SCRIPTURE: Genesis 29:15-28
TEXT: 25When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” THEME: God is journeys throughout our lives. INTRODUCTION This is a middle story setting up the events for a longer saga. Like the “Empire Strikes Back” after the epic beginning with Star Wars, The Ewok’s installment fills in some background and sets us up for the events to follow. We were introduced to Jacob last week, the younger of twins, steeped in sibling rivalry, an opportunist, weaker than his older brother but cunning. After buying his brother’s birth right, he now has stolen the only blessing from their father, taking the promise from God, given to his grandfather, passed on to his father and reserved for his brother Esau, through some crafty deception and the help of his mother Rebekah, the blessing is now his as he escapes to his family’s ancestral homeland in Paddan-aram. He Immediately meets a girl watering her sheep at a well and falls madly in love. My Gosh, if we didn’t already know the story, it is like a soap opera. You can’t make things like this up. Truth is stranger than fiction. Telenovela! SCRIPTURE Laban appears to be a good guy, telling his nephew just because they were related that he shouldn’t work for free, “Tell me, what shall your wages be?” He already knew the Jacob was in love with is younger daughter Rachel, A good con artist will want us to think, that what they want us to do, was our own good idea. Jacob answered, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel” DEAL. Jacob is so in love that the seven years fly by. That is like waiting through four years of college and three years of a master’s program. Laban gathers the people for a wedding feast, but in the evening, he switches his daughters bringing Leah to Jacob. Aya! When Jacob wakes up in the morning, he realizes he has consummated a marriage with Leah and not Rachel. Telenovela! Jacob confronts Laban about the deception and he responds, “Oh I thought you knew that the younger daughter cannot get married until the older daughter is married first. Common knowledge really. That’s the way we do things here, according to our cultural norms, or don’t you abide by that kind of things?” Ooo, what a burn. So here is the con; Complete the wedding week in respect of Leah, in return for agreeing to work for Laban for another seven years he gave Rachel to Jacob for his wife. Laban and his sister Rebekah have inherited a conniving gene. Paired with beauty, it is a deadly combination. Laban has played Jacob masterfully and will profit from his labors for another seven years. God is recessive in this story, in much the same way God journeys with us at times. Not abandoning us but involved in weaving the details our stories together. Along with the daughters, Laban also gives a maid for each daughter. From this arrangement Jacob will sire 13 children that become the 12 tribes of Israel. APPLICATION This is a middle of the journey story, in a world that although good, is filled with inequities, injustice, trickery and greedy self-interest. How is God's provision found and understood amidst the drama of our world? This is a story of formation. From where we have met Jacob as an ambitious, self-centered, back stabbing, conniving individual into a participant in the mission of God. If the Bible were about karma, this passage would prove, “the sum of a person’s actions decides their fate in the future.” It seems that Jacob’s ill treatment of his brother Esau is repeated upon him; lying, deception, the exploitation of a person’s weakness, sibling rivalry, stealing and trickery. We may think that turnabout is fair play but it is not. If it is wrong, it is wrong, and just because it was done to us it does not mean that we get to do it back. The added promise given to Jacob at Bethel, is that God will be with him. And although it may not seem like it at the moment, God is. We all have times when God seems silent. Ineffective, what we were up against was so daunting, it feels like our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling. Although it is not very fun, just keep at it. Formation stories take time, to change culture, to change systems, to change attitudes, to change persons. The constant drum beat of righteousness, equality, respect, humanity has been played long and consistently. Yet there are those who ignore it, find it as an irritant, and try to suppress it. Last week we mourned the loss of Representative John Lewis. Contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr. He has been a constant force for civil rights. Coordinator of peaceful demonstration, sit ins, marches, and protest. He has been arrested, beaten, spat upon and has risen to be the conscience of the Senate, to do what is right, to do what is just for all people. Respected, listened to, honored. This is a journey that has been long that God created the undergirding foundation. He said, “'When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to say something,' He not only talked about activism but did it “Making some good trouble.” CNN's Jim Acosta and Haley Byrd reported: John Lewis said, “I felt when we were sitting in at those lunch counter stools, or going on the Freedom Ride, or marching from Selma to Montgomery, there was a power and a force. God Almighty was there with us.” He described an incident when, he was beaten while attempting to enter a "white waiting room.” "Many years later, one of the men that had beaten him came to his Capitol Hill office he said, 'Mr. Lewis, I am one of the people who beat you … on the bus, “He said, 'I want to apologize. Will you accept my apology?'" Accepting his apology and hugging the father and son, the three cried together, Lewis remembered. "It is the power in the way of peace, the way of love," Lewis said. "We must never, ever hate. The way of love is a better way." There may be times when God seems silent, but God is never inactive, God is always moving, weaving, using what has happened for God’s advantage, loving us, and calling us to participate in ‘God’s good trouble’. To move us toward an active Civil Rights, for us to eliminate sexism, for slavery in all of its forms to be eliminated, for all lives to matter, for public fund being used to heal and build communities rather than suppress, for new cultural habits that take our focus off of our self and placed on helping those in need, for the global community to find a cure for the Corona virus. CONCLUSION Telenovela is our story. We are filled with over the top emotions, extreme passion, unquenchable desire and have created complex dramatic plots. This is why God loves us so much. We are far from being boring. We are loved and God sees us as good, but Trouble has taken simplicity away from our lives, we are haunted by a fear of being found out, we live from one crisis to another. Our drama has become the focus of our overly stressed lives and we are blind to God’s guiding movements through the Spirit, leading in the background, writing a better end to our story. Faith opens our eyes to see what God is doing. Faith enables us to take a leap from our best laid plans for what God has to offer. Relationship with God moves us towards identity, assurance, self-confidence, security, love, stewardship, and mission. We can take responsibility for our actions instead of trying to run away from them, we can foster relationship instead of control them. We can change from how we have been to transformed into a better version of ourselves. We can be an Upgraded version of ourselves fixing the bugs, and living freely with God. We can change our culture, we can modify our traditions, we can move our country in another direction, taking what is good and making it better. This is an exciting drama of faith, a God inspired telenovela.
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SCRIPTURE: Genesis 28:10–19a
TEXT: 15aKnow that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, THEME: God travels with us through life. INTRODUCTION I have found it helpful to leave notes to my future self. Last week I was going to bring some stuff for the Rummage Sale so I left it on my front porch to load up when I went to my car. I got up to Dodge Hall and forgot to take those items with me. The next time I did that, I left my computer, wallet, water and face mask, on the porch too, and remembered. A sign, an altar, a marker from the past, for my future self to remember something in the past. SCRIPTURE Jacob, the heal grabbing brother, is running away from Esau’s anger. Oh no, he couldn’t just give his brother some of the lentil soup that he made, he had to sell it to him for his birth right. And now when their father was ready to pass on the blessing God had bestowed upon him, Jacob, disguises himself as his older brother, in his hairy jacket, to steal his blessing. Telemundo! You’ve gotta love this crazy, dysfunctional family. Esau is so angry he is ready to kill his brother. “Hey Jacob”, his mother calls, “I can’t stand these Hillbilly brides in my household. I forbid you to marry a local girl,” “Go back to my homeland and find a nice girl from there. You have been putting this off long enough, so Go Now!” The timing couldn’t have been better, so off Jacob goes. Away from his brother, (as fast as he can). He travels as far as he could as it gets dark, about 50 miles from home and he beds down for the night, in the wilderness, using a stone for a pillow. He dreamed that there was a ladder set up connecting heaven to earth, with Angels going up and down the ladder. Then the Lord,” The God of Abraham and the God of Isaac.” stood beside Him and repeated the promise of descendants, land and blessing to the world. This is the eighth time this promise is repeated, and God assures Jacob of always being with Jacob. This is a thin place, between heaven and earth, where the holy was experienced, Jacob marks with a stone altar and stone pillow on top. Then he renames the place Bethel, the “House of God”. APPLICATION God draws us into relationship just as we are and we begin our faith journey. As imperfect, broken and unique as we may be, we are called to participate with God in mission. Faith enables us to see how God can be found everywhere. How do we see God in the events that are unfolding today? Where are the thin places where God can be felt especially close? How does our mindfulness of God change the way we live? The stories of Jacob are favorites, because of how human he is. We sort of feel that if God can love Jacob, then God can love us too. We often feel that we disqualified ourselves from the love of God. We ate forbidden fruit; our jobs have caused us to go against our better judgment. We have found ourselves in messes that snowball into greater atrocities. Lying, cheating, deception, forgery, stealing, greed, selfishness, unbridled ambition has become the litany of our lives and yet Jacob is loved by God. Literally running for his life, Jacob stops for the night and as his life pauses, God speaks to him in a dream. If God can be found in the wilderness, away from everything, then God can be found everywhere. Thin places, between Heaven and earth are formed when we pause and allow God to speak to us. Beauty, art, music, the woods, prayer, nature, exhaustion, the wilderness, architecture, create pauses in our lives where we take a breath and God can speak. The church in the middle of the pandemic gives us a chance to pause and allows God to speak. The church in the middle of the inequality, speaks against the behavior, privilege, disrespect, and biases based on skin color. All lives mattering is the pause Black Lives Matters protest have given us. The church praying, healing, feeding, protesting in the middle of narcissistic governmental leadership that is more concern about personal numbers and re-election than the preservation of people’s lives is a pause for God to speak. God is speaking through food drives; God is speaking through the majority voices that are protesting against the empowered minority. God is speaking through the valiant efforts of health care workers risking personal safety to save the lives of strangers. God is speaking through people who care more about you than their own discomfort by wearing a mask in public. God is speaking through the members of this church who are preparing for the rummage sale, preparing for Sunday services, preparing to reopen our preschool. These are thin places that should be marked with an altar and stone pillow on top. The last visit I had with a seminary classmate lead to a discussion on memory. He said to make a memory’s imprint stronger, attach a feeling, a taste, a smell or a sound to that memory. Like the sounds of stones being stacked upon each other, or the smell of fragrant oil being poured out, or the fear we felt as God stood next to us, or the renaming of a place, a person, a bias, a fear, or an enemy. God events in our lives are thin places, where our faith has been inspired. Attach what we were experiencing to that memory of God. Remember what we smelled, heard, or tasted when God met us in that thin place. This is an altar marking a memory when God was near. And if appropriate, we can rename the event as friend, human, forgiven, accepted, peace, respected, empathy, or loved by God. CONCLUSION Take note of God’s provision in this pandemic. Take a note of the persons who have checked in on you from time to time and was a God send. Name something that you weren’t sure how it was going to work out but God’s intervention made it have a good ending. Names have been changed in this time of civil unrest when our bias have been brought to light and color has been drained away. We wonder what character, will portray the Washington D.C. football players? Name calling reveals our character, more than the person being called a name. Marks of faith from the past are notes to our present self of what God has done. Our faith, is marked by events of the activities of God and how we can entrust our lives and future to God. The stories in Genesis are faith markers of how God connects us with a holy DNA, of how God visits to encourage us, of a God who hears the cries of all, of how embraceable we are to God, of how God’s ways are good for us to live in our ordinary lives, and of how God loves that we are different and has a unique relationship with each of us. These markers of faith are reminder to our future self that we are not alone, there is much more ahead, that God will be there to help us, and if God can meet Jacob in the wilderness in between home and the future, God will be with us in whatever tomorrow we will be living. Mark our faith today as a note from our present self to our future self of what we should not forget about God. SCRIPTURE: Genesis 25:19-34
TEXT: 27When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. THEME: God loves diversity. INTRODUCTION We are a combination of talent and gifts, likes and dislikes, intelligence and humor, wisdom and strength, personality and stalwartness, that make us unique. Our Faith in God gives us a common bond, but because we are unique God’s relationship with each of us can be a little bit different from each other. We will know God differently because of our adventures, mishaps, response to the world, crisis, love, and compassion that we have lived through with God. The irony of this passage, is that it is about story about twins, that should be the epitome of sameness, but are so very different from each other from the very start, as we all are with our relationship with God and `as members of the family of God. SCRIPTURE Today we have the story of how God continues to move the promise on to the next generation. Isaac’s wife Rebekah is having difficulty conceiving, so Isaac sonnets with God through prayer and God answers. Rebekah is having a painful pregnancy and connects with God through prayer and God speaks to her about having twins. They will be different from each other. One will be stronger than the other and they will break from cultural tradition as the elder will serve the younger. As the boys are born, they are very different in appearance, interest, vocation, aptitude, temperament, strength, desire and faith. The parents too had their own favorites, maybe as a human indication, that there can be different type of individuals in the family of God. God does not work the same ‘cookie cutter’ way with all people, but God loves us in different ways because we are different. Another observation of this story is that God does not impose upon us, as we have the capacity to choose for or against God. We are at different stages of spirituality and sensitivity to God. The humans in this story are far from perfection, like us. God can handle our imperfections, that we are not all the same or at the same place in our relationship with God (even if we are twins). And yet, we all can participate in the designs of God’s mission. The culture crossing event comes when the eldest son decides he does not need the greater inheritance and would prefer, the immediate comfort of red lentil soup. I know some of hunters, who travel as light as they can and don’t pack any food with them on a hunt. When you are on the hunt, pursuing and animal, your adrenaline keeps you from feeling hungry, thirsty or have to use the rest room. But once you are done hunting or there is no game in sight, you are famished, parched and got to go. Esau was in from his hunt. His adrenaline was down, and he was feeling his hunger, tiredness, thirst and impatience. He was ‘Hangry’. All he wanted to do was to sit down and eat something. So, when he smells the stew cooking, all the hunter wanted to do was eat. But here is the another take on Esau, after binge watching several seasons of “Life Below Zero”, following the stories of individuals living around the Alaskan Arctic Circle, they live a subsistence life style away from the conventions of modern society. Hard, grueling, lives, off of the grid, but content, meaningful, purposeful lives where survival has its own rewards. Esau may have been content with his life and didn’t need any more, except for something to eat and was willing to give up having more, for some for food right now. There may have been expectations, responsibilities, relationships and obligations attached to the inheritance that Esau didn’t want so, he was willing to depart from his inheritance. We carry the hidden value that more is always better, but that is not always true. This is a break away from our conventional way of thinking. APPLICATION In a family, its members can be different and diverse. Parents will have different relationships with each child, and the treatment from one child to another may not be equal, but fair. God does this too. When we see differences in our world, how can our differences be embraced for a view of a diverse, healthy and loving world? Two of the four questions Pat Dutcher-Walls asks when she read the Bible is “What does this passage say about God?” and “What does this passage say about Human Beings?” None of the people in this story are perfect, but where ever they are in their relationship with God, they participate in God’s mission. The Fourth of July and the live streaming of the musical Hamilton has brought up conversations of the moral character of our nation’s forefathers. They were not always as noble, self-sacrificing or honorable. They were human beings, using their freedom to create an inspired government that respected people and shared power and responsibility. So, despite their sin, they came up with a concept of a democratic government that requires all of its citizens to be on their best behavior. God does not require us to be freed from sin before we can participate in the good that God is doing. God’s capabilities are beyond the errors of our ways; While we were yet sinners, while we yet imperfect, while we were doubting and fearful, God is able to accomplish good through us. For whatever reason Esau refused to participate in God’s promises, God was able to accomplish the mission, even if boundaries of culture and tradition had to be crossed with Jacob. We don’t need to tear down statues of our unsavory past. They don’t always represent who we are today, but they should be reminders of where we have been, how we have behaved and what it took for us to get where we are today. God can use us, even though we are different, even though we are in different stages in our relationship with God, even though we are not perfect, so we should not pretend that we are. Instead we should admit our bias, our sin, our failures and be more gracious with ourselves and each other as God’s story continues to be written in our lives. The other two questions Pat Dutcher-Walls asks when reading the Bible is about our relationship with God and our relationship with each other. God can have a relationship with each of us and does not expect us all to be the same. There are different ways that we can participate in the activity of God. But having God in our lives will influence the way we live. We will have an ongoing dialogue with God through prayer. The Holy Spirit will guide us. Our assumptions will be challenged with God’s truth and with God’s help, we have hope for a better future. When our difference, do not divide us, we have the potential to create enriched communities. Esau marries two Canaanite women, that displease his parents so he then marries his Uncle’s Ishmael’s daughter. So, the Edomites become a combination of Canaanites, Ishmaelites, and Israelites. As president Trump came into office, there was a statistic that stated that the majority race in the United States is Mixed. Meaning that there wasn’t a white, black, or Hispanic majority but the majority race was mixed. It is interesting that although Mixed race is the majority, they act under the illusion of being in the minority. Imagine what our communities would look like if, although different, we would foster these relationships into churches, communities and voting blocks. There could be changes in attitudes and in how we treat each other on all levels. CONCLUSION Relationship with God does not mean that we all conform to live the same relationship with God. If twins couldn’t do it, why should we try to be the same. God loves us the way we are and then journeys with us, through; joys and sins, struggles and goodness, wandering and triumph. If we had to wait to be sinless before we started to serve God, then no one could do anything. There would be no sermons and everyone would be seated in the pew. But God takes us were we are, takes our willing parts to participate in mission, takes our imperfect circumstances and answers our prayers, speaks to us, guides our heart closer to God’s own heart. God can handle our diversity and inspires us through our sin, failures, and waywardness, to be insightful, wise, compassionate, loving, provocative, inventive and missional. We each have a unique relationship with God, to love God in different ways and create and foster communities that are enriched by diversity. SCRIPTURE: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
TEXT: 67b He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. THEME: God’s ways are for our living in ordinary time. INTRODUCTION Pentecost is the longest season in the church calendar, taking us from roughly the end of May all the way to the end of November. It is so long, that it is also called Ordinary Time. There are no Holidays in this season for us to look forward towards or to prepare for. In this season we concentrate on how we live our ordinary lives with God and the stories of faith. Have you ever asked your parents how they met? Was it a story of romance, of chance meetings, of things coming together against all odds, about right timing, attraction, valiant gestures, commitment and devotion? So many things could have gone wrong but everything went right. SCRIPTURE Today’s passage is a story of romance. God loves a good love story. The setting is in a different cultural and time, Rebekah is living her ordinary life, waking up in the morning, doing her chores, going to the well as she does every day to get water, when God, through Abraham’s servant, intersects her life. In order for the Promise made to Abraham to continue, the next part of the story needs participants for another next generation. Isaac needs a wife, but not on from Canaan. He needs to marry someone like himself, from where Abraham and Sarah hailed from in Haran. Where their values, traditions, culture, and wrestle with the Holy is much more like his own, and not like the inhabitants of where they presently lives. Then, his descendants will be more than the stars in the sky. Mission meets Rebekah at the watering hole. The well was and the Ancient singles bar. Everybody needed water, and so everybody met at the well. Locals as well as strangers. Abraham’s servant knew this and begins his day with a prayer, “God of Abraham, if you do this, then I will know”. If I ask for water, and the girl will give it to me and offer to water my camels also, that will be the sign, that this is the one for my master’s son. A woman of extreme hospitality towards a stranger, kind thinks about others, strong, not lazy, self-sacrificing and humble. Before he could put an “Amen” on that prayer, up comes Rebekah, doing what she always does. As she gets her daily portion of water, this stranger asks her for a drink. She graciously, sets aside her own needs, lowers the water jug to give, someone she has no obligation to be nice to, who will probably never see her again, but has thirst, a drink of water. Her generosity doesn’t end there as she offers to water his camels too. She does what she would ordinarily do for anyone. An ordinary life is met with by the Missional God. Immediately, Abraham’s servant makes his intentions known with a dowry We may not like how Rebekah is not given a choice in this marriage or in how she is not treated as an equal partner in the negotiations. There are times when our faith stories do not challenge the cultural norms of the day but God is able to operate within the circumstances that we are in, to accomplish what God desires. God will help us in horrible relationship as well as orchestrate a match where a couple will endure, work together, and be lifelong partners in life. Approaching the foreign land that will be her new home, Rebekah sees a striking figure in the distance. She fell off her camel. It was Isaac; they were married and fall in love. APPLICATION Our ordinary lives show God's providence and God's will, even though we don't hear God's voice addressing us directly. How can our ordinary practice of kindness open communities to radical compassion, courage and trust in God? At our last Zoom Conference Call with our Conference Minister, David Popham, he read portions of David Kinnaman’s book, from the Barna Study Group. Kinnaman wrote about how Christianity is perceived by the younger generation. This is what the church’s ordinary life looks like to them; we are out of touch, irrelevant, judgmental, homophobic, political, old fashion and only interested in others to evangelize them. At first's hearing, the fur at the back of the neck stood up. This maybe how we are perceived, but that is not what we are like. Then I started explaining why we were the way we were. Making excuses. And finally I had to grapple with the fact, that although we may not be irrelevant, judgmental, homophobic, political, old fashion, or insensitive, we are missing young adults and youth in our congregation. I know that this is not what our ordinary lives are like, but this is how we are being perceived. Trying to change popular opinion is really hard. This is part of the problem we are having in our nation right now with the how one segment of the population is treated by law enforcement, while another segment of our population gets different treated just because of a perceived bias. What changes bias, is speaking up against it and positive one on one interaction that destroy our ill-informed stereo types. This is why Wanda Sykes on Netflix says, “you gotta make black friends”. This is the story of a White Nationalist and Orthodox Jew university students who got to know each other through Friday Night Sabot dinners. This is the hope that when people get to know us, and know that we go to Wailuku Union Church, they have a chance to change their perception of the what we are like, who we are, and who God is. This is why we like selling soda at the county fair with our preschool parents. This is why we like the work of our Food Pantry. This why we like the coordination for the Rummage sale in Dodge Hall to have clothes and things available for people to purchase at a really great price. This is why we like to do our COVID-19 Facebook and limited seating worship services. This why we like our preschool reopening in August. This is why we like the Wailuku Mission Housing project we are doing. Wailuku Union Church’s ordinary life is filled with extreme hospitality, kindness, mindfulness, strength, energy, self-sacrificing, and humble service of others. We just have to be willing to let people get to know us, for the wonderful, funny, happy, hardworking, compassionate, faithful, praying people that we are. We tend to be introverted but, our acts of evangelism, can be as simple as to let the Holy Spirit guide us to listen to someone else’s story and by doing so, have them learn a little bit about ourselves and the church. There are all kinds of stories out there about how COVID-19 is affecting our lives. As we listen to the stories, we can identify where God has been present to the storyteller. What are the stories of where the Spirit has been active? What might these stories be telling our about what God is doing? Something our ordinary life can do. CONCLUSION Our relationship with God gives us the hope for chance and a transformed life. With God in our lives, what is ordinary to us, can be seen is extraordinary by others. We want people to get to know us for who we are and not for what their bias tells them. They can only change their bias of us, as we are willing to listen to their stories first, and by doing so, have their ordinary lives intersected our missional God. It’s a great love story. |
Pastor robbSermons Archives
April 2024
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