Delayed Blessings

Anointed with God’s Blessing

                What were you doing in June of 2009? Can you remember? It was 5 years ago. Savannah turned 10 that month. It was the first year of the Obama presidency. In June of 2009 Bowe Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.  I don’t know how he felt but if it were me I wouldn’t have expected to live very much longer after being captured by the Taliban. For 5 years he was a prisoner of war, but just yesterday president Obama announced that he is free as part of an agreement with the Taliban for a prisoner swap.

The thing is there were signs of life that kept his parents and the State Department going. He was captured on June 30; the Defense department classified him as “missing-captured,” On July 3^rd.  Two weeks later the Taliban released a video showing Bergdahl and his ID tags. In December of that year there were two more videos, then another video in April of 2010. Proof of life; signs of hope.  The State Department started making offers to swap prisoners.  And it took until yesterday to make it happen.

Delayed blessings. 

A trip to the lake last weekend meant that we had to get in the water.  It was
too cold to swim.  However after a long winter that didn't really matter. 

I’m sure it didn’t seem to that soldier that he was being blessed.  But he is on his way home.  Now he will have to begin the process of healing which may never fully happen in this life. But at least he gets the opportunity. That’s what we all have in common right now.  The opportunity to live this life today.

Jesus said “Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Are any of you looking to find some rest from the labors of life this morning?  Jesus is here with you. Bowe Bergdahl was a prisoner of the Taliban for 5 years and now he gets to have some rest.  Jesus offers us rest from the things that weigh us down.  Tell Jesus about the rest you need.  Open yourself to the rest that he offers it may look different than you expect.

In the story of Noah that I read from a few minutes ago the mountaintops were uncovered. It is our temptation; it is our desire to have “mountaintop experiences.” We want the miraculous healing.  We want the Special Forces to go in and rescue our citizens from their captors in dramatic fashion. But life is rarely like that. Sometimes the cancer doesn’t go away. Sometimes the sound of the helicopters never comes. And the future seems unsure.

We want the blessing and we want it as soon as possible.  But sometimes the blessing is delayed.  Often times the blessing comes in a way that is unexpected.

Noah could have got off the boat when it came to rest on the mountain top, when they were first exposed, but he waited. He waited for what? To see where things were going? For a sign from God? I don’t know what he was waiting for.  If it were impatient me; if I were on a boat for 150 days with a bunch of animals I would have balanced on the slipperiest rock outside of the boat I could find. Think about it it’s like staying on a boat from now until the end of October (no plumbing, no buffet). 

He waited. It wasn’t until the dove brought the leaf.  And he waited another week and the dove brought a branch. He knew that’s where the blessing was.  He knew it was time to get off the boat. Mountain top experiences are out there. But it’s after you cultivate and it’s after you prune, and after you harvest.  It’s after the work that you get the harvest.  It’s then the fruits come. Then the anointing comes.  My friends it’s time to begin to cultivate what God has given us.  God has set us stewards of abundance so that we can be God’s blessing to others.

The time wasn’t right for Noah to leave the Ark.  Not until the Dove came back with the leaf, then the branch then not at all.

Before Noah sent out the dove he sent out a raven. The raven went out and found no place to rest. In Jewish tradition the Raven is an unclean animal. The dove is a clean animal.  The dove eventually found rest.  I remember another time in scripture that a dove found rest.  Jesus was baptized by his cousin John in the Jordan River and the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and RESTED on him in the form of a dove.

Jesus Said, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Noah sent out the dove and it brought back a leaf of an olive tree. The thing is about olive trees is that they don’t grow on mountain tops; they don’t grown in high elevations. So the waters of the flood must have receded quite a bit to the lower elevations an then to grow leaves.

Sometimes the smallest sign of life is enough to hold on to.

Poinsettia leaf in bible just a plant leaf. For me it’s a symbol. Olive leave is just a leaf why does it matter that the dove brought back the olive leaf? There is the fact about olive trees growing in lower elevations, also an olive tree is where we get olives and from olives we extract olive oil.  We as a faith tradition have consecrated, anointed things with olive oil for centuries.

 A few generations after Noah there was Jacob and Jacob had a dream, a dream where God promised to be with him and his family until his family is spread across the earth like dust. And all families of the earth will be blessed by his family. We know Jacob is the ancestor of our Lord Jesus and has indeed blessed the whole earth through him. Jacob woke from his rest and  consecrated the rock with oil and said,  If God will be with me and keep me and give me bread to eat “Thin this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, will be God’s house, of all that you give me I will surely give the tenth to you.”

He poured oil on the rock to consecrate it, to anoint it.

 The word “Christ” means the anointed one. It is in Christ Jesus that we have the blessings of God. It is through Jesus that the whole world is blessed. Jesus said we can come to him and find rest but he also says that we need to take on his yoke.  We need to eventually get off the boat.

 “It’s time to get off the boat”

St. Paul church you are in a position that many churches of this size are not in.  In many of them you will hear things said like, “If only we could pay the bills” well we can pay the bills. “If we had a gym like the big church down the street we could really attract the youth.” We have a gym. “If we had people who are qualified to teach and to build a teaching ministry that would really be something,” I’ve never seen a congregation with more experience and expertise in teaching.  We have the olive leaf. We may not have manifested the full blessing of God in this place but we have the leaf and the branch.  We have the promise of the blessing. It’s time to get off the boat.

“Our Mission”

If we had just one year to live how would we spend that time as a church?  Would we spend it building a building? Do we want to spend our precious time building facilities? Or should we be building people? You all have said that you don’t want to build a building. We have a facility, so we ought to be focused on building disciples. That means following an intentional path.  We have a discipleship team formulating that path. The skits that we see every Sunday are getting us ready for that path.  We have a hospitality team that will invite people into that process. You are already invited into that process. But our purpose isn’t just to grow the people that are here right now but is to go out into the world and to grow new disciples. 

The vision for this place that is emerging is to make this a place of community outreach. So that this place is a source of life, love and support for the people who live in this area. So that this place becomes a familiar comfortable place for the people who are our neighbors. A Day-care or a pre-school in this building would do that.  It would be an initial step into this place where we can build relationships with people and invite them into that process of growth in Jesus Christ. So that we can build disciples in this place.  We are not going to build a new building but we are going to fulfill our mission statement to “Know Christ and to make him Known.”

So how is it with you today? When we dedicate ourselves to resting in God we become the sacrament in the lives of others.

Would you pray with me?