of all evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”  Ouch.  We might be rivaling Maury with this odd couple.  

Let’s take a cue from the Maury show though.  I can’t believe I just said that in a pulpit. . . but really, let’s take a cue from Maury here.  Because after all the odd couples were introduced, Maury did something that was actually pretty cool.  He had them all sit out on the stage together, and he brought out a relationship expert.  Every single time they did a variation of this odd couple show, Maury would pretend to be clueless about how these relationships could possibly work with partners that seemed so different.  And the relationship expert would inform Maury, again and again, that while the couples seemed different on a superficial level, what made relationships work wasn’t the superficial stuff that everyone could see.

 It wasn’t about the tattoos or the job title.  It was the deeper, really important stuff like morals, values, that led to a loving, working relationship.  What held these “odd couples” together was that they shared something deeper that was apparent at first glance.  And this expert would interview the couples and see just what it was that tied them to each other when their appearances would suggest otherwise.

So let’s take a little deeper look at our scriptural odd couple and find this something deeper that binds them too.  And, since you all pay me to study scriptures, I’m going to take on the role of Maury’s relationship expert, and tell you what I think this deep thing is that binds Psalm 146 and our reading from 1 Timothy together.  They both share a deep concern with the praise of God.   

We can see this pretty clearly with Psalm 146.  It repeats, over and over again, and exhortation to “Praise the Lord!”  So praise, the Hebrew word “ha-le-lu,” is clearly pretty important.  And what does “ha-le-lu” mean exactly?  What does it mean to praise God?  Is it about writing or singing songs like the psalmist, or coming to a specific building to pray and worship, like we’ve done this morning?  Well, not exactly.  Clearly, this can be part of how we express praise, but it’s not the foundation of it.  And that’s what’s really important in the scriptural relationship here—the deep foundational stuff.  So, what the Psalter as a whole and this Psalm in particular tell us is that the actual foundation of praise is trust.  Whatever our outward actions of praise, they are grounded in this trust.   

Unfortunately, both these scripture readings also remind us that we live in a world full of other things that compete for our trust and praise.  And if we’re going to truly praise God, we can’t put our trust in anything, or anyone else.  1 Timothy puts it this way: “those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”  For us to fully trust and praise God, as the psalm exhorts us to do over and over, we cannot also trust and praise and money.  

Now, of course, it’s not likely that any of us actually build altars to money, or sing songs about how wonderful it is all day long.  But we have all been tempted to put our trust in it.  Maybe we stash a stockpile of it away, and trust that money will protect or save us from whatever problems should occur.  And when those problems do occur, maybe we seek a way to buy a solution, a magic pill or quick fix, and neglect to even lift a prayer up to God.  Or maybe we may spend all our time and energy working to make more and more money, when we already have enough to live on, and others are in need.  We may abandon our families, our friends, or maybe our spiritual lives as we do whatever it takes get more money in an attempt to feel safe and secure.

And even if neither of these sounds like you, we all live in a culture that puts its trust in money, no matter what the back of our currency might say.  We live in a culture where CEO’s make 500 times more than their workers, who struggle to get by with even the bare necessities, and we rarely raise a fuss, but instead praise the CEO for their skill or work ethic, and claim they “deserve” all that cash and that the poor “deserve” to be poor.  We live in a culture that pushes advertisements down our throat claiming that money invested in certain products will solve all our problems, making us attractive, happy, and invincible.   

Now, while it’s true that money can be associated with lots of problematic behavior, I want to be clear that there’s nothing inherently wrong with money.  There’s also nothing wrong with having money—we need money to live.  But there’s not even anything wrong with having a lot of money.  The 1 Timothy text we heard today is often misquoted to say that money is the root of all evil.  But do you remember what it actually says?  “The love of money is the root of all evil.”  When we start to love money, when we put our trust in money, we can no longer praise God in our whole lives. God’s praise and money’s praise are a couple that won’t ever be able to make their relationship work.  There’s nothing fundamental they share.  Instead, one makes the other impossible—you can’t trust put your trust in God and money at the same time. 

The work that God calls us to do— executing justice for the oppressed, giving food to the hungry, lifting up the bowed down, watching over and protecting the most vulnerable people among us, to paraphrase the psalm—we can’t do this work if we don’t put our trust fully in God.  It’s hard work, unpopular work, and work that isn’t going to make us rich.  You can’t feed someone else if you insist on keeping every penny for your stockpile.  You can’t protect someone vulnerable if you’re only concerned about protecting your cash.

So we, as followers of Christ and worshippers of God, cannot put our trust anywhere else but in God.  For us, money is, and needs to stay, a means to an end.  And our end, the place where we put our trust, our praise, and our love, needs to always be God.  Everything else will eventually fail us.  As the psalm puts it “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.”  We all know this is true still today.  We’ve seen the stock market crash, some of us more than once, and bring hopes and dreams down with it.  We’ve seen mighty corporations crumble.  We’ve seen powerful leaders fall.  None of them lasts.  No earthly power or ruler, no amount of money, is good enough for us to put our trust in. 

Only God is good enough.  And if a lack of better options isn’t a good enough motivator, both the Psalm and 1 Timothy share the rewards of trusting and praising God. As the psalm puts it true “happiness.”  Or 1 Timothy puts it, “the life that is really life.”  Worshipping God isn’t just something we do for God.  It’s something we do for us, our community, and our world, as well.  Only through trusting and praising God can we experience that happiness and “life that is really life.  And we can only worship God when we let go of our fear based grasping, and hoarding and instead let go and let God.  We can experience this new quality of life only when stop being concerned with being rich with money, and start caring about being rich in good works, being generous, and sharing what we have with others.  It is when fully put our trust in God that we can go about the kind of work God calls us to—to again draw from our psalm, executing justice for the oppressed, giving food to the hungry, setting prisoners free, lifting up those who are bowed down, watching over strangers and upholding the widow and the orphan.

And our relationship with money matters in this.   We can either put our trust in God, money, or some other false God with the way we pursue and spend money.  The relationship we have with money impacts the way we live our whole lives, and the relationship we have with God.

And this is so important that I’m asking us all to take some time now, and to reflect on who and what we praise, and trust in our daily lives.  So Tim is going to play some meditative music for us for a few minutes while we all reflect on the ways we live our trust in God in our daily lives, and the places where we may have misplaced our trust.  And yes, I am asking you specifically to think about your relationship with money here too.  So as you reflect, you can write, you can draw, you can just think, whatever is your style.  But take some time now and reflect, so that you can live the wisdom of the psalmist, and truly, fully praise the Lord.