The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for November 19, 2006

Texts:  Isaiah 2:1-5/Matthew 24:36-44

Title: “A New Game Plan”

              I can summarize my sermon this morning in a single sentence: When you can't move the ball try a new game plan.  The summary is not meant to excuse you from listening to what will follow, but to orient you in the direction I wish to take us.  When you can't move the ball try a new game plan.

              My summary sentence is particularly fitting in the context in which we residents of greater New Orleans happen to be living. City officials in conjunction with state and federal authorities have tested various strategies, various game plans, in restoring New Orleans to civic health. Unfortunately, no strategy has proven to be very effective.  While progress is being made, it is much slower than many of us who live here thought it would be.

                   Of course, we here at Lakeview have tested a game plan or two in attempting to restore our facility, with little more success to claim than our civil leaders.            

              When you can't move the ball try a new game plan.  Failure is always bitter, but failure needn't be debilitating.  It has really become a cliché, but it is a cliché with an important life lesson to teach: You and I learn the most from our failures. 

                 We learn the most from our failures.  Perhaps we should qualify that by saying the wise learn from their failures.  For the wise failure is seldom the final verdict, rather it gives incentive to attempt new approaches. We at Lakeview have climbed that learning curve, and have won some victories in doing so.

             Success and failure are not terribly difficult to judge when one looks at the status of our city and our property fifteen months out.  The data for judging success or failure is all around us.         

               In life in general, however, wins and loses seldom tally with that precision.  Is a C average on the report card a win or a loss?  Should a 2% sales gain in this economy be judged a win or a loss? How shall we measure wins and losses in parenting?  Judgments regarding success or failure, wins or losses, are often extremely subjective.  For instance, I may think I have done extremely well to complete my assignment in a specified amount of time, while the recipient of my work may feel I had completely let her down. 

               When you can't move the ball try a new game plan.  Assuming that a new game plan is something we agree we need, the implementation of such a plan may offer significant challenges. After all, we have our routines, our well-established ways of doing things.

               Nothing destroyed office routines like the introduction of the personal computer. Legions of office workers balked when the new equipment was introduced.  Those who did the office grunt work were reluctant to scrap their typewriters and adding machines, even as the business owners and office managers were sold on the cost saving features of the new technology. In many, many instances the people in the front office were all for a new game plan, but not so the people who would ultimately carry it out. 

                Is the game plan working?  Judging from progress made in New Orleans recovery, a strong argument could be made that it isn’t. Time to learn from mistakes.   Time for those in authority to reunite around some new goals, time for those who are members of the planning team to set a new course.

              It is a modest challenge, albeit a costly one, to outfit a team in the team uniform, and provide the team with all the gear needed to compete.  It is a very significant challenge, however, to build a team, like LSU for instance, into a functioning and productive unit, for that requires personal sacrifices from individual team members, a willingness to put team ahead of personal goals. 

            This issue of team plays big in scripture. There was nothing God wanted quite as much as to shape Israel into an effective team.  God, after all, had commissioned the Jews to work his game plan, to announce his name to the world. It was through the Jews, the chosen of God, that God would bring his name to the world. Unfortunately, God's team couldn't get the job done.  Generation after generation God’s people turned a deaf ear to their God. 

              Let this small snippet from the first chapter of Isaiah demonstrate what God was up against.  This is Isaiah speaking on God’s behalf: "Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.  The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand." 

               If you ever wanted to make one of those cross-stitch wall hangings for God's living room, you wouldn't have it read, "Home Sweet Home," instead you would have it read, "My people do not understand." 

               Israel had trouble with God's game plan from the very beginning.  We all know the bill of particulars.  The Jews were disobedient. Rude, crude and indifferent, the people did their own thing.  The ox might know its owner, the donkey its master's crib, but the Jews from generation to generation kept recycling the same mistakes.  They ignored God's commandments.  They worshiped the gods of the peoples among whom they lived.  They married pagans. For all that God remained committed to his game plan.  So what did he do?  He groomed his own team of coaches to send to the people, designating them as his "prophets."  Among that number was a man named Isaiah.

            His name was Isaiah but for the people of Judah, that southern portion of the divided kingdom of Israel to whom he prophesied, his name was trouble.  You see, Isaiah brought a word of judgment against the people.  Their crime?  They were working their own game plan.

              Fact of the matter is they needed a game plan, any game plan, because they were being threatened by the armies of Assyria.  The northern half of the divided kingdom of Israel was already lost, and the borders of Judah were already threatened.  To try to save herself Judah sought to buy herself some time by entering into an alliance with the Assyrians, reasoning that such a strategy might stall that nation's expansionist plans.  Isaiah was outspokenly opposed to this move, for if Judah's skin was to be saved, it was God who would do the saving.  Judah was not to launch independent efforts to preserve herself. 

              When you can't move the ball try a new game plan.  God sent a coach in with a game plan, but Judah thought she could move the ball on her own.  Assyria was the key.  Be nice to Assyria and everything might work out.  Coach Isaiah scoffed, "Forget about Assyria.  Assyria can't save you, God alone can save you, and God alone knows how and when salvation will come."

               Friends, there remains great reluctance to follow God’s game plan. The sin that infested the ancient peoples and made them turn a deaf ear to the prophets has found contemporary expression.  We, like our predecessors, want to order the world on terms suited to our convenience.  And, if you look around, you know we have done a pretty good job at that. We have made extraordinary strides, acquiring power and authority unmatched by any other nation. It is obvious that our game plan works. The evidence is everywhere to be seen. Yet for all the power and influence to which we can lay claim, the confidence we possessed in the pre-terrorism days, has yet to be restored.            

              September 11th and its aftermath have clearly demonstrated that we are not the masters of our destiny that we may have thought we were. The specter of terrorism haunts us here at home, even as we are engaged in a war on foreign soil. September 11th continues to serve as a benchmark, virtually every day the press reports information about some terrorist plot uncovered, or some countermeasure devised. The office of Homeland Security, a post 9/11 creation, warns us to be alert during the holidays, the Centers for Disease Control issues a report on the nation’s progress in preparing for chemical and biological threats, and the airlines remind us to allocate additional time for security check-in.  

               Vulnerability is easily taught.  Your car is stolen.  You are mugged.  A hurricane sweeps through your city.  Terrorists seize airplanes.  This stuff makes us vulnerable.  Yet suggest that our vulnerability, and the hardship and anguish that follow in its train, all fit into some game plan of God's design and we become very upset. We cannot conceive of any reason why God would give suffering any standing in his plan. 

               Fact of the matter is God is not composing his game plan in such a way as to guarantee our, or anyone else’s, exemption from the fallout that human sinfulness causes.  The innocent enjoy no exemption when the terrorist’s bomb is detonated.  No exemption from the AIDS pandemic.  No exemption from hurricanes, famine or other natural disasters.

               The Jews of Isaiah's day rejected any notion that God would allow them to suffer at the hands of their enemies.  Such a notion was unthinkable.  But, the unthinkable did in fact happen.  The people of Israel would see all of the illusions she maintained about her greatness and her personal worth in the eyes of God come crashing down.        

               The unexpected hour to which Jesus referred in our second lesson, the hour of judgment, was experienced by Israel with devastating consequences as she saw Jerusalem fall and most of the "best and brightest" of her people carted off into exile. 

               When you can't move the ball try a new game plan.  There is a game plan perfectly suited to your life and mine. You won't find it laid out in football team playbook.  You won't find it advertised in an infomercial on the television.  You won't find it lined out in the self-help books at the bookstore. This morning Isaiah laid out in vivid detail the game plan through which God wishes to be known.  The setting is a mountain peak to which all nations move.  Jerusalem, God's hometown, sits at the mountain's very pinnacle, a place of sanctuary for all people.          

              The message Isaiah delivers is a dramatic counterpoint to the message used a mere chapter earlier where the prophet censures the Jews for their infidelity to God.  The message is restoration, the reestablishment of God’s reign among his people.               Restoration is the game plan, and God is its guarantor.  That ancient fellow Isaiah was given to see the game plan up close. Mind you, he knew nothing of modern national borders.  He knew nothing about the USA, Russia, Norway, Japan.  The worldview he maintained was very, very limited, yet be that as it may, the God Isaiah worshiped was not limited, IS not limited.  The hope Isaiah pronounced for the world in God's name is the same hope in which we live.  It is hope established on unity between nations and peoples, the cessation of war, where swords are retooled into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.  God promises to return this world to “mint condition.”   

               When you can't move the ball try a new game plan.  We humans have made a big deal out of our self-sufficiency, that we have the wits and resources to handle just about anything that comes our way.  Israel was sobered to learn just how limited her powers actually were.  We face our own sobering realities, the limits of our powers exposed.

               Restoration is God's game plan, hope linked not to the fulfillment of your personal ambitions or mine.  The restoration that God envisioned through the prophets is a game plan where justice and righteousness can flourish for all people.  That is the hope that God envisions, that is the game plan to which God is committed. 

               But what about the how?  How will the game plan get done?  The mayor, the governor, the FEMA team can devise a game plan, they can plan for every contingency, but that game plan is an inert thing, just words, without the personnel with intelligence to execute it. 

               God designs the game plan, but he looks to people, to us, to carry it out.  This world may well change through some massive intervention by God, some scenario of judgment.  Scripture reports that interventions like that have occurred. Yet throughout most of history God has relied on human agents, his faithful to do what justice and righteousness requires.  Make not mistake about it, it is largely through the decisions that we are making as individuals and nations that we determine the quality of life mankind will enjoy. 

               We can follow our own game plan, but we won't move the ball.  Our hope is in the Lord; his game plan is the only one that will take us where we need to go.  Read scripture, its God’s play book. 

               Be open to the movement of the Spirit in the efforts of those who deeply care about creation.  Inform yourself about efforts being made to combat poverty and illiteracy here in America.  Inform yourself about efforts being made to stop the spread of AIDS.  Inform yourself about efforts to address global warning or to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.   There are people who are attempting to bring sanity to our world.  They are working God’s game plan.  Inform yourself about what they are doing, and to the level of your ability, lend them your support. 

               God has a game plan.  People are working it.  Join them. God loves this world. He sent his son to redeem it. May that extraordinary commitment be matched by ours. AMEN.

             PRAYER

             We live in hope, O God, at the same time knowing that our sin, our disobedience, prevents us from enjoying the hope toward which we strive.  We live in hope, knowing that your forgiveness can sever the manacles of sin in which we are held.  We live in hope, O God, for hope is your game plan, your gift to all who trust in your name.             

              From all that discourages us from seeking life on your terms; the inertia of habit that deadens our will to consider new options, the material strivings that displace spiritual aims, our resort to the easy solution rather than the right one, we pray your forgiveness.  O God, who created us with hearts to seek thee, preserve us from all those things that would blunt our righteous aspirations. Where hearts are cold and unresponsive there spread the warmth of your healing love, there kindle new desire to fulfill your holy will.

          Heavenly Father, pain is etched into lives of individuals and nations who daily live in the wasteland of cities and countryside decimated through war or famine.  Children orphaned, women raped, men tortured, each day’s news reports some new outrage, the toll of the suffering and dead rising ever higher with no end in sight.  For such a world as this, O Christ, you voluntarily shed your blood, all to inaugurate a day when freedom and hope shall eternally reign. Grant us the faith, O Lord, to preserve onto the day when evil will be vanquished, confidence to believe that justice will not be denied.

              Lord Christ, head of the church, be with this church that we may be faithful to your holy calling.  We have come here not merely to learn a vocabulary through which your name might be honored, but to be equipped to take your message to the streets. May our ambition be worthy and pleasing in your sight, may it be the ambition you yourself modeled to your disciples and all people who sought your help.  May it be an ambition that seeks new ways to serve.  Where our methods fall short or are ineffective there come and show us a better way.

               O Holy Spirit who is ever present where your people congregate, you are with us now, be with us when we reassemble this evening to review what our ministry has become, and where the Holy Spirit may be leading us. Much to celebrate as we recognize the contributions of the cloud of witnesses, friends across the church who have reached out to us in our time of need, we thank you for the offerings we ourselves are privileged to give, committing time, talent, and treasure to the work you have placed in our hands.

            Abide with our servicemen and women who face danger this day.  Protect them from harm, and grant them courage in face of the challenges they meet. Grant your wisdom to our President and all who make public policy, that our leaders may meet the challenges of the day with sufficient wisdom and courage to effectively respond. 

               O God, our hope, hear the prayers of your people for we pray in Jesus' name.