Sermon: Poison vs. Grace

Rev. Jennifer Whipple
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 22, 2009        

“Poison vs. Grace”

Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our minds and hearts gathered here today be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.

             In this corner – weighing in at the weight of the world and able to bring anyone to his or her knees we have poison, and in this corner – light as a feather but able to pack a life-changing punch we have grace.  In the grand scheme of things it is probably easy enough for us to pick which one of these two opponents we would like to win, but is that the choice we always make?

             We have a saying – a motto, if you will, in the United Church of Christ – “God is still speaking.”  I believe this.  After all, the words we have in scripture are from thousands of years ago.  If that was all, it seems like we could just sit back on our laurels having heard or learned everything already, but if we as Christians know anything, we know that is not the case – or we would all be drinking coffee or tea over a big breakfast in our bathrobes right now.

            Over the past few weeks God has been screaming at me.  God has been saying, “If you would open your ears and eyes and heart for four seconds and actually listen to me, you might just get something out of it, Jen.”  Allow me to explain.

             Back in the wintertime, a few of our members came to me and asked if we could do a book study about The Shack, a book about a man whose daughter is abducted and murdered in a shack out in the woods, and while he is experiencing a time of unknowing and great sadness he receives a note from God asking him to go back to the place where it all happened.  There he meets some unusual characters that help him to better understand God and his own faith.  So, we decided to have this book study as part of our Lenten adult education offerings, meaning that I have been reading and re-reading parts of it over the last few weeks.

             Then we decided to use movies and music to take a better look at faith with the Senior Youth Fellowship group this Lent.  Last Sunday we watched clips of Evan Almighty, about a newscaster turned senator who God asks to build an ark in his D.C. suburb in order to save people from a flood.  It is a “comedy of epic proportions” it says on the DVD box, but as Evan interacts with God, and works both to fight God’s plan at first and then to fulfill it – even though everyone around thinks he is crazy – God helps Evan examine his faith and God’s plan.  Our conversation last Sunday night had us answering questions about prayer, God’s call, what we and others do every day that help us to realize we are God’s people.

             Then my dad loaned me a movie from a friend a few weeks ago, with the caveat that his friend needed that movie back soon.  As you can guess, like many of you with busy lives, it was tough to find the time to watch it, so I finally got around to it on St. Patrick’s Day.  The movie was The Perfect Stranger – a movie that is not going to win any Academy Awards soon but with a neat concept.  It is about a woman named Nikki, who is not particularly a woman of faith, who is in her own wilderness period - trouble at home, trouble at work, not sure where or who it is that she should be.  Not knowing what she is getting herself into, and against her better judgment, she ends up eating dinner with Jesus.  Jesus talks her through the tenets of Christianity and answers all of her burning questions.  Wouldn’t that be nice?!        

             To top it all off, I had chosen the scripture lessons and the title for this sermon back in mid-February but just had the opportunity to really do the reading, praying, and research all about Poison and Grace this past week.  And, as if all that was not enough, on my way home from picking Brayden up at my mother-in-law’s house last night there was a song on the radio that was all about how we are our own devil.  

            “Alright already, God!”

            I can hear God saying, “Don’t you ‘Alright Already’ me, young lady.  It took me scripture, prayer, two movies, a book, and a song to get you to even begin to think about my message!”  

            I can be a little thick-headed sometimes…

             So what do all of these things have to do with God speaking?  And what do they have to do with our aforementioned opponents – poison and grace?  Well there were two conversations that came up in each of these media that made me think about our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us.             

             The first was a question that was asked by a person in each to God, “Do I know you?”  And God’s response, “Not as well as I would like.”  Surely we do a lot to hinder our relationship with God.  That is some of the poison that we infuse into our systems. We spend so much time poisoning ourselves with actual things – substances and junk food.  In one article I read it said that “A recent report on global health pointed out that as many people in rich nations are malnourished, obese or diseased from excessive consumption of unhealthy foods as are found in poor countries where food is scarce, has little variety and provides poor nourishment.”  (www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/b-le04-js.php)  We fill our refrigerators and our homes with more and more stuff looking for the latest thing. 

            We often times turn to such poisons because we are a people and a culture who desire instant gratification.  The biggest issue with this in our faith lives, of course, is that it often seems as if God is not moving fast enough for us.  We sometimes wonder if God has a direction for us because we are not getting there – wherever we want there to be – quickly enough.  We spend so much time focused on getting somewhere else that we rarely take the time to realize the presence of God in each moment of our lives – in the present, the here and now.

             We also poison ourselves with things like worry, doubt, and fear.  Now I consider myself a pretty expert worrier, often worrying about the craziest things – often about things that will never happen – thank God.  At certain times in life our worry seems warranted, though – times like now, perhaps, when we are not sure where our economy will be in the next few months, let alone the next few years.  Times in our lives when we are unsure of what our future might hold.  These are the times that are called wilderness periods, at least that is what we call them in the church! The experience of wilderness periods, we know began as a primarily Israelite experience – escaping Egypt through desolate wastelands in Sinai.  But if we look deeper we realize that is where God was trying to enter into covenant with the Israelites.  There was a constant cycle of distrust, grumbling, and appeals for help.  The Israelites were not even brave enough to share their own thoughts and feelings with God – using Moses as an intermediary.  The time in the wilderness, though, allowed for God to unveil his plan to the people and to take care of them despite adversity.  He even took a symbol of poison and death and turned it into a symbol of healing and life in the serpent – which exists to this day as you know if you have ever been to a doctor’s office and seen the bronze statue outside.  We manage to put up the barriers to our relationship with God – to poison that relationship.  God, on the other hand, only wants us to let down our guard in order to be in deeper relationship.

             That is where the second point in the books and movies comes in.  You see, in each of them, there was a conversation that went something like this.  “But how?  How do I know that there is something better coming?” said the human.  “Trust me,” was God’s reply.  Despite all the poison we manage to allow to infiltrate our lives, God’s grace is stronger.  The feather light grace of God can hold us fast and keep us on the right track.  But we have to let it.  We have to trust it.  In The Perfect Stranger Nikki asks Jesus about eternal life, and his answer is, “Eternal life doesn’t begin when you die.  It begins when you start trusting in God.”  In Confirmation we do an exercise with the cross when we have our class all about Jesus.  We write the poisons of our world, the sins we and others commit onto a cross that is drawn on paper – things like abuse, making fun of others, disrespect, dishonesty, disloyalty, greed, gossip, -isms, and –phobias.  Then we take post-its and write on them the actions that God would like to see us carry out.  We cover up the others, our sins, with these actions to which God calls us – wiping out the poison of sin with God’s grace and forgiveness.  I make sure to tell the confirmands that this does not mean (a) that we are forgiven so we can go out and do the same thing again or (b) that we are forgiven so we do not need to do anything.  Rather we are forgiven so all of the poison in our lives can be sucked out and so we can go on to show God in the deeds we do and the words we say.  God’s favor is shown to we sinners through Jesus Christ.  Even when the vocabulary of grace is absent, God’s actions are full of grace.  The message and belief in letters like that to the Ephesians, which was also circulated to the surrounding towns, assumes that recipients of God’s grace will perform gracious deeds in return and cautioned believers against using grace as a license to sin.

             I often joke about the words we use for things in the church.  For instance we use “growing edges” to signify the weaknesses we have, and “wilderness period” to talk about a time when we have no idea what is supposed to come next – when we are lost and alone with no end in sight.  When I think about it, though, the other words, ones like “lost,” “alone,” and “weakness” are ones that this world uses and that only help us to feel worse about ourselves and our situations.  But when God’s grace is the mark on things, on our “growing edges” and “wilderness periods,” we can come to realize that it is not the end of the world…that there is a light ahead…that we can change things that need changing – whether ourselves or our situations.  That we are called to live as God’s beloved and saved children.

             "By grace we are saved through faith," writes the author of Ephesians.  God’s mercy and grace is a FREE gift.  It cost God something – a huge sum in fact, but it costs us nothing.  And how do we generally react when offered free gifts with no strings attached?  We are usually excited and willing to accept them.  So why not this too?  Why not trust in the God who forgives us, who draws the poison out, who wants to be in closer relationship with us, who wants to walk with us through the wilderness and bring us to a better life on the other side?

             As Megan Montgomery said at Lenten Lunch this past Tuesday, “God is all around us if we are willing to open our eyes.”  Indeed it is possible to be God’s people while in the wilderness or when things are going just fine.  The greatest blessing that God can give us is to dwell among us, to help us to recognize grace when it slaps us in the face, and to lead us on the path to reconciliation and health and wholeness. 

            So is God still speaking in this day?  I believe so – through the words of a book, or a movie, or a close friend, or perhaps even a pastor on a Sunday morning (hint hint).  So for those of us who find ourselves seemingly drenched in poison or lost in the wilderness during this Lenten Season, my prayer is that we will open our eyes to the way that God’s grace infuses each day, and our ears to hear God’s still speaking voice, and allow those around us to support us along our journey.  And for those of us who have been through the wilderness and made it out safely on the other side, my prayer is that we will be willing to offer our support and care to those who are struggling and searching.  To help see and be God’s hands in this world. 

We cannot save ourselves, people of faith, but we can allow ourselves to be saved.  We can make the decision to TRUST God in each moment and to let grace take the knock out punch that wins the day. 

So the question for today is – Poison or Grace?  Distrust or Trust?  Who will win?  What will we decide?  Amen.