Let Go, Let God, pt. 1 - Letting Go

A sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA
by Gregory S. Kaurin, pastor August 1, 2010

Let Go, Let God, pt. 1 – Letting Go

Texts: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21

In a sketch from the old Jack Benny Show he’s being held up. The robber tells him in those famous words, “Your money or your life.” There’s a long pause, and the crook says again, “Look buddy, I said your money or your life,” to which Jack would answer… “I’m thinking about it!”

Jesus was clear about the message in today’s parable. He said that we are to guard “against all kinds of greed.” What kinds of greed? All kinds. Are there a lot of kinds of greed? You bet. Anything we try to hold onto, hoard or control for ourselves. It can be anything we chase after or want. And the ironic twist is that whatever we try to possess or control can end up possessing and controlling us. It gets in the way of our relationships with each other, and with God. All the time that we try to fill ourselves, our lives are actually emptying of meaning and value.

Greed and accumulating stuff or experiences is a mask for deeper fears and loneliness. We can become addicted to approval or attention, social connections. Even the negative stuff, people accumulate fear, guilt, or anger. Why? What are we trying to fill emotionally or physically? What are we looking for?

Look at this parable. Is Jesus saying that we throw investments and all future thoughts to the wind? There is nothing especially wicked about this rich man, at least not by our standards. He had a good year that produced lots of food. He saw that this good year would carry over, if he built a bigger portfolio, safety net. If you’ve ever read Aesop’s fable about the hard working ant and the lazy grasshopper, what’s the message? When things are available or plentiful, you should take advantage, store them up, because winter will come, bad years will come. Get a good education when you’re young so that…? You can get a good job or have more success later.

But I think Jesus’ point runs deeper… and you’ll find it in how the rich man talks to himself, “Soul, soul, now that you’ve collected all these goods, now you can relax, [be at peace] eat, drink and be merry.” Jesus added that his problem was where he was looking for his larger sense of peace. “So it is,” Jesus said, “with those who store up” their stuff, who hold on to things or experiences for themselves, but are not rich toward God.”

I am reminded of the beer commercial about the middle-aged bearded guy. They show clips and flashbacks of him involved in all manner of adventurous feats, surrounded by young women. The narrator says things like, “His reputation is expanding faster than the universe. He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels. When he picks at his nose, he finds real gold.” Okay, I added the last one. The commercial declares him to be the most interesting man. Of course, we’re supposed to believe that part of his mysterious sophistication is that when he drinks beer, he drinks Dos Equis. He ends with the deep comment, “Stay thirsty, my friends.”

Some people find the book of Ecclesiastes depressing and cynical, but I find it honest, powerful and faith inspiring. It drives me to Jesus Christ. The book and today’s lesson begins with:
“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity!”
Literally, this passage reads, “Vaporous Vapors, everything is Vapor.” It’s all empty. In time it all blows away in the wind. Nothing lasts forever or has value in itself… except this: We stopped at the 23rd verse, but look at verses 24-25, “24There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. [What did the rich man say to his soul? To relax, eat, drink and be merry, except Ecclesiastes says that,] “This I saw, is from the hand of God; 25for apart from God who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”

Ecclesiastes is the same book that holds the lesson about finding good companions. You hear it in Ecclesiastes 4:9 – Two are better than one, for if one falls they can help each other up, keep warm, or strengthen each other. I mentioned a month or so ago that I saw a huge RV plastered with poster-sized pictures of family and friends with a sign across it saying to see your treasures in the accumulation of family and friends, but even this must be understood in perspective. Even that, if done for the sake of accumulation, doesn’t provide all happiness and meaning.

Some of you know that I have a Facebook account and blog on the web, and I own one of these: a blackberry. I can receive and answer email, look up stuff on the web, take pictures of the boys and send them to their grandparents. Some people are finding that email, Facebook and phone texting encourage us to accumulate and maintain hundreds of connections and “friends,” leading to what some call “hyper connection.” Most people know that this doesn’t take the place of face to face conversation and relationship, but we can become so tied to our phones and blackberries, checking our messages first thing in the morning and last thing at night. We can become hyper-vigilant and preoccupied, not wanting to miss all the “somethings” that may be happening out there. Some people admit that the time spent answering emails, on Facebook, texting people, keeps them from the life, the people and world right in front of them. We need to tread in these waters carefully, with thoughtfulness and self-control.

In 1765, Charles Wesley wrote that in this book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon “shews that business and wealth are only vanity and vexation of spirit. And that if there be any good therein, it is only to these who sit loose to them.”

“Sit loose to them,” meaning to hold them loosely. Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, reminds us to keep things in prospective, that there is a time for everything under the sun, times for laughter and tears, peace and war, life and death. That the only thing we can hold onto, the only thing left is to place our faith in God. Enjoy, experience happy moments, people and good things of life as momentary, passing gifts from God, but let them come and go without expecting them to be our happiness or fill that God-sized need in us to belong to something or someone that will never let us down, and that never ends. That is how Ecclesiastes drives me to Jesus Christ. Ecclesiastes takes away everything else. It’s vain, vapor, and he says that the only left is to trust God, and Jesus Christ shows us that we can trust God, that he is unbelievably loving, trustworthy and merciful.

All this can help us know when to put things down, and to keep priority. Time, quality time, needs to be given to God and the people he sends to us. Pauline and I have a rule. No answering phones at the dinner hour. Make a few rules for yourself, don’t check email, or rush to answer a phone that first and last fifteen minutes or hour of each day. Give your full attention to God instead… to devotional reading and prayer… or to the person in front of you. Sometimes when I’m talking with someone, my phone starts to vibrate, and people ask me if I’m going to answer it. No, you are in front of me now. In light of the importance of each moment, each person that God sends us, even urgent requests can leave messages. Breaking news can wait.

Next week, we’ll talk more about how letting go makes room for God to transform our lives. This week I wanted to get across our need to release our fearful hold on things of this life, and really grabbing hold of Christ.

Letting go takes endless practice. I’ve recently started to read about the spiritual journey of Parker Palmer. He set out to be deeply spiritual by accumulating spiritual experiences, flexing his holy muscles through intense study, personal retreats and meditation. He was taking his own spiritual journey by the horns and was going to make himself a great spiritual person. But as he did all this, he became more frustrated, and depressed and felt more and more like a failure for all his efforts and distant from God. You see, he wasn’t letting go. He was trying to accumulate God, possess God, instead of accepting Christ’s presence, and letting Christ take him where he needed him to go.

Letting go, is not about throwing all cares and things to the wind. It is about keeping priority and really trusting God’s love, his promises to you and to this whole creation. Letting go may include giving less time and energy to pursuing stuff and more time to God, but also to people. Less talking and more listening. Letting go is more about accepting people and situations, and less about fixing them, because we trust God’s Holy Spirit to somehow do more than we can. Letting go makes us more available. Letting go changes how we deal with death, or frustrating children, deep hurts, separation or divorce. It does not make us immune to any of these, but it means that the sands will not shift completely from under us.

We hold unto God through the promises of Jesus Christ. We stand on the Grace through which the universe was built. We are small, but God has put eternity into our small hearts. Therefore, we are not insignificant.

It takes trust to believe that all of us, and all of creation, all destiny lies in the hands of a good, loving and merciful God. It really is going to be okay. All knees will bend to Christ. Let go of the accumulated past or trying to direct every bit of your future, enough to enter into and savor this minute, the people around you and our time together, or the next song. The presence of God is in your life now and always. You can look at the vaporous wind of life in two ways. Yes, it does take things away… but it will always bring new blessings, too. Even death is not as powerful as the blessing that comes after. You are going to be okay. Your destination is written by the mark on your forehead. Let go, and pay attention to the ride.

Our Christian Freedom, Pt. 3

Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA
by Pastor Greg Kaurin
July 4, 2010

Text: Galatians 5:1-6
Our Christian Freedom, pt. 3: for Country

This will be the third week that we look at this verse from Galatians: "For freedom Christ has set you free. Stand firm, therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." Last week, I said that this Christian freedom that Paul wrote about isn't civil freedoms, our rights as citizens. Neither is Christianity a freedom to follow our urges, either. However, there is a relation between our Christian freedom won for us by Christ, and the freedoms for which we strive and pray and die while we are here, our civil freedoms.

Our civil freedoms have been earned and fought for, and need protection. Our Christian freedom was given to us by God, paid in full by the blood of Jesus. Our Christian freedom is what gives us the ability to live and act with compassion, but without fear for the sake of our neighbors.

Before the great battle in the movie Braveheart, William Wallace shouts to the enemy that “you may take our lives, but you’ll never take our freedom!” It’s almost ridiculous to see a shackled man, or someone claiming that not even death can take his freedom, but this is the Christian claim to freedom. It can and has been shackled, it has been enslaved, it has been persecuted, laughed at, hidden and hated, but none of these can actually destroy the Christian freedom. We are in God's hands, his instruments. So long as others do these things to us, we can bear up. Even from death, we will rise again.

We do need to be vigilant as citizens to help protect each other as we try to keep this balance between safety and freedom, so that we can have a place in which the church can worship and the gospel can spread. Here "on earth" Christians have a special ability to be generous hosts in protecting the civil rights and freedoms of others.

I know that some of you have felt and seen anti-Christian sentiments both here and elsewhere around the world. The temptation is to strike back, in words or actions, or to take back. But when we're doing that, talking tough or demanding, it's too easy to look and act and sound like the stereotyped, judging, or irrational people that others say we are. Some are.

The trick, instead, is to remember Jesus' teaching: his example is to act on behalf of our neighbors, to protect the rights and dignity of those who differ, disagree, or even disbelieve.

So, while we are here, we seek to have the peace of Christ and God's kingdom come to the just and to the unjust, to the believer and the non-believer. The Christian who fights for the rights and dignities of those who follow other creeds, are, in fact, living out both their Christian freedom, and supporting our civil freedoms at the same time.

Not long ago, there was Southern police chief; he was a black man who volunteered to walk in front and protect a demonstration of the KKK as they paraded through his city streets. His face was set like flint. He protected their rights to free speech and assembly, but at the very same time, he showed his own freedom and the rights that people bled and died for, and he was able to do it because of those who gave of themselves on his behalf, and because of his faith that proclaimed him free no matter what.

My life, my hope, my future, my salvaton is in Christ, so that now I can think about, work for, and seek to answer the needs of my neighbors and the public sphere: their health and food, their rights to assemble and vote, and to worship or not, their right to love, and to raise children. On behalf of the Samaritan, the Jew or Muslim, on behalf of the atheist and agnostic, men, women, children, we demand protection, care, compassion, life and freedom. Those are freedoms worth Christian blood, sweat and tears. We can give any of these away to anyone, or even lose them for their sake, and regardless of the apparent outcome, we cannot be defeated because we will rise again. The Body of Christ will always rise again.

Our overall sense of freedom and independence have been building over centuries and generations. In the Old Testament, while God's Spirit came to specific people at specific times and for specific reasons, he promised that the day would come when: "I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Sons and daughters will prophesy. Young men shall see visions, old men dream dreams. On my servants, men and women, I will pour my Spirit.” And Ezekiel promised a day would come when each would be responsible for his own sin, or her own relationship with God.

And in the New Testament--while Paul did not declare all slaves to be free, in fact, even returned a slave to his owner, and told women to be silent and respect the authority of husbands and men--this is the same Paul who spoke of a gospel message that was not bound by these structures, but a grace in which there is neither Jew, nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.

That gospel message--and the prayer that God's will, that this same gospel, might be lived on earth as it is in heaven--set us on a course long ago. So that now after centuries, including the Reformation, Wars of Independence here, France and elsewhere, Civil War, Womens' suffrage, civil right’s marches, and on, humanity continues to strive for these freedoms. Our country needs to strive for these freedoms, even more than for our safety and protection.

And as Christians we are free to love, pray for, fight for, and critique our nation. We must seek the peace and welfare of the nation in which we are living and the rights of our neighbors because, in the process, we demonstrate the freedom God has given to us through Christ.

We sometimes worry so much about protecting and hoarding our freedoms that we forget that freedom is not free if it's lived in the cages of selfish desire or bound by fear. Stand firm. Do not submit to fear. Do not try to regain control of God with Old Laws or new rules. Stand firm that you are saved by grace, that nothing else can put you in or remove you from the hand of God.

And while you are here, seek the welfare of the nation you are in. Pray for its welfare, its people and leaders. Help reach for the civil freedoms that so many have bled and died for. Pray for our men and women who stand in harm's way on our behalf; pray that their sacrifices will finally result in better lives for all.

Of our national hymns and songs, I am very partial to those that are clear solemn prayers to God. We have our strengths, and we certainly have our faults, so we ask God to mend our every flaw, and to make firm our soul through self-control, and our liberty in law. We ask for God's blessing; our nation needs his grace, and his forgiveness to stand beside her and guide her, through the night with a light from above.

And while you're at it, pray for a new birth of freedom in and beyond our nation that will come when fears are put aside for the sake of sharing our freedoms, and demanding that basic human needs be met, and that justice be given both in and also beyond our borders.

Live the idea and belief, that in God's eyes, all are created equal, and that whatever separates, divides and qualifies that truth needs standing against, needs us to stand firm. Dream with Martin Luther King, Jr. that God's will can be done on earth, and that with this faith we will be able to help--as he said--"transform the jangling discords of our nation" into a more beautiful symphony.

Civil freedom points to and reaches for the freedom of heaven which was won by Christ once and for all, and all the bells of heaven rang out. So now, we pray that all the bells of our freedom can ring on earth, as they once did in heaven.