Loving God, Loving Others



When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, " "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."- Matthew 22: 34-40

I love this passage. To me, it explains Christian faith in a nutshell. What's Christian faith about? Loving God with everything we have, and then others as ourselves. In fact, I think this passage is ground zero for the whole Bible, the place out of which everything else in the Bible flows. It is not only the central teaching of Jesus in the gospels, it emanates from the first commandment in the Old Testament.

So if love is so central to the Bible, why do we have such a hard time making love central our lives? We're not necessarily bad at love, but we're sure biased in our love. Think about this for a moment. We generally love the most those who like us and are the most like us, and we love the least those who dislike us and are the most unlike us. Ponder what I just said for a moment.

I'll show you what I mean. There was a woman who met a friend from long ago in the checkout line of a supermarket. They hadn't seen each other for years. Her friend asked her, “So how your children? Are they married?” “Yes,” the woman replied. “One has a great marriage, the other a bad one. My son, he is in a bad marriage. He is married to the laziest woman on earth. She expects him to do everything. She won't cook, she won't clean, she doesn't pay the bills. All she does is lie in bed all day reading, and expects my son to even bring her breakfast in bed.”

“What about your daughter,” the friend asked. “Oh, my daughter is in the most wonderful marriage. She is married to a prince. He does everything. He cooks for her. He cleans. He tells her just to take it easy, sit in bed or lie on a couch all day and read. And get this. He is so thoughtful that most mornings he brings her breakfast in bed.”

We are so biased when it comes to our love. Why do we have such a hard time loving everyone? Truth? It all comes down to the conflict between biology and spirituality. I'm not sure why this is, but most of us somehow think that because we are spiritual, or because humans are a sophisticated and higher form of creature, that we aren't influenced much by biology. We are. In fact, our biological wiring influences most of everything we do. Let me give you a basic introduction to psychology 101. Psychology understands that biology plays a huge part in our everyday behavior, and it is a discipline devoted to understanding the role biology plays. It understands that our minds are often controlled, or at least heavily influenced, by our endocrine systems, hormones, frontal lobes, pituitary glands, amygdalas, reticular activating systems, rigt and left hemispheres, and so much more. Our thoughts and actions have a heavy biological basis.

One of the ways our biology is influences us the most is through our survival instinct. Most of us don't even come close to realizing how much this survival instinct plays in everyday life, and how it influences our ability to love. We not only have a strong survival instinct when it comes to protecting our food sources, our families, and our homes. We also have a strong survival instinct that protects our beliefs and values. I don't just mean our religious or political beliefs. I mean our beliefs about others and ourselves. We humans are a very self-protective species.

We sense threats all the time, whether in the workplace or at home. For instance, are you married? If so, do you ever fight with your spouse? And if you do, what do you fight about? We may think we are fighting over the dishes, finances, and intimacy, but the truth is that we are generally fighting because we feel threatened in one way or another by our spouses. They say things to us in ways that cause us to be defensive. Defensiveness is a survival reaction. It is a reaction to a threat, whether it is the threat of someone telling us that we're slobs, which we hear as them telling us that we are bad, or the threat of someone telling us that we aren't a good husband or wife. These feelings of being threatened extend to the workplace, among friends, or even listening to the radio. Most of us feel threatened in one small way or another throughout our days. It's all part of our animal nature.

When we defend ourselves by criticizing them, we are acting out of our survival instinct, trying to protect ourselves and diminish others who may be a threat. You see this same biology playing out in our elections. Have you noticed that as the election campaigns get closer to the wire, the attacks on each other become more aggressive? Why? Because the candidates are getting closer to the end, and they see their opponents more and more as threats. So they do what anyone does when threatened: they attack as a way of defending themselves and diminishing the threat. We may not like it, but it happens. In fact, the more we identify with a candidate, the more we tend to feel threatened not only by his or her opponent, but by his or her supporters. This is why politics is so hard to talk about. People get incredibly defensive about their candidates and their own political opinions. They see others as threats to their beliefs and values, and act aggressively to protect themselves.

We cannot escape the fact that we are biological and act too often out of our survival instincts. We may be biological beings, but we're also spiritual, and it is the spiritual part of us that connects us with love. C. S. Lewis points out our double nature when he says that we are amphibians. And just as amphibians inhabit both watery world and an earthy world, we inhabit both an earthly world and spiritual world. The problem is that love is really of the spiritual world, not the earthly.

You can see the spiritual nature of love in John's writings. In 1 John 4, John writes, “ God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” That is a radical statement. What he is saying is that love not only comes from God, but that it is the essence of God. God is love. The two are indistinguishable from each other. Not only that, but anytime we truly love another, we are letting God love through us. We become spiritual in that moment. Anytime we lock love out, we lock God out and we become merely biological.

John also says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” What is he saying here? Among other things he is saying that love casts out fear, which is our biological survival instinct. He is saying that when we fear, we cast out God because we are living purely according to our biological instincts. When we love, we are living in the spiritual, and if not overriding the biological, we are at least allowing the spiritual to guide the biological. In effect, love means being rooted in God. When we love, we are living more in the spiritual than the biological, and it enables us to be more than just our biological wiring.

The whole point of our passage is that we have a choice: will biology control us, or will we choose to let the spiritual guide us? There's a very simple way to tell whether biology and protectiveness, or love and spirituality, reigns in our lives: to what extent do we tend to get irritated with others, feel threatened by others, need to be approved by others, need to put others in their place, criticize others, or defend ourselves from others? If the answer is that these feelings are strong in our lives, then biology determines a lot in our lives. On the other hand, to what extent do we tend to like others, want to help others, offer to do things for others without expecting a reward, like to compliment others, find the good in others? The stronger these are, the more we live in the spiritual.

Our passage teaches us to live in the spiritual by loving God with everything we have, and then making that the basis for our love of others. And Jesus gives a great example of this. In Luke's gospel, a parable is added to Jesus' command to love God first, then others as ourselves. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. This is a story of spirituality overriding the survival instinct.

You know the story. A man lies beaten by the side of the road, and three people come upon him. The first, a Levite, will not help the man because the man threatens his survival. He knows that there may be bandits lurking behind the rocks who have beaten the man and are now using him to a lure, beat, and rob others. Also, he knows that if he touches the man, and he is dead, he'll be unclean for 7 days. He is afraid. So he keeps going. The priest also sees the man, but similarly fearing touching a dead body, he passes by. You see, as a priest in the Temple of Jerusalem , he serves only two weeks a year. He is probably in the midst of his two-week service. He doesn't want contamination and defilement to interfere with his service to God in the Temple. So he keeps going.

The Samaritan, in contrast, is the one who has the most to fear. The Jews hated Samaritans. Why? Because they were syncretists. This means that they had been Jewish centuries before, but as they had been attacked and overcome by enemies, they had allowed other religious beliefs and practice to change their Jewish faith. They still saw themselves as Jewish, but now had their own Temple and their own practices. The Jews considered them to be among the most sinful of all, more sinful than Gentiles, because they had defiled the Jewish faith. The Samaritan was at the most risk by helping the man. He not only could be beaten by other bandits and be declared unclean, but he if he was falsely accused by the Jews of beating the man, who would believe him? Who would take the word of a Samaritan? Yet, amidst all his fears, he is the one who lets go of fear, acts out of love, and helps the man by binding his wounds, taking him to an inn, paying for his stay, and offering to pay for longer if need be. He put aside his animal anxiety to live out of his spirituality—to live according to God's love and to let God love through him. This parable shows us the way of love.

We are called to live according to love. We are called to let go of our animal natures to be able to love more and more out of our spiritual natures. Our passage is basically a call to rise above our animal natures to take on God's nature . The question is to what extent are we willing to put our biology aside for God?

Amen.

at

Do Religion and Poltics Mix?

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.- Matthew 22:15-22

About a month ago I saw an interview on television that irked me. A reporter was interviewing different people about their thoughts on Barack Obama, and one woman said, “I don’t like Obama. He’s a Muslim, and this is a Christian nation.” Can you tell which part of that statement irked me? It wasn’t the part about Obama being a Muslim, although I am tired of people saying that. When people say that, it’s an ignorant statement on so many levels. First, because it’s not true. Second, because it’s a statement that’s prejudiced against Muslims, and I find that destructive. I’m also not saying that you should vote for Obama. I’m just pointing out the ignorance of saying he is a Muslim. Despite my disagreement with that part of her comment, it is her saying we are a Christian nation that bothers me.

Now, why would it bother me to hear someone say we’re a Christian nation? Shouldn’t I agree with her? After all, I am a pastor. The truth is that a lot of Christians would agree that we’re a Christian nation, and a quick look at American history seems to support this belief. The only problem is that you’d have to look at American history very quickly and very narrowly to support this belief. The truth is that the Founding Fathers never saw us as a Christian nation. In fact, they didn’t even think in categories of Christian/non-Christian at all. They thought in terms of denominations and whose version of Christianity was right. The people of the time saw their own denominations as being truly Christian, and all others as being false to one degree or another. To say that they saw us as a Christian nation is misleading because they didn’t see Christianity the same way we do now, as one religion with many difference expressions.

To understand the differences, you have to go back to understanding the colonization of North America. Most of those who migrated to the colonies, especially those who established the colonies, did so as a way of establishing a state where they would be free to pursue their own religion. For instance, the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts came from the east of England. These were Calvinists who believed that to truly be Christian meant to seek a way of purification during this life. They strove to overcome sin, and to create God’s kingdom on earth. They also saw all other Christians, and especially the Anglicans (whom today we call Episcopalians), as misguided and unchristian. They were especially against the Anglicans because it was officially the Church of England, and thus the state religion. What made it worse was that they had been persecuted at the hands of English Anglicans.

Meanwhile, those who settled in Virginia were mostly Anglicans. They saw the Church of England as the only true church, and all others as heretics. These folks came from the south of England and were part of the landed gentry class. They believed in a hierarchy in which God came first, then the king (or queen—Virginia was named after Elizabeth, the “virgin queen”), then the Lords, then everyone else. They believed that the bottom of this hierarchy, religiously, were the Roman Catholics because they were followers of the pope, whom they suspected of being the antichrist.

The Quakers settled into Pennsylvania as part of a great experiment by William Penn. Penn wanted to create a colony of tolerance, love, and peace (hence they name Philadelphia, or city of brotherly love). Pennsylvania was later settled by the Scots-Irish, the Lutherans, the Mennonites, and the Amish precisely because they were welcomed by the Quakers, even if they were somewhat distrusted.

The Scots-Irish originally came from the borderlands between Scotland and England, where they developed a fiercely independent brand of Christianity. It was a brand rooted in scripture, but only to the extent that scripture agreed with what they agreed with. They did not see people of any other denomination as Christians. These folks saw themselves as the only Christians, and they weren’t always convinced that each other were Christians.

Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics (hence the name Maryland, which venerated both the virgin Mary and Mary the Roman Catholic sister of Elizabeth). The Roman Catholics were universally disliked by all the other denominations. They were considered to be papists and followers of the fallen faith. Remember that the Reformation had taken place only 50 to 100 years before. Distrust and denigration of Roman Catholics was high among all the other colonies.

As the colonies matured, there may have been a tentative willingness to come together as colonies economically, but there was still as distrust of each others’ faith. Again, they did not see themselves as Christian. They saw themselves as whatever denomination they were.

By the time of the Founding Fathers, the different denominations still looked down at each other—a condition that really wasn’t overcome until the 20th century. Even when it came to signing the declaration, there was reluctance to join each other because of distrust until one particular Anglican clergyman stated that despite his distrust of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, he would sign the declaration for the benefit of the all. Again, they didn’t see themselves as Christians in the way we see ourselves as Christian. They saw themselves as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Congregationalists, and even Methodists.

In addition, while many of the Founding Fathers were religious, they saw themselves more as learned men. Not all saw themselves as Christians, and some never even went to church. While basic Protestant theology influenced their beliefs, they were just as heavily influenced by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the tradition of Roman democracy, and the English parliamentary system since the signing of the Magna Carter. To say that they were Christians trying to found a Christian nation simply isn’t true. Christian ideals under girded part of their beliefs, but they would have been reluctant to identify themselves as Christians.

So, would Jesus promote any nation being a Christian nation? Not if you believe our passage for this morning. Our passage is one in which a trap is set for Jesus. The Pharisees and the Herodians (those charged with maintaining peace on behalf of the Romans) wanted to find a way to arrest Jesus. So they ask him a cleverly designed question: is it lawful to pay taxes. Here’s the trap. If Jesus said yes, then the Jews, who hated the Romans and saw paying taxes as a form of Caesar worship, would have rejected Jesus. Remember that in the Temple of Jerusalem, the whole problem of the money-changers existed because the Jews demanded that temple tax be paid in Jewish shekels, not Roman denarii. If Jesus supported paying taxes, he would have been seen as being in collusion with the Romans. The people would have rejected him and his message. If he had said that it wasn’t right to pay taxes, the Herodians, the government of the province, would have had him arrested for sedition. It was a pretty good trap. How did Jesus answer? He said that we should give to God what is God’s and to the Romans what is the Romans.

In essence, what he was saying is that there is a separation between the spiritual and the material realms, and that to confuse them meant giving to the world that which is due God. In other words, it’s okay to wrap yourself in the American flag, but don’t get confused in thinking that God is wrapped in an American flag. If we do, that becomes a problem because it assumes that God is God of this nation and no others. And Jesus already was telling the Jews, the “chosen people,” that God was ready to expand to all people as chosen people. This ideal of Jesus influenced the Founding Fathers, who recognized that there was an inherent separation between church and state.

So, does that mean that politics and religion shouldn’t mix? Not at all. The Founding Fathers all recognized the importance of religion. They believed that it should mix, but not in a state sanctioned way. What the Founding Fathers absolutely did not want was the institution of a European understanding of state and religion. At the time of the Revolution, the nations of Europe believed that the state should establish a state religion, and that religion should get preference above all others. So, in England the state religion has been the Anglican Church, or the Church of England, ever since Henry VIII. In Scotland the state religion is the Church of Scotland, or the Presbyterian Church. In Sweden and Norway it is the Lutheran Church. In France and Italy it is the Roman Catholic Church. Even today, in Italy there are roadblocks put up for Protestant churches because they are violating the state church. The Founding Fathers wanted our nation to be a place of religious freedom, not necessarily to be a place just for Christianity. In fact, the Founding Fathers were much more receptive to Muslims and Jews than they were to Roman Catholics. So for those promoting our country as a Christian nation to lump Romans Catholics in with other Christians today takes liberties with what the Founding Fathers believed.

I think that one of the basic issues that causes us to think that the Founding Fathers were all Christian is that so few understand their faith. People believe that they were Christian, but that’s not quite true. I saw fully how easy it is for people to misrepresent the Founding Fathers’ faith during a one-month sabbatical I took in 2003 to finish writing my book, Becoming a Blessed Church. During that month I visited several area churches on Sunday morning to see what they do. I visited one local church, a large, nondenominational church. on the 4th of July weekend. They started the service with a rousing version of “American the Beautiful” as power point screens on either side of the stage displayed an American flag flapping in the breeze. After each verse, they stopped the music, and someone dressed up as a founding father (or mother) in colonial garb walked forward to address the congregation. The message of each person—Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and Ben Franklin—was pretty much the same: “We founded this country on Christianity. We founded it on the words of scripture. This is the word that we trusted in, this is the word I believe in, and this is the word we follow!” There was only one problem. Two out of those three were not really Christians in the strict sense of the word.

I have no idea what Abigail Adams believed, but I do know what Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin believed. Thomas Jefferson was a deist, meaning that he believed in a remote, impersonal God. He did not believe that Jesus was anything more than a great teacher or prophet. In fact, the Bible bothered him so much that he created his own Bible by cutting out anything in the gospels he disagreed with (Jefferson didn’t have much use for any part of the Bible other than the gospels). He cut out the virgin birth, the resurrection, and any miracles. He kept Jesus’ teachings and parables. You can actually go out and buy a copy of Jefferson’s Bible. While Jefferson was technically an Episcopalian, he rarely went to church. Ben Franklin was a deist who bordered on atheist or agnostic. He didn’t believe much in God. He rarely went to church. And he lived a life that often ignored Christian principles or morality. He believed in human reason, rationality, philosophy, and science. For that particular church to have portrayed Jefferson and Franklin as bible-thumping Christians was just untrue. But people believed what the church said because they want this to be a Christian nation.

So in the face of all this, what should we believe? What do I believe? I believe that I follow the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson. who was the one who coined the term “separation of church and state.” I believe as they did, which is that the state should not establish a religion. That being said, is there a role for religion in politics? Absolutely. The Founding Fathers believed that religion should mix, but in us. The church shouldn’t establish religion, but religion should influence politics. In essence, we should bring our faith into our voting. And our government officials should bring their faith into their decision-making, but not to the point of establishing one religion over another.

So what’s wrong with the state encouraging religion, say, in areas such as teaching a biblical view of creation? The problem is that if you bring creationism, or even intelligent design, into teaching, the state either has to choose one faith over another, or teach all faiths. Which version would we teach? I’ll be honest. I don’t want schools teaching about creation because invariably they won’t teach what we Presbyterians believe. We believe that God created everything, but that God has used evolution. When you are teaching creation in a school, what version do you use? The fundamentalist one? The Catholic one? The Muslim one? The Wiccan one? The Native American one? Do you teach all of them, and if so, how? And if you teach all of them, do you have time for teaching science? I would rather have schools stick to teaching science, and let us teach about creation, which is partly what we are doing right now in our adult education class, Science and Theology Shake Hands.

I also don’t want the state determining what faith to teach or encourage because invariably they won’t pick mine. Right now the evangelicals have more political power than we in the mainline churches do, and I’m not an evangelical. When people say we are a Christian nation, what they usually mean is that we are a nation founded upon evangelical Christian beliefs. That’s only not true, but if flies in the face of my beliefs because I’m not an evangelical. I don’t want to impose my beliefs on them, and I certainly don’t want them imposing their beliefs on me. I want the state to stay out of this.

So, again, how do politics and religion mix? Ultimately they mix in each one of us. I wrote about this in the Calvin Newsletter in August. I wrote then that I believe that we should bring our faith, and especially our prayer, into our voting. We should be asking questions such as, “which candidate is the one who seems most open to God’s will? Who will care about Christian issues, not only about abortion, but about the poor, the hungry, the hurting, the marginalized, and the struggling? Who will treat others in the most Christian way?” This is where religion and politics mix. This should be part of our voting.

I believe that the Founding Fathers wanted us to mix religion and politics in this way. That’s why the first amendment is so sacrosanct in our country. I defend the right of anyone to say that we are a Christian nation, even if they’re wrong. I defend it because even though I disagree with it, I recognize that even saying that brings faith into our politics. What I don’t want is for the state to agree with them and establish their religion as our state religion to the point at which we become so intolerant of other faith that my and our faith becomes diminished by the very people who are sworn to protect my rights to pursue my faith. And I believe that this is the faith that the Founding Fathers had.

Amen.
at

Can We Reject God So Easily?



Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, "They will respect my son.' But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.' So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time." Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls." When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.- Matthew 21: 33-46

This was a very dangerous parable for Jesus to tell? Did you hear the danger in it? It would be a safe bet to say that this parable probably had a lot to do with getting Jesus killed . Did you hear the danger in it?

You probably didn't hear the danger because you were listening to it from Jesus' point of view, but take some time thinking about it from the perspective of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Jesus had a very special talent. He had the ability to bring conservatives and liberals together. Of course he did it by doing things that caused them to hate him. The Sadducees were the conservatives of the day. They were trying to conserve the old traditions, especially the traditions of the Temple . They believed that holy scripture should be treated literally with no room for interpretation. The Pharisees were the liberals. They believed that scripture could be interpreted and applied in new ways to life. They took liberties with scripture, and added their own beliefs, including the idea of resurrection. Yet Jesus managed to threaten both groups.

This parable was about them. What Jesus was saying in this parable was that Israel was like the vineyard, and the Pharisees and Sadducees were like the tenants on the vineyard. God is the owner of the vineyard. Basically, Jesus was saying this: “Look, God sent prophets to you, and you beat them up. God sent more prophets, and you killed them. God sent more, and you stoned them. And here I am, the son of God, coming to you, and you are going to kill me. In the end, God's kingdom is going to be taken away from you and given to the Gentiles!” Imagine you are the Sadducees or Pharisees. If you are them, how do you take this parable? He's accusing them of leading people to ignore God, and on top of that he is calling himself the son of God. How blasphemous!

Why would Jesus provoke the Pharisees and Sadducees so? Did he want to be killed? Actually, my guess is that he just expected to be killed. He figured that leading people back to God, and teaching them truth, was enough on its own to get him killed. So he told this parable to explain his death before it happened. He wasn't trying to provoke the Pharisees and Sadducees. He was simply trying to prepare his followers for what was to happen.

Listen to the parable from Jesus' point of view. He is telling the people, “Look, way back in the past God kept trying to bring prophets to you to show you the way to God. And your leaders kept misleading you. They led your ancestors to beat some of the prophets, kill others, and stone others. And now the Father has sent me to you. I am the son of God. I am the incarnation of God right here and now. You know this because of my teachings and my miracles. I'm teaching you the truth: the Pharisees and Sadducees can't stand me speaking the truth, so they are going to kill me, too. But don't worry. God is going to take the kingdom of heaven away from ones such as these and give it to ones such as you. So have faith.”

This passage not only tells why Jesus was going to die, but it was telling us about the kind of relationship God wants with us, and how we reject it. Jesus was telling the people about themselves, and what to be careful about. Again, listen to the parables from a human point of view. Jesus was saying, “Look, you know that even though God is trying to constantly teach you, you struggle to listen. No one wants to hear truth. We only want to hear what we want to hear. But God is speaking to you. God sent you prophets and now me. Your natural sinful nature will cause many of you to want to kill me and to reject God. That may happen. The reason it happens is that you want to be the master and not serve God. But trust me on this. If you decide to serve God, it's amazing how much fruit your life will bear. If you decide not to serve God, then all of this will be taken away from you. You will no longer be the chosen people. Choose who you want to serve—yourself or God.”

Jesus is speaking truth in all three perspectives. Ultimately he is saying that this relationship we have with God is a difficult one . It's based on our loving and trusting a God who we often experience as an absentee landowner . We live in a world created by God, blessed by God, endowed by God with amazing wonders, but because we don't see God's hand in it all, it's so easy to ignore and reject God. And we all reject God at one point or another. Often we end up rejecting God by becoming enamored with our own thoughts, beliefs, and prowess that we only see what we do, not what God does. Let me show you what I mean.

A number of years ago a brilliant scientist unlocked the secret of creation. He figured out how to create life out of dirt, and to create new animals, plants, and even humans. He was celebrated far and wide for his brilliance, his ingenuity, his prowess. Eventually God heard about this man, and about his claims that we no longer need God because we can create like God.

God wasn't offended, but God did want to see whether or not this scientist could do as he said. So he visited him. The man showed God what he could do in his lab, and after looking at it all God presented the man with a challenge: God would create a human, the man would create a human, and anyone in attendance could judge whose creation was better. The winner would be master of all creation.

The day of the challenge came, and the scientist was surrounded by curious onlookers, all waiting to see whether God could be beaten by this scientist. The scientist stood in front of his laboratory, while God stood barefoot in the grass. God explained the rules: “We will both grab dirt from below our feet, and we'll begin to create. The crowd can judge the results. On your mark! Get set! Go!” At that, both bent over to grab a handful of dirt. As the scientist reached into the dirt, God looked up and said, “No, no, no. If you want to be master of creation, you first have to create your own dirt!”

See the point? We can become so enamored with our own intelligence, our own beliefs, our own insights, our own abilities that we ignore or diminish God in the process. We think that we are more powerful than we really are. We think this as individuals and we think this as a people.

This pride of ours, which leads us to reject God, gets right to the heart of the parable, which is this. God created us and has given us life. Everything we have, everything we are, comes from God . God is all around us and wants to be part of every experience we have, everything we do, and every event in the world . But it is up to us to let God into the world. God is a polite God. That's what scripture says. It says that God only rarely barges into our lives uninvited. For instance, in Revelation it says, “ Listen! I am standing at the door , knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door , I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” Also, the story of the Prodigal Son teaches us something similar. You remember the story. The son wants his inheritance from his father, and then goes out and squanders it, ending up living among pigs. He returns home, hoping to be a slave in his father's household, but is surprised to find that the Father runs to embrace him, gives him the ring off his finger, and has a feast to celebrate his return. This is a metaphor for the way God is. God, like the father, gives us to freedom to reject God. And if that happens, God will wait patiently for our return. God won't follow us, intervene in our lives, or try to convince us to return. Instead, God will wait patiently. But when we return, God will immediately bless us. The point is that it is up to us either to embrace or reject God, embrace or reject faith.

Here's the point. The economy is bad, and we're all nervous about it . Will we let God in to help us with our anxiety? Will we trust God to help us and take care of us? Do we trust that God, ultimately, is in charge?

Some of us have troubled relationships at home, work, the neighborhood . Are we letting God in to make things better? Are we willing to let God show us what to change to make it better? Are we willing to seek God's way to love and peace?

Some of us are struggling in life . We don't have a sense of direction. We aren't sure what are the right decisions for our lives. Are we willing to let God guide us to a better life, even if it means changing our thinking and living?

We are surrounded by God's love, beauty, grace, and possibility . Are we doing enough to recognize God's hand in it all, and letting that hand bless us?

Amen.
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