Weekly Sermon

"Recovering from Summer Vacation" - September 12, 2004

The Reverend Anne Benefield

Isaiah 40:27-31; Jeremiah 29:11-13

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Jeremiah 29:11-13 "Surely I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "Plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. When you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart." Prayer: Lord God, there are so many voices calling us. May we hear your voice above all others and may we follow it for we know that you do have plans for us in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. The end of summer is always bittersweet to me. I'm not sure exactly why, but whether I had a great summer or a lousy one, I'm sorry to see it go. Summer is always so romantic. There are dreams to be lived out in warm, carefree days. Dreams about who we are and who we might be. I remember a friend telling me about the difficulties her daughter was having in her first year of college. She explained, "When my daughter went off to college, she thought everything would be new and she would be a new person, too. When she got there, she was disappointed to realize that while everything around her was different, she was the same person. She thought her problems would disappear in new surroundings, but they didn't. Her problems went with her." I feel that way in the fall. During the summer, problems don't seem so pressing, but with fall all those unresolved issues come right back. Labor Day weekend reminds me of that dangerous condition deep sea divers get when they return to the surface too quickly. I think they call it the "bends." Labor Day is like the bends to me-I've inevitably come up on fall much too quickly. So here we are coming home to Geneva in our 41st year. With summer behind us, it may seem like some of our dreams are behind us, too. But the way to recover from summer vacation is to face forward and reclaim our dreams. That is what Jeremiah was telling the Judean exiles in Babylon in our reading. Our scripture is from a letter that Jeremiah sent to encourage the exiles. Since they were faithful Jews from Jerusalem, they couldn't imagine true worship of God outside the Temple. Their dreams were dashed. For the captive Israelites, Babylon ain't no summer vacation! But Jeremiah tells them to pick themselves up and get over it. He tells them to worship God even though they are in Babylon. He tells them to trust God, to have confidence in God's plan and to keep seeking the Lord, especially in troubling times. Trusting God is a huge challenge. We're so proud of our own abilities. We take pride in being self-sufficient, but that's not the gospel. We're called to trust God, for God's dreams are much bigger than ours. In his book, When God Whispers Your Name, Max Lucado writes: I came across a sad story this week, a story about a honeymoon disaster. The newlyweds arrived at the hotel in the wee hours with high hopes. They'd reserved a large room with romantic amenities. That's not what they found. Seems the room was pretty skimpy. The tiny room had no view, no flowers, a cramped bathroom, and worst of all-no bed. Just a foldout sofa with a lumpy mattress and sagging springs. It was not what they'd hoped for; consequently, neither was the night. The next morning the sore-necked groom stormed down to the manager's desk and ventilated his anger. After listening patiently for a few minutes, the clerk asked, "Did you open the door in your room?" The groom admitted he hadn't. He returned to the suite and opened the door he had thought was a closet. There, complete with fruit baskets and chocolates, was a spacious bedroom! [Max Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name, (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1999), 179-180] There's more to this life than may be apparent. Trusting God opens us to hope and joy, but it's still not easy to do. Dan Wakefield, an author I know, says he thinks that truly trusting God would be like floating effortlessly on water. I thought about that. My family regularly visits Allenberry, a small resort in Pennsylvania where they have summer stock theatre, fishing, and great sticky buns. A few years ago, we took tubes down the little creek there. It's called the "Yellow Breeches," because when British revolutionary soldiers washed their white breeches in the creek they came out yellow. There I was in this tube floating comfortably, slowly down the creek for about an hour. It was so relaxing. Part of the joy was that it was aimless and somehow trusting God doesn't seem aimless to me. Still maybe Dan's idea of trusting God being like floating is a good counterpoint to my own struggles to trust God. I have to decide to try to trust God again and again, many times a day! Thursday is the day I struggle the most to trust God. That is the day I write the sermon. I begin by praying to the Lord, "Here I am, guide me." Then I wait and if ideas don't come quickly, I start looking for ideas. A few frantic minutes or hours later, I pause again for prayer. "Please help me, Lord. I'm getting a little anxious." I feel calmer for a while, maybe three minutes or so. Then I grab that sermon back from God and start working on it some more. This goes on all day Thursday and sometimes on Friday, too. The surprising thing is that some time between Thursday evening and Sunday morning, the good Lord takes that sermon back and completely reworks it. The best witness to this is my husband John who gets to hear the original sermon on Thursday evening and the transformed sermon on Sunday morning. He says that it's amazing how much better the sermon is on Sunday morning! It would be a whole lot easier if I learned to trust God more on the front end of the process, but this way I can convince myself that I've done my share of the work. Still, over the years I'm slowly coming to trust God more with the sermon and as I do, I find I am more and more confident in God's plans. As we experience the results of trusting in God, our confidence in God's plan grows. God does have a plan, even though that may not always be clear to us at the time. Kierkegaard said it well: "Life must be lived forwards, but it can be understood only backwards." We may never understand the plan, but with grace we can try to live faithfully. Perhaps the most telling testimony to God's plan is the transformed lives of the early Christians. Why did they go everywhere telling the message of the risen Christ? We could question their motives if they gained anything from it like prestige, wealth, status, or possessions. Instead they were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured, and crucified. Yet they continued to share their faith. They laid down their lives as the ultimate proof of their complete confidence in the truth of their message. Their humble witness changed the world. [Josh McDowell, Christianity: Hoax or History? (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989)] God's plan so often involves simple people, everyday people, like us. If you think back over your life, even if you are very young, you will see that you have made a difference. At some time, a word or action or maybe a prayer has changed a life. In those moments you have been a part of God's plan. I had a moment like that years ago. The story is confidential so I can't share it, but there is a 12-year-old boy who is alive today because God let me be a part of the plan. When I feel inadequate, not up to the task, I remember that child and I become more confident. Perhaps the hardest thing that Jeremiah tells the exiled Israelites to do is to keep seeking God. When we are in trouble, when our dreams are dashed, when summer is over and we're having trouble facing fall…it is difficult to seek God. Shouldn't God be seeking us? Where is God when we are suffering? Kathleen Norris writes: "I once heard a Holocaust survivor asked if her experience of a death march and forced labor camp hadn't destroyed her faith in God. 'Of course,' she said, adding, 'but only for a time.' She had come to the conclusion that what she and so many others had endured was not God's doing, but was due to human beings having chosen to do evil. She said she now believed that God was good, but had given people the ability to choose between good and evil. As for the terror that she and the other Jews of her village had endured, she had come to believe that God had been there all the time, suffering with them." [Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 103] God is here with us on a beautiful day like today and on a threatening day like the days of this fall in Florida. Summer is over, but God has new plans for us. On a day like today, when we come home to Geneva we are blessed with dreams…dreams of our children growing in faith…dreams of music sung by strong young voices to the glory of God…and dreams of a future of hope. We must trust God, have confidence in God's plan, and seek God in all things for as the scripture tells us: "Surely I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "Plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. When you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart." Amen.