SCRIPTURE: Deuteronomy 34:1-12
TEXT: 4c but you shall not cross over there.” THEME: Living with God is the reward. INTRODUCTION Makiki Christian Church and I have been preaching from the same lectionary passages. So, when I have the time, I will Zoom in to hear how Pastor Wayne Ibarra or Pastor Gloria Imamura handle the text. Wayne preaches only every other Sunday, so a couple of weeks ago he asked what I was going to preach this week. Exodus is pau so he was jumping to Leviticus and I said I was going to preach on the death of Moses so I could talk about retirement. SCRIPTURE When I read this passage, I think that Moses gets a raw deal. What did he do that is so bad that he gets disqualifies him from entering the Promised Land? It has something to do with not having water in one of their wilderness stops. The people complained and Moses and Aaron pray and then Moses strikes the rock with his staff and water comes forth. Their not trusting in God, results in not being able to enter the Promised land. Aaron dies shortly after this event but Moses continues on until he reaches this spectacular vista, and sees the horizons of the promised land. ‘See but no touch’ is punishment that doesn’t seem to match the crime. But what if, the important thing is not the completion of the journey by entering the Promised Land, and instead, the journey itself that develops an intimate relationship with God? Then Goal accomplished! The narrator describes Moses is as a prophet, whom the Lord knew face to face, unequaled for all of the signs and wonders against Pharaoh, displayer of God’s mighty deeds and terrifying power in the sight of all Israel. Moses’ relationship with God has an eternal consequence. He lays hand on Joshua, from the next generation, and the Spirit of God is upon him to fill the role as the next leader of Israel. A peaceful transition of power is made. Joshua’s leadership is going to be different. No one can be a Moses and no one should expect Joshua to be one either. Joshua brings a different set of gifts, skills, abilities and talents. Not to mention that his relationship with God is their own, just as our relationship with God is as unique, as we are all unique. He will be called to do things that Moses was not called to do, mainly to move the people of God into land promised to them, that now has been occupied by others, causing a continued middle East conflict that is unsettled to this day. Things are going to be different, so mourn and get that out of your system. Be sad for a time (30 days) because we grieve the loss of Moses, but don’t compare a Joshua to a Moses, and move into the new that God has for you, make accommodations, learn something new and move into the next chapters of being the people of God. APPLICATION God gives to Moses a view of the fulfillment of a Promise, but the Promised Land is not the goal. The Goal, is living in relationship with God. The people of God, wandering the wilderness with Moses are still with him after forty years, that’s an accomplishment. This relationship with God through Moses has eternal consequences. The wandering Israelites are living the Passionate love of God expressed in the Ten Commandments. Their next challenge will be to continue to love God and love their neighbor as they re-inhabit the land and establish themselves in the land of Canaan. This too, will have eternal consequences. Heaven has become our new Promised land as we wander this world trying to live in relationship with a God who passionately loves us and to love our neighbors. How do we live so that the Promised Land we strive to enter, is more about our living with God, than a destination? How do we become a place where God dwells with us? Moses’ dies the kind of death we want. Living in full vitality, keen eye sight and at the Lord’s command we are gone. Where Moses lives or dies is encompassed by being known by God. This makes me wonder if heaven is more about being in relationship with God than place. I wanted to preach on this passage because Someday I hope to retire and not die before I leave my responsibilities for this church. After retirement, the Church will get an interim minister, a “search Committee” will be formed to review candidates and discover a ‘Joshua or Elisha’ for the congregation to call, Then the association will celebrate with us and lay hands on the new pastor. Whoever that person may be, as long as they Love God and faithfully follow Jesus, through the Holy Spirit this church will be okay. Don’t compare the old Moses with the New one, instead be thankful for who they are and be gracious with their faults. We got news this week that Margie Baybrook died, in the land of Oahu, at the Lord’s command. I messaged with Grace Baybrook, her daughter, about how my life has followed Pastor George and Margie from the Big Island to Waimea on Kauai, to Wailuku Union and I anticipate to retirement and to the Lord. As a congregation you have never made a comparison of us. Although he was tall and I am not. His ancestry goes East and mine goes to the Far East, and He was led by God and the Holy Spirit as I am but doing different things for God. We were different and God has used both of us doing ministry in different ways for this congregation. We can be thankful for what each of us brought to this congregation and for God bringing the Wailuku Mission Housing Project to the Horizon. Getting there takes a set of skills, living into what it means, will take another set of skills. I had no idea that this was what the result of my ministry here would be, as with the next pastor, following faithfully, will be led to places unexpected, but exactly where God wants the church to be. The check and balance of our lives is to be passionately loved by God and to love our neighbors, with the love of God. CONCLUSION I have a vision of the future that I may never live into, but the next generation will inherit this promise and live into its reality. Up until the time that I die at the Lord’s command, I will live as close with God as I possibly can, with vitality and keen eye sight, even in retirement. I’m not planning to go anywhere, but I am deeply aware of the plans we are making for the future. They are not dependent upon me being there, but upon God being with us. Maybe I’ll preach this sermon again when the text rolls up three years from now or, maybe the next time, I’ll use the text from Leviticus. Pastor Wayne gave me a draft of his sermon notes, it’s on living the rules of God’s passionate love.
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SCRIPTURE: Exodus 33:12-23
TEXT:19b ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. THEME: Knowing God INTRODUCTION God passionately loves the Israelites, but that makes their offense, fashioning a metal idol to worship, all the more hurtful. God’s passionate love fuels a passionate rage. If not for Moses, who was the non-anxious presence, who spoke to God, we would have a very different story, with Moses as our forefather in faith (Exodus 32:10). Using his prefrontal cortex, Moses calms down the omnipotent’s anxious presence, and amygdala’s response of wrath. Moses is logical, reminding God of their past, the promises and considers a different course of action, more aligned with God’s loving passion for the Israelites. Calmer minds come up with a reconciliation plan instead of destruction. This passage of the negotiations for reconciliation reveals more of the character of God and further develops the relationship between God and Israel. SCRIPTURE Moses has become quite the negotiator. First with Pharaoh and now with God. After the ‘Holy Cow’ incident, God wants to be distant from the Israelites and was planning to send them out on their journey to the Promised Land with an angel instead of God’s self. What???! That is Moses’ first tick point,” Hey God, if I have found favor with you, God you gotta come with us! Show to all, that we have favor with you and your presence is with us.” God says, “Okay”. The second tick point is for God to acknowledge the Israelites as God’s people. To make them distinctive from all of the nations of the world. That through the Israelites, all can come to know what it means, to be loved by God. God is okay with that too. Then Moses has a couple of tick points for himself. He wants to know God’s name and to see God’s glory. God’s character cannot be contained by a single name. God is vague in answering Moses, wanting to be addressed as “Lord”, and then God gives a description of what God does, rather than a name; gracious to whom I will be gracious to and mercy on whom I will show mercy. We don’t have to call on God by name, just call upon God’s grace and mercy to help us. God will not show God’s face to Moses, but compromises with an opportunity to get a glimpse of God’s glory, walking away. Accommodations were made for Moses’ life to be preserved as a witness to this stunt. When we negotiate with God, we get to know God by the answers we receive or don’t get. We sharpen our understanding of the will of God with what God is willing to do or why God will not do as we ask. This is part of our discovery of God, by being in relationship with God. More than the God and mortal relationship, and more like Parent and child. God makes accommodations for our idiosyncrasies, our vulnerabilities, and our curiosities as we journey with God. I just completed this class on Christian Education from Pacific School of Religion’s CTEL program. The instructor Michael Campos spoke about how our relationship with God spirals, upward with our experiences of God, our analysis of what has happened with God, our learning from those experiences that shape our lives with new behaviors and new actions and repeating the cycle again with more new experiences with God. Through this cycle we continue to refine our understanding of God’s face, seeing and experiencing more of God’s grace and mercy. APPLICATION God reveals a passionate love for the Israelites, but when God seemed distant, they revert to their old ways and offend God. God’s passionate love burns with wrath that is redirected to rebuild their relationship. God wants to be called ‘grace and mercy’ to do the work of reconciliation with us. How does God’s reconciling grace and mercy change our living and shape our community? God’s passionate love for the Israelites defeats Pharaoh and his army as they escape Egypt and flee into the desert. God’s passionate love for the Israelites provides food, water, shade and warmth for them as they travel through the wilderness. God’s passionate love for them is laid out in healthy boundaries, of a common understanding of respect, honor, freedom and care. God’s passionate love for the Israelites burns with anger because of their betrayal and hurtful apostasy. But after the initial hurt, God’s passionate love for the Israelites moves towards grace and mercy. That through this passionate relationship with the Israelites, there will be forgiveness, reconciliation and grace to cover their flaws and gives to them what they do not deserve, peace with God. God offers them mercy and love, over and over again, because there is an innate enjoyment in their relationship together, so much so, that when invited, God jumps at the chance to travel with them. They are distinctive in all the world because they know and live with God, who is passionately in love with them. Our lives as a community of God must display welcome, grace and mercy more than the rules and laws of being with God. God’s mercy and grace is more powerful than our ability to obey the rules, and will work to reconcile with us, each time we move beyond the boundaries of our relationship with God. This pattern of betrayal and reconciliation with grace and mercy will get repeated, over and over again, because of God’s love. Reconciliation is better than estrangement. Being passionately in love, God will risk being hurt, over not having love. Grace and mercy, also moves us into deeper cycles of intimacy, of knowing and relationship with God. We live with a profound confidence, based in the hope of a Godly grace and mercy for us. God will always seek to reconcile with us no matter what we have done. In God we have a freedom from the guilt of betrayal, a liberation from bondage, an acceptance as family and are heirs to what only mercy can provide. We can live humbly, we don’t have to make amends with God, but for the relationships that we have hurt along the way, we have the work of trust building and healing to do. Our work of grace and mercy must also extend towards those who have hurt us. Our lives with God Spiral upward. CONCLUSION I want to see God’s face. I want Jesus to appear before me, so I can believe with certainty, but that has never happened. I have seen grace given to me that has made me feel humbled. I have seen mercy extended to me in ways that I didn’t deserve. I have watched numerous sun sets, and peered into the Grand Canyon and got a view of space that only NASA could provide of what God has created. Being able to see God’s face is not as important, because the view from the back is pretty substantial. Just that little bit, reveals a Passionate love for us, reflected in God’s relationship with the Israelites, that is full of grace and mercy. You still want to see the face of Glory? This time you don’t have to be cleft in a rock and have the hand shield you as God passes by, God comes to us in flesh and blood. ♫ Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his Glory and grace. ♫ CH340 SCRIPTURE: Exodus 32:1-14
TEXT: 14And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. THEME: We can trust God to move into the something new God has for us. INTRODUCTION Trying to live into a new way is hard. It is a paradigm shift. A change in how we understand things and seeing and understand things in a new way. The renewal of our minds, gives us new perspectives and new behaviors. This is what happening to the Israelites in the wilderness. The God that they have heard about, that helped their ancestors, has suddenly appeared like an erupting volcano. Shaken out of the hands of Egypt’s slavery they are now free to wander the wilderness. In the challenges of this barren landscape God has shown up in ways that they have ben oblivious as slaves in Egypt. God has revealed a passionate love for them with shelter, warmth, food, water and deliverance from predators. Moses has led them and been the bridge for them to God. But at this juncture, time is their adversary. Moses has been away from them for 40 days and doubt, worry, fears of abandonment, and anxiety are challenging them to question their survival without God. SCRIPTURE When is Moses coming back? What is taking so long? What if he is dead? What if he got lost? What if he ran away to leave us here in the wilderness to die? What if, what if, what if…. When we are living in a new way, in relationship with God, God’s love, protection, care and answers to prayers is transformational. We are freed to enter into relationship with God. Living into this has been amazing but with Moses being gone, is God gone? When there is push back to our new life, it is easy for us to snap back to our old ways. So, the people gather around Aaron (the vice president) and present a ‘snap back’ solution: “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us.” Aaron, not having to rely on the ways of God on his own before, says, “Let’s be how we used be, and get help beyond ourselves by drawing from our old ways and create an image of the gods that delivered us out of Egypt.” A golden bull calf representing their wish for military strength and fertility. Holy Cow. Sacrifice, worship, dancing and feasting follow the next day. Meanwhile, Moses is on the mountain spending time with God but God is not limited to only being with Moses and has also been with the people down on the hill anxiously waiting for Moses’ return. God tells Moses to go down to Your people, who are acting perversely. They have turned aside from the ways that are consistent with God’s passionate love for them. They have made gods in the form of a calf and worshipped and sacrificed to it. Giving the idol created by their hands credit for their deliverance out of Egypt. God sees them as stiff necked: “incapable of learning, traditionalist, stubborn, and set in their ways. God’s wrath burns hot against them, ready to destroy them, be left alone and start all over with Moses. But Moses is the non-anxious presence in this story and argues with God for the people, God has rescued from Egypt. “That was some power and might back there. You showed those Egyptians, but we wouldn’t want them to think this was an evil trick on the Israelites leading them out of Egypt only to kill them on the mountain. Is that the impression you want to leave with the Egyptians?” “Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel? How they served you and the promise you swore to them to multiply their descendants and give them land.” Moses’ argument changes the Lord’s mind about the disaster plan for the people of God. We want both, a God whose mind can be changed and a will that is unmovable. I have three observations about this. One is that we can be in dialogue with God. Arguing, complaining, reasoning, realizing, changing, transforming and coming out with resolutions different from where we started out that reflect the will of God. Second, is that the plans of God are ingrained in Moses as he argues with God. God is not the only one who understands the plan, Moses gets it too. This is in essence what needs to happen with the people of God. They need to have the plan of God, the will of God, the passion God has for them as their passion, so when Moses is not there, they can have faith, trust, to squelch their worry, anxiety, and fears. And the Third, is that with God, it is okay to make mistakes as long as we are willing to admit our fault and get back on track because God loves us, even when God needs to be reminded of it. APPLICATION God is forming the Israelites into becoming the People of God. It is based on relationship with God, behavior, practice, attitude, love, faith and trust. They are becoming new by what they are learning about God. How are we to be the people of God, the church in this changing Age? A hundred and fifty-four years ago people who came to work on the sugar plantation on Maui signed the charter to incorporate Wailuku Union Church as an outpost of Christian faith in the middle of the Pacific. In the wilderness of a tropical paradise, they needed each other to keep their faith, nurture each other and worship God. They came from different Christian traditions but found encouragement in being together worshiping God with the English language. We are the same today. Although we are part of the United Church of Christ, we come from different Christian traditions, emerging theologies and religious styles, and find encouragement, support, faith, worship and meaning together as a community of faith. We find in each other something to appreciate about God, something new to discover, something to understand in the way we live our faith. We are passionately in love with God, following God’s way over our own. The church has become a community on a faith adventure, transforming who we are and the church as we journey into the future. At the Aha Pae’aina, our statewide church meeting via, Zoom and other internet postings. One of the morning devotions was conducted by Young Adults. They want more members for our churches. They want a church that is more concern about living their belief in the community than encasing it in the edifice of a well-maintained museum. They want church that are open to all kinds of people rather than judgmental. They want churches that will listen to their voice in ways shaping the direction and future of the church. Churches that follow a God who passionately loves them are transformational. Just as Moses is transformed and argues God’s points with God, to change God’s mind. The people of God must be transformed from slaves, into living in the freedom of relationship with God. And to live into the freedom of living in relationships with each other that transforms communities. The State has contacted us about receiving the GIA grant that they awarded us. Josh Hayashi our “owner’s representative” on this project told me, that our Mission Ground project is transformational, it is transforming our members about what it means to have faith and to do something for others. It is transformational for a church to have its focus on the community and serving God. It is the kind of church that young adults described in their devotion. Its transformational, in the vision of what the church in the future might be. It may be less about members and more about how we engage together in mission. Being free to make a difference for others, in the community, for God. This is transformational. CONCLUSION Passionately loved by God, we can be transformed to live in new ways rather than settling for how we used to live. Even if we revert backwards, we can admit our fault and get back on track with God. The COVID -19 virus has changed the Aha Pae’aina this year. Caroline Belsom did an excellent job Moderating us through this event on Zoom. Our churches have been thrusted into a new reality as the church. We are being transformed, trust in God and move where God wants us to be, into the future and resist the temptation to worship Holy Cows. SCRIPTURE: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
TEXT: 8When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, THEME: Live the 10, intend to live. INTRODUCTION As we follow the progression of the God’s relationship with the Israelites through Exodus, they are off to a rough start. I mean there seems to be a lot of complaining and now quarreling from the people’s side and God has been relatively passive taking a lot of guff, and reserved, while answering their concerns, displaying that they can come to God who hears and answers. SCRIPTURE But now, as they are deeper in the desert, their dependence upon God is greater for their survival with; fiery pillar for warmth, pillar of cloud for shade from the sun, water, daily portions of mana and quail. The people of God see God as a kind of dispenser of Goods and services. But wait God wants more from this relationship, so God shows the Hand, God is playing. It may look like a bunch of commandments, a check off list of things not to do, but it is more than that, it reveals God’s passion for us. The Lord our God is passionate about us. We are so dear to God that when God saw how miserable our lives were in Egypt, God intervened, and called Moses to challenge Pharaoh and lead us back to the Promised Land. This is where our ancestors came from and where future generations will find their roots. God is passionate about our Love being only for God. Let’s get to know each other, what we are like, our character, our heart, it pains God when we waste time on ventures seeking out our own gods, any god that we built from our own picking and choosing will be inferior, shallow, lack continuity and saccharine. Such a god becomes a target to be blamed rather than helping us take responsibility for our own actions and contributions to our situation, rather than being partners in a fulfilled life. God is passionate about our self-care. The universe is systematic. From days to seasons, revolving around the sun, universes are held in magnetic fields circling each other in endless harmony. Feel the rhythm and the pulse that works for six days and takes the seventh day for rest, as a marker to spend time on relationships. To stop creating, to nurture our body, our mind, our spirit, and our soul with rest. To have time to invest in our relationships with God and worship. To spend time with our relationship with Creation. Time to spend with those who are the most important to us, to love, to be rejuvenated, reconnect, to minister and to enjoy. God is passionate about life. Creating life is out of love, the destruction of life come from a disrespect of love. We can honor the sources of life in parents, creation, God, and Apply skilled mastery to the lives placed in our care, the planet, our parents, our children, those in our circle of love. God is passionate about relationships. We work through the conflicts we have in relationships. There are tools and attitudes that God recommends for the basic peaceful enjoyment of each other such as truth telling, honesty, being content with what we have, being able to celebrate the accomplishments of others, being happy, sharing in joy and although not listed here, doing the work of reconciliation through forgiveness. God’s passion for this relationship with us is dynamic. When God jumps up and down, it looks like thunder, and lightening, sounds of trumpets and smoke. It’s like the first time we’ve seen fireworks, or been in a hurricane, or in a thunder storm. So powerful, our fear rises, but we are safe in God. God was a little too enthusiastic for the people of God. They wen’t quite ready for God to be so accessible. I know some people gather here that if God showed up and said come to me, that they would be running and screaming up the aisle, (Yes, Heather I talking about you). So for right now, the Israelites ask for Moses to stand between them and God, until they learn to trust God and not to be afraid to live passionately with God. APPLICATION This passage expresses God’s passion for us and of how God wants us to live in relationship with us. If obedience to the commandments were the only thing that could hold us in relationship with God, being the people of God would be impossible to do. God’s passion for us is more about how we live treating each other and living vibrantly with God. How do we take these commands and live them as a blessing? Move them from ‘thou shall nots’ to ‘thou shall do’s’. Have the 10 become an innate part of our living instead of a list of obey. See God’s passionate love for us and live that way of loving passionately. (Instead of seeing God as wanting to catch us doing something wrong to punish us.) This is how to live a happy, fulfilled life, not as a criminal trying to avoid punishment. The rhythm with our time, is a rhythm of relationships and a rhythm with our money and a rhythm with our stewardship of stuff. Recycling, reuse, reduce are the beginning rhythms with creation. Be like Jesus. On one level we see Jesus as obeying the 10 throughout his entire life. But on another hand, Jesus is an incarnation of living the 10. It is fluid, flowing, not forced but lived. Even when walking through the wheat field and grabbing the crown of wheat in his hand, pulling off the kernels and sharing them with the disciples as they ate a few like a hand full of granola. We can be like that. Live the 10, intend to live Segway: Bryan Sirchio, UCC pastor-musician-composer: Mission Moments https://bryansirchio.bandcamp.com/track/live-the-10> CONCLUSION We don’t want to be hurt in relationships, so we set up boundaries and communicate expectations to build a common understanding. This is what live the 10 is all about. It is about God’s Passion for us and how we can live with this blessing, of a relationship with God changes the way we live and treat others. |
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April 2024
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