Quiet Strength

 

Sermon Psalm 103:1-18; Proverbs 23:19-25; Matthew 2:13-23 June 20,2021 Father's Day

Quiet Strength

The Scripture readings for today are to encourage us in our life as we live in relationship with others. Most of us grew up in some kind of family. We grew up in foster, adoptive, group, blended, or nuclear families. We can look to our heritage and find the people who impacted our life and who we admire for their ability to inspire us. 

Who are those people for you? Let’s take a few minutes today and think carefully about them. Perhaps they are still living or they have long passed. Yet, something about who they were in our life has been a force to steer and guide us even today.

Whatever they did, put an impression upon us that has lasted a lifetime. There presence in our life gave us life. A thumbprint of energy, guidance, imagination, intelligence, confidence, curiosity, joy, and laughter.

I would have to say that Joseph was that kind of man for Jesus. In the first two chapters of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is born and is an infant without a voice in the narrative. Joseph also has no voice. The narrative teaches us about the obedience of a man caught in a circumstance that was more than awkward, it was downright dangerous. 

You know who Joseph is right? 

He’s the guy in the nativity scene that we can’t quite explain to our kids at Christmas. He’s the dad of Jesus. Well, he’s not really the dad. God is the dad of Jesus. But, then Joseph is the step-dad? God told Joseph to marry Mary just as they had planned and to obey God. So, Joseph without question, despite what all the neighbors, and all the relatives would say, took Mary as his wife even though she was having someone else’s baby. Yes, Joseph did that!

To be honest anyone who looks to Joseph can be impressed. 

They can look to him and honor him for his courage. They can look to him and be impressed by his integrity. For custom in those days was to stone Mary for having someone else’s child. A child out of wedlock was a penalty of death. And Mary was having a child out of wedlock and not even of the man to whom she was engaged. This was a nightmare that every family hoped would never come to them. And yet the holy family who we adore lived exactly that. It is important that we honor those who have had the courage to love, honor, and obey during the most unusual circumstances. To love children born without a voice of where they are born or where they are raised is the greatest of all gifts. Joseph is a man to be lifted up because he denied the customs of his day and chose to put love first.

Who are the people we know who put love above the rules, customs, or traditions for the sake of another?

Joseph had a quiet strength. Initially he didn’t know what to do. But, when the angel spoke to him he obeyed. He followed through with his vows to Mary. He followed through with the Roman law and went to his home town for the census. He followed through with care for his newborn son and named him Jesus, just as the angel had told him.

He trusted the presence of God in his life. He didn’t need to put on a fancy show. He didn’t need to place an ad in the paper about why he was doing what he was doing. He didn’t justify himself to his family, neighbors and friends. He just quietly listened to God and cared for his family. 

For all of today’s families who don’t quite fit the mold of what society deems a perfect family, we have the holy family as our example to know that there is no perfect family. 

The best ones are the ones ordained to come together as God calls them together-no matter how different from the norm.

Joseph had been raised in the faith of his fathers and his mothers through the generations. He knew the psalms and the proverbs. He knew to listen for God’s word to guide his life. All around him were people of faith. It is through their imprint that he developed his faith and strength in love.

When the angel of the Lord appeared to him, he remembered all the stories told to him of Moses and Abraham, Sarah and Hannah. He too could take heart in the word of God through the angel to love Mary, to love Jesus and to bring them to safety.

It’s hard to imagine though to hear a call in the middle of the night to flee to safety. The only time I could imagine a call like that would be in places along tornado alley. There are sirens and warnings and no time to tell others except to run to the safety of a shelter or room as quick as possible.

As a parent to have to run with your child to a place you’re not sure of in order to flee a certain conflict if you stay, I don’t know how Joseph made that decision.

I honestly believe there are moments in our life where we are caught with decisions that rely purely on our ability to trust God’s guidance. There are moments when the need to act outweighs the fear of inaction. The flight to Egypt was one of those moments.

Who are the people we know who have had the ability to guide us to safety, to reach out and lead us in another direction, to grab us by the arm and save us from the fire around us?

We can thank God for their ability to love us enough to take the time to raise us up and to bring us around to the place we ultimately belong.

Joseph stayed with Mary and protected Jesus in Egypt until the angel sent him an all-clear message. And when he heard the news he was guided to the best place to raise Jesus into adulthood.

Sometimes what doesn’t quite fit the norm for growing up turns out in the end to have been the right place all along. The Eastern Shore is one of those places people assume is not the best place. Galilee was one of those places. Galilee was no royal town for a messiah. Yet, Galilee was a place set up for a young boy to grow and learn among a community of people of quiet strength. Jesus grew up in a rural community where people cared for each other. People modeled behavior of love and acceptance for the young Jesus so when he entered into ministry he had been formed by the people of his village.

As the church we are the village for one another. Let us make sure our fingerprints are on the trees of one another. Let us show the community in which we live the quiet strength we have to live and grow.

Let us be for others in the same manner as those who we remember today for their impact on our lives through their quiet strength. Amen.

Resources: NIB Matthew; Working Preacher 2012 commentary; Max Lucado Before Amen; 

I Have Plans for You

 Sermon Jeremiah 29:1-14; 1 Peter 2:1-6 June 13, 2021

I Have Plans for You

 

The day has finally arrived! Our young people have reached another milestone in life. This year is perhaps a greater accomplishment worth recognition because of all the obstacles along the way.

Those delayed sports events, the virtual classes; the on again, off again in-person classes, it’s been the kind of year for our students that we can applaud them for just being here today! No graduation speech can be as they were before, “Reach the sky for there are no limits.” Those who were caught in the midst of covid restrictions or even those who had to endure the hardship of being ill with the virus experienced limits in ways our generation did not know. Now we can say to our graduating students, “You’ve climbed the hardest mountain and succeeded. Now you know you have been given the skills and confidence to face all the other mountains before you and succeed!”

 

The young woman Jane who won Simon’s golden buzzer on America’s Got Talent this week for her magnificent voice and for her original song-“It’s Ok” knows how hard life can be. In her song she sings, “It’s ok to be lost sometimes”. Her mantra she repeats to herself is, “You don’t have to wait for life to stop being hard before you learn to be happy.” I honestly believe this past year has been one of those hard years. And in the midst of the hard we have found messages of happiness. We have experienced the joy of planted gardens.

 

We, the rest of us,  are not marking an educational milestone, but are marking a milestone as we emerge from isolation. We too have had our challenges, our difficulties, our exiles. We’ve suffered from separation, loneliness, illness, emotional and physical challenges we have never faced before.

 

 Yet, here we are emerging from restrictions. We, like our graduates, are entering a new season of life. It’s a time of hope. It’s a time of new beginnings. It’s a time of renewal. It is also a big experiment.

Can we do this? Can we move towards the hopes for us? Are we willing? Are we able? Are we ready to risk?

 

Every beginning has an ending. Every ending has a beginning. The Israelites were told by Jeremiah that their time in exile would be for at least a generation. The life before had ended. They were in a new place. It was time to begin again. It was time to look around at what was before them. It was time to let go of what was behind them. It was a time for them to hear the word of God speak, “I have plans for you. Plans for your welfare and not for harm. To give you a future with hope.”

 

We learned more than we ever knew how hard life could be as a community and as individuals. We have made it through the longest time of uncertainty than most of us have ever experienced. Yet, we discovered how to put action to hope. We learned ways to adapt. We learned how to build a fire pit big enough to keep warm on cold nights so we could social distance and still see grandchildren. We adapted and held  music classes outside in fields and parks. We learned how to live our best lives with the moments we were dealt.

 

That’s what Jeremiah is speaking to the exiles about. Don’t face adversity with a defeated approach. Face adversity with strength, courage, imagination, and energy.

I am reminded of the saying, “The will of God will not take you where the grace of God will not keep you.” God has plans for us no matter our age, no matter our youth or our longevity. Have we lived in the promise of God knowing this verse will guide us in our adversity? Have we trusted God for our welfare and for our future? Have we been honest with God and shaken our fist and wondered where this future of hope is? Have we opened our heart to witness the blessings of mercy falling all around us? Or are our hearts still hardened because we are not living where we want? The prophet told the people plant gardens, live your life, have families-you may not be where you want, but make the best of what you’ve been given.

 

What we’ve been able to discover about ourselves during this challenging year can only propel us with greater hope and anticipation for the next adventure, the next challenge, the next season of life.

 

As our graduates move on to the next season I would like to emphasize-Do not be conformed by the world that is around you. Do not be swayed by the loudest and angriest voices. Search for the word of God to guide you. Hold on to the truths you were taught.

 As Peter tells us we are Living Stones. Once we were not a people but now we are God’s people. Before we get caught up in the way of the world hold on to the truth of whose we are.

 

There is a man (a professor) who took his life because he had been harassed beyond his own ability to hold on anymore. He had been attacked for his views of ethics, religion and politics. An author wrote a story about him. It is an important thing to remember when adversity overcomes us. He said this, ““For those of you who’ve never been in the middle of the battle between the worst of the ideological left and the worst of the ideological right, I can tell you it really gets inside your head. You get to see people on both sides go from loving you to hating you depending on who you defend, even if the moral principles of the case are identical.” I can fully agree with and understand this sentiment. It’s impossible to be human with a variety of ideals without being pegged into a position by someone else.’ It these kinds of times we live in. The people in exile were forced to keep their faith, their political opinions as captives, their ideology of marriage, ethics, all things hidden away. They were without a voice. They were not able to live as they truly believed or thought. That’s what exile and captivity is. The future hope is for our welfare and not harm. Let us imagine a world of differing opinions, ideologies, ethics, all having a place to speak.

 

The question then becomes how do we live our lives beyond the exile? How do we take what we learned in Babylon and carry it with us to our new homes?

 

Remember your points of value. 

Remember how you feel about God. 

Remember how you feel about life. 

Learn how to express them so no one takes your words out of context. 

Live a life worthy but remember that there are those who will twist your words, your thoughts. 

These are days when there are those who quickly seek to destroy rather than build up.

 
Find those who truly show love. 

Lose the false friends. 

If your only friends are on social media, 

leave your room and risk introducing yourself to someone new.
Write notes. 

Not on the computer but in a book. 

Not a chrome book but a real piece of paper and a pen. 

Feel what its like to touch pen to paper and let your thoughts flow. 

Listen to music.
Read poetry. 

Read proverbs and psalms.
Use your phone. 

Not the text part. 

The phone talking part where you have to hear a voice and say words out loud.
Go for a walk. 

Walk not to go somewhere 

but walk to see, hear and notice the world around you.
Draw a picture. 

Even if all you know how to do is stick figures draw anyway.
When you see someone

 look at them when you talk.
Smile more.
Wave more. 

Be willing to shake a hand again.
Sit on a bench. 

Talk to the person who sits down next to you.

Engage with the world. Perhaps if we do, we’ll learn that we are all children of God. Perhaps our goal in life will be less proving to the world how right we are and more about listening and learning from one another.

The greatest thing Jesus did for us was to come down from heaven and walk with us even unto his death so that we would be saved into a new life. If we can remember that truth perhaps we will be a people who loves and cares.

As our young people move through life let us teach them and hold them and offer them ways of expressing themselves. It is our responsibility to continue to nurture one another through all of our life until the end of our life.

As we hear the prophet calling out, “I have plans for you”, let us heed God’s voice and be ready to live in hope for our future.

There is so much wonder and joy and adventure as the new beginning is emerging. Dear graduates, who have accomplished so much, your future awaits you precious children of God. It is time to celebrate with joy! Amen.

 

Resources: NIB Jeremiah; AGT-solo tryouts Jane; Nightbirde blog-God on the Bathroom Floor; FIRE article-“Professor Mike Adams Suicide Will Always Haunt Me” ; by Greg Lukianoff December 15, 2020;