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Creekside Church
Sermon of February
10, 2008
"The
Best Shape of Your Life"
Jeremiah
18:1-6
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Rev.
David Bibbee
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There is a sect
of Muslim mystics called the Sufis. Before a student in the Sufi
tradition can teach, he must spend at least ten years living with
and learning from a Sufi Master. Having finished his decade-long
apprenticeship, a teacher went to visit his Master. It was raining,
and he wore sandals and carried an umbrella.
When he walked
into the house the Master greeted him, saying, "You left your
sandals and umbrella on the porch, didn't you? Tell me, did you
place the umbrella on the left side of the sandals or the right?"
The young teacher was embarrassed because he had no idea. So the
teacher became a student again and labored another ten years with
the master to acquire constant awareness.
Becoming a Christian
means being a "work-in-progress." Becoming a Christian
means taking the first step in a life-long series of phases and
stages. C. S. Lewis said that being a Christian takes a lifetime
of beginning again. Every day we start over, recommitting ourselves
to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. As Paul put it,
"…we are being changed into the Lord's likeness from one
degree to another (1 Cor. 3:18)."
The process
cannot happen without our permission. God cannot nor will not force
our hand. God needs our "yes" to get things rolling. If
we are going to be people in "formation," we must be involved,
and the first step of involvement is being awake, attentive, and
aware of which side of the sandals the umbrella is on.
Constant awareness
is not a spiritual goal you or I will achieve, given the daily deluge
of distractions we face. But certainly we can become more "in
tune" with God's immediacy-if we want to, and who wouldn't
want our community of faith to be a place where this happens?
When asked what
the most important tool is for catching fish, I tell people it isn't
a magic lure or a hi-tech rod and reel to present it. The most important
thing in fishing isn't a thing at all. It is a discipline-- one
that takes patience and is learned over time. It is OBSERVATION.
Yogi Berra said,
"You can see a lot by looking." Frederick Buechner puts
more meat on Yogi's insight when he says: "There are lots of
things you can learn if you are in a receptive state of mind.
One word, OBSERVANCE, suggests what is most important… It is
life that is going on. It is always going on, and it is always precious.
It is God that is going on. It is you who are there that is going
on."
A young man
showed up at the door of a Sufi Master known for his great wisdom
and spiritual insight. He declared that he wanted to be a student
of the Master so that he, too, would live his life in godly wisdom.
Rather than directly answer his question, the Master invited him
in and asked if he wanted a cup of tea. He accepted. The Master
returned with a tea pot and two cups. He sat and began to pour the
young man's tea. The cup quickly filled, and the Master kept pouring.
It spilled on to the table and ran off into a hot puddle on the
floor, and the Master kept pouring. Unable to keep silent, the young
man said, "Uh… Master-the cup is full. I think you can
stop pouring now." "You are very observant," the
Master said. "The cup is like you. I cannot teach you unless
you are first willing to empty yourself and allow the new to fill
you up."
From 130 to
200 A.D. there lived a man named Iranaeus of Lyons. He was a student
and follower of one of an early Christian martyrs named Polycarp.
Iranaeus lived only two generations from Jesus' disciples, and he
became one of the early church fathers who helped solidify Christian
theology during a dangerous time. There was intense persecution
against the church and Iranaeus defended it against its despisers
from without, and he fought against a heretical sect from within
called the Gnostics who believed that Christianity was a philosophy
which only intellectuals could understand and belong to.
During the Sundays
in Lent our worship themes will relate to the prayer printed in
the worship bulletin. It was written by St. Iranaeus in 140 A.D.
He used the imagery we read from Jeremiah and Isaiah of God as a
potter. The prayer begins with an obvious, and unfortunately dismissed
observation- "It is not you who shapes God. It is God who shapes
you."
The reformer
John Calvin observed that across cultures, people are inherently
religious. People have an implanted drive to connect with a power
that is beyond them. It is what underlies the worship of the sun,
the sea, and mountains and forces of nature. Human hands carve idols,
shape golden calves, and build elaborate temples to the gods, and,
as Paul saw in Corinth, even statues to unknown gods.
We are born
God-hungry, but we have a propensity for creating "designer"
versions of God. In which roles get reversed. Instead of singing,
"Have Thine Own Way, Lord", we sing:
Let's have
our own way, folks! Let's have our own way!
We are the potters, God is the clay.
Mold God and make God, according to our will,
While we are contented, complacent, and still.
There are ways
to tell if we worship the god we've shaped instead of God who shapes
us. If God is "fenced-in" for a designated spiritual
period on Sunday morning; if God only consoles and never confronts;
if God is content to leave you be and not poke you in the conscience
when conditions warrant; if God promises benefits without costs;
if what God wants and you want is one in the same; if you believe
God's ways are in sync with the Administration's ways, chances are
we are worshipping a god we've fashioned on our own potters wheel.
One day the
prophet Jeremiah had an inkling to go to a potter's house to watch
the artist at work. Jeremiah found the potter at the wheel, throwing
a clay vessel. As the potter turned the wheel, a weakness was revealed
and the clay collapsed in the potter's hands. Then he started over
and shaped the clay into the desired vessel.
As Jeremiah
watched, God spoke to him. "O house of Israel, can I not do
with you as this potter has done? Behold, like the clay in the potter's
hand, so are you in my hand."
Jesus told us
to look for the sights and signs around us that point to God and
the world God is determined to have. "Consider the birds of
the air… Consider the lilies of the field… Consider the
children, for to such belongs the kingdom of God." We see little
things every day and seldom give them a second thought. "What's
the big deal?" we wonder. The deal is this-- the little stuff,
the see-it-all-time-easy-to-miss-stuff, is the stuff of our moments
and days that God uses to grab our attention, heighten our awareness,
and shape our lives.
On Tuesday,
after Alyssa Marcin was seen by a host of doctors and had numerous
and painful blood draws from both arms, she had all that her patience
could take. She was cranky and crying to go home. Then nurse came
and took Alyssa, saying there was just one more thing to do before
leaving. She led Alyssa to a room with a large treasure chest full
of new toys and games given by agencies and churches across Indianapolis.
Alyssa's eyes lit up, she zipped across the room, picked a gift
and said, "Tia will love this!"
Alyssa's selfless
gesture brought instant tears from Angi, and a flash of spiritual
insight. Days before a complicated surgery that will impact the
rest of Alyssa's life, this seven year-old's thoughts were not for
herself, but for her sister. "Check out the children,"
Jesus said. "Come to me and behold life with the openness and
humility of a child… IF you want to inherit the Kingdom."
This past week
I pulled out a book that has sat unread in my library for at least
fifteen years. I read a chapter title that caught my attention and
ran into a quote by a seventeenth century Christian mystic named
Angelus Silesius. The words stopped me in my tracks:
God, devil
and the world all wish to enter me
Of what great lineage my noble heart must be.
As I consider
this I must ask myself, and you as well-"What's gotten into
you?" What shapes your identity? The human heart must be quite
a place to dwell, given all influences trying to get a foot inside
the door. What resides in you has everything to do with what absorbs
your attention. The one with whom you are most intimate is the one
of whom you are most aware, and the heart is designed for one occupant.
You may have
heard the story of an unusual funeral that took place in Chicago
a few years ago. A young gambler from the south side named Willie
Stokes Jr. was murdered, and his family had an auto-body shop outfit
Willie's coffin as a Cadillac Seville. It had a trunk and front
grille, a dashboard and windshield, silver spoke wheels, working
headlights and taillights, and Willie's vanity license plate. He
was embalmed and positioned sitting at the wheel, dressed in a hot-pink
suit with five one hundred dollar bills between his thumb and forefinger.
As Willie Stokes
Jr.'s Cadilac Seville coffin was lowered into the grave, I wonder
if it occurred to anyone present that day that Willie died a very
poor man with lots of things, he couldn't take with him. His life
was built on a gamble, not God.
We come into
the world with nothing to our name, and its a guarantee that we
will leave it empty-handed… save for lessons learned, and wisdom
gained, and love given and received through relationships we've
made, especially THE relationship which was made "for us,"
and fashions us into the best shape of our lives.
It is not
you who shapes God. It is God who shapes you. Like clay in the
hands of the Master potter, be supple, be pliable, be malleable,
and be aware of the God who is present and available at every turn,
and ready to turn you into a vessel to do his bidding.
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