Click to hear this sermon  sermon090726

What's your name? What do you do?

First Questions For God: What Do You Do? - Isaiah 42: 5-9; Colossians 1: 15-23 - July 26, 2009 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            What's your name? What do you do? When two people first meet each other, those are two of the questions that are basic in the conversation. Last week I started a sermon series about first questions we ask to get acquainted, as they might be used to get to know God better. I think the Bible, as it introduces us to God, answers those questions beautifully for us. So 1 looked at the first of those questions - What is your name?

            Today I want to look at the second question we might ask: "What do you do? And I think the Bible answers that question for God as well. In fact, it answers it in the very first words on the very first page. "'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth ... " God has many job titles that you can pick out from the Bible, but all of them, in one way or another, come back to the very first job title for God - God is the Creator.

            Of course, there's a lot of discussion about that nowadays. School boards across the country are wrestling with the matter of whether to teach Intelligent Design or evolution. I understand the arguments made in those discussions; it just seems to me that choosing between Intelligent Design and evolution is a false choice. In my mind, they are two things that fit together very well. I find myself resonating with a cartoon I saw once in New Yorker magazine. It shows a scientist in front of three huge blackboards. At the beginning of the first one is the caption, How the World Came to Be.  And then all three blackboards are jam-packed with numbers and formulas and scientific equations. Then, at the end of the third board, the scientist has written, "And then a miracle happened."

            It's obvious that an evolution has taken place - the world is constantly evolving. But, having said that, whatever theory you might have, whatever scientific formulae you prove or disprove, however many blackboards you might fill with numbers and observations, sooner or later you have to acknowledge that the universe is miraculous. And the faith of the Bible says that that is because there is a miracle-working God behind it.

            This morning I want to share four reasons that God the Creator is Good News to us.

The first is one that becomes especially clear in this beautifull season, on a beautiful morning like today. And that is, that what God has created is absolutely amazing.  It is a work of artistic genius.  Let me just mention a couple things:

            First, the manx shearwater. The manx shearwater may be the earliest existing bird in England; it's one of those who have diminished rapidly in population over the last fifty years or so. It is a tiny shore bird, about the size of a sparrow; and it lives around the islands of the United Kingdom. But in the spring, the shearwater needs a warmer place to nest its young. So it flies an amazing 2500 miles and then back again - an astounding journey in a short period of time.  Some years back, some birders captured some in a little village in Wales; they thought it would be reasonable that these birds would do well in the very similar climate of New England.  So, they banded them and released them near Boston.  Amazingly, within two weeks the birds were back in their nests in Wales.

            You've heard stories like this before. Tiny insects, butterflies, birds - with amazing homing devices built into them that guide them over journeys of thousands of miles. Wonders like this are woven into God's amazing creation.

            It's an abundant creation. We know that there are many endangered species today; we know that many species are more than endangered - they're extinct. We also know that the world is much smaller now, - with our communication and transportation methods ­our reach from North Pole to South Pole, into the jungles and deserts. And, you would imagine that our sophisticated scientists have catalogued just about everything.

            And yet, just a short time ago, explorers in a cave beneath Sequoia National Park in California discovered 27 unknown species - spiders, centipedes, scorpion-like creatures, and other small animals. A pill-bug whose internal organs are translucent; a daddy-long­legs with jaws bigger than its body; a tiny fluorescent orange spider. Some of them were specific to one small room in this one particular cave. I can see that you're not all as excited about a new pill-bug as I am. But just think of the abundance of life. Just think of this amazing thing that God has done.

            Now here's some other Good News: God decided He wants partners to take care of this awesome creation - and those partners are you and me. God created human beings in His own image, and gave us dominion - responsibility - over the world He created. One of those cute childrens' letters to God you read of now and then said this: "Dear God, 1 think the very best thing you ever created was the stapler." Well, of course, God didn't directly create the stapler. God created partners who had the intellectual capacity to create the stapler. (If we could only create one that doesn't jam up whenever I use it.)

            Imagine - we are creative partners with God. Of course, it is not an equal partnership.

One of my favorite sports quotes ever was by Stacy King, who was a forward for the Chicago Bulls. And he said after a game, "I'll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score seventy points." Seventy points by two players is quite an accomplishment in a basketball game.  What Stacy King is not mentioning is that Michael Jordan scored 69 of those points, and King scored one.  That's kind of like our partnership with God - it's not an equal thing.  But it's still a wonderful opportunity God has given us to take part in creation.

            I don't know of a time when there was more of an awareness of that than there is now, with our heightened awareness of global warming. God needs partners as never before, because the earth's atmosphere is warming, because of some combination of human activity and natural processes. The exact combination of the causes is not known. But what is clear is this: it has already caused suffering, and it's going to cause a lot more. And we are the only creatures on earth that can do anything about it. We're not sure what we can do, but the Green movement that so many or you take part in is one way we acknowledge our role in this partnership with God to exercise faithful care of the earth.

            Now here's some more Good News about God the Creator: what God creates, God saves. That is the truth behind the scripture lesson we read from Isaiah 42. First we read a strong affirmation of the Creator-God: "Thus says God, Yahweh, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it ... " Then again, God declares his name: "I am Yahweh." And then we get a wonderful list of the things God does in the world He created: "I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you... I have given you as a covenant to the people ... to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am Yahweh, that is my name ... "

            Our faith-story tells us that God created a world of abundance and beauty. But that world fell to sin and corruption. And it became a world all too acquainted with blindness and oppression and the grief of sin and death. It became a world in need of salvation.          We became people in need of salvation. And praise the Lord, what God creates, God saves. The God of the Bible is not some distant idea, or some impersonal force, or some spirit locked in to the cycles and limits of nature. The God of the Bible is a loving Person who creates, and then, when that creation groans out for a Savior, takes action.

            That's what is celebrated in Isaiah's words: this is a God who calls us for righteousness, takes us by the hand, gives us a covenant to live by, opens the eyes of the blind, and frees the prisoners from the dungeon of sin. This is a God who saves.

            And, of course, these words were fully realized in the New Testament with the sending of Jesus to be the Savior of the world. Colossians 1: 19-20 declares, "For in (Christ) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." Reconciling all things to himself. Making peace by the cross of Christ. What God creates, God saves. And that includes you and me.

            And that brings us to one more piece of Good News: it's in that last verse in our scripture lesson from Isaiah, Isaiah 42: 9: "Behold," (says Yahweh), '"the former things have passed away, and new things I now declare." The fourth piece of Good News this morning is that the Creator isn't done. The Creator is still creating new things.

            I don't know about anyone else, but I count on that. If God is all done with me, then that is depressing news. Because I am well aware of my faults, and, like Paul said in the Bible, like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, taught as a basic belief of Methodist faith: God is at work, creating new possibilities within us, moving us on to perfection.

            I believe that is God's plan for all of us. Anybody here ever get depressed by the same old same old? Anybody here ever get discouraged by the steady stream of bad news in the world? Anybody here ever despair that you will never overcome that habit, or conquer that recurring feeling, or get that old love of life back? Don't despair. God's last word hasn't been spoken yet. "'what you see today will not always be in God's tomorrow. Every cell in your body will be replaced in seven years. Every experience, every thought, every joy and sorrow we encounter, is potentially the foundation for something new and wonderful God can do. God is not nearly done creating. And what God creates, God creates with beauty and abundance. What God creates, God holds in partnership with you and me.  What God creates, God saves when it stumbles and falls in blindness. And what God creates, God is constantly transforming and perfecting.

            All of this is Good News - but, as always, only if you and I choose to embrace it. God doesn't force it on us. We can close our eyes to the wondrous activity of God around us - in effect, become the blind ones or the imprisoned ones in the scripture lesson. Or we can celebrate the abundance of creation, step up to the partnership with God, accept the salvation and reconciliation through Jesus Christ, and let the Holy Spirit of God perfect us to new and exciting life. In my thinking, that's too good an invitation to pass up.

            The other day I read what seems like a wonderful piece of advice: If you don't like the way you were born, be born again. In this particular case, those words weren't said in a religious way, and the person saying them didn't offer any suggestions as to how to go about carrying them out. But we know. Because we have met a God who, has been offering rebirth to this universe from the very first day. And so we always have hope. Because no matter how dark things may seem at a given moment, we have met a Personal God who is always creating new life. That's who God is; that's what God does. And that's why you and I can live with confidence and joy and hope, even in tough times. We have an amazing God. This world, this nation, your neighbors - need to know this.

            Share the Good News.