Saying "Yes" to God Again (& Again . . . )

Matthew 25:1-13

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

In the 1998 film American History X, Edward Norton’s character absorbs the racism of his father and becomes the leader of a Skinhead gang in LA.  He grows up assuming that different races are distinct tribes at war with one another.  He gives passionate speeches to his fellow Skinheads aimed at producing violent acts against blacks and other immigrants.  Norton’s character is the last person in the world you would expect to have a powerful conversion experience. 

In prison he is forced to work alongside a black inmate in the laundry room.  And he slowly begins to recognize that he has been wrong about his black neighbors all along.  The most moving scene of the movie is his return home to his bedroom where he removes all the hate-filled, racist posters and signs hanging on his bedroom walls.  It’s a conversion that is a radical turn around.  He moves from a heart filled with hate to a place of light.

 

Sometimes God meets us in these ways where life pivots powerfully in a new direction.  Maybe some of you have stories like this.  Within Scripture it is Paul who has the most dramatic conversion.  He was a Jew working to arrest any other Jews who become followers of Jesus.  And then one day on the road to Damascus, he is met and overwhelmed by the glory of the risen Christ, and his life is changed forever.

I have a friend who has one of these powerful conversion experiences about every six months.  His life is a pendulum that swings back and forth between a life completely out of control, followed by a weeping, dramatic repentance that ushers in several months of overly saintly behavior.  There is no stable middle ground.  It’s all chaos or heroic self-control.  I’m sure it wore him out living that way.  It wore me out just watching it.  I’m not sure I want God to keep meeting me in quite that way.

Yet don’t we too believe that God meets us, often in powerful and life transforming ways, along the journey of life?  Don’t we gather for worship with a sense of anticipation?  Aren’t we called to live with a lively expectation that God’s Spirit is at work in us and between us during worship and during the week?

In our reading today, Joshua gathers the people at Shechem for a ceremonial renewal of their covenant with God.  Joshua warns them that their devotion will be pulled in several directions.  They are a people whose journey has exposed them to a variety of different gods.  Their ancestors beyond the Euphrates River, the Egyptians where they were enslaved, and their new neighbors the Amorites - all have their own gods.  And Joshua asks them to throw away these gods.  (Apparently, they carried statues or trinkets of these various gods).  He calls them to serve and love only the god who had led them out of Egypt and had settled them into the land.

Don’t you find it a bit strange that the people are called to this covenant recommitment ceremony at all?  Their life with God has been a dramatic and powerful journey.  God led them out of slavery in Egypt and across the Red Sea.  God sustained them with manna in the wilderness and provided them the law as a way of life on Mt. Sinai.  God was visibly present with them first in the pillar of cloud and fire, then later in the ark of the covenant carried by the priests.  And God led them across the Jordan on dry ground and settled them in a land to call their own.  You’d think this would be a pretty good time to relax and celebrate. 

Do we really need to keep re-connecting with the living God?  Do we really need to keep recommitting ourselves to the covenant we’ve entered?  Do we really need to keep saying “Yes” to God’s love and grace over and over?  Once baptized, shouldn’t we be left alone, sort of like the guy who tells his wife, “Yes, I told you I loved you, and if anything changes, I’ll let you know!”

Most of us want God’s presence in our lives as a quiet, gentle companion.  We’re not so sure that we want a life of repeated, dramatic, life-altering conversion experiences.  Yet, our reading invites us to pictures our lives as a tension filled scene where various gods vie powerfully for our attention and allegiance.  What makes this hard for us to hear is that we’ve been raised as monotheists.  We believe that there is only one true God – the God of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, there really aren’t any other powerful “gods” pulling us in other directions.  And so we relax, as if there’s not much at stake.

German theologian Paul Tillich moved to the United States when the Nazis revoked his license to teach.  He taught at UTS in New York, at Harvard, and at the University of Chicago.  His life work was to explore the Christian biblical tradition in the light of the concerns and issues raised by existentialist philosophers.  He wanted to help modern people make sense of the Christian faith.  He developed a helpful way of talking about God and the gods.  He used the language of “ultimate concern.”  Your “god” is whatever ultimately concerns you.  And whatever ultimately concerns you is your “god.”

In Tillich’s terms, our “god” or “ultimate concern” names whatever gets our attention and allegiance.  Every single one of us allows some value in life to have organizing power over our desire, our joy, and our energies.  What matters is not so much what we “say” about our religious commitments.  What matters is what kinds of values or ultimate concerns actually organize our lives. 

Joshua names the rival gods of their ancestors, of the Egyptians, and of the Amorites.  What might be the rival gods, the competing ultimate concerns, in our lives?  A few candidates would be . . . politics, family honor codes, your children’s success, a spouse or lover, a group of friends, spending patterns, or particular pleasures or comforts.  None of these values are evil in themselves, but if they become the organizing power of your life, they become an ultimate concern, a rival god.

Every single one of us lives our lives within this reality of being pulled in different directions.  That’s why one of God’s gifts to us is a life filled with continual opportunities to recommit ourselves to the life-giving covenant with Jesus Christ.

Now of course, none of us wants to feel like every day is a revival service where we have to summon the energy for another conversion experience.  That would be a terrible burden.

What God offers us instead is the gift of a life where renewal and recommitment are built into the very fabric of life.  One of God’s blessings is to provide us with fresh chances every day to realign our energies.  The Psalmist says, “Your mercies are fresh everyday, O Lord.”  And they are!  We don’t have to carry around yesterday’s burdens, disappointments, and failures.  Each day God comes to us anew with life abundant. 

The rhythmic pattern of weekly worship together with others who are following Jesus Christ is one of these gifts.  Through the simple practices of greeting and making peace with others, of confessing our sins together, of singing and praying, of listening to the Word read and preached, of offering our financial resources and our best energies – each experience of worship is an opportunity to refresh and renew our lives in God.

In every baptism, like Harper’s today, we all together reaffirm our baptismal vows to love and serve God together.  We’re all reminded that we’ve been bathed and cared for by the love of God and adopted into a new family with a new story.  And we share the Lord’s Supper as the meal that nourishes us for the challenges we face.

But the opportunities for renewal do not all happen at church during worship.  God has woven them into the rest of your week.

Your rest each night is a gift of renewal from God.  You stop working, you lay down and your energies are restored in sleep.  This is an experience of the grace of God at work.  You wake into a new day and your shower is another baptism, washing you in the mercy of God to face what’s ahead of you that day.  Your meals are an encounter with God in thanksgiving, as God feeds you and strengthens you.  And the work you do during the day – whether it is child care, volunteer work or paid work – the work you do is a way of sharing in God’s work of blessing and healing the world.  Every single ordinary day is filled with experiences of renewed commitment to the love of God.

God’s loving presence doesn’t come and go.  God stays wonderfully near.  What comes and goes are special opportunities to renew and refresh our commitment to the love and grace of God at work in our lives.  Keep watch, and stay awake, God’s gifts are all around you!