Recharging our batteries

Readings: Psalm 73 , 1 Timothy 6:12-16
Preached at First Presbyterian Church Baldwin, NY, on August 13th 2006

A printable PDF file can be found here




Have you ever had a car that didn’t like to start in the mornings? You get up, ready to go, outside, shut the door, put on the seat belt and ‘UR-UR-UR-UR - CLUNK”. Not a thing. The batteries dead. The only way you are going to move is if somebody gives you a push or rescues you with jump leads.

The battery is still good. The cells in the battery are not dead; it just doesn’t have the power to operate. There are days when we know exactly how that battery feels! According to a poll in the Readers Digest a few years back one of the most frequently asked questions of pastors was “How do I recharge my spiritual batteries?”

The writer of Psalm 73 faces a similar dilemma. In Verse 2 he writes “My feet had almost stumbled, my steps had well nigh slipped.” The old English word for ‘the feeling that God’s grace was getting you through’ was ‘unction’. The psalmist’s problem? The ‘unction’ had ceased to function; their ‘Ford’ was no longer trucking for the Lord!

Let me offer three insights from the Psalmist on how we can recharge our spiritual selves.
1) Acknowledge the need
2) Share the load
3) Activation

Acknowledge the Need.

The Psalmist begins by being clear about their situation. They were losing it. They were stumbling and were in danger of falling. Their relationship with God was slipping away from them.

Be honest with God about your spiritual state. It’s no good before God saying that everything is all right if it’s not. We can fool each other, but we can’t fool God. If we feel like a spiritual wash out then we have to take that situation to God.

Rev. Lloyd John Ogilvie, retired Chaplain for the United States Senate and for twenty years pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, CA, wrote a book called ‘Falling into Greatness’. In it he tells of an unsophisticated wild-west preacher who during a funeral service pointed to the coffin and said, “I want you to know that this corpse has been a member of the church for thirty years.”

Scripture suggests that we can either be spiritually dead or spiritually alive. That it is possible to be a member of a religious community yet be a corpse when it comes to having a vital life changing relationship with God.

One way of gauging how our relationship with God is going is to monitor our cynicism levels. When the psalmist looked to those who wanted to live in any which way but the way of God he became bitter and cynical.

The New Living Translation has him saying between verses 4 and 13: “I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness. They seem to live such painless lives; their bodies are so healthy and strong. They don't have troubles like other people; they're not plagued with problems like everyone else… These fat cats have everything their hearts could ever wish for! …Did I keep my heart pure for nothing? Did I keep myself innocent for no reason?”

Have you noticed how if you are feeling down or depressed or washed-out... how hard it is to keep a realistic perspective? Because you feel personally low, you paint the whole world gray. You make out things are worse than they really are, molehills become mountains, insignificant problems become tremendous causes for anxiety.

As the Psalmist struggles through he realizes that he needs to acknowledge his feelings. Verse 16: “Though I tried to understand all this, it was too difficult for me,”
Verses 21-22; “Since my heart was embittered and my soul deeply wounded, I was stupid and could not understand; I was like a brute beast in Your presence.”

Before we can be spiritually recharged we need to stop pretending and acknowledge we are washed out. We need to realize that the power has gone and we need to be charged up. That’s the first step, acknowledge our need. Step two is:

Share the Load.

When I was in seminary over in Wales, Great Britain, I possessed one of those cars that didn’t like the mornings. A 4 Cylinder Morris Marina Estate (as pictured above). Early one misty Sunday morning I needed to drive about two hours to preach in a church in another town. We got to the car park, turned the key and...”WURR-WURR-WURR – Click”.

Mr. Morris Marina’s 4 little cylinders were not playing ball. Now early on Sunday mornings in college towns in Wales you were not going to find a garage open to service your vehicle. Neither would anybody appreciate you knocking on their door asking if they could give you a push. “Lord” I said “Help!”

A short whilst later turning into the Car Park came a guy in a flashy Jaguar XJ6. He turned out to not only have jump leads in his boot – or rather trunk as you say in these parts – but was a good Samaritan prepared to lend a hand. He lifted up the bonnet – that is hood – of the XJ6 – his engine all shiny gleaming and purring – attached the jump leads to my little rather tired looking engine – I turned the key and I tell you – that Morris Marina – jumped to attention. ‘Yes Sir – let’s go! I am the Little Marina that can!’

Where do we go when we need spiritually recharging? The Psalmist tells us in verse 17: “Though I tried to understand all this, it was too difficult for me, Until I entered the sanctuary of God”. As the Living Bible has it, “I went into Your temple… and then I understood!”

Where do we go when we want to be spiritually recharged? To the pastor? To our Sunday School Teacher? To the elders on call? To the liquor store? To the video store to rent a game or movie? To the T.V and wait for Oprah or Dr. Phil to come on?

As Christians we have a direct line. Jesus Christ is our High Priest. He is the One who brings into our life the presence of God. He is our Sanctuary, our Holy place. He sends His Spirit to be the encourager, the Helper, the light, the guide. By-pass the middle man. When you need a recharge go direct to the source of power. When the Psalmist took his need to God, then He started to be charged up.

To meet spiritual need we need to connect with a spiritual source. When Mr. Morris Marina needed to be recharged, we connected him to a higher power, Mr. Jaguar. To meet our deepest needs we should go to God, for only God can meet those needs! It was only then that the Psalmist started to regain his perspective.

Through verses 17 to 20 you find him saying things like, “I understand now what will happen to the wicked… They are like a bad dream that goes away in the morning… What goes around will come around, and their end is destruction’. As he reflected upon and contemplated God’s Word life stated to make sense again. He became less cynical, more willing to make a go of things, more aware that he was not alone, but that God was still walking right alongside.

Listen to verses 23-26 “I am always with You; You take hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You guide me, and at the end receive me with honor. Whom else have I in the heavens? None beside You delights me on earth. Though my flesh and my heart fail, God is the rock of my heart, my portion forever.”

This is the same guy who early was saying, “Oh no, I’m losing it, I should just be wicked like everybody else’ Now he’s saying, “The wicked will get the welcome they should expect… as for me, I will serve the Lord. God is my Rock!” What happened? He realized his need and got serious with God about seeing that met.

If we take our need for recharge to God, I believe we will start to understand, something will happen, some word of encouragement, some Scripture will grab our attention, something that makes us sit up and take notice and regain the perspective of a child of God. But we shouldn’t leave it there. One final word.

Activation

There was a reason why the battery in my car that day had gone flat. I hardly ever used it. Everything I needed was in town, and the only time I left town was on those occasional Sundays when I needed to travel to a preaching engagement. So sometimes it would sit for weeks at a time in the Car Park or on the road. A car has an alternator, a dynamo that recharges the battery as you are driving along. If the alternator stops functioning the battery will go flat. The best way to prevent a battery from losing its charge is to keep it charged up.

The best way to prevent spiritual passion from sapping out of us is through staying fired up. Regular participation in spiritual things results in a life activated by the Holy Spirit. When we express our faith through regular habits, such as faithful attendance at worship, regular Bible Reading and corporate and private prayer, we have less opportunity to lose our focus.

Do something for someone else. Share your faith. Read a solid Christian book about some area of your faith that perplexes you. Take a greater role in a committee or mission of the church. Volunteer for something you haven’t tried before. Support financially a particular project you have not previously supported. What happens? Activation!

Hear how the Psalmist concludes his struggles. (Psalm 73:28) “But as for me, how good it is to be near God! I have made the Sovereign LORD my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things God does”.

We all stumble on our spiritual journeys. But how can we relight the fire?

• We acknowledge our need. We are honest with ourselves about our lack of spiritual vitality.
• We share the load. We take our life to God, we ask God to renew our perspective, to help us
• We Activate. We seek to live in a disciplined and spiritual way that keeps our aim true and our hearts centered in the love of Jesus Christ. To take the Psalmists words ‘We make the sovereign Lord our shelter and tell others about the wonderful things Gods can do!”

May God renew each of our lives today, through Jesus Christ and in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JOSEPH THE DREAMER

Readings: Psalm 105:1-6,16-22, Romans 11:1-2, 29-32, Matthew 14:22-33, Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, on August 7th 2011

A printable PDF version can be found here

Back in Joseph’s day, dreams were important. His father Jacob had been one whose life had been changed by that dream of a ladder with angels ascending and descending its rungs. Previously to Jacob’s encounter, Abimelech the King of Gerear (in Genesis 20:30) and also Laban (in Genesis 31:24) had received guidance from God in their dreams.

In Egypt and Mesopotamia the science of dream interpretation was a highly developed skill. An Egyptian papyrus that dates back to 1300 BC arranges dreams and their interpretations according to their symbol and meaning. It suggests that if we dream about a large cat then that is a good omen, for we shall be producing a large harvest. If however we dream of a deep well, that’s bad, for it is a premonition of being sent to jail.

If we happen to dream that we are wearing a pilot’s suit and being chased by a kangaroo through a field of Jello, then it means need to lay off the coffee before we go to bed at night.

Which is a round about way of stressing that there are dreams and there are dreams. Our subconscious likes to sort out the events of the day whilst we sleep. Sometimes, as this rearranging takes place, new insights may indeed come our way. The likelihood is, that whilst all of us dream, most of us will either awake with a confused recollection of our minds midnight ramblings or simply leave those dreams behind in our sleep and never recall them.

This morning we heard of the reaction of Joseph’s brothers to the dreams that he shared with them. At a later time in his life, his dreams would get him out of trouble, but right then, they were about to be his downfall. You have to be careful when it comes to dreams. As I say, there are dreams and there are dreams. The interpretation that you give to your dreams could lead to events that you hadn’t anticipated.

Joseph’s dreams appeared to be a two-edged sword. On the one-hand they did appear to be a communication from God, along the lines of what his father and the likes of Abimelech and Alban had received before him. They were certainly perceived as being enough of a ‘communication from the beyond’ that his brothers took these dreams to be a serious threat to their well-being.

The brothers also recognized that dreams were inseparable from the personality and goals of the dreamer. There was no doubt in the brother’s mind that Joseph, although he is their younger sibling, had it in mind to be the one in charge once their father was no longer around. After all, in his dream, Joseph pictured Jacob, his father, bowing down to him, as well as all of his brothers.

So the stage was set for a major confrontation between Joseph and his brothers. It had been coming for a while. Joseph’s father Jacob could sense it. One of the reasons he sends Joseph to meet his brothers is so that Joseph may make his peace with them. At first, in Shechem, Joseph cannot find them. Then through the help of a stranger he is directed towards Dothan.

I suspect that if he knew what was about to come his way, he would not have searched so hard. The brothers see him strolling towards them in that special coat his father gave him, and there, far from home, see their opportunity to put an end to his scheming and dreaming of domination over them.

For some of the brothers the decision to do away with Joseph had been made a long while back. It was simply a case of waiting for the opportunity. Others of the brothers, in particular Rueben, (who as the eldest would have to explain to the father what had happened to his favorite son), intensely disliked Joseph but felt that just removing him from their circle would be enough; that his death would accomplish no good purpose.

Joseph is set upon, his precious coat is torn into shreds, and he’s thrown into a pit whilst the brothers eat lunch and contemplate what they should do with him. Not a lot of love lost in that family!

Judah (an opportunist if ever there were one) sees the slave traders coming and sees a chance to benefit from Joseph’s misfortunes. Why kill the lad, when they could profit from his betrayal? Such a plan meets with all of the brothers’ approval. Rueben could have the satisfaction of knowing that they hadn’t murdered him, and the rest could be satisfied that Joseph was no longer a threat to their well being. All this and money in the bank!

The dastardly deed is done, and for the rest of the story.... well you know what became of him once he was taken into slavery. In the end he comes out on top. His dreams are fulfilled, but not in the way anybody could have predicted.

What can we learn from this account?

Sometimes life’s biggest setbacks turn out to be life’s great opportunities.

There’s a story about a man who becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck. Building for himself a small raft he eventually drifts to a desert island. There, in a wonderful Tom Hanks ‘Castaway’ fashion, he builds himself a shelter and survives on the food he had rescued for himself.

A ship appears on the horizon and he hastily builds a signal fire, pours the last remnants of fuel he has upon it, and desperately tries to signal the ship. But all in vain. The ship sails past.

Worse still, he has been a little too generous with the fuel oil. The fire gets out of control. Sparks fly onto the roof of his hut and it is only a matter of time before the little that he owned, the very supplies he treasured for his survival, are being consumed by a raging inferno.

All was lost. Without those essentials he reasoned that he probably couldn’t survive. Suddenly he noticed that the ship, which had earlier passed by, was now heading in his direction. He was soon to be rescued. Once on board he needed to thank the Captain. But he had a question.

“What made you turn around when you had already passed me by?”
“Why” explained the Captain, “we saw that impressive signal fire you made by setting your hut on fire. Good thinking that man!”

The very thing that seemed to seal his doom had turned out to be his deliverance. Was it the same with Joseph? Down in that pit his optimism must have reached an end. As he was dragged away by slave traders, he may well have been thinking that death would have been a kinder fate.

Yet over the period of the next few years Joseph became the means by which his people were saved from starvation and ultimately the nation was delivered from being absorbed into the pagan landscape that surrounded them. Despite the dysfunction in the family, the bad motives and thinly veiled ego’s, the cruelty and the favoritism, through Joseph, new-life came to a people of faith who had lost sight of what faith should be about.

It is hard to see anything good when crisis strikes our lives. We are no different than Joseph. Though it may well be our own fault that we end up in the mess we get into, still we fail to see the hand of God in our misfortunes. Only through the eye of faith can any sense be made of trials and suffering.

That eye of faith may well abandon us at our point of need. Our faith may well simmer or be overcome by the darkness of circumstance. We may well cry out against God or question why God has let us down.

Yet is this not the mystery of the Cross? There were no signs of glory on that dark day when they did away with Jesus Christ. Only pain and death and loss and darkness and grief. There’s a haunting line in Don McLean’s song, “American Pie”; “The Three men I admire most, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died”.

Was there ever a day that the music died more than upon than that day at Calvary? Was there ever a darker day than the crucified the One who came to save? Sometimes life’s greatest set-backs turn out to be life’s greatest opportunities.

Our Dreams are not always God’s Dreams

It was not the dream that God planted in Joseph’s life that caused his brothers to hate him. It was his arrogance in response to God’s calling and choosing that angered them. Maybe, if Joseph had the strength of character to see, that God chooses us as servants, not because of who we are, but in spite of who we are, there would have been a different story to tell.

Whilst the Bible speaks of the “Offence of the Cross”, I have a hard time believing that it is our authentic Christian lives, our faithfulness to Christ’s values that offends people. More often than not it is our assumption that when it comes to God, we hold all the high cards that turns people from God rather than towards them.

Like Jacob before him, it is only the grace of God that comes through for Joseph and his family and …his extended family… indeed for the whole nation. It is that same grace that is extended to us at the cross of Jesus Christ. His love is there for those who know they cannot deliver themselves, for those who are prepared to abandon their personal dreams in order dream great things for the kingdom of God.

Joseph will always be known as the dreamer. Yet he had to learn some important lessons about dreams. Learn the difference between his dreams and how God would fulfill God’s purposes. Learn to hold onto faith during times when the dream died. Learn that, at the end of the day, were it not for the Grace of God, there would be no hope in any persons dream.

May God help us dream dreams that guide us in the ways of true life, love and grace.

AMEN!

JACOB'S WRESTLING MATCH

Reading: Psalm 17:1-7, 15, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:22-33, Genesis 32:22-31
Preached at First Presbyterian Church Baldwin, NY, on July 31st 2011

A PDF printable version can be found here

Are any of you are familiar with the Wrestling programs on Television. The W.W.F. and W.C.W. and all the rest of them. Do you know who the most famous wrestler of all time is? The Rock? Jessie Ventura? Hulk Hogan? None of the above.

The most famous wrestler of all time, the one who has had more written about him, who has had the account of his one and only fight read in places where they have never heard ‘Wrestling Federations; the most influential wrestler of all time was a man called Jacob.

Jacob was born fighting, holding onto his twin Esau’s ankle as he came out of the womb. He fought and won the birthright that should have been his brothers by right. He fought to win the heart of the lady he loved. He was ready to fight Esau again should his twin brother seek to get his birthright back.

That’s how we find him at the beginning of our bible account. Getting ready to meet Esau. Jacob has a large family and many possessions. He splits them into groups so that if they were attacked, not all would be lost. Always the wrestler, he has alternative strategies up his sleeve. “I will win Esau over with gifts, and when I meet him, perhaps he will forgive me!”

As we’ve noted before, Jacob isn’t a particularly ‘godly’ person. Despite his visions of ladders descending from heaven and his life being the recipient of numerous promises and blessings from God, he is constantly maneuvering and manipulating, often without any thought of how his actions may have been hurting others. It’s almost as though God needs to finally get a grip on him and teach him that there was more to life than serving his own desires!

That seems to be exactly what happens. As he seeks to cross the river, Jacob is set upon. His attacker is sometimes described as a man, sometimes as an angel. Some suggest that the figure he wrestled was Jesus. The assailant’s exact identity is unknown. Yet when the bout is over, Jacob recognizes that it had been no normal fight, but that he had been struggling with God. Verse 30: "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved."

That’s why Jacob is the most famous wrestler of all. He wrestled God and survived to tell the tale! Out of the struggle he gained a new name, Verse 28 tells us "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." He was also left with a limp in his walk having suffered a dislocated hip in the fight. Orthodox Jews today still avoid eating the muscle of the thigh, in honor of Jacob’s wrestling match!

Jacob never intended to be a wrestler. Neither do most of us. Even those who enjoy watching bouts on the television would feel very nervous if it was they who were actually in the ring with some big bad bone-crusher! Yet life has a habit of throwing us into the ring, time and time again. A sermon I saw on this passage had for its title; “Life’s a wrestling match”.

Life surely can be that way. A wrestling match. A struggle. A fight. Things come along and get a hold of us. Health problems. Money problems. Family problems. Personal struggles and private battles. Corporate problems and things we face together. It’s not all sweetness and light, is it? There’s so much that could get us down and keep us there if we let it.

Our dilemma is much like Jacob’s, in that some of these struggles are things we have bought upon ourselves. It has been our own selfishness, or unprepared-ness or sometimes just plain stupidity that has got us into a mess. We’d like to have a magic wand to wish it all away, but this isn’t Harry Potter, it’s the real world. Other struggles just seem to come at us from out of nowhere. “Didn’t see that one coming!”

One thing I like about this story is the vagueness of the attackers identity. Could be a man, could be an angel. Could be some manifestation of the pre-incarnate Christ or personification of the Holy Spirit. Could be something as earthly as the river in which Jacob stood, or as heavenly as the river of life that is pictured flowing through heavens garden.

We are not given an exact identification. But we are told that in some mysterious way, God is mixed up with it, involved in it, and a part of it! There are struggles in our lives that we can name and others that we cannot seem to get a handle on. Dare we believe that in the midst of our struggles, God is involved?

Dare we, as did Jacob, get such a grip on our struggles that we have the audacity to pray, “Out of this, there will yet be some blessing, some insight, some treasure that I have yet to glimpse and make my own!” Is it not the case that we learn far more from our struggles than from those times when things are just to easy?

These struggles may indeed leave us limping as we go, yet even that can be a reminder to us that we have wrestled and made it through to the other side. Whilst Jesus Christ promises us that in His name we have the victory, we are never promised that we should travel through the battles without receiving any scars.

I wonder, if through faith, we can see that in the midst of these struggles, we are not alone, but in the same mysterious way as God was mixed up in Jacob’s struggle, God is also there in the midst of our conflicts. Sometimes it can be about conflicts in relationships. Sometimes it can be about getting ourselves to live as God wants us to. Sometimes it can be a conflict going on inside of ourselves. In these different situations the mystery is that we can actually be wrestling with God.

Reflecting on this passage one writer reflects on the journaling that they had started to do at the end of each day.

“Finally I’ve found a space to be alone at the end of a hard day. I’ve just begun to relax when suddenly some monster out of the darkness jumps me and my face is in the mud. I’m pitched into battle with something I cannot see, but which, if I don’t struggle with it, shall be my downfall.

As I grow older, I’m aware that each major struggle I undergo takes on these same familiar characteristics. And so Jacob wrestling with the angel becomes an increasingly poignant metaphor for me. Every personal conflict begins to look like that one, with it’s many forms:
It’s a struggle in the darkness.
It’s a struggle with the unknown.
Jacob wrestles an angel who seems just as afraid as he is.
Jacob wrestles his own fears.
Jacob tries to kill the angel, who’s intent is to bless him.
The angel gently allows Jacob to defeat himself.
Jacob, remembering the consequences of stealing his brothers
blessing, stifles the angels blessing.
Jacob and the angel eventually collapse in exhaustion.
In the light of the morning Jacob discovers, that through wrestling
with God, he has been wrestling also with himself.

Inevitably, such a struggle leaves me wounded and I will limp forever afterward. But it’s not until later that I realize that I wasn’t wrestling with some other creature, but with that which we may call the spiritual, or the holy, or even the divine. And it is then that I realize that I too, have been blessed. The strange thing is that I never really remember who won!”

There’s the strange thing about this wrestling match between Jacob and God. Who won? It would be ludicrous to suggest that God would lose! The intent of the angel is to bless Jacob, to establish him in a new relationship with God. This is a defining moment, marked by Jacob’s name being changed to that of “Israel”, the name eventually adopted by the nation. God’s purposes were achieved. God won!

God won, but Jacob didn’t lose. Jacob won. He gained the blessing. Jacob is listed in the ‘Hall of Faith’ of Hebrews Chapter 11. Despite his many failings, weaknesses and subsequent sorrows, there remained an underpinning of faith that enabled him to rise above his often-misguided actions.

Such a faith does not come without struggle. It would not come to Jacob, which implies that neither will we reach a maturity of faith, without conflict and struggling and wrestling with both the things of God and the circumstances that life brings our way.

There is a line in the Presbyterian Confession of Faith of 1967 that reads, “Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage”. So, too, is faith. Faith grows and life becomes enriched only as we commit together to worship, work, study and pray. There are no short cuts on the spiritual road God places before us.

There are things in our lives we need to work through with God. There are things God seeks for us to let go of, and we don’t want to. There are things that will come our way that will catch us totally by surprise. They may be pleasant, or they may be harsh.

So take courage. Be empowered by the Holy Spirit. Seek for God’s blessing in the midst of the struggles and refuse to give up till the blessing is yours. May the example of Christ encourage us. May the promises of Scripture inspire us. Let us seek to help each other as we travel along, (or maybe limp along), the road that leads towards better days.

AMEN

Rev Adrian Pratt