Sermon

God’s Extravagance

Isaiah 55: 10-13, Psalm 119: 105-112, Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Picture us gathered here and someone walks among us giving us something good. I don’t know what that good is, but use your imagination – it is something good.

But strange things happen. For some of us, the good is snatched away before it ever reaches our hands. For others of us, we rejoice for a short time with this new found good thing, but soon that which is good gets lost amidst that which is bad. For others of us, we never realize the good is being given to us because we have wrapped ourselves in the lure of the world and we miss the good in our midst. For others of us we realize that something good has been given and we understand it and we let it grow in us and we share it with others.

I don’t pretend to say where the sower’s seed falls on you or me. But I do know that just prior to Jesus explaining the parable of the sower and seeds, he reminds us that hearts grow dull; ears won’t hear; eyes refuse to look; hearts harden and will not understand. Jesus says, in effect, “If only … your heart would open, your ears would listen; your eyes would see … If only … I would heal you.

Balaam’s Courier , a daily newspaper published every two years when the General Synod of the United Church of Christ meets, wrote last year about the theological debate in the Christian community around the issue of whether God continues to speak or whether the Bible contains everything God has to say to humanity and our job is to keep interpreting it for each generation. The editors wrote: “We live amidst a theological debate of conflicting deities. One is represented by a God whose revelation has been completed, symbolized by the period. The other, representing ongoing revelation, is symbolized by the comma.

“Is this God whom we hear speaking to us the same one proclaimed on all our currency? Is the one we hear speaking the same deity in whose name we launch war?”

The pews of our churches throughout the ages have been filled with people who received the good news in the varying ways the seed was scattered. For some they never got it; for others they wanted only the joy of religion and not the substance; for others they could not believe that God can overcome the stress and lures of the world; and for some, they were fed and nourished and went out and helped feed and nourish the world.

The early church was often steeped in controversy around doctrinal questions. The idea that one God could be revealed in three distinct ways – Father, Son, Holy Ghost – was difficult for many to grasp. So two great affirmations of faith were written: the Apostles’ Creed, which is the oldest known statement of belief, was developed between the second and ninth centuries. This creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for candidates for baptism.

The Nicene Creed, written in 325 at a called special Council of Nicea and revised in 381, was an effort to meet the challenge of the Gospel which was developed in a Hebraic and Jewish Christian context to a Graeco-Roman world. This creed goes to great effort to make sure that it is understood that God is three-in-one and that the divinity of the Son and the Holy Ghost are the same substance as God the Father. It was an effort to make sure that the Christian religion was a monotheistic religion. Christians did not worship three gods. They worship one God and the three manifestations of God were all of the same substance.

The debate at Nicea was between those bishops who believed that the doctrine expressed in the creed was ancient and Apostolic and those bishops who believed that a new interpretation of the faith was correct.

The Nicene Creed was developed after the emperor Constantine won control of the Roman Empire and attributed his victory to the intervention of Jesus Christ. He elevated Christianity to a favored status in society and even had as his personal motto: "One God, one Lord, one faith, one church, one empire, one emperor." Thus, Christians were no longer persecuted and Christianity became “easy” and declaring oneself a Christian became the accepted thing to do. We have had to deal with “easy” Christianity ever since.

I resonate with both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed as early creeds which tried to define this new religion called Christianity. For many years churches were strict doctrinal churches and the creeds were much like the initiation creeds of secular organizations. Over the years we have come to understand that the greatness of God cannot ever be totally captured in any creed or statement. At best we can capture a snapshot of God as understood at various historical moments in the life of the church.

The church does not demand adherence to some set in stone doctrine. Our creeds and statements of faith are ways we keep trying to affirm our belief in a God who is in fact too awesome to capture in mere words. Many people, who want very clear fences around their beliefs, are not able to live with a church that believes you should not have fences.

It is easy to eat and drink at our radically welcoming table. It is not so easy, sometimes, to make room for all of the others who want to come and eat and drink. The church at Rome was reminded that “God has done what the law could not do” … so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk, not according to the flesh (world), but according to the Spirit.

Over the years I have seen this denomination swing right and left, be too political at times, too timid at times, too elitist sometimes, and so on. But I believe that one of the things that has happened to us in the past few years is that we are once again looking more closely at what it means to follow Jesus Christ. We are challenged to not be ashamed of the gospel. We are reminded that Jesus is head of the church and that what we do as a local church or as a denomination, we do because we affirm that God is in Christ reconciling the world to God. It is imperative that we “testify,” that we “witness” to the mighty power and call of a God whose intent is that we make room for all at the table of grace and salvation.

I will say again what I have said in the past. As a life-long member of this denomination, I love the United Church of Christ. Over the years I have quarreled with the church, but it has always been a lover’s quarrel. I believe this denomination has an understanding of the gospel that will continue to take us into places that make us uncomfortable in order to find all of God’s children and offer them the water of life.

My friends who published Balaam’s Courier at the Synod said it this way: “In a nation that finds itself more divided than ever; in a nation which pursues both domestic and international policies ever farther from anything resembling the Gospel; in a nation where the wealthy and powerful increasingly dictate the parameters of our public discourse; it is good to be part of a Christian family that insists on a different future. It is good to be part of a church where God’s love is shared with all. It is good to be part of a church where the teachings of Jesus are taken seriously. It is good to be part of a church where the Holy Spirit is on the move and our conversation with God is fully engaged.

“We are not a perfect denomination. We are wholly dependent on the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God. Yet, we have come this far by faith and our faith will lead us home. God bless the United Church of Christ.”

God extends an invitation to an abundant life. The prophet Isaiah speaks of an everlasting covenant (Isaiah 55:3) with a God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. If we seek a relationship with this God, says Isaiah, then we “shall go out in joy” and be “led back in peace.” We need not fear scarcity or abandonment for this great God invites us to share in God’s abundance. That was a welcome message to an ancient Hebrew nation living in the middle of a hostile land. It is still a welcome message to anyone who fears the future, who fears life, who fears the way nations war with each other, who fears failure and who fears the world “out there.”

“For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)

The God of all creation is an extravagant God holding out an invitation to those who follow this sovereign God the assurance of an abundant life and God’s own abiding presence – no matter what our temporary conditions might be.

The comma logo which has become associated with the identity ad campaigns of the United Church of Christ has the statement, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.” Gracie Allen wrote that sentence. It was in a letter she left to her husband George Burns. Who would have ever thought that a comedian would write in a simple sentence such a profound statement?

Actually we have always known that God still speaks. However, we have not been very faithful about letting God speak through us so that each new generation can hear this still-speaking God. “Easy Christianity” has seduced us into believing we do not have to struggle with questions about faith and values. “Easy Christianity” has lured us into a mentality that sees local churches as club houses rather than houses of worship. “Easy Christianity” adapts to the world rather than bringing some word from the Lord to a world gone astray. “Easy Christianity” closes doors and excludes rather than wrestle with opening doors and including all of God’s children.

When Constantine endorsed Christianity and made it safe and acceptable, he did not do the church a favor. State endorsed faith from the emperor made it appear that what the emperor wanted must be what God wanted. Remember his motto: "One God, one Lord, one faith, one church, one empire, one emperor." He equated one God and one church with the equal partnership of one empire and one emperor.

You see that partnership today in too many churches when they equate wealth with blessing; when they equate the good life of consumerism with the godly life of Jesus; when they preach a gospel of God’s love of one nation and one people more than am equal love for other nations and other people.

I believe the present generation is seeking a church that will offer spiritual food to hungering souls. They want to know a God who still has something to say today. They want to know what the ancient creeds and parables mean in the world in which we live.

It has been an eye-opening experience to watch the reaction of people to the call to follow a still-speaking God. Literally thousands of people have gone to the denomination’s web site and entered a zip code seeking a church. Statistically the majority of people coming to the UCC for the first time are coming as families who want their children to grow up in an inclusive church. We have stepped out and spoken out. We are experiencing the joy of discipleship as we try to follow this still-speaking God. We are also experiencing heart-wrenching divisions at times. It is in those times we need to remember that God calls us into the church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship and to be God’s servants in the service of humankind.

When we come to times of division and frustration and even anger, I recall the prayer John Thomas, the President and General Minister of the church offered on an occasion following a particularly bitter debate and vote. After the vote the president of the church went to the podium to pray for the whole church. In that prayer he prayed:

Lord, Jesus, to you we live, to you we suffer, to you we die. Yours will we be in life and in death. Today, as in ancient Bethlehem, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in you.  We give thanks for your presence during these days of prayer and discernment, and especially for your presence here this morning. We have felt your warm embrace, stilling us as we tremble with joy, with hope, with fear, with disappointment. Remind us that as we are tempted to run from each other, so too we run from you. We know that every choice confers a cost, so let us attend in the coming hours and days to those for whom this decision confers a particular burden. Let us find words that comfort rather than congratulate; let us seek to be a community of grace and forgiveness rather than organizing constituencies of protest, let us use our hands not to clap, but to wipe away every tear. And in all this may we know in surprising new ways the comfort of belonging to You. This is our prayer. Hear us, Lord Jesus. Amen .

“For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)

Amen.

Jim Bell

7/13/08