Start Swinging

Numbers 13:25-14-9
Matthew 3:1-10

Start Swinging

A good harvest is a gift of God given through the work
and understanding of His people.

Psalm 27

The Lord is my light and my salvation—
    whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
    of whom shall I be afraid?

² When the wicked advance against me
    to devour me,
it is my enemies and my foes
    who will stumble and fall.
³ Though an army besiege me,
    my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
    even then I will be confident.

Psalm 23 The words of King David as he faced almost certain death at the hands of his son.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

He had confidence in the Lord since his youth. When David faced the Giant Goliath it wasn’t in fear.  David said, “David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. ⁴⁶ This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head…  All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

We have that confidence and more! There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ! Jesus is the Good Shepherd that protects his flock.  Jesus says, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

But we face our own giants.  It isn’t a 9’ tall warrior challenging us to a duel to the death.  It’s not even the giants that face most congregations in the United States.  I have been talking with several of you and I have come to learn that this gathering of God’s people is particularly skilled at managing challenges and moving forward with courage and vision.  But we do have giants to face.  The giants we face are the ones we see every morning in the mirror.

The Israelite spies went into the land that God promised them and they reported seeing giants and they were afraid.  They saw a land flowing with milk and honey but they determined the danger to be too high to risk entering this land. They came back with some fruit of the land.  It was good fruit but it wasn’t enough to convince many to risk what they already had. 

In the Gospel lesson John the Baptist referred to producing fruit.  The good fruit, the land flowing with milk and honey, the good fruit that we ought to be producing is not only a reference to food for sustenance but is more about living on, and trusting in the food that God provides; the eternal food; the spiritual sustenance of trusting in God. 

There is nothing in this world that can separate us from that.

But there are giants.  There are those things that cause us fear. There are those things that prevent us from entering the Promised Land, things that prevent us from living the life that God intends for us. So what are these giants? Is if fear of our neighbors, what they’ll think of us?  Is it fear of the government? What holds us back from being fully the people that God intends us to be?

The Giant that we must overcome and overcome on a daily basis is our in-born, broken nature.  Our nature is brilliantly illustrated in the story of Adam and Eve.  They were given everything they needed to live a happy, eternal life.  But they wanted what they were told they could not have.  They reached up and took fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  The one tree God said they could not eat from.

We do that don’t we?  Humanity I mean.  Just think of the “enlightenment.” The advances in scientific knowledge to describe and understand how things work in nature is astounding.  Human mastery over our environment miraculous.   Many tend to have the understanding that the human has been elevated and we have become self-sufficient and have outgrown our need for religion to explain the world. Our understanding has evolved and now sees ourselves as masters of our own destinies.  But just like Adam and Eve, we wouldn’t have anything unless God made it available in the first place. 

I love science.  I appreciate science.  We should embrace science.  But understand also that it is merely understanding better, the way God ordered the universe. 

But the trap is to understand the world like the story Jack and the bean stalk.  In that story Jack was given some special ability (magic beans) and he was able to ascend to a different world.  Where he ceased the Goose that laid the golden eggs.  He came back to his world.  Was pursued by a giant who was the guardian.  So Jack severed the connection with this other world because he got what he wanted.

It was jacks power to ascend.  It was his power to take what he wanted.  It was his power to decide what we would and would not let in his world from that other world.

Contrast that with the faith filled world view. 

We live in a world that is constantly being breathed into existence by God.  At its very foundations is God.  We are not physical bodies with a soul.  We are souls with a physical body. 

In Exodus chapter 20 where the Ten Commandments are given it says, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”  We are not to worship the physical. But everything that is physical was given by God.  The trees in the garden were all from God.  We are gifted with an intellect and a free will to investigate all these gifts from god but not to worship them or our mastery over them.

However when Jesus came, he came in a body.  He came in physical form.  Jesus sanctified the incarnational existence. Only his flesh was not corrupt.  Only his flesh knew no sin.  Only his flesh was broken and given for your salvation.

And when we accept the gift of salvation the Holy Spirit comes and lives in us and Jesus promises that if we have just the tiniest amount of faith the Holy Spirit will do great things through us.  But we have to face our giants. You all have trusted God in the past.

We have to trust God as we travel on this road of discernment.  How can we see our mission as a community of Christ followers through the lens of what God envisions for us?  Blessings have flowed down from heaven to us.  So we have to discern what it is that God would have us do next.  But before we can move forward we have to defeat the giant.

So what are the specific giants that stand in our way? What are the things that frighten us about this discernment process? More than a couple people have come to me and have said “Pastor Jon, I do not want to go door to door evangelizing. Well I know how I have received folk who have come to my door and I have come to the conclusion that that is not the best way to share the love of Christ. I don’t particularly want to do that either. But I do want to reach out to the community more.  I want to demonstrate Christ’s love in multiple ways. By sharing resources, by providing services. By reaching out with compassion in times of trouble, in times of need and in times of want. By reaching out in times of celebration of their victories.  So that they know that this is a gathering of people in whom the presence of Christ can be felt.

The sacrament of Holy communion we have Christ with us in a very unique way. Do this in remembrance of me. We eat the bread and drink the cup and we find forgiveness for our sins as we confess them to the lord.  We find healing where there was brokenness. Those things in us that are unholy can be transformed and healed and they need not be a hindrance to us anymore because they are no longer a hindrance to God. When we look in the mirror we are supposed to see ourselves the way God sees us, not the way we often see ourselves when se see the sin, the failure.  But when God looks at us he sees perfection.  He sees his son Jesus who is the very reflection of himself. He sees Jesus in us. And he is waiting for us to claim our inheritance and his children as brothers and sisters to Jesus.  We need to start to envision this community of his Children the way He sees us. And start to do the work of making our perceived reality look more and more like His envisioned reality.

So, how is it with you today?  If John the Baptist is right that the axe is laying at the root of the tree and  God will remove anything in me that does not produce fruit, then I say “Lord, start swinging”  if we have to take up our slings and face a giant like Goliath, then I say, “Brothers and sisters, start swinging.”