Episodes
Sunday Dec 15, 2013
Trusting God’s Future
Sunday Dec 15, 2013
Sunday Dec 15, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder
Scripture: Luke 1:49-55
I have never tried to surf but surfing is beautiful and fascinating to watch. Surfers catch a wave just ahead of where the wave is breaking and ride it to shore. Surfers don’t create the wave but they learn how to maintain their balance and maneuver their board so as to ride it. They learn to align themselves with the wave.
I have never sailed. I’ve been on boats that others have sailed but I myself have never tried to sail. Sail boating is beautiful to watch as sailors harness the wind in relationship to the position of the sail boat in the water. Sailors don’t create the wind but they learn to align themselves with it.
I have done canoe floats. When my son was a teenager we would do canoe float camping trips in summer that lasted 10 days or two weeks… David, I and Holly the dog. Canoe floats don’t take the skill that surfing or sailing does, but still you harnessed the power of the current. If you can keep your canoe upright through the occasional rapids, the flow of the current will eventually take you downstream to where your car was waiting for you if you align your canoe with it..
I think surfing, sailing and canoe floating are strong metaphors for the life of faith. We don’t make the wave, the wind or the flow. We learn to ride it. We learn to keep afloat in it. We learn to trust it. We align ourselves with it. This is the life of faith. We don’t create the wave. We learn to ride it.
We are near the beginning of a six month emphasis here at Foundry on working our core. Physical educators tell us that the key to strength and health is strong core strength. Our core is the part of our body between our hips and our shoulders. Strong legs, strong arms don’t help us much unless our core is strong.
So we are asking what our spiritual core is. What are the core spiritual muscles that we need to work for us to be spiritually strong?
During Advent we are focusing on trust. We will not be spiritually strong unless our ability to trust is strong.
One of the biblical embodiments of trust is Jesus’ mother Mary, who trusted God when things were happening to her that it was hard for her to understand.
An angel came to Mary and told her that she would have a baby who would reign over the House of Jacob and whose kingdom would never end.
Mary asked: How could this be since I am only a young
girl?
The angel said “With God nothing will be impossible.
Mary said, “Then, let it be…”
Later Mary sings what we have come to call the Magnificat.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. … (Luke 1:47-8)
Then she begins a litany of what God has done throughout history:
God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. God has helped God’s servant Israel, in remembrance of God’s mercy, according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever." (Luke 1:51-55)
In this theological story, Mary grasps that she is riding a wave she did not create. She is sailing in a wind she did not blow. She is riding a flow that began long before she entered the water and that will continue long after she has docked her boat.
History has direction. It is not neat. It is not as precise as we'd like. It is not obvious to the near sited. But is is real to eyes of faith.
The biblical story is about the flow of history. Mary’s Magnificat is a summary of the biblical understanding of the flow of history.
God scatters the arrogant powerful… Pharaohs and despots. God lifts up the lowly … slaves and women and others whom the powerful disregard and distain.
God fills the hungry with good food and sends the rich away empty. God sides with the poor.
God liberates the oppressed and reconciles enemies.
Our work is not to create the wave, not to create the wind, not to create the flow but to trust it and to ride it into God’s future.
Jane and I were traveling in the Pacific a few years ago. We wanted to find a good health food store on the island we were on, and someone told us about a great health food store in a certain town. We drove there.
The town it turned out was located on a beech that apparently had some of the best waves in the world for surfing. Most of the people who lived in this town were passionate surfers. Many of them had only part time jobs so they could devote the bulk of their time to surfing. They lived in small apartments and had few possessions beyond their surfboards and surfing equipment. They lived simple lives, lives of near poverty, so they could devote all their time and energy to surfing.
They ate healthy food, they made enough money to just get by, they surfed. Almost everybody we saw in that town was muscular and slim and strong and mellow.
They lived to ride the wave.
The church is called to be the spiritual equivalent of that town. God’s history, heilsgeschichte, salvation history is a wave, a wind, a flow.
The work of the church is to ride it, not fully understanding where it came from or where it will go, but trusting in God’s mercy.
I know it is tempting for us to want to control the wave, the wind, the flow. I know we want to set the direction of history and shape the future.
But we cannot. We will only frustrate ourselves. We cannot make our own waves in an ocean.
We can learn to catch the wave just ahead of where it is breaking. We can learn to ride the wind. We can learn to keep our little boats upright in the flow.
It is God who controls the wave, the
wind, the flow.
Like Mary, we can develop the spiritual strength to trust God and let God
direct our paths.
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