A sermon preached by The Reverend Scott Dennis Nowack
on September 18, 2011 at the First Presbyterian Church of Kilgore,
Texas.
The Mystery of Mercy
Exodus
16:2-15
A large dog
walks into a butcher shop carrying a purse in its mouth. He puts the purse down
and sits in front of the meat case.
"What is
it, boy?" the butcher jokingly asks. "Want to buy some meat?"
"Woof!"
barks the dog.
"Hmm,"
says the butcher. "What kind? Liver, bacon, steak?"
"Woof!"
interrupts the dog.
"And how
much steak? Half a pound, one pound . . ."
"Woof!"
The amazed
butcher wraps up the meat and finds the money in the dog's purse. As the dog
leaves the butcher decides to follow. The dog enters an apartment house, climbs
to the third floor and begins scratching at a door. With that, the door swings
open and an angry man starts shouting at the dog.
"Stop!"
yells the butcher. "He's the most intelligent animal I've ever seen!"
"Intelligent?"
says the man. "This is the third time this week he's forgotten his
key."
Some people
are impossible to please. And some of
those people include the recently released Israelites.
In one of the
most astounding displays of ingratitude in the Bible, just one and a half
months after being freed from captivity in Egypt, the Israelites began
grumbling and complaining to their leaders about traveling conditions, and even
insisted that their leaders, Moses and Aaron, were trying to kill them in the
desert by starving them to death! The
Israelites are acting like an institutionalized criminal released from prison
after decades of incarceration scared of how to live in a world of
freedom. The Israelites recall with
selective memory their days as slaves in Egypt to be a much better place than
living in freedom with their God.
They don’t
get it. They are questioning the methods
and work of the God of all creation. How
the Israelites see themselves and their situation does not match up to this new
reality; they have not yet become who God created them to be.
How do you
respond to someone who complains? When I
was in high school and college, I worked in different types of stores such as
American Eagle and CVS. I interacted
regularly with the customers. Most of
the time it was a fun and I enjoyed meeting people. But there were those few people who were
impossible to please; whatever you did it was never good enough. I was amazed at how well I kept my cool in
these situations. Deep inside I wanted
to let them have it! But I kept my
composure and tried to smile a lot. I
would respond in a polite and courtesy manner, although I really wanted to do
knock them into next week. I tried to be
a person of grace and mercy.
When God
hears us complain about our lives, about what’s going wrong with us, God does
not respond with a word of anger; rather, he promises to rain bread from
heaven, enough to sustain us for that specific day. God meets our needs, not our greeds. In Egypt, the Israelites were completely
dependent on the Egyptians to provide them food to eat; they always had enough
for the day. Through Moses and Aaron, God
wants to teach the Israelites to place their trust in the gifts of God and be
dependent on Him for all their daily needs.
God’s gifts to the Israelites are to be found not only in the
extraordinary miracles, but also in the ordinary, the small stuff of everyday;
found in our needs and not our greeds.
God’s mercy and presence are demonstrated to us in all parts of our
lives, large and small moments, insignificant and significant events.
The sixteenth
century poet and minister John Donne put it this way. He said, “We are God’s tenants here, and yet
here he, our landlord, pays us rent – not yearly, nor quarterly, but hourly and
quarterly; every minute he renews his mercy.”
God is actively participating in our ordinary lives.
There’s a TV
show on the A&E channel called “Hoarders”.
It’s a reality show that tries to help individuals who are unable to get
rid of their stuff to clean house and come to grips with their current
reality. Pathological hoarding is the selfish acquisition of possessions (and failure to use or discard them) in excess of
socially normative amounts, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or
unsanitary. Compulsive hoarding may impair mobility and interfere with basic
activities such as cooking, cleaning, hygiene, sanitation and sleeping. It is not clear whether compulsive hoarding
is an isolated disorder, or rather a symptom of another condition, such as OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder.([i])
This is a
troubling condition because of its wide impact on the lives of so many. They are stuck and overwhelmed by what they
have created. To some degree, we’ve all
been stuck with a hoarding mentality. We
have all experienced the fear we will not have enough, that we will run out of
money and lose everything we’ve worked so hard to earn; that we will run out of
time, missing out on some of the best years of our lives, so we desperately
hold on to all we can get our hands on. Does
the church hoard its resources? In times
of decline, how do churches react? They
react by cutting the budget and doing away with ministries in part or
altogether. Since 2008, I’ve met so many
ordained ministers who were dismissed from their call because of the economic
recession. It’s a hunker down attitude storing
our resources in a safe place as if preparing for a major snowstorm or a major hurricane
to blow through, as if the problem is a temporary one that will come and go. Fear and anxiety of the future replace faith
and hope. The issue becomes learning to primarily
rely on God, rather than ourselves, for one’s daily needs, “for where your
treasure is, your heart will be also.”(Luke 12:34).
When we pray
the Lord’s Prayer, we only pray will give us our daily bread, for there will be
no hoarding of the gifts of God’s creation, no building of larger and larger barns,
no fear about what is lawful to eat, and no anxiety over who is to be included in
or excluded from the kingdom of God.
The
increasing gap between rich and poor in our community and in societies around the
globe is certainly in part due to the hoarding of manna. It witnesses to our failure to recognize that
all that we have is due to God’s goodness, love and mercy for us, not our
ability to gather manna better than anyone else. The world God made is to be structured so
that nobody goes without their basic needs of food, water and shelter. But yet even in the face of misuse and our
failure to disobey God’s commands, God’s gracious mercy prevails. The manna from God in heaven comes every day
without fail as described right up until the Isrealites reach the promised
land.
The mystery of
God’s mercy is it is on-going, recurring, non-stop, persistent, never ending
and trustworthy gift found in Jesus Christ.
Our worship life and our community life is not simply to focus on the
dramatic acts of God, but also to provide remembrances of how the simple, little
things often overlooked in our daily lives are undergirded by the sustaining,
consistent care of God.
Some people
are impossible to please. With God in
Christ Jesus, all things are possible.
[i] Steketee G, Frost R (December 2003). "Compulsive hoarding: current status of the
research". Clin Psychol Rev 23 (7):
905–27. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2003.08.002. PMID 14624821.
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