Well, last week in our reading, the Israelites were on the cusp of the promised land, and they were looking back and reflecting on all the things that had happened and all of the people who had worked so hard to get them where they are.

But what happens when you get everything that you ever wanted? Well, usually we want more, right?

And the people wanted more. They wanted to be like their neighbors around them who all had kings. And God tried to dissuade them from this notion, saying, “No, no. You can all live together happily with me as your king.” And they said, “That’s nice, but we want one of us as king.” And so God reluctantly went along with their plan, and we find out today, in today’s reading, why that might not have been the best idea.

2 Samuel 11:1–5, 26–27; 12:1–9

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened, late one afternoon when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb that he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”

Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your bosom and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

These days, it’s generally meant as a compliment, but in today’s passage, it’s more of an accusation. Nathan says to David, “You are the man.” But he’s not laying flowers at David’s feet. He’s calling him to account for his egregious abuse of power.

David, we know, is a biblical hero, one of the most important figures in Israel’s history. The Gospel writers make sure they can trace Jesus’ lineage back to David. That’s how important and well-regarded he is: king of Israel, player of the harp, writer of Psalms, and so much more.

David’s story begins humbly. The youngest and smallest of his brothers, forgotten and dismissed by everyone, including his own father, David is the ultimate underdog. And the story of David and Goliath still stands today as the ultimate underdog story, right?

But the scene that we just read happens much later in David’s life and career. He’s been in power now for a long time. People love him. Enemies fear him. His servants will do anything for him. Even he is beginning to believe the hype. The power and endless praise have gone to his head. He has started to think that he deserves all of it, that he is superior, that they are lucky to have him as their king.

And his relationship with God shifts as well. Where he was once grateful and humble and eager to serve, now he speaks to God as if they’re on the same plane, the same status.

Then Allie Rosner Bass writes, “It happens one evening when David’s troops are out to war. Kings were supposed to lead their armies into battle. David, however, stays home and is taking a stroll on the rooftop of his palace. Perhaps a clue that something is already wrong.”

And from his vantage point on the roof, David sees a beautiful woman bathing and is determined to have her. The whole affair is reported matter-of-factly in a terse sequence of verbs: David sends for her, she comes, he lies with her, she returns.

And as if this is not bad enough on its own, David knows that the woman, Bathsheba, is married to one of his generals, Uriah. But that doesn’t stop him. Quite to the contrary, when Bathsheba confronts him with the consequences of what he has done, saying to him, “I’m pregnant,” David doubles down.

Instead of confessing his fault and seeking to make amends, he sends Uriah to the front of the battle lines with instructions for his troops to pull back and leave him stranded, essentially getting the enemy troops to do his dirty work for him.

When word returns that Uriah has been killed, David then brings Bathsheba into his house. To those looking in from the outside, this may seem incredibly generous and magnanimous on David’s part—to take this poor widow and her family and give them a home after what has happened to her husband, the war hero Uriah. But those who know what truly happened, including us, know David’s shame and guilt. He is a rapist, an abuser, a murderer, and a despot.

But here’s the real question we’re likely to miss if we’re too distracted by the bawdy and scandalous tale: Why does the Bible include this at all? It certainly doesn’t reflect well on David, one of Israel’s greatest figures and heroes.

“You are the man,” Nathan says to David, but he’s not offering a compliment. He has just told David a story about someone seeing something that didn’t belong to him, but he took it nonetheless. And upon hearing this in the abstract, David’s sense of justice is offended. How dare he do such a thing? Bring him to me so that I can set things right.

But Nathan says to him, “No, you are the man. It’s you, the wrongdoer. You have violated God’s justice. You assaulted Bathsheba. You killed Uriah. And you lied to the people, and you lied to yourself.”

It took Nathan telling David a story, supposedly about someone else, for him to see the truth. But do you get what that means about David? David still knows right from wrong. When he hears it in the abstract, he knows what justice requires. He just has become distant from it because of his power and his privilege.

Bass writes, “The story presents a cautionary tale about the dangers of power. David, securely ensconced in his palace and confident of his absolute authority, sees something he wants and makes it his.”

And the prophet Samuel had warned of this when the Israelite elders first came asking for a king. A king, he said, will take your sons for his army and your daughters as his servants. He will take your fields and your vineyards and your cattle and your sheep. That’s from 1 Samuel, chapter 8. Now Samuel’s warnings appear to be coming true.

In other words, this is actually less about David and his character and more about the fact that the people wanted to have a king like the other nations. God’s warning about how power can corrupt even the purest of people is at odds with the people’s desire to cede their agency to someone else. They don’t want the responsibility of governing. They want someone else to tell them what to do.

While attractive for the short term, over time things erode and temptation becomes too great. You start to believe the hype. People want to do things for you. You see an opportunity, and you look around and you ask, “Who’s going to stop me?” And not just that: “Who will even call me out on what I’m doing?”

No, they’ll praise me and tell me that I deserve it and that exceptions are made for the great ones.

And for the rest of us, we start off innocent as well. But then comfort starts to kick in, and we say things like, “Well, you know, too many cooks in the kitchen doesn’t really work,” or, “Someone has to take charge. Leaders lead, and the rest of us follow and obey.”

But soon disobedience starts to get called disloyalty, and we become afraid to speak truth to power. What will it cost us if we do? I don’t need a target on my back, thank you very much.

And soon it becomes easier to believe that those in power just operate from a different set of rules from the rest of us. “It’s not fair,” we might say, “but it is the way that it is.”

Now, unless you think that I’m starting to talk about current events from a purely partisan perspective, I do admit that I see this playing out in today’s politics. But—and I mean this sincerely—if your takeaway from today’s sermon is, “Mark was right, and those people really need to shape up and do better,” then I dare say you missed my point.

My point is that I think this is precisely why Scripture tells us this story about our beloved David—heroic David, humble and faithful David—because even he, even the very best among us, is not immune to this warning.

We are all David. We are not all Bathsheba and Nathan.

Let me put this another way. One of John Calvin’s most misunderstood teachings, perhaps even more than predestination, is that of total depravity. I know—Calvin sounds like such a fun guy, right?

When Calvin writes about total depravity, he doesn’t mean that each one of us is completely unredeemable or that some are wholly despicable, but that all of us—each and every one of us—are capable of depravity.

We’ll talk about this more next week, but we can’t simply divide humanity into sinners and saints. Rather, each of us is both at once. We are sinners capable of sainthood, and we are saints who sometimes sin.

So, what difference can all this make for us here and now?

Well, if you didn’t know, early voting started here in Maryland. If you don’t already have a plan to vote on or before November 3, please go home this afternoon and make one.

While it’s definitely not my job to tell you how to vote, I can and do urge you to use your voice. Like Bathsheba, like Nathan, use your voice. It can and does make a difference.

Engage politically. Research issues. Vote your values. Vote for people, not parties. And remember, you are voting for people, not demigods. No one is perfect. Everyone can and may be corrupted by power.

Regular people are rarely our enemies, and we should be much more suspicious of those who want to convince us that they are than of those regular people.

“Voting isn’t marriage; it’s public transport,” writes Paul Tambyah. “You’re not waiting for the one who’s absolutely perfect; you’re getting on a bus. And if there isn’t one going exactly to your destination, you don’t just stay home. You take the one going closest to where you want to be.”

And to this I would only add: Don’t just vote at the polls. Don’t just vote every couple of years. Vote consistently and intentionally with your time, your talent, and your treasure as well. Vote every day for the kind of world that you want.

But perhaps more important and fundamental than that, make sure that the world that you want at least in some way resembles what Jesus called the kingdom of God, which will stand when all other kingdoms have fallen: a kingdom where justice and mercy work in harmony; where all sin is held to account; where power is told the truth in love; and where every voice not only makes a difference, but it makes the difference.

To God be the power and glory and honor, now and always.

Amen.

The post Your Small Voice appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: The corrupting danger of power, David’s abuse of Bathsheba and Uriah, truth-telling and accountability, complicity and self-examination, sin and sainthood, political participation, using our voices, and seeking God’s kingdom of justice and mercy.

Discussion Questions:

1. When Power Distorts

• Pastor Mark describes how David’s long experience of power and praise changed his understanding of himself and his relationship with God. What warning does David’s story offer anyone who holds authority, influence, or privilege?
• Where have you seen power create distance between what a person knows is right and what that person permits themselves to do?

2. Hearing “You Are the Man”

• David recognizes the injustice in Nathan’s story before he recognizes himself within it. Why is wrongdoing often easier to identify in the abstract—or in someone else—than in our own conduct?
• What kinds of stories, relationships, or practices can help us see truths about ourselves that we might otherwise avoid?

3. Sinners and Saints

• Pastor Mark says, “We are all David. We are not all Bathsheba and Nathan.” What does this claim ask us to acknowledge about our own capacity for harm, silence, or complicity?
• How does the idea that each of us is both sinner and saint challenge the temptation to divide the world neatly into good people and bad people?

4. Using Our Small Voices

• Nathan risked speaking truth to a powerful king, and Bathsheba named the consequences of what David had done. What makes it difficult to speak when power is being abused?
• Pastor Mark urges us to use our voices through political engagement while remembering that no candidate is a demigod. What might faithful, thoughtful participation look like without turning politics into another form of worship?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Pastor Mark invites us to “vote every day” with our time, talent, and treasure for the kind of world we want. What is one everyday choice through which you can support justice, mercy, accountability, or human dignity this week?
• Where might your small voice be needed right now—to tell the truth in love, support someone who has been silenced, or call power back to accountability?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Your Small Voice appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Well, I’m not going to give too much of a recap of where we have been because our passage actually does that for us today. But I’ll just briefly remind us that over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been in the book of Exodus, and we heard about God using Moses to rescue the people from slavery in Egypt, their narrow escape through the sea, and their time in the wilderness, where they experienced this newfound freedom. But then God gave them the commandments as a shape of that freedom—ways that they can live together in peace and harmony with one another and with their neighbors.

In today’s passage, we’ve moved on from the book of Exodus and into the book of Joshua—and actually all the way to the end of Joshua—when the people are on the cusp of entering the promised land.

Joshua 24:1–15

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac, and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst, and afterward I brought you out. When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. When they cried out to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them, and your eyes saw what I did to Egypt. Afterward you lived in the wilderness a long time. Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan; they fought with you, and I handed them over to you, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. Then King Balak son of Zippor of Moab set out to fight against Israel. He sent and invited Balaam son of Beor to curse you, but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you, so I rescued you out of his hand. When you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, the citizens of Jericho fought against you, as well as the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I handed them over to you. I sent swarms of hornets ahead of you that drove out before you the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant. 

“Now, therefore, revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” 

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

Well, there are times in life when it’s just vitally important to look back and reflect. And these occasions become more and more precious the older that we get: births, baptisms, birthdays, weddings, funerals, anniversaries, reunions. They give us an opportunity to reflect not only on where we are going, but on where we have been.

Why is it so important to look back?

Because it’s vitally important that we understand we did not get here on our own. One of the most dangerous things is when we think that all of this—that we’ve earned it, or that we somehow have deserved it, or that we’ve come about it because of our own goodness or sacrifice or hard work. That may be part of the truth, but that’s only ever part of the truth.

We owe a debt of gratitude to so many who went before us, some of whom we had the pleasure to meet, but many of whom we only know their name, if even that. There have been those who have worked and sacrificed so that those who come after them may have opportunities that they never dreamed of. Parents and grandparents, sure, of course, but countless others as well. And not to mention the strokes of good fortune and all of the needful things that have happened so that we can be here today.

And we see this in our passage today when Joshua gathers the people at Shechem as they prepare to enter the promised land. But before they do, they have to stop. They have to pause. Joshua wants to make sure that they acknowledge those who helped them get there while they are still at this crucial juncture.

Arthur Wright points out, “Joshua gathers the entire people of Israel to Shechem. He then begins to recount God’s activity and faithfulness on their behalf, from the call of Abraham to God’s partnership with Moses and Aaron to save the Hebrew people from the Egyptians.”

And did you notice the emphasis that is put on: Not by your sword, not by your bow. You didn’t plant those fields. You didn’t plant those vineyards. I have done this.

“God is viewed as the primary agent of these events,” writes Arthur Wright, “and the passage emphasizes God’s agency on behalf of the people.”

He then continues, “This passage offers us an opportunity to remember the histories of our own faith communities and reflect on the ways in which we’ve seen God’s faithfulness to us along the way.”

As many of you know, I just had a birthday. Birthdays are a great time to look back and reflect and give thanks. As a congregation, we have just been celebrating 125 years. And to do that, we’ve revisited and celebrated our history. And as a nation, we have marked 250 years as well.

And we give thanks and we celebrate. But these occasions are not just times for celebration. They are also times for truth-telling. As we look back, of course, not everything is worthy of our praise. Sometimes we need to repent and make sure that we learn from our mistakes in the past.

As Joshua and the people stood triumphantly at Shechem, the truth is that their victory came at a cost for others. People were displaced and dispatched in order for them to take hold of this promised land. And that’s part of the story, too. It’s a hard part. It’s a part we would rather look past or look over, but it’s part of the story as well.

“At this moment in time, where nationalism—and especially in the United States, where Christian nationalism—continues to be ascendant,” writes Arthur Wright, “it is important to draw attention to these features without simply minimizing or explaining away the violence.”

Do we really believe that it affirms something true about God’s heart and God’s activity in the world? We have to choose, just as the ancient Israelites had to choose which gods they will serve.

You and I—this text demands that we choose between a God of conquest and violence and a God who intends to bring divine blessing to the entire world.

In recent years, our knowledge of what we mean by the entire world has expanded exponentially. While we had long suspected it, it was only in 1992 that we confirmed that there are planets outside of our solar system. That’s a huge shift in our cosmic perspective of who we are.

Furthermore, with the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, we’ve been able to look out further and further into the universe, which also means that we get to look back further and further in time as well. The data that we have available to us now is overwhelming, to say the least. It can make us feel small and insignificant—just a small, tiny speck in the universe.

Physicist and professor of humanities at MIT Alan Lightman writes, “Over the span of less than a century, discoveries in astronomy and biology have expanded our perspective almost beyond comprehension. We’ve learned that our solar system sits on the outskirts of an enormous galaxy of a hundred billion stars called the Milky Way. And the size of our galaxy is itself inconceivable.”

But there are other galaxies—many, many, many other galaxies beyond that as well. “The mind reels from trying to imagine such expanse,” Lightman writes. And I think sometimes that’s why it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning, right?

But seen from a different perspective, it’s a miracle that we exist at all.

Lightman continues, “Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck that we will ever experience, yet it’s the easiest to overlook and to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, we have our coffee, we make breakfast, we send the kids to school, we go to our jobs, we move through our routines, we worry about the deadlines, we check off all the items on our to-do list, and we forget that beneath it all lies something profoundly rare: existence itself.”

The point Joshua is trying to make is that we are blessed beyond measure just with the mere fact that we’re here at all. And no, it hasn’t been perfect. It hasn’t always been pretty. And we’ve not always been on our best behavior, to say the least. But nonetheless, we are extraordinarily blessed just to be alive here and now, in this moment, in this place.

And the least that we can do is give thanks and pledge to honor that blessing and pass it on. We can also look back, knowing that we are loved, and admit where we were wrong. We can learn from our past and our mistakes and promise to do better when we know better.

Gratitude does not require that we gloss over the past. It helps us to honestly acknowledge the good and the bad.

Look, I know as well as you do that there are times in our lives when gratitude is not an easy choice. It may be the very hardest choice of them all. When health fails, or money is tight, or work is overwhelming, it’s not easy to be thankful.

But the more we practice gratitude—like any skill, the more that we practice it when we can and when it’s easy—it will help us to find a little bit of gratitude when it’s more difficult.

We can think of gratitude like a deep well that we dig. And the deeper we go, the more it can hold. And the more it will have for us when we need it.

And we may even find our way to gratitude for some, but not all, of the tough times.

In a really profound and touching interview—and Google it and watch the whole thing later if you haven’t seen it—with Anderson Cooper, Stephen Colbert reflects to him, “It’s a gift.” Stephen Colbert from The Late Show—you all know, the comedian. Okay? So this is really—that just helps with the perspective.

He says this: “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. But if you’re grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it.”

And Colbert goes on to explain further, saying that it doesn’t mean that you’re glad for everything that’s happened to you, but in time you may find it useful to relate to others these things that we have gone through. We can turn our pain into compassion. “You’re a different person on the other side of it,” is how Colbert puts it. And largely, it is up to us how we respond and what we choose in terms of what kind of person we will be.

“If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it’s very unlikely that we’ll ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day,” writes Anthon St. Maarten. “Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully,” he writes, “it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom and find the hidden blessing in it.”

“Choose this day,” Joshua says to the assembly at Shechem. Choose. Every day we make choices, and every day we wake to the miracle of existence.

Sure, some days the weight of it all feels too much, and all we can do is hold on until sunset. But other days, the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, and we’re hit with an overwhelming sense of thankfulness for all of it. Most days, of course, fall somewhere in between.

But choosing gratitude does not mean that we gloss over the hard parts of our lives or those things in our past we would rather not think about again. Gratitude actually helps us to face up to the hard stuff because it puts it in the larger context of existence—and what a miracle it is that we are here at all to celebrate and to suffer, to give and to receive, to learn and to grow.

Existence is a gift. We are extraordinarily fortunate just to be here. But this does not mean that life will be easy or free of pain. Rather, even in the midst of the darkest and hardest times, we can still choose gratitude.

“If the only prayer we ever say is thank you,” writes Meister Eckhart, “it will be enough.” Amen.

The post Choose This Day appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: Remembering God’s faithfulness, gratitude for those who came before us, honest truth-telling about the past, repentance and learning, choosing blessing over conquest, existence as a gift, suffering and compassion, and practicing gratitude.

Discussion Questions

1. Remembering How We Got Here

• Pastor Mark warns against imagining that we arrived where we are entirely through our own goodness, sacrifice, or hard work. Who helped make your life, faith, or opportunities possible?
• What changes when we understand our lives as gifts shaped by God’s faithfulness, other people’s sacrifices, and circumstances we did not create for ourselves?

2. Remembering with Honesty

• The sermon says anniversaries and milestones are occasions not only for celebration but also for truth-telling. Why can it be difficult for individuals, churches, or nations to hold gratitude and repentance together?
• What part of your personal or communal history needs to be remembered more honestly so that its lessons are not lost or repeated?

3. Choosing Between Conquest and Blessing

• Pastor Mark says the text demands that we choose between a God of conquest and violence and a God who intends to bring blessing to the entire world. How does that choice affect the way we read Joshua’s story?
• Where do you see faith being used to justify power, exclusion, or nationalism today? What would it look like instead to bear God’s blessing to the whole world?

4. Gratitude in the Midst of Suffering

• The sermon insists that gratitude does not require us to gloss over pain or pretend to be glad for everything that has happened. How is this understanding of gratitude different from forced positivity?
• Pastor Mark compares gratitude to a deep well that we dig through practice. What practices have helped you find something life-giving when health, money, work, grief, or other burdens feel overwhelming?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Joshua says, “Choose this day.” What is one specific way you can choose gratitude this week while remaining honest about something difficult?
• How might you honor the blessings you have received by passing them on—through compassion, truth-telling, repair, generosity, or care for someone who comes after you?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Choose This Day appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Exodus 19:3–7; 20:1–17

Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.” So Moses went, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him.

Then God spoke all these words,

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

“You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

“Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

“You shall not murder.

“You shall not commit adultery.

“You shall not steal.

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

Well, I grew up in the time before there was such a thing as truth in advertising. I remember getting a pair of sneakers and being disappointed that I couldn’t run as fast as Carl Lewis or jump as high as Michael Jordan. For those of you who are younger, Carl Lewis is like Usain Bolt, and Michael Jordan is like LeBron James, okay? Or that eating spinach didn’t immediately give me huge biceps like Popeye.

But perhaps the most disappointing of them all were these dinosaur capsules. Does anybody remember those? They’re these little capsules that, when you put them in water, would suddenly grow into, like, a brontosaurus or a Tyrannosaurus rex. And I distinctly remember the commercial for these. It showed a boy with a garden hose waiting around the corner, ready to surprise his friends. And so he puts the little capsules there, and then, when they come, he comes around the corner and sprays them with the hose, and they grow into these real, life-size dinosaurs that are roaring and everything. I was sold immediately. I began imagining playing this prank on my buddies in the neighborhood. It was going to be legendary.

But, of course, when I actually got the capsules and tried them in the sink, the results were underwhelming, to say the least. Sure enough, the capsules dissolved, but what grew out of them was nothing like those lifelike dinosaurs in the commercial. Instead, it was this tiny little dinosaur-shaped sponge that could fit in my hand.

Now, what if I told you that those who argue that we should hang the Ten Commandments in every schoolroom or every courtroom are guilty of the same thing as those ads from my childhood: false advertising? They reduce them to a list of rules to be obeyed or else. They take all of the life out of them, and they oversimplify them to the point of squeezing all of the meaning out of them. They dehydrate them, if you will. They flatten them.

Bobby Williamson and Amy Robertson write, “We insist that these commandments cannot be flattened onto a piece of paper, but must be understood with the smoke and fire erupting from Sinai and the liberating power of God in Egypt.”

To bring them back to life, what we need to do is not douse them with a hose, but recomplicate them. We have to put them back in their context and read them not as individual rules to curb bad behavior, but as life-giving guidelines for people to live together in community and freedom. We must understand them as a gift, not a burden.

Tom Long writes—and this is on your bulletin cover—“We think of the Ten Commandments as ten things we’d really like to do, but God doesn’t want us to, so to please God, let’s don’t.” But we miss the way that the commandments begin, he says. “I am the Lord your God” is the first thing that God says to the people. “I brought you out of slavery into the land of freedom.”

And this, God says to them, is the shape of freedom. You are so free that you don’t have to have any other gods. And you certainly don’t have to serve them. You’ve been given so much, you’re free not to covet what is your neighbor’s. You are free to have the Sabbath day and to keep it holy. “It’s not a list of rules,” Tom Long writes. “It’s the shape of freedom.”

Let me give you a few examples of recomplicating the commandments. Let’s take that word in the last commandment, “covet.” It’s not an everyday word, right? It’s a churchy word: covet. And we think we know what it means. “Don’t be jealous” is basically what we usually interpret that as, right? Don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff. Don’t be jealous of what your neighbor has. It’s like an ancient version of, you know, “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.” That’s the simple version, the dehydrated version of the command.

But when we take that commandment and we put it back in context, remembering that this is being spoken to people who, not that long ago, were completely under Pharaoh’s control, where they had few, if any, possessions, and what they did have could be taken away from them at any moment by those in power over them, we can ask: What does it mean for those people, in those circumstances, to be told not to covet? What depth does that add?

Well, Bobby Williamson points out that the only other place in Scripture where this word is used, “covet,” is in Micah. And there it is to describe, in a very negative way, the way that the wealthy people in the city were devising ways to scheme and take the land away from rural farmers for their own profit. And God was angry at them for coveting what their neighbors had—for using their power to not just be jealous of it, but to forcibly take it from them.

So it’s not really when your neighbor gets a new car, and they pull into the driveway, and you say, “Oh man, that’s—I wanted that car.” No, no. It’s about not using our power and privilege to get our way at the expense of others. Which, you know, thank goodness that never happens anymore, right? Yeah, right.

So we can see that, by putting this commandment back into context, it recomplicates it. It makes it not so simple, but it also makes it much more relevant. We can apply that to our daily living and lives in community with one another. Don’t take advantage of others just because you can. An important part of living in community is respecting each other’s autonomy and not using our power over others to our advantage and their disadvantage.

That’s how we all live together in freedom and harmony, is what God is saying. Not just, “Don’t look over at what your neighbor has and wish you had it,” but live in such a way that you are glad for them, that you are with them, that they can live in peace and harmony, and so can you.

The other example I can easily point to is the commandment about the Sabbath. We still play around with this one. We like to, you know, say, “Well, Sunday’s my Sabbath. I went to church, and then I went home and had brunch, and then I went and watched the football game and fell asleep.” Probably what I’m going to do this afternoon, to be completely honest.

But is that what God meant by observing the Sabbath? Is that all God wants us to do? Again, that’s a flattened—it’s not that it’s wrong, necessarily. It’s just flattened. It’s dehydrated. It’s a simple version of the commandment. But if we put it back into context, we can see that there’s so much more. There’s so much more depth and richness there.

“Sabbath, in the first instance,” writes Walter Brueggemann, “is not about worship. It’s about work stoppage. It’s about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.” Again, thank goodness that never happens in our culture anymore.

He also writes, “The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgement that God and God’s people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production.” So it’s not just about your work stoppage. It’s about your neighbors as well, and those that may be in your employ. Let them rest once in a while. Let them be, so that they know that they’re valued not just for what they do or what they produce or what they own, but for who they are and who God created them to be.

Can you sense the difference when we recomplicate these commandments? Can you sense how much more is going on in each of these? Freedom, of course, is a gift, but without limits or a sense of responsibility to our fellow human beings, it’s just competitive chaos. It’s enslavement all over again, just in a much more subtle form. It’s every person for themselves rather than the reminder that we are each other’s keeper, that your well-being and my well-being are part of the same whole.

Hanging the commandments on the wall, putting them on display, makes them seem like a museum piece, an interesting historical artifact, but has very little relevance. But when we take them down, when we put them in context, when we ask questions, when we actually try to live them—not just the letter of the law, but the generous spirit of it—suddenly they come to life for us. They become worthy of our time, worthy of our examination.

They remind us that we are not what we own or produce. We are God’s beloved. And that’s not just true of us, but our neighbors as well. And if we truly believe that our neighbor is a child of God, just as we are, all of these things just become no-brainers. Of course we will not cause them harm or treat them unjustly. That’s not the way we want to be treated. And so we will be sure to treat them the way that we want to be treated.

Because, friends, faith is not about forcing others to live the way we think they should live. It’s about trusting in the grace and mercy of God and trying our best to live the way that God intends for us to live: in community, in shalom, in wholeness, in forgiveness.

We do not honor God or the Ten Commandments by hanging them on a wall in a school or a courthouse, but by taking them seriously, understanding them in the larger context of our faith, and allowing them to become a part of our being, a part of who we are.

Pointing to some words on the wall isn’t all that impressive, is it? But showing somebody, through our living and the way that we treat them and the way that we treat others—and especially the way that we treat the most vulnerable—what it means to belong to God and what it means to trust in God’s love above all else: that, my friends, is the kind of advertising that we Christians need a whole lot more of. Don’t you agree? Truth in advertising.

Because the true test of faith is not making others follow our values and principles. It’s how well we follow them ourselves. Amen.

The post The Shape of Freedom appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: The Ten Commandments as the shape of freedom, liberation and responsibility, interpreting Scripture in context, power and privilege, Sabbath rest, human belovedness, neighbor-love, and faith practiced rather than imposed.

Discussion Questions

1. The Commandments as the Shape of Freedom

• Pastor Mark emphasizes that the commandments begin with God’s liberation of Israel rather than with a list of demands. How does hearing the commandments as a gift to people who have been freed change the way you understand them?
• What is the difference between freedom as doing whatever we want and freedom shaped by responsibility, mutuality, and care for our neighbors?

2. Recomplicating the Text

• Pastor Mark says we must “recomplicate” the commandments by restoring their historical and theological context. What can be lost when Scripture is flattened into simple rules or slogans?
• How can questions, context, and careful interpretation help an ancient text come alive without weakening its authority or importance?

3. Power, Privilege, and Coveting

• The sermon reframes coveting as using power and privilege to take what belongs to another, rather than merely wanting what someone else has. Where do you see this deeper form of coveting at work today?
• What might it look like to respect another person’s autonomy and refuse to use our power to our advantage and their disadvantage?

4. Sabbath and Human Worth

• Walter Brueggemann describes Sabbath as withdrawal from a system that defines life by production and consumption. What anxieties or expectations make genuine rest difficult for you or for people in your community?
• How could Sabbath practice affirm that we and our neighbors are valued for who we are—not only for what we do, produce, or own?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Pastor Mark says the true test of faith is not making others follow our values, but how well we follow them ourselves. Where is that distinction especially important in your life or in the public life of the church?
• What is one concrete way you can embody the generous spirit of the commandments this week—especially in how you treat someone vulnerable, overworked, overlooked, or subject to another’s power?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: The Shape of Freedom appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Exodus 14:5-7, 10-14, 21-29

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the minds of Pharaoh and his officials were changed toward the people, and they said, “What have we done, letting Israel leave our service?” So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him; he took six hundred elite chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. 

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today, for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” 

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. At the morning watch the Lord, in the pillar of fire and cloud, looked down on the Egyptian army and threw the Egyptian army into a panic. He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.” 

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.” So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. 

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

Joseph is the bridge. He is the key figure in transitioning from the book of Genesis to the book of Exodus. Now, in the second half of the book of Genesis, we meet Joseph and his family. We read the story about his fancy coat, his favored position among his brothers, and how that turns his brothers against him. We learn that they then sell him into slavery, but even so, he ends up living like a prince in Egypt, where he then gets into trouble with the wife of a high-ranking official.

Now, last week, our guest preacher, Krista, preached about the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Using Dolly Parton’s movie 9 to 5, she talked about power differentials in relationships, reminding us that God is always on the side of the powerless over the powerful. God is always on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor.

Make no mistake: God does love everyone. But that doesn’t mean that God is always neutral. God’s love compels God to take sides at certain times and in certain places.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not talking about sporting events here. I saw this cartoon last week. It’s a cartoon of a football player in a huddle looking over at the other team and saying, ‘Oh no, the other team’s praying too.’ That’s not what we’re talking about here, okay? We’re also not talking about Christian nationalism or manifest destiny. Those are all distortions of the faith.

What we are talking about is something closer to what Marilynne Robinson means in her novel Gilead when she writes that God is forever raising up those who are brought low. What we are talking about is what Jonathan Martin means when he writes, ‘If your Christianity makes emperors feel comfortable and oppressed people feel unsafe, it’s time for a grand reversal.’

And that’s what we see in today’s passage: a grand reversal, a great escape, a tale of liberation. God has heard the people’s cry and appoints Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand the release of the people. After a vigorous back-and-forth, including plagues, Pharaoh relents. But wait—Pharaoh and his officials then change their minds, and they send an army after the people, who attempt a daring and dramatic escape through the Red Sea, with God making a way where there was no way.

Now, we know this story. Many of us have heard it, in one way or another, for most of our lives. Even if we’re not particularly religious, it has seeped into our culture: movies, artwork, music, poetry, literature, on and on. It’s a foundational story of two of the world’s great religions, Judaism and Christianity.

We know this story, but remember: familiarity is not always our friend. We know that Moses and his people prevail. We know, of course, right, that the Red Sea parts. Once you know that the Red Sea is parted, you never forget that the Red Sea is parted. We know that they escape. We know that it’s successful. We know that they triumph.

We know even the bit about how the sea comes back over the Egyptians and Pharaoh. And did you notice, just kind of notice this time, that at the beginning they’re talking about the chariots and the chariot drivers and the horses, and then suddenly the horses disappear from it? It’s like the narrator doesn’t want to get us upset that the horses might have drowned too. I don’t know.

You know who doesn’t know that the story turns out all right? The people in the story. And we hear their complaints and their fears: ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?’ What’s so dramatic? They’re like a bunch of teenagers, aren’t they? ‘Oh, were there no graves in Egypt?’

But it’s true. They don’t know where they’re going. They don’t know what’s on the other side. They don’t know what’s waiting for them, or if it’s any better than what they have left behind. They don’t know how to get there. And they think that God is on their side, but how do you ever really know? The other side has a whole lot of soldiers and weapons and horses. I mean, even with all the hope and faith aside, it looks grim for Moses and the Israelites.

Professor Song-Mi Suzie Park writes, ‘The Israelites have to engage. They cannot just sit on the sidelines and let God do all the work. After God splits the seas, the Israelites have to have faith and courage to walk between the waters of chaos and death, waters that were held up by invisible divine hands. They have to choose to follow God, the one who promises a life of peace and wholeness, and they have to turn their back on enslavement, their past selves, the lives to which they were accustomed. They have to be brave and they have to choose freedom. And they have to join in and participate in the work of God to hold back the threatening waters of doom and disorder.’

I’ll be honest: I don’t know whether I really believe in miracles or not—supernatural miracles. I believe in science. I believe in the laws of nature. I like to say gravity keeps me grounded. That was bad.

And, if you thought that one was bad, I like the old joke about the man who insisted on staying in his house even though it was under a flood evacuation. Do you know this one? First, the police come and tell him to leave. He says, ‘Don’t worry, I’m staying put. I believe in God and that God will rescue me.’

Then the flood came and the man moved to the second floor, at which point the Coast Guard shows up in a boat, and they say, ‘Man, you better get in. The flood waters are only increasing.’ He says to them, ‘Thanks, but I’m good. God’s going to save me.’

The waters do continue, and the man has to go up onto his roof. Finally, a rescue helicopter hovers over him, and he waves them off. And then the man drowns. Upon getting to heaven, he asks God, ‘God, why didn’t you save me? I had faith in you. I told everybody you would save me.’ To which God replies, ‘I sent the police. I sent the Coast Guard. I even sent a rescue helicopter, for goodness’ sake. What more do you want?’

Perhaps, as Hans Christian Andersen once said, the whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them that we just call them ordinary things.

But something extraordinary seems to happen in today’s story. Moses and the Israelites were not rescued by regular means. We are told that the sea parted. We are told that a way appeared where there was no way.

So, let me tell you what I don’t think this story is trying to say to us today. I don’t think that this story is telling us to ignore the warnings, to send away the boat and wave off the helicopter. This is not a story that is meant to lull us into passivity.

It is to remind us that, in all circumstances, our job is to keep working, keep striving, keep trying—even when the way looks grim, even when it seems as though the other side has everything going for them. We have to keep working for justice. Keep trying to do what is right and good. Keep striving for equity. Keep working for liberation. We have to take sides with the powerless and the voiceless.

Professor Park writes, ‘Like the Israelites, we are called to be brave, to do our part to help God hold back the chaotic waters of the sea.’

A while back, Stephen King wrote a short story—I think it was a novella—called The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It’s a story of a nine-year-old girl named Trisha. Trisha is hiking on the Appalachian Trail with her mom and siblings, and she gets lost. As darkness falls, Trisha has to summon her courage to face her mounting fears. The only thing that she has with her is her Walkman, which she uses to listen to the broadcast of the Boston Red Sox baseball game so that she can follow her favorite baseball player, Tom Gordon.

Now, if you don’t know, Tom Gordon is an actual baseball player—or was; he’s retired now—and he was a pitcher who is called a closer. A closer is the pitcher who comes in at the very end of the game, when you have the lead and you need to get those final, hard three outs. That’s their job. And if the closer does that and you manage to win the game, that’s called a save, right? You saved the win. If the closer doesn’t, that’s called a blown save, and you probably won’t have that job for much longer.

But Tom Gordon was a closer. I think he played for a couple teams, but famously he played for the Red Sox, and he was one of the best at the time. Trisha loved Tom Gordon, and so, as she sat there in the dark, lost and afraid, listening to the Red Sox, she imagined that her hero, Tom Gordon, was there with her, keeping her company and giving her courage.

And Tom Gordon says to her, ‘It is God’s nature to come in in the bottom of the ninth. It is God’s nature to come in in the bottom of the ninth.’

You know, that’s what I think this Exodus story is about. It is about the God who rescues. It is about the God who saves—by ordinary and extraordinary means.

You and I, we get so caught up in the means, like it’s only faith somehow if it defies logic and common sense. But let me tell you: you can believe in science and God. You can believe in the laws of nature and divine providence. You can heed the warnings. You can get in the boat. You can board the helicopter and still pray for God to rescue you.

You can fight for justice. You can speak for truth. You can speak the truth to power. And you can keep working toward the reconciliation of the world without giving in to despair. Because, as this story reminds us, God is the God of justice and of freedom and of liberation. That is who God is.

The Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it this way. She writes, ‘God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves that we dig for ourselves through our violence and our lies and our selfishness and our arrogance and our addictions. And God keeps on loving us back to life.’

A way where there is no way. That’s what God provides. You can call it a miracle. You can call it a save. You can call it justice, equity, or peace, or shalom. You can call it love. Call it whatever you want. But Tom Gordon is right: it’s just God’s nature. Amen.

The post A Way Where There Is No Way appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: God’s solidarity with the oppressed, liberation, fear and uncertainty, courage and faithful participation, faith and science, ordinary and extraordinary rescue, justice, and hope without passivity.

Discussion Questions

1. God’s Love and the Oppressed

• Pastor Mark says that God loves everyone but is not always neutral—that God’s love can compel God to take the side of the powerless and oppressed. What challenges or comforts you about that claim?
• Pastor Mark names Christian nationalism and manifest destiny as distortions of faith. How can communities of faith discern when religion is serving power rather than God’s work of justice and liberation?

2. Standing at the Edge of the Unknown

• We know how the Exodus story ends, but the Israelites did not. Where in your life are you being asked to move forward without knowing what waits on the other side?
• Why can a familiar form of bondage sometimes feel safer than an uncertain path toward freedom? What helps people choose freedom anyway?

3. Participating in Liberation

• The waters part, but the Israelites still have to walk between them. What does this suggest about the relationship between God’s saving work and our faithful participation?
• What ‘threatening waters’ of injustice or disorder are people facing today, and what might it mean for us to help hold them back?

4. Ordinary and Extraordinary Rescue

• Pastor Mark insists that we can believe in science and God, heed warnings, accept practical help, and still pray for rescue. How does that understanding reshape the way you think about faith and miracles?
• When have ordinary people, practical resources, or common-sense decisions become a means of grace or rescue in your life?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Where are you tempted to give in to despair, and what would it look like to keep working for justice, equity, peace, or liberation in that place?
• What is one concrete step you—or your community—can take this week to stand with people who are powerless or voiceless while trusting God to make a way?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: A Way Where There Is No Way appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

But we’re still at the beginning of our journey, barely even launched off, and we encounter today in Genesis chapter 12 a very foundational and important text, not only for us as Christians, but also for our Jewish brothers and sisters, as well as our Muslim brothers and sisters. We all kind of trace our heritage and our beginning back to this foundational story: the story of an older couple whose names get changed halfway through the story. But this is still the beginning of the story, and so they are Abram and Sarai. We later come to know them, after they’re renamed, as Abraham and Sarah.

Genesis 12: 1-9:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.

When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

For the Word of God in Scripture, for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us. Thanks be to God.

***

For the past two Sundays, we’ve been talking about Noah and the ark. As somebody pointed out to me this morning, I probably should have saved those for today with all of the rain. But we’ve been talking about Noah and the ark, and I’ve been trying to give us a different perspective on it: that it is really a story about beginning again, about second chances, about new and unexpected opportunities.

We talked about how, from a biblical perspective, the flood is not an ending, but a new beginning in grace and gratitude. Well, today we discover in our reading what this new beginning looks like on the ground and in the flesh. We find out that second chances come with their own work and challenge, and we learn all of this through a man called Abram, later renamed Abraham.

Abram seems a decent fellow in our text. He has a pretty good life, a loving wife and family. He lost his brother, which is why his brother’s son Lot is coming with them. But they have land, they have work to do, they have familiar surroundings. Things aren’t perfect. As I mentioned, he’s lost his brother. Also, he and his wife Sarai wanted children, but they were seemingly unable. It’s life’s big disappointment for them, a bitter pill to swallow for sure.

Still, all things considered, Abram and Sarai have a good life. And so what God is asking of them is no small thing. Get up and go. Where exactly? Well, I’ll tell you that later. Why? I don’t want to get into the specifics just yet, but basically my plan is to bless the whole world through you. Just go with it.

Professor Susie Park writes, “Abruptly and without warning, God calls on Abram to move from his country, his people, his father’s household.” You know, any time in Hebrew where they repeat something three times, they’re really wanting to emphasize the point. So at the very beginning: your country, your people, your father’s household. Park continues, “That is, he’s called from all that he knows to make a clean break with everything with which he is familiar. Moving forward into an unknown future is not easy. It takes courage. It takes faith. It takes a willingness to walk in trust.”

Richard Rohr writes, “I believe that faith might be precisely that ability to trust” what he calls “the big river of God’s providential love” – to trust the visible embodiment, that is the Son; the flow, the Holy Spirit; and the source itself, the Father.

“This is a divine process,” Rohr writes, “that we don’t have to change or coerce or improve. We just need to allow it and enjoy it.” And that takes immense confidence, especially, he writes, when we’re hurting.

He says, “Usually I can feel myself getting panicky, then trying to quickly make things right. I lose my ability to be present, and I go up into my head and start obsessing. Soon I tend to be overly focused in my head to such a point that I don’t really feel and experience things in my heart and in my body. I’m oriented toward goals and making things happen and trying to push or even create my own river. Yet the big river that is God’s love, God’s care, God’s providence, is already flowing through me, and I am only one small part of it.”

One of the biggest challenges, one of the biggest hurdles we have, I believe, to trusting this divine flow is actually the direction of the current. Too often we think that the river flows toward us, that God’s favor and blessings are apparent through our lives, through our wealth and our power, our influence, our recognition, our success. Winning, right? Winning is evidence of God’s approval. That’s the way it works, right?

And that’s why us preachers need our own personal jets and gold rings and fancy Italian suits, right? I mean, if God loves me, I should be rolling in it, right? That’s what this story of Abram’s about.

No, we know that’s not true. Actually, the river flows in the other direction: not toward us, but away from us, or, as Rohr says, through us. The call of God is not so much to be blessed as it is to be a blessing.

In his book Do One Thing Different, Bill O’Hanlon tells the story of a widow who has fallen into depression. Not only has she lost her spouse, her children are grown and away, living in different states, and her friends – those who are still with us – are either sick or depressed like her.

Her pastor is worried about her. She used to be really active in church. Now she barely leaves home, and she doesn’t want visitors. The few who have managed to stop by have all reported to the pastor that it’s bad. She doesn’t even open the curtains in her house anymore. She was known for taking care of plants and being a good gardener, but her houseplants are starting to die. So they’re all worried about her.

The pastor decides he’s going to do something about it. He sends her a note announcing that he’s going to visit because he has a special message for her. He shows up on the day and time announced, and she reluctantly welcomes him in. The curtains have been cracked just a little bit, but it’s still dark and dusty. She’s made tea, but he isn’t there for the pleasantries.

As soon as they are seated, he launches into his spiel. “You are not being a very good Christian,” he tells her.

The woman’s stunned. How dare he? She’s been a faithful member for many years. She served as a leader in the church. She was even on the committee that called him to their church, for Pete’s sake. Who does he think he is?

But she doesn’t say this. She just sits there. And he continues, “You have so much to give,” he tells her, “and you’re sitting here in your house, hiding your light under a bushel.”

He looks around at her plants and flowers. “We have so many people in our church who are hurting and lonely, and you know better than most how they’re feeling. You could be writing them cards, sending them flowers or plants, and visiting them to cheer them up.”

The woman was shocked. He was right. How had she not seen it? She thought she was done and that no one needed her anymore, but nothing could be further from the truth. There were people all around who needed just what she could do.

Get up and go and be a blessing, God says to Abram. Get in the river. Trust in me to take you where you need to go. Trust the flow.

Bono, the lead singer of U2, the Irish band, gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast when George W. Bush was in office. He tells of a transformative encounter that he had had some years earlier. He says, “Years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song; look after it. I have this family; please look after them. I have this crazy idea.”

And this wise man said, “Stop. Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved with what God is doing, because it’s already blessed.”

Get up. Go and be a blessing.

Friends, the Christian life is not about stockpiling blessings for ourselves. It’s about gratefully counting our blessings and then seeing how we can put them to use to bless others. I don’t know how we got so completely turned around that we’ve made people think that wealth and prosperity are signs of following Jesus. Do we not remember that Jesus himself said, “I have come not to be served, but to serve”?

That is who we follow. That is the life that we are called to lead. That is where God’s river takes us.

As Christians, each and every one of us is called to serve, to get involved in what God is already doing because it’s already blessed, to leave our comfortable confines, and to venture out into the flow of God’s love and be a blessing.

Amen.

The post What Is Already Blessed? appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: God’s call into an unknown future; trust in God’s providential love; blessing that flows through us; service rather than prosperity; joining what God is already doing.

Discussion Questions

1.   Leaving What Is Familiar

• God asks Abram and Sarai to leave the familiar without giving them a detailed destination. What makes that kind of trust difficult?
• When have you sensed that faith was asking you to move beyond what felt comfortable or predictable?

2.  Trusting the River of God’s Love

• Richard Rohr describes faith as trusting the ‘big river of God’s providential love.’ What does that image suggest to you about God’s presence and care?
• When you feel anxious or hurt, are you more likely to trust the flow or try to create and control your own river? What helps you return to trust?

3.  Blessing That Flows Through Us

• Pastor Mark says, ‘The call of God is not so much to be blessed as it is to be a blessing.’ How does that challenge common ideas about success, favor, or prosperity?
• What gifts, experiences, relationships, or resources have been entrusted to you that could become a blessing to someone else?

4.  Joining What God Is Already Doing

• What is the difference between asking God to bless our plans and looking for what God is already doing?
• Where do you see love, justice, healing, or hospitality already taking shape in your community, and how might you join that work?

5.   Applying the Sermon

• Who might need ‘just what you can do’ this week, and what is one concrete way you could reach out?
• What comfortable boundary could you cross – individually or with RPPC – in order to serve and become a blessing?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: What Is Already Blessed? appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.