Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
Abiding Love
May 25, 2008
In the last several weeks, Betty and I have been daydreaming about being home-owners once again. The only other time we owned a home, it was more than ten years ago in suburban Maryland, and we sold it several months after I moved to pursue a career in sunny Florida. Given the radical difference in the cost of living between the suburbs of Baltimore and the rural North Country, I had harbored some delusional thinking about how affordable real estate should be up here. After looking at a few places that would be in a comfortable price range for us, we came away feeling more than a little shocked at how little housing we could afford to buy.
I also did a little research on buying a lot and putting a manufactured home on it, but the estimate on clearing the property, putting down a foundation, and hooking it up to water, sewer, and utilities was nothing short of startling. Then if we wanted to take the next step and actually put a manufactured structure on it, we were looking at some serious money for a home that would end up depreciating in value over the years. So one night not so long ago, I was searching the internet for an old-fashioned concept: what about pre-fabricated housing? Do they even use that language any more, or has it been replaced completely with modular housing?
I was pleasantly surprised to find a good many references to pre-fabricated housing, and one of them in particular caught my eye. Their housing made use of Structural Insulated Panels, which I had heard of because of the extremely high efficiency of these panels in insulating homes. As I explored their website with growing interest and enthusiasm, I read paragraph after paragraph in praise of their product, and was totally enthralled with their cost comparisons between purchasing a manufactured home and purchasing a home built with Structural Insulated Panels.
Buoyed by a growing sense of optimism that I might well have found the answer to our dreams of home ownership, I excitedly opened the section listing their floor plans, and clicked on several of the models to see how much it would actually cost me to buy one of them. I was astounded to see that a model ranging from 1100 to 1200 square feet would only cost me around $33,000, and that if I wanted to add a garage, that would only be an additional $11,000. Nearly trembling with excitement, I pushed ahead into the sections that told me how I could contact them to start planning for our new home. By now, I was literally racing through the print, primed for action and wondering how soon we could get started.
As I was racing along, with my heart pounding and my breath bated, my brain did a little hiccup thing that acts like a speed bump whenever it happens. Since my mind was racing ahead, I hit the speed bump doing about 75, and I had to crawl out of the back seat with a lump on my head to see what was going on, and to try to figure out what had caused my hiccup. It seemed like it had something to do with what their price didn’t cover… there it was! Buried in plain sight, right in the middle of a long and complex sentence, way down toward the bottom of their website, it was clear as day: “windows, doors, and other finish materials not included.”
For decades, my entire family has had a standing joke about the quintessential sleazy salesperson. So if you were in the showroom trying to buy a new car, this person would be rubbing their hands over the adding machine in gleeful anticipation of the sale, finalizing a few details: “So would you like tires on your new car? Ka-ching! How about a windshield? Ka-ching! And most of our customers like steering wheels and headlights. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!” Here it was, in plain sight, the epitome of the slick salesperson trying to sell me a new home. “Would you like a door with that? Ka-ching! Perhaps some windows to let in the light? Ka-ching! Would you like to put any siding on the house? Ka-ching! Most of our customers these days prefer to have indoor plumbing and electricity. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!”
In the meantime, our daydreams of finding an abiding place to call home remain in the fantasy realm. In a similar vein, people are looking for a lasting home for their souls, a way of connecting and abiding with God that renews their life energy and helps them find meaning in their rapidly changing world. Many people have been disappointed and disillusioned in this quest. In some cases, their disappointment has to do with their expectations that connecting with God should be relatively easy to do, and shouldn’t cost much in the way of time and energy. Ka-ching!
Others have been disillusioned by the realities of bringing a group of people together who think very differently about the way things should be organized and handled. If you bring a widely divergent variety of views onto the same property and try to reach a consensus on how to proceed, the resulting fireworks can turn people off. Ka-ching! Still others come into their faith filled with enthusiasm, their hearts pounding with inspiration, eager to pursue their vision for God at work in and through their lives. The speed bumps in life hit these folks especially hard, and some of them never look back at the spirituality they left behind. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!
So how can we connect with God in ways that renew our life energy, help us find meaning in our rapidly changing world, and still maintain that vital connection after crashing through the obstacles and pitfalls of life? Some of it, I believe, has to do with the way we look at God and how we define ourselves in relationship to God. For most of us, our understanding of God has been shaped dramatically by our relationship with our parents and the other important people in our lives. Most of us were raised with a very strong and basic understanding of how our behavior resulted in consequences. More specifically, we were trained to be responsive to the suggestions, requests, and downright commands of our parents. If we did what was asked of us, things went better for us than if we neglected our chores, or defied our folks, or were so arrogant as to be disrespectful. What happens is that we carry this basic understanding of the consequences of good behavior and bad behavior over into our theology.
The result is that we can internalize a view of God as the righteous enforcer of rules and regulations, with very clear implications that if we obey God, then things are going to go a lot better for us than if we neglect our Christian duties, or defy God, or become so arrogant as to be disrespectful toward God, in which case we deserve punishment. With this kind of theology, the wonderful promises of an abundant spiritual life can take a rather cruel twist in our minds, because our strong and basic understanding of consequences tells us that if we behave, then God should reward us by making our lives go smoothly. When things don’t go smoothly, the only conclusion we can reach that is consistent with a universe based on punishment and reward is that we somehow misbehaved.
Having been stuck in this quandary on a number of occasions, I can openly admit to you that God begins to resemble that quintessential sleazy salesperson when I start thinking this way. The spiritual home I was expecting in this lifetime in repayment for everything I had done for God was missing some key components, and the disillusionment rocked me to the core of my being. In my efforts to shed an old way of thinking that no longer worked for me, I began to view God from a completely different perspective. I believe that it was this perspective which had revolutionized the life of Jesus, and one which had made his ministry so incredibly productive and fruitful.
At first glance, his teachings seem to reinforce our old worldview, the one based on rewards for obedient behavior, and punishment for bad behavior. He draws a clear parallel to his obedience to his heavenly Father and his expectation that if we want to abide in love, then we need to obey his commands. At face value, it seems to be the same old story couched in new language. But what if Jesus had a different understanding of obedience to divine directives? What if he looked at this relationship in such radically new terms that the speed bumps of life rocked people right out of the ruts they were in and pointed them toward a completely different understanding of God?
The very word “commandment” has a way of rankling people even before they know what the commandment is about. It conjures up frightening images of painful consequences for our moral lapses, our ingratitude, our indifference to others, and all of the other things that make us sweat when we ponder Judgment Day. But what if those very commandments were intended to steer us away from dangerous and painful situations? Every one of the ten commandments has to do with creating a safe environment for peace, love and justice to flourish on earth.
When a parent tells a young child not to go out into the street, they don’t issue the command because they’re looking for a reason to punish the child, they do it because they don’t want their child to be injured or killed in traffic. Their command springs from their love and their concern for the welfare of their sons and daughters. So, too, the commands of God are not issued because God is looking for a reason to hurt us. Rather, those divine directives spring from the everlasting love and concern that God has for each and every one of us as children of the living God.
Likewise, the concept of obedience sometimes inspires our defiance, because we want to know just how far we can push it before we start seeing consequences. There is something reassuring in knowing that people in authority over us care enough to enforce some boundaries and limits. But there are some subtleties in the word that we interpret as “obey”, and those subtleties are usually lost in the translation. In its most ancient setting, the word referred to keeping watch over something valuable or precious. We all know that if we value something and want to protect it, we’re going to be thinking about it, and directing some time and energy to safeguarding that which is precious to us.
This is especially true when it comes to the relationships which are important to us. If we are going to safeguard the precious relationships, then we are going to be thinking about the people involved, and directing time and energy to maintain those life-giving connections. In its most ancient setting, the concept of keeping the commands of God has to do with safeguarding a connection with God which inspires life, love, hope, and faith in us. It has to do with spending so much time thinking about it that it starts to shape the way we treat others, as we are present to them in the context of an abiding love that has transformed our lives.
I didn’t need quick and easy answers to the questions perplexing me as I crawled out of the back seat after hitting another speed bump in life. I needed someone to love and support me as I wrestled with those perplexities. Those experiences of love clear the lot and lay a foundation for hope, faith, and love to flourish in our lives. Living in abiding love gives us more than a house to live in for a season or two in life. Living in abiding love gives us a place for our souls to call home… for an eternity. Living in abiding love has a way of righting our wrongful thinking, of inspiring hope for today, and of being bounced far enough out of our ruts to point us in the right direction.
So say goodbye to the ultimate sleazy salvation salesperson (ka-ching!) and say hello to the God who creates a safe place in our souls where abiding love can transform us.
Order of Service May 25 , 2008 Back to Sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
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