September 6, 2009
We’re Due for a Blessing - 1 Kings 8:54-61
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadOn my way to work every morning, I listen to a show on the radio called, “Charlotte Talks.” I have learned to love that show first because it is local, and second, unlike other kinds of talk shows, it is civil. The host of the show, Mike Collins, simply has a conversation with experts on a certain, often controversial topic, and they sit down, like grown-ups, and discuss whatever the topic is. Imagine that. This past Tuesday’s show was about the future of Charlotte. Our Mayor, Pat McCrory, was one of the guests, along with a few other experts on regional growth. The one thing on which they all agreed, and I think is a good summary of the conversation, is this one sentence from the Mayor of Atlanta: Charlotte’s future, she said, will be pretty much like how we decide that we want it to be.
I agree with that. It is important that our leaders try to determine where we should go and how to get there. Our session at this church is meeting on the weekend of September 26th to do the exact same thing. The blind leading the blind, after all, is a very poor leadership strategy. Proverbs 29:18 tells us that, “where there is no prophesy, the people cast off restraint.” The King James Version puts it even more succinctly, “where there is no vision, the people perish.” So I agree with the mayor of Atlanta when she says that our future in Charlotte will be very much like how we want it to be.
And yet, I doubt very seriously if the leaders of New Orleans, Louisiana would agree with that assessment. Never did they know that their city would be as devastated by a Hurricane five years ago this weekend as theirs was. I have read a great book recently by Craig Barnes called “The Pastor as Minor Poet.” Craig Barnes was the pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC (one of the largest in our denomination) for a number of years and is now on the faculty at Pittsburg Theological Seminary. Craig Barnes writes in that book that every time he thought as a pastor that he had a good, thorough plan for his congregation, God always changed it. In short, our vision, while important, can only go so far. We are foolish to think that we can control the future. We can influence the future, but we certainly cannot control it.
All of which raises the point of blessings. 1 Kings 8 is Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, which had just been constructed. The first 54 verses of Solomon’s dedication is a prayer. And it’s a long prayer. But then in verse 54, we read that Solomon finished his prayer, he arose, faced the people of Israel, and invoked God’s blessing on them. In that blessing, we read these words a lot, “May the Lord.” “May the Lord be with us,” Solomon says. “May the Lord incline our hearts to him. May my words remain with the Lord, so that,” and I think this is important, “all the people of the earth may know that the Lord is God.” This is God’s world, and it’s not ours. We need to know that. The whole world needs to know that. If there is any hope in the world at all, that’s what it is. If there is any hope for Charlotte, if there is any hope for our church, that’s what it is, that God is God and that God will be with us. Regardless of all the planning and strategizing of the future, it’s all for naught without that.
One of the unintended consequences of technology is that we believe the illusion that we control our own futures. We have birth control, as if we can control when the baby comes, or if the baby comes. We even think we can control things like the baby’s gender, and even the baby’s features. Who wants a blemished baby, anyway? We can control our financial futures, just so long as we place all of our money in a mutual fund somewhere that’s run by people we’ve never seen before. That sure goes to reason. We can control our children. Just read a couple of books on parenting and we can raise our children to be exactly like we are. And who needs rain? That’s why we (not God) invented the sprinkler system, you know, to give us green grass. We don’t need rain for food. Our food doesn’t come from the earth’s bounty. Or food comes from Harris Teeter or Wal-Mart. We can control that, you see. Technology has led us to believe that we can control all of that.
When in fact, we simply cannot control all of that. We simply are not the self sufficient people that we have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are. If we were, why would we be in church in the first place? Maybe that’s one reason that Christianity is declining in America. With all that we have, and with all that we think we can control, who needs God? “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” the choir will sing in a few minutes. It’s one of my favorite hymns. But we live in a time that says, “Great is My Own Faithfulness,” so who needs anybody else’s faithfulness, much less God’s?
We have taught our children to say a prayer before they eat and before they go to bed. I’m sure you did the same thing. It has raised the question, at least for me, as to why we pray at those specific times. Why do we thank God for our food, and ask God to get us through the night? There was a time not that long ago when the next meal was anything but guaranteed. I know that I’m going to eat tonight. I don’t know what, and I don’t what it’s going to taste like, but I will eat. In fact, I can’t just about guarantee you that I will eat too much. I know that because I worked this week and got a paycheck, so I could go the store and buy my food. I earned my food, and Herman Canipe gave me a lot of it, too. So if my children should thank anybody for their food, it should be me and maybe Herman, right? Imagine sitting down to a meal and having my children praying to Daddy, thanking him for their food. When it really gets down to it, that’s how we think, isn’t it? We provide for ourselves, we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
There was also a time, not that long ago, when getting through the night was also not guaranteed. We take completely for granted that we’re going to wake up, that our sniffle won’t turn into pneumonia, and won’t kill us. I took my oldest daughter to the doctor last week for a check-up. The doctor asked me if I had any concerns, and I told her no, that I didn’t. The status of her physical health has never really crossed my mind. I could not imagine if I had to say the prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, that if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,” and really mean it. If I should die before I wake? That thought has never crossed my mind. And yet today is a gift. Everything that we have is a gift. This is a gift. That I am here is a gift for me. I did not earn this.
Every Sunday, I do largely what Solomon did in today’s text. I change postures myself. I leave this pulpit and come down among you, and I raise my hands and say a benediction. And, like Solomon, I say “May the Lord” a whole lot. That’s always been a given part of the service, one of my favorite parts because I get a warm and fuzzy feeling. But in some ways, it’s the most counter-cultural and even counter-intuitive part of the whole service. I don’t know what your week holds this week. I can look at my calendar and tell you what mine holds. And I can also tell you that, at least initially, I believe the myth that my week holds pretty much what I want it to hold. If I make the right choices, then I’ll have a pretty good week, and visa versa.
Choices matter. I don’t dispute that. But Scripture is abundantly clear that the most important choice is not one that we make, but one that God in Christ already has made. So I can, like Solomon did with Israel, stand before you and say, “May the Lord,” and actually have confidence that the Lord really will, because the Lord already has. I can stand before you at the end of this service, as I do every service, and say, “May the Lord bless you. May the Lord keep you. May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” I don’t know what this week holds for you. I have no idea. Your calendar may well be misleading. Whatever it is that you think you can control about this coming week is nowhere near enough to actually control the outcome of it. The only thing that I can with confidence say is what I already said, “May the Lord,” because the Lord, in our Savior Jesus Christ, already has and always will. That is our hope. That is our past, present, and our future. That is our confidence, and our benediction.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
