17 Pentecost 06 Proper 21
When we lived in Buffalo, NY we endured a lot of cold weather. I was always longing to go back to where it was warm. Then the summer came and it got really hot one day (relatively speaking). I was out mowing the yard and wishing to be somewhere where it was cold. It is so easy to idealize the past and want to go back there. We often forget that things weren’t always so good in the past. We sometimes want to turn back the hands of time.
An Amish boy and his father were visiting a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny silver walls that moved apart and back together again by themselves.
The boy asked, “What is this, father?”
The father (having never seen an elevator) responded: “I have no idea what it is.”
While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed, an old lady in a wheelchair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched as small circles lit up above the walls.
The walls opened up again and a beautiful twenty-four year-old woman stepped out.
The father looked at his son anxiously and said, “Go get your mother.”
It is easy to want to turn back the hands of time, to go back to the past, to live in the good old days. We want to go back to those days of gas below a dollar a gallon, of coffee that was a dime, or when there was less traffic.
Some of you haven’t yet adjusted to the fact that we are now in the 21st century. I came across a top ten list the other day. It is the top ten signs you might be longing for the 20th century again.
10. You try to enter your password on the microwave.
9. You haven’t played solitaire with a real deck of cards in years.
8 You email your son in his room telling him dinner is ready and he emails you back asking, “What’s for dinner?”
7 You chat on line several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven’t spoken to your next door neighbor yet this year.
6. You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and now sells for half the price you paid.
5. The concept of using real money instead of credit or debit cards to make a purchase is foreign to you.
6. Cleaning up the dining area means getting the fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they don’t have email addresses.
4. You consider 2nd day delivery painfully slow.
3. You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet.
2. Your idea of being organized is multicolored post-it notes.
And the number one sign you might be longing for the 20th century again is:
1. You get most of your jokes via email instead of in person.
Some of us just want to go back to the good old days. The reality is that we sometimes forget some of the bad things that happened in the good old days.
In our Old Testament lesson today from Numbers 11, when the Children of Israel were set free from 400 years of captivity in Egypt, they were led by God into the wilderness on their way to the Promised land.. They were, at first, so grateful to have been set free. But after a while of wandering in the wilderness, not having any food to eat except for the wafer-like food God provided for them called Manna, they began to grumble and complain.
So much was their desire for solid food that they began to say, “We want to go back to Egypt, at least there we had leeks and onions to eat.” They had forgotten the bitter bondage they were in and how bad the conditions were for them under the tyrant Ramisees. They had forgotten that they were slaves in Egypt.
We see in this story an exact picture of what happens to some people who come to believe in or put their trust in Christ and others who simply decide to try to live a Christian life. Quite often what happens to the new Christian or the Christian who has stopped having a relationship with Jesus Christ, they begin to long for life the way it was before Jesus. They want to go back to enjoy the leeks and onions of their sinful past. Those leeks and onions sound sooooo good to them. They forget about the fact that Jesus died for them, paid the price for their sins, and brought them into relationship with him. They forget about the fact that Jesus is the one who can fill their spiritual hunger, their emptiness. He is the bread of life.
The consequences of sin are never considered by the person who chooses to go back into the bondage of those sins. Sometimes we think all we need to do is to be baptized, go to church occasionally, try to do the best we can and not worry about what we do wrong.
John Smithson was the only Protestant to move into a large Catholic neighborhood. During the time when John was in the neighborhood the custom was for Roman Catholics to not eat meat on Fridays. This was especially true during Lent. On the first Friday of Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill. Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for supper. This went on each Friday of Lent.
On the last Friday of Lent, the neighborhood men got together and decided that something had to be done about John, he was tempting them to eat meat each Friday of Lent, and they couldn’t take it anymore. They decided to try to convert John to be a Roman Catholic.
They went over to his house and talked to him and were so happy that he decided to join all his neighbors and become a Roman Catholic. They took him to church, and the Priest sprinkled water over him, and said, “You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, and now you are a Catholic.”
The men were so relieved. Now their biggest Lenten temptation was resolved. The next year’s Lenten season rolled around. The first Friday of Lent came, and just at supper time, when the neighborhood was sitting down to their tuna fish dinner, came the wafting smell of steak cooking on a grill. The neighborhood men could not believe their noses! WHAT WAS GOING ON?
They called each other up and decided to meet over in John’s yard to see if he had forgotten it was the first Friday of Lent. The group arrived just in time to see John standing over his grill with a small pitcher of water.
He was sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, “You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, and now you are a fish.”
We can be baptized, go to church, and do religious things, but if continue to have one foot in the camp of sin and one foot in the camp of righteousness, then we will inevitably be drawn back into sin. Our sinful nature will seek to draw us back into bondage with sin.
Moses also discovered while wandering with the people in the wilderness that he could not carry the full burden of the people alone. He began to delegate some of the work he was doing to the seventy elders. This is an important principle in the church. Many hands in ministry make the burden of ministry much easier on each person. It certainly helps me when others are willing to take on the ministries of the church.. It was once though that the work of the minister or priest was to minister, and the job of the congregation was to congregate. As we read the Bible we realize that each person working together with others will help the work of the ministry be accomplished more effectively.
Sometimes what happens, however, when someone seeks to do a ministry, is that other people feel threatened, or feel like their ministry is being taken from them, or they feel like they are not going to be as popular as they were. Their egos are hurt and they began to either put down the other person, or seek to undermine his or her ministry.
That’s what happened with Eldad and Medad who were prophesying in the camp. Joshua, one of the ministers of Moses, one of the chosen men, a member of Moses’ Vestry, came to Moses and said, “My Lord Moses, forbid them from prophesying.” They weren’t doing things the right way. They weren’t following the script. They weren’t given permission to prophesy after everyone one else stopped. But the Spirit of the Lord was upon them.
This reminds us that sometimes Christians who are being led by the Spirit may be moved to do something that seems to us strange or out of our normal routine. We should be careful not to jump to conclusions that this person has lost his mind or has somehow gone off the deep end. We should not look down on a person who seems to be very demonstrative in how they show their faith. It could be that they are being led by the Spirit.
St. Paul does give some guidelines for prophesying (that is saying something that a person believes the Lord wants to tell another or others). Sometimes a person saying something or doing something for the Lord needs to wait for the right time to speak or to act. They need to be sensitive to the people to whom they believe the Lord wants them to speak.
I like what Moses said in response. “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his spirit on them.” It is reminiscent of what St. Paul said, “I wish that everyone spoke in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy.”
We need not be threatened by those who are exuberant in their faith, or who are seeking to exercise their spiritual gifts. While all things should be done decently and in order, we should not quench the Holy Spirit. The Spirit seeks to work through each Christian in different ways. As a result, we should not limit what God wants to do through his Spirit.
The devil wants to move us from temptation to sin. God wants to move us from temptation to himself. James reminds us to resist the devil and he will flee from you. But James doesn’t stop there. He says “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” Purify yourselves and keep your mind focused on Jesus instead of being double minded.
We are double minded when we ask for forgiveness but are unwilling to turn away from our sin. We are double minded when we say we forgive someone, but we don’t act as though we do. We are double minded when we can see the hypocrisy in someone else but not in ourselves. We are double minded when we only think of Jesus and our relationship with him once a week.
James implies that we are to remove anything that is keeping us from a relationship with Jesus and from keeping his commandments. That is what Jesus meant in our Gospel lesson today when he said “if your hand causes you to sin, if your foot causes you to sin, if your eye causes you to sin, cut it off, pluck it out. For it is better to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
What is the Word of God saying to us today? First, don’t look back to and long for the Egypts of your life, the old sinful ways from which Christ has delivered you. God says that our past is behind us and he is making everything new. Remember sin was really not as satisfying as we might remember. Have you really submitted your life to Jesus Christ? If not, why not do so today?
Secondly, we learned that each person in the Body of Christ, each Christian has a role to play in the ministry of the church to take the burden off of the priest and the rest of the congregation. Listen to what St. Paul said in Eph. 4 :15-16: “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ, “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Are you involved in some ministry in or for the Church? If not, you might be able to relieve the burden of someone who is trying to do two or three ministries. Come talk to me or one of our Vestry members to find out more about the ministries available here.
The final thing we discussed was the importance of practicing patience when it comes to those whose faith might be more vocal or visible than our own. It could just be that God is speaking to you through them. It also may be that you might see something in them that would inspire you to a deeper devotion to our Lord. Don’t quench the Spirit in your life or in the life of another brother or sister in Christ.
If you are a Christian today have you asked Jesus to fill you with his Holy Spirit? If not, why not? It’s biblical, it’s necessary to empower us to do the work of the ministry, and it is vital if we are to be witnesses for Jesus in an effective way.