Created and Called

Sermon from closing worship.

Texts: Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Genesis 2:18-25

When the planning team decided to use this Genesis
text for this weekend, I really wasn't that excited
about it. Honestly I was about as far from excited
about it as it's possible to get. I felt about this text
about the same way I feel about Valentine's Day.
And I hate Valentine's Day.

The problem I have with both things is the way they
seem to play into and support the assumption that
our normal way of being is to pair off.

And the thing is, I have never had much success at
he whole pairing off thing. And I have no reason to
think that I will have more luck in the future. It just
isn't in the cards for me.

So every year as Valentine's Day comes around, I
grumble and mope as every conceivable media
outlet goes on and on about spending time with and
buying things for your significant other, partner or
POSSLQ. I just don't want to hear about it.

I had an even stronger reaction to this text. As if it's
not bad enough that the culture keeps sending me
the message that there's something wrong with me
because I'm spending my life without that kind of
relationship, now the Bible is telling me the same
thing.

Dammit

And isn't that a great place to start a sermon from?
Pissed off at the text. Great.

And then, and then, on top of that, because this is
the closing service for the retreat, I have to find a
way to connect the Genesis text to the Jeremiah text
we used Thursday night.

Sure, no problem.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part,
I came to a realization that I've faced many times
before. When I'm struggling with a text, the problem
is not the text; the problem is the questions that I'm
asking of the text.

The questions I had been asking, the ones that
weren't working were "what do these texts say
about us? What do they say about humanity." Now
there are times when those are great questions to
ask of texts. Last night's Bible study and sermon,
were, at least in part about those
questions. And for him those were the right
questions to ask. But for me and where I am right
now they are not the right questions.

The better question for me, the one that actually
works for me is, "what do these texts tell us about
God?"

Once I started to ask that question, the connections
between the two texts became obvious. And more
than that, the answer to the first question I had
asked also became obvious. In seeing what these
texts say about God, I also saw what these texts say
about us.

In both texts we see a God who is active and
intimate with us; a God who acts to address our
needs.

In Genesis, God sees what it is that the man needs,
perhaps even before the man himself realizes it. The
great part is that God doesn't just point and say,
"there's your problem," and then walk away.

No, God rolls up God's metaphorical sleeves and
gets to work.

Now I have no idea whether creation is easy or hard
for God, but what I do know is that it is something
that only God can do. The help that God offers the
man is help that only God could offer.

The same kind of thing happens in the Jeremiah text.
Only instead of looking at humanity's individual
needs, God looks at humanity's structures and
systems, at the nation of Israel and at the nations of
the world, the goyim, and sees how unjust they are,
how broken.

And again, God doesn't just say, "Take care of that,
would you?"

No, God goes to work again and again, God does
what only God can do.

God takes a boy, a nobody, certainly not a person
who has any power or position in and of himself and
God puts God's word into the boy's mouth and gives
the boy the "power to pluck up and pull down, to
destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant."

So what these texts tell us about God is that God
knows our needs, God cares about our needs and
God will act to address those needs in ways that
only God can.

They also tell us that when God acts, God acts
through us. God acts through us to address the
needs of both individuals and nations.

We are created by God to be partners and helps for
each other and for each individual that we meet.

And then God calls us to speak against the
brokenness of the nations, and equips us to pull
down and overthrow those broken and unjust
structures and in their place to plant and to build
God's kingdom here on earth.

Created and called, by God and for each other.

Hallelujah.

Amen.