Sermon, 7 August 2005
Sermon: 7 August 2005, Job 38:1-27, 1 Corinthians 13:8-12.
I love my dog. She's an old lady dog now, she's fifteen years old; a toy poodle. And she'll follow me anywhere. We'll go paddling on the lake in my canoe; she'll willingly follow me into the canoe, even though she hates the water. She's hiked with me to the top of Old Rag, in the Shenandoah, and back down again, this little tiny eight-pound dog; and to the top of 4000'-high peaks in the Adirondacks and back down. She trusts me; she loves me.
Yet sometimes she must think I'm the meanest person on the face of the earth. I will cook pork chops, or roast chicken, and the smell of the meat will fill the house, and my mother will come running and say, "mmm, pork chops," and my dog is sitting there with her big brown eyes -- they take up most of her face -- begging, pleading "please, this time, this time, can't I have the bone? You don't eat it, and it smells so good!" But mom and I eat the pork chops, and even if we share some of the meat with Sappho, we throw the bones away. To my little dog, it must seem like such a waste, those perfectly good bones thrown in the trash.
But pork chop bones and chicken bones, they're soft, they can splinter: they're bad for dogs, you can't give that kind of bone to a dog. I know that, and so I throw them in the garbage even as I'm looking at her pleading, wishing I could do something for her, but I can't. And, she doesn't understand. And she can't understand. All she sees are good bones that she can't have. But I love her, and I want her to be healthy: and so I throw out the bones.
I am to God as my little dog is to me. There is so much that I do not understand. I love him, and I trust him, and God willing I will follow him anywhere, but sometimes I feel like I'm struggling with the celestial equivalent of those pork chop bones: there is so much that I simply do not understand.
Our God is an awesome God. Nowhere better than Job do we see this awesome creator God, speaking out of the whirlwind. It is God who separates light from darkness, and promises that the darkness will never overcome the light. He sets boundaries for primordial chaos, separating earth from water and sky. It is God who walls death from life, and who brings us victory over death.
God's design is vast beyond our comprehension. We're so wrapped up in our own needs, and our family's needs, and in our own home and country, that we have trouble even concerning ourselves with other people. God's eye encompasses all of humanity [Africa riff?]; God creates and watches and sustains life beyond *human* life: He brings rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert which is empty of human life, to satisfy the waste and the desolate land...
There is so much that I don't understand in this world -- why children get sick. Why *anyone* gets sick. Why people choose to hurt each other the way that they do. Even-- and this is a big important question when one is living in open-sided tents at camp -- why in heaven's name God created ticks and mosquitoes! My understanding is limited; our capacity to understand is limited.
But God gives us a promise.
For now we see in a mirror darkly, but then we will see face to face. Now I understand only in part, but then I will understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
We *will* see; we *will* understand -- that is God's promise to us.
But there's a dilemma -- we live not in the *then,* but in the through-a-mirror-darkly *now.*
With our dimly-lit partial vision, how do we know which path to choose, which decisions to make? Each day we're bombarded by media images and soundbites, by information and disinformation, by sermons and speeches and articles. How do we know what is of God, and what is not?
We will not fully understand God's plan in this world, although we do glimpse reflections of God's truth: glimmers of mercy, and kindness, and love, and gentleness; we see the sure light of God's grace given freely to us in Christ Jesus. As the Psalmist tells us, God's word is a lamp unto [our] feet, and a light unto [our] path.
So it is to scripture that I turn, as always, for guidance. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control. Is a decision motivated by anger or selfishness? Then it is not of God. Is a policy founded on hatred or jealousy? Then it is not of God. In this through-a-mirror-darkly world, set your sight on Christ's light and the Spirit's fruit -- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control -- there you will find whom you seek.
We will not always understand God's plan in this world, but if we will follow Him, the Lord will guide us. Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind; trust God, and follow Him. Know that if you follow, the Lord will lead you into abundant life.