Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

The Anxiety of the Journey

Rev. Dean Snyder Exodus 33:12-23 & John 13:31-35

The journey continues

Bishop Marcus Matthews Isaiah 43:19

Thunder, lightning, smoke, and trumpets”

Rev. Dean Snyder Exodus 19:16-20:3 & John 7:14-24

The Problem with Trying Harder

Rev. Dean Snyder Exodus 18:13-24 & John 7:14-24

We are talking this month about making change in our lives … beginning new journeys.

Many of us have changes we’d like to make in our lives and this is one of the times of the year when we tend to think about them.

Some of us might want to exercise more or lose weight. Some of us might want to stop smoking or drinking or using pornography.

Some of us might want to get new jobs or even new careers.

Some of us might want to fall in love and get married. Some of us might want to get help for our marriage or relationship. We might want to become parents.

We might want to relocate to another part of the country.

We might want to grow spiritually and have a deeper relationship with God.

Lots of changes we might want to make in our lives.

And then sometimes change happens to us whether we want to make changes in our lives or not. Sometimes our new journey is a forced march.

The lab results come back positive. Our spouse or partner doesn’t want to be with us anymore. The company is downsizing.

Or maybe we become a parent and it changes our lives in ways we never expected. Or we’ve succeeded at everything we wanted to do and have lost interest in our vocation. We’d been wanting more intimacy in our life but when we fall in love, suddenly it changes our life in ways we would have never guessed.

Sometimes even good things happening in our lives can take our lives into new directions that change everything.

We are following the story of the journey of the Israelites toward the Promised Land just after they have crossed the Red Sea, just at the very beginning of their new journey, in order to see what we can learn from them about change. They are in the process of a big change from slavery to freedom, from oppression to self-determination, from powerless to responsibility. What can we learn from the Bible’s description of their experience?

Last week we observed the Israelites very upset 45 days into their journey because the food that was available to them on their journey was not the same as the food they were used to back in Egypt and they were afraid that they were going to starve to death. They had to learn that, even if it meant not having meat, onions, garlic, and chocolate, God would provide for them on their journey. It might not be the way it used to be, it might not be the way they wanted it to be, but change would not kill them. They would survive.

Today I’d like us to look at what Moses had to learn as a result of the change in his life.

Moses had been very successful in Egypt. Very successful. He had taken a disempowered, disorganized, passive-aggressive group of oppressed people and he had organized them and empowered them and led them out of slavery. He had led them through the Red Sea. He was leading them on a new journey toward the Promised Land.

What Moses discovered was that what had worked for him and made him highly successful back in Egypt was not working anymore in the new journey he was on.

So Moses did what most of us do when change has come to our lives and what made us successful in the past isn’t working anymore. He kept doing what used to work but wasn’t working any more – only harder.

This is what we do. We keep doing what isn’t working anymore only harder.

Moses’ style – his hands-on, handle every problem himself, tell people what to do and make them do it, micromanaging way of leading-- had been successful back in Egypt.

On this new journey it isn’t working anymore so what does Moses do? He tries to micromanage even more, make every decision himself, he works from daylight past sunset until he is exhausted and everybody else is exhausted as well.

This is what we do when what made us successful in the past isn’t working anymore.

Let me use a purely hypothetical illustration. Say you are a very clear extravert and you are married to a very clear introvert. Let’s say you won her heart by being witty, entertaining and engaging. You made her happy.

Then, let’s say, you get married and now you are living together. When she comes home from work she sometimes seems distracted and unhappy. You won her heart by entertaining her and making her happy. So when she comes home from work unhappy you try harder and harder to engage her and make her happy. She tries to hide from you in her study to get a few minutes peace but you chase after her trying harder and harder to make her happy.

You finally say to her, “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Tell me what is wrong?”

And she says to you, “When I got home the problem was something that happened at work today, but now the problem is that you won’t stop badgering me for five minutes.”

What worked during your courtship may not work during the journey called marriage, and trying harder will only make it worse.

What used to work when we were part of a department of five people may not work anymore when we are part of a department of 40 people. What worked when you were rank and file may not work when you are a supervisor. Trying harder, pushing harder, trying to get more control, will only make it worse.

The international policies that worked during a time of empire may not work during a time of insurgency and only trying harder may make it worse, and isn’t war the ultimate example of trying harder.

Some of you know that my older brother Nevin died this week. He was an army chaplain … a veteran of the War in Vietnam. Nevin was a great guy and I hope you go to our webpage and read the blog I wrote about him.

But there were wounds in Nevin’s life as a result of his experience in combat in Vietnam that never healed.

All week since his death I have frankly just been angry that we have created another generation of combat veteran in two wars because after 9/11 we didn’t know what to do except what we used to work only harder. Shock and awe. Shock and awe. It isn’t working anymore. Doing it harder and harder wouldn’t work anymore. And veterans with PTS and lost limbs are paying the price because we send them into wars to fight in ways that weren’t working anymore only harder.

This is what we do – whatever isn’t working anymore, only harder.

Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Someone else defined neurosis as doing what isn’t working, only harder.

First point, this is what Moses did and what we all do on a new journey … what isn’t working any more, only harder.

The second point is this – Moses was so caught up in the situation, so buried in the situation he was in, that it never occurred to him that what used to work wasn’t going to work anymore no matter how hard he tried. He'd never be able to see it on his own.

He needed someone from outside the situation to help him get perspective.

For Moses it was his father-in-law Jethro. Jethro was a Median priest. He wasn’t even an Israelite. He wasn’t even part of the same religion Moses and the Israelites were part of. He had no shared assumptions, no shared history.

It took someone completely outside the system to say, “Hey, Moses, you keep doing what you are doing, you are going to kill yourself and all the people with you. Instead of more and more micromanaging, you’ve got to give up control and pick some smart people and empower them.”

Moses could have never seen that himself. He needed someone from outside the system to help him see it. He needed a consultant. Jethro was the first consultant.

All of us when change comes into our lives, maybe even the change we’ve been praying for, we need help learning how to live in the new place in which we find ourselves. We all need help when change comes.

We need a consultant, we need a therapist, we need a spiritual guide, we need a small group, we need a prayer partner. Some of the best money I ever spend in my life was to hire consultants and therapists … someone from outside the picture who can see what I, in my trying harder and harder, have been missing.

I want to say one more thing this morning. When the early Christians were trying to understand just who this Jesus who had changed their lives was, they came to the conclusion that he was a consultant sent from heaven to help a humanity who were trying harder and harder and succeeding less and less.

He was the one sent from heaven to teach us that trying harder and harder to follow the law so that we might justify ourselves wasn’t working …. That what we needed rather than trying harder was grace … accepting love as a gift, not a reward.

Giving up our attempt to total control our lives and world and trusting God and others.

Jesus was God’s gift to all humanity to teach us that the way of trying harder isn’t work, but the way of love will.

He can still teach us this today.

Bread in the Morning

Rev. Dean Snyder Exodus 16:1-3 13-26 & John 6:30-35 NT

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. Tuesday is the beginning of a new year 2013. A New Year for some of us is a time for resolutions, a time for change, a time to begin new journeys.

We are going to be thinking about journeys all year long this year. It is our theme for the year. Every sermon series we do in 2013 is going to be about being on a journey.

We want to start during the month of January by thinking about beginning a new journey in our lives, making changes in our lives.

Many of us have changes we’d like to make in our lives. Some of us might want to exercise more and lose weight and live healthier lives. Some of us might want to drink less or stop drinking all together.

Some of us might want to get a new job. Or we might want to quit our job and go back to school and get another degree. We might want to change careers.

Some of us might want to find somebody and fall in love and get married. Some of us might want to deal with a troubled relationship or marriage. We might want to have children and become parents.

Some of us might want to buy a house. We might want to relocate to another part of the country. We might want to travel less for work. We might want to travel more and see more of the world. We might want to make more money. We might want to need less money.

Some of us might want to have more power and recognition in our lives. We might want to have less stress in our lives. We might want more meaning in our lives. We might want more wholeness in our lives. We might want to come out with our parents.

We might want to grow emotionally and spiritually. We might want to do therapy. We might want a deeper relationship with God.

I’d venture to say a good many of us might want some change in our life, some new journey in life.

This is what we know about change. Two things: It is possible. Change is possible.

I know people who have made every change I have just used as examples. People who have lost weight and gotten healthier and have been successful at it for years; People who have quit their jobs and gone back to school; People who have, after years of not finding someone, fallen in love and gotten married; People who have done whatever they needed to do to become a parent.

Change is possible. It is possible for us to take a new path, to begin a new journey. That is the first thing we know.

The second thing we know is that change is hard. Next week the gym I go to will be crowded. It will be hard for me to get on the equipment I prefer to use. But I know that by mid-February everything will be back to normal. Change is hard.

It is scary. Quitting a job to go back to school after you’ve been used to a regular pay check is scary. Letting yourself fall in love is scary. Facing problems in your relationship is scary.

Change is hard.

So during at the beginning of a new year and during the month of January we want to look at the experience of the Israelites in the Book of Exodus after they left Egypt and began their journey toward the Promised Land. What was change like for them? What can we learn from them about how to begin new journeys in our lives?

Here are a couple of learnings about change based on the experience of the Israelites:

Change is inspired and motivated by a vision of new possibilities but it always means letting go of something and giving something up.

The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for generations. They longed for freedom … to have power over their own lives … not to have to do what others compelled them to do but to have control over their own lives.

They prayed to God for freedom. They complained to God about their slavery. They moaned and groaned to God.

…Until God heard their complaints and send them Moses to lead them out of slavery to the Promised Land of freedom.

After long negotiations with Pharaoh, the oppressor, and lots of plagues, Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites leave Egypt. Then he changes his mind and sends his army to bring them back, but the Israelites escaped through the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army is drowned.

If you haven’t read the book perhaps you’ve seen the movie.

Change has come for the Israelites. They are free. They are beginning a new journey.

As soon as they have made it through the Red Sea there is a big celebration. The women sing and dance. Everybody praises God and slaps Moses on the back.

Then we come to our Scripture lesson of the morning. It is the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. They are 45 days into their journey toward freedom in the Promised Land. It is February 15 of a new year. It is mid-February of a new year.

Exodus 16: 2-3

The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

They had prayed for generations for God to save them from slavery… to grant them freedom. Forty-five days into their journey toward freedom, they want to go back and be slaves in Egypt again because, even if they had to work at work all day that they did not want to do, even though they had no control over their own destiny, even though the Egyptians could abuse them with impunity and violate their wives and daughters, the food back in Egypt was good.

There was barbeque back in Egypt and cornbread, all you could eat.

When this same story is told in the book of Numbers, it says:

The rabble among them had a strong craving; and the Israelites also wept again, and said, "If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic… (Num 11:4-5)

They missed garlic. Forty-five days into their new journey, the Israelites were ready to go back to being slaves so long as they could taste garlic again. Some of us understand this.

Moses shows them that they will not starve on their journey. God has provided them with bread for the journey. On their journey in the morning after the dew had dried, they found a fine flaky substance like nothing they’d ever seen before. When they Israelites first saw it they looked at it and rubbed it between their fingers and said to one another: “What is it?”

So they called it manna, which is Hebrew for “What is it?”

Every morning there was enough manna to eat for the day. Just enough for the day. If they tried to keep it for more than one day, it became wormy … full of worms. There was just enough for one day every morning, except Fridays when there was enough for two days so that they could rest on the Sabbath.

So every day on their journey they had “What is it” to eat. And it was enough to sustain them.

They still missed and longed for the barbeque and fried fish and garlic they ate back in Egypt –in fact they experienced something like withdrawal-- but the manna sustained them.

Change, beginning a new journey, always means giving something up and we probably will not be aware before we begin the journey of what all it will mean sacrificing. We may well go through withdrawal and grief when we begin a new journey toward something we have really wanted in our lives.

We want to go back to school but then we can’t do the happy hours anymore the way we used to. We want to fall in love but then we end up in bed night after night with someone who hogs the covers and snores. We want a deeper relationship with God but then prayer is 80 percent boring and only 20 percent profound for the next year. After 45 days we are ready to give up.

I don’t mean to trivialize this. The cost of beginning a new journey can be very, very high. Change is hard.

But here is the promise. Here is the good news. If we are journeying toward a vision for our lives that God has blessed, there will be manna in the morning. There will be enough to sustain us on our journey.

There may not be more than we need to get through the day. This is why the mantra of someone who is recovering is “One day at a time.” There will be enough to make it through the day. And on Friday there may be the grace of enough to make it through the Sabbath as well.

On a journey toward a new place in our lives, we may need to live one day at a time. In fact, it is the only way we can live, because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for any of us. But on a journey to a new place we may have to give up our illusion of security and safety.

There may only be enough to sustain us for the day and we may not know what it is, we may call it manna, “what is it,” but it will keep us for the day.

This is the good news. This is the promise. If God blesses our journey, if it is a journey toward a good place, there will be manna in the morning.

The first Christians, when they began their new journey of following Jesus toward their promised land of justice and inclusion, said that Jesus was their manna from heaven. Jesus was what saw them through the day.

This strange person who died on a cross and in dying showed us the path toward life, “What is it?” Jesus was their manna from heaven.

Jesus can be our manna from heaven who sustains on one day at a time as we begin our journeys toward our promised lands.

Whatever it is in your life that is calling you … freedom, justice, meaning, inclusion, affirmation, recognition, sobriety, wholeness, joy … Jesus can be your manna from heaven who will sustain you through your journey one day at a time.