Scripture: Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
How often do we want things that we do not have? I’m guessing most of us have participated in this at least once today. I wanted steak bu instead I had a burrito (not a bad tradeoff since I had a very good burrito from my favorite Mexican restraunt in Kansas City). Well I also wanted to purchase a wireless router for my mother-in-laws computer so I could use their internet when we are at their house, but alas I did not purchase it.
Why not, don’t think it was not because I have amazing skills in the area of self discipline because that is not the reason. The truth is I did not purchase I because my wife gave me a look. If you are a married man you know the look. It is that look that says…well it says many things but in this case it was if you buy it I will be very disappointed.
This passage starts with Israel, as the wandering tribes, longing for meat. Meat was something that a wandering tribe has a hard time obtaining. There were thousands of people so if you were able to find a bunny running around you were lucky. (Did they have bunnies in the wildness?) So they thought back to their wonderful times back in the land flowing with milk and honey, Egypt…wait we got that backwards they were slaves in Egypt. It was a land of bondage, poverty, hard labor, and racism. Who in their right mind would be longing for a time when they were held under the harsh thumb of tyranny?
That is the point we need to ponder. When we live in this lifestyle of longing for things we cannot have we are actually longing for slavery. This is a sin. “Thou shall not covet you neighbors…” Covet is such a dirty term, it just sounds wrong, which is probably why wedo not hear it outside of church. We try to avoid these terms that point out sin. Which leads us to another point, we avoid reminding ourselves of sin. This in itself I sinnful.
Sin is a form of bondage. I say this because when we are living in sin we are longing for things. Longing for things that will satisfy our own desires, many of which are selfish. Not all desires are sinful, in fact many of them are leading from the Holy Spirit. Desires become sinful when they are acted on in a manner that is focused only on our own personal benifit. Even some really good activties can become sinful if we enter them with a selfish intent. For example, to become a medical doctor is an honorable and needed pursuit, but if you only pursue the medical arts to recieve a big salary then we are probably leaning toward sin. Of course, if people are only trying to become a doctor for the money they may probably would not be able to finish medical school. Sin is bondage, and in this story Israel is showing us just how easy it is for sin to turn our hearts to long for the bondage.
We want meat. We had meat back then, so I want to go back. The sin is not in the desire for meat but what we give up in trying to obtain it. They are willing to go back to a life of bondage for fish. When if they stay with God and kee walking to the promised land the will be able to raise as much meat as they want. Sin steals from our future and puts us into bondage. This sin, the sin of wanting something now instead of going through the struggle to obtain something better, literally puts us into bondage.
This leads us to a life of simplicity. The simple lifestyle ecourages us to give up our selfish desires so that we can obtain a better life in the future. If we give up meat for now while we wander through the wilderness we will have more opportunity in the future for something even better. In a culture of materialism this seems pretty crazy. Why live a simple life? It frees us to do something greater. If we are not bond by sin, or debt we can change directions quickly. We can enter into ministry without worrying if we may have a conversation with a collections agent. We can support ministries freely because we already know our bills are covered in our budget.
The simple life is crazy but amazing. Monks, Mennonites, and Quakers have tried to live this lifestyle. Some live it well and others actually live this lifestyle in a sinful manner. We should live a simple life not to look holy, but so we are free to answer the call of God in our life. It was a command from Jesus when He sent out His disciples, yet often we forget it. Why? Because we want meat. We want what we want now and do not want to wait for an amazing blessing in the future. As we pray today let’s consider why we are living the way we are and if we are honoring God in it, or if we are honoring ourselves. If you are under the tyrant of debt guess what there is a way out. Be warned it is a vast desert that you must cross and along the way you may not have much meat to eat, but on the other side of that desert is a promised land. If you cannot see the land across the desert, talk to the countless groups helping people out of bondage. They are all over you can hear them on the radio and buy their books at most places books are sold. This is just one step and it is not the whole story of why we should live a life of simplicity. It goes way beyond the financial aspects of life. It enters the spiritual as well. Do we trust God or do we long for the world? Do we seek to be citizens in the Kingdom of God or slaves in the land of bondage.
Scripture: Mark 9:30-37
There are many confused people all around us. They are searching for something, anything really that might make them feel accepted, loved, wanted, and needed. The songs we just listened to were released by a band a couple of years ago, Mumford and Sons, they speak of the hunger and the emptiness found in the world. They recognize a darkness that seems to be enveloping their communities, and the world around them. A darkness that seems to have many faces: poverty, war, and environmental decline.
This is an emptiness that has been around since man first walked out of the God’s Garden. Yet there is something that keeps urging them to look back and search for something that they may have known but forgotten, even generations back. This void of the soul is spoken of throughout scriptures in many terms, things like the hardening of the heart. Theologians speak of it in other terms, one spoke of it as being the God shaped vacuum. Mystics spoke of it in more imaginative terms like the cloud of unknowing or the dark night’s journey.
There is darkness in the world that seeks to consume every aspect of humanity. No one is truly safe from its effects. It seeks to shade the light in its shadow sucking life into its black hole of despair.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
This passage from the first chapter of John speaks of this war between the darkness and the light. It alludes to the darkness corrupting and sucking life out of the world but the light holding its ground. John wrote this gospel after several years of walking with and remembering his life with his Lord. But even he as a great saint, an apostle sent out by Jesus Himself to carry on the ministry He started did not always or even fully understands what life with God meant.
He as a young man walked with Jesus during Jesus’ ministry. He was with Jesus during this trip mentioned by John Mark in his Gospel called Mark. Jesus was teaching them as they traveled through Galilee to Capernaum. I can imagine it would be like a discussion in the car that many of us have had with our friends, coworkers, and children. There was a spontaneous conversation about the deeper things of life. During this particular discussion Jesus tried to explain how the light would over come the darkness.
“The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” Just imagine for a moment if you were there during that discussion. You were walking along the dusty road with rocks slipping into your sandals. You had hopes that finally the king had come and would drive away the Orc-ish Romans, the darkness plaguing the nation set apart to be the light of nations. Now the one that you thought was king was telling you straight up that he was going to be killed. What does that mean? How would that affect your future? Would it happen before or after he rose to power and delivered the nation?
They were asking questions in their minds that each of us would have asked. You yourself probably wondered about a few more that you would have asked. Then he spoke about rising again? Was this whole discussion metaphorical or was Jesus speaking of literal death and resurrection?
Mark goes on to say that they did not understand what Jesus was saying and they were afraid to ask him about it. Fear is darkness. Darkness was right there among the disciples trying to corrupt the closet friends to the light.
Well they walked on and the disciples probably fell back a bit because they did not know what to talk to the teacher about, and they picked up a different subject matter. I imagine that this second private discussion was spun off of the discussion of Jesus’ pending death, so they were trying to determine where in the line of succession they would fall. Corruption is seeping deeper into the lives of the disciples as they begin to plot their alliances and playing their political clout.
They arrive at their destination, and Jesus asks them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” Again there was silence. How could they tell the king that they were arguing about who would take His place, because in nearly every revolutionary order plotting the overthrow of an empire that would be an act of treason against the cause. It shows weakness and they knew it.
Jesus does not push the issue instead He looks out among those in the camp and He sees a child among the followers. So he calls the disciples over to Him and they go to this child. Jesus takes the kid into His arms and begins to teach using whatever is around to illustrate the point. And He says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
A child, a common child one of probably a few dozen that was hanging around that camp taught these respectable adults what it meant to be a true follower of the king. We can learn much from this illustration about what it means to be a leader. A child is in the process of learning about the world around them. Their eyes are wide open looking at every aspect of their environment. They see things differently. A child observes a mother getting pleasure from receiving a gift of flowers, so the child runs out to pick every dandelion in the yard so that they can bring her joy. They may even include other weeds that most of us adults would dig up or spay with an herbicide. A child asks questions and they are full of wonder. They will walk all day exploring if we would let them, just to find out what is over beyond what they can see from the door. Many of the greatest scientists of the world had child like abilities to wonder and desire to explore.
Jesus is saying that if you want to be first in the kingdom, the number one thing is to welcome the children. What that means is not only having a church full of kids, but to interact with the kids. To walk with them as they explore, to invest our time and energy teaching them and assisting them as they learn the boundaries of their own abilities. If we want to be true effective citizens of the kingdom we need to bring the sense of wonder back into our culture. And to be effective leaders we should be willing to do what ever we can to walk with people as they learn and explore aspects of life.
To bring back the sense of wonder is a difficult thing. With the corruption darkness brings, there is also a squelching of wonder. Poverty kills a child before they have a chance in many ways. A hungry child sits because they lack the energy to explore. Many children live in a poverty of affection; their parents are so busy trying to feed them that the child fails to develop senses of love and belonging. These children are starved for attention in any way possible and seek it out in the darkness that begins to suck the life out of them. We are seeing the product of the attention starved generations.
Those attention-starved people of the western world are the ones that have the greatest spiritual hunger, but they do not realize it. They fill their lives with so much junk they look like their lives are perfect but reality is that they are malnourished. Their lives are filled with spiritual junk food. Their empty soul is being filled with quick empty calories, which turns into apathy and obesity.
Our culture is a picture of unhealthy spirituality. We must change the direction, and to do that means that all followers of Christ must begin to interact with the world. Our greatest need is not money but time. If the followers of Christ would take the time to teach people to manage their money and time so that they could then invest love in their families we can begin to change our communities. If we as followers of Christ would change our lifestyles just a bit and invite someone else to eat with them when they go out they can possibly spark a spontaneous conversation that may change the direction of someone’s life.
If we were to examine our own lives we could see where the darkness is creeping into our lives, and into our communities. The interesting thing about darkness is that it leaves when light is present. As we enter this time of open worship let us shine the light of Christ into our own lives. Let us allow Him to show us ever so gently where our own arguments and politicking has allowed the darkness of our adversary to gain a foothold and cause our testimonies to fail and cause spiritual malnutrition in our lives. We cannot share what we do not have.
James the brother of Jesus says that we do not have because we do not ask, or we ask for the wrong reason. And if we draw closer to God that He will come closer to us. We do not need to fear God, he is the source of light and life. He is the vine that feeds the branches of our lives. And He is the friend that walks with us down our own dusty roads. Let us now seek Christ and let Him lead us down that road.
Scripture: Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22
I read the pages of post through the social media sites and find a divided world, a world divided between the left and right, conservative and liberal, Christian and Muslim, tomato and tamoto. It is not a laughing matter I know. We are filled with emotions and opinions that we will stand by to our dying breath. Our reasons are probably very good, but what are we actually saying to those that are on the opposite side? Are we saying you are loved by God and He has a plan and purpose for your life, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans that will allow you to live with Him forever if you were to turn around and follow Him? I have caught myself on a number of occasions, having to stop what I was doing and rethink my responses to people.
This passage causes me to consider things from a different perspective, the prospective of the “sinner.” It allows us to step into the shoes of for just a moment and look at things from their perspective. We as followers of Jesus say a lot. We have answers for everything right in the Bible, but what about those areas that really hurt, when things do not make sense. We say that God is in control, that He is our protector and provider, but what do we do if everything is seemingly out of control. We are tested every day, observed like mice running in a maze. Those around us are watching to see if our words and actions are in harmony. They are checking our actions to what they think scriptures say. Often times these things do not balance out, and when they do not we do not have a good answer. Why do good, hard working people lose their jobs? Why do people act treat some people better than others?
Now we can step into our own shoes again, knowing that everyone is watching our response to whatever is thrown at us, how well do we react. If everything around us is threatened are we able and willing to respond accoding to our belief? This has been a struggle for me over tha past few weeks. If you are my friend on facebook you have probably seen my posts are both liberal and conservative. Some even make me sick to read. I cry out who will save me from myself, because cearly I don’t know who I am. But that’s pretty much the point.
We are all humans. We come from the same base. We are all equally messed up and that is what scripture is really about. There is a standard that noone is able to meet. There is a goal for communitees and even nations that have never been fullfilled. Sure some come pretty close but we have failed as humans and nations. And the point is we need to practice what we preach. Not just the Muslims, the republicans, liberals, Baptists, Quaker, Americans or Arabs but each one of us. We all need to look at what we say we believe, look at what we do, and look at how we treat others according to the entire book we follow.
I know that sounds like a unitarian reponse, but let’s focus on how we live our lives first, before we get to upset about how someone else is responding to us. It is their job to test our faith and to question our beliefs. In the end it is not about who has the best belief system but who cares and loves the most as a culture, community, and individually. I challenge Christians, pagans, athiests, Jews, and Muslims a like to a duel of charity. Let us all out do the other group in showing hospitality and care to those around us. Then let’s come back to the table and discuss the who says what and why.