The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for March 11, 2007

Texts: Isaiah 55:1-9/1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Title: “A Way Out”

              History is malleable; we can do whatever we choose with it. We can ignore it. It’s behind us why bother with it.  There are people living today who are completely devoid of curiosity about the past. We can deny history. The most outrageous example being those who insist that the holocaust never happened.  A third option would be to misrepresent history to suit our purposes, or to promote a certain image. The readings many of us were assigned in our civics classes in those bygone middle school and high school days back in the fifties, sixties, and earlier, misrepresented our history. Racial injustices and other unsavory episodes in our nation’s history were passed over with little or no comment, the aim being to promote an image of America the author of those texts wanted us to see.

              History is malleable.  We can ignore it, we can deny it, we can misrepresent it.  History is just that, it’s history, it’s ours to use, or abuse, as we see fit. 

              The prophets of God were just as aware of those realities as much as we are, insisting that the people to whom God sent them neither, ignore, deny, nor misrepresent history. “Your history has things to teach you,” they declared. Over and over they could be heard to declare “Remember how you suffered when you didn’t listen to God?  Wise up learn from your history.”

              The Apostle Paul lent his voice to that chorus.  In letter after letter he referred his fellow Jews back to the history they shared. And so we have his first letter to the church in Corinth.  We heard Paul open our lesson this morning with a history lesson.  He writes, “I do not want you to be unaware...our ancestors [remember them] our ancestors way back there in the time of Moses…” It would have been impossible for any Jew to be out of the loop on Moses.  “Our ancestors were all under the cloud, and they all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and sea.” 

              “Under the cloud,” as Paul employs the phrase does not carry the derogatory connotation it might carry today, “under the cloud,” here literally means “under the cloud.” The cloud offered the Israelites assurance that God was with them as they made their wilderness journey to the Promised Land.

              The people of Israel, Paul would insist, lacked for nothing in their journey, food, drink, strong leadership in Moses who, the Egyptians in hot pursuit, led them through the sea to safety and was unyielding in the face of peril. The journey under Moses was rigorous, taking its toll on young and old alike, but in all instances the people journeyed in God’s vigilant custody.      

              Despite, however, having a vigilant God as their travel companion, Paul wanted his Corinthians friends to know that the Israelites failed the obedience test. This, of course, did not please God, the bodies of the disobedient littering the wilderness testifying to his displeasure.

              Paul’s counsel to the Corinthians could be summarized as follows, “History only repeats itself when we choose to allow it.”  “These things [the events back there in the wilderness with Moses, Paul writes] occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.”

              “History only repeats itself when we choose to allow it.”  Spring training is a wonderful and hoped-filled inauguration of the baseball season.  The baseball fan, particularly those who look out upon three feet of snow from their bay window as the spring season begins, greet the new season with great expectations.  Your team may be a perennial cellar dweller, but in March possibilities come unscuffed by the harsher realities of the loses that will inevitably come.

              Spring training is a hope-filled inauguration of the baseball season, but hopes are liable to quickly fade if the team you follow hasn’t made a move to improve itself after last year’s dismal season.  The disappointed fan can only look on in dismay to see his or her team stand pat with the same roster of players as lost a hundred games the previous season.  The disappointed fan might want to remind team ownership that “history only repeats itself when we choose to allow it.

              Someone once defined mental illness as repeatedly doing the same thing over and over expecting that the result of the deed will somehow change in the process.  That form of mental illness, to the regret of many fans, is not at all uncommon among certain owners of professional baseball teams and franchises in other American sports.  That form of mental illness is widespread beyond sports.

              History, is just that, its history.  But sometimes history establishes such precedence in our lives, creates such a groove, that we can’t lift ourselves out of it. My remarks from here last week focused on the failure of Israel to learn from her history.  Misadventure after misadventure, and the people failed to learn anything, or perhaps learned for a period, only to revert back to former practices. 

              The Apostle Paul didn’t want that to happen to his friends in Corinth.  Having recounted the tragic end to those who failed to heed God in the wilderness, Paul declares, “Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.” 

              Harriet Beecher Stowe, the renowned author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” reminds us that “Things have to be done once to learn not to do them again.”  But that’s not to say that we personally have to do them, does it?  Under the right conditions the wise can learn from someone else’s mistakes as easily as there own.

              “There is a history behind us,” Paul declared to his Corinthian friends, and it would be tragic if the people didn’t learn something from it. 

              History is just that, it’s history, it’s the past.  However, that doesn’t make history irrelevant. History is certainly not irrelevant, but neither must it cast its shadow over the present or the future.

              You and I know people who are chained to the past, lives undone by the mistakes they have made and the disappointments they have suffered. You can pick up the newspaper any day of the week and you will find a record of people who have made mistakes and suffered disappointments. Some of what you read there, the arrest for DUI, the divorce, the accident, the firing will follow those individuals for the rest of their lives. Read the obituaries. For the surviving spouse or child that death notice represents a death within themselves. That death, that arrest, or that loss of a job may have occurred ages ago, but the fallout, the fallout from those events, lingers as a persistent cloud.

              It is terrible waste to see lives stalled in that way. But that is the state in which many live today.  God doesn’t want that for us, and we don’t want that for ourselves, but many of us don’t know how to get beyond it. 

              Each one of us is stalled to some degree, a mistake, a disappointment, preventing us from living the kind of life we might otherwise live. The diagnosis in this case, however, is much easier to propose than the cure.  For the Apostle Paul the lessons obtainable in history were indispensable to the cure. His counsel, “learn from the past, don’t relive it.”

              Paul, and people who preach and teach that message, have their work cut out for them, because there is a counterforce in history that would have us to believe that the past governs the present and future. Care to take a guess at what that counterforce might be? Sin is that counterforce. Sin represents the great dead end, the “no” to any and all attempts to rescue life from bondage.  

              “Sorry, that’s just the way it is. There is nothing you can do to alter things.” Paul, who in his own personal life had experienced a 180 degree re-orientation from persecutor of the church to a committed defender, knew that such declarations were nonsense.  For Paul past failures had no bearing on the present or future.  His personal experience of Christ dramatically impacted the way he approached life. That experience would make him a counselor and companion to all struggled to live free.

As counselor and companion to the Corinthians, Paul made no attempt to sugarcoat things or diminish the seriousness of the problems Israel, the Corinthian forbearers, had brought on herself. The record was not good, but neither were the obstacles to freedom and health insurmountable.

                 Paul was prepared to offer a new slant on history.  The record could not be denied, the wilderness was littered with the bodies of those who through their disobedience failed to heed God and his representative Moses. Paul was prepared, however, to add another page to the record. “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

                We do not know what, if any, particular conditions in Corinth prompted Paul to take his friends on a trip down memory lane all the way back to Moses.  We can surmise, however, that the Corinthians faced some important test.  As I stand here right now, I know that some of you feel tested. Some of you struggle with issues in your family, others with health, still others with faith. 

                 There is a real counterforce operating in your life, history that cannot be ignored. But that history will only repeat itself when you choose to allow it. You have tried and failed, not just once, but repeatedly, to make headway on the problem, the disappointment, you are facing. What makes this run up the hill any different?  In fact, this effort may well produce no outcome different than the past.

                    But God through Christ would have you to know that the counterforce against which your energies are cast, the counterforce that repelled you once, twice, or a dozen times, is not the dead end you may perceive it to be.  “God is faithful…and with the testing will provide the way out.”

                  If you feel trapped there is a way out.  If you feel forgotten there is a way out.  If you feel tempted there is a way out.  If you have tried everything you can think of, and your can’t make your problem budge, there is a way out.

                  God is faithful.  But what does that mean? It means his presence when we feel abandoned.  It means strength when we feel weak.  It means courage when fear overwhelms. It means hope when we feel hopeless. It means light when all we see is darkness.

                  Brother Roger founder of the Taize community in Taize, France, and one of the true saints of our time, offers this, “Whoever is on a journey towards God goes from one beginning to another beginning.  [And then he asks this question], Will you be among those who dare to tell themselves: “Begin again! Leave discouragement behind! Let your soul live!”

                  We ultimately decide whether or not past history, past failures, represent dead ends or new beginnings. God is faithful… and with the testing will provide the way out. But don’t take my word for it, insist that God prove it. He’s waiting and ready to do just that. Have him prove it.

PRAYER

              You preside over the world and creation, O God, with a faithfulness that is beyond the comprehension of mortals like us.  We sing the exhilarating hymn of the church, “Great is thy faithful,” but the tribute words offer is far less than your works deserve. Yet, O God, you have taught us that it is not words of tribute you seek, but hearts converted to your holy purpose.  Don’t wait, O Lord, work in us today.

              Lord, we are but imperfect vessels to transport the blessings you would have us carry. Called to a life of discipleship, O God, we waver when we tally the cost discipleship might entail.  Forgive, O Christ, our readiness to identify ourselves as your disciples, to partake of the communion bread and drink the communion juice, and assemble as the church, while maintaining but a casual commitment to the mission you would have us accomplish.  Have mercy, O Christ, for our sins of omission, the vineyard left unharvested, the widow, the orphan, and the prisoner left neglected.

              O God, you embody the freedom we seek for ourselves, our families, and our world.  We have come seeking that freedom, but old habits are difficult to break. We have sought freedom in earning and consuming more, and by so doing have only succeeded in impoverishing ourselves, sacrificing health and relationships in the process. Through the inspiration of your holy Word, satisfy, O God, the longings that go unmet in your people.  May your Spirit move open that which has stubbornly remained closed in us.

              We have allowed the histories we have individually compiled, the guilt and disappoints suffered, O God, to discourage us from believing that anything in our lives can really be changed. Lord, even as you gave us this new day, renew our minds that we may more fully grasp the possibilities that exist for us. With the assurance that the old has passed away, you sent Christ to bring deliverance, O God.  May that blessing be a reality upon which we are willing to base our lives and our futures.

              Abide with the dislocated, the grieving, and the forlorn this day.  Wave upon wave of terror mars the face of civilization.  Children deprived of parents, parents grieving the loss of children. Casualties mount even as resignation overcomes us.  Our wills are too weakened to entertain thoughts of a lasting peace. O God, in your mercy deliver us.

              O God you have taught us that from those who have been given much, much is expected.  Beneficiaries of great generosity from across the Church, we at Lakeview take seriously the charge that is laid upon us.  Help us now to faithfully and intelligently use the resources made available to us to accomplish the mission you have placed in our hands. May our ambitions in all that we do conform to your will.

              Lord, we celebrate the legacy of Christian education that has been faithfully maintained in our church over many years.  We lift up those whose energies are committed to continuing that legacy through teaching and administering our educational programming today.  The responsibility is great, a labor requiring additional hands. Through the prompting of your Spirit may the congregation hear and heed the call.

              O Lord, who in Christ, has redeemed us for a life free of sin and death, grant that we may believe and accept the invitation to a new life, this we ask in Christ’s name, praying the prayer…