What kind of God?

Couple that with our general human stubbornness and resistance to hearing anything which we don't want to hear, and we could have lots of reason for pastors to keep on preaching for a very long time indeed.

But there is another reason why pastors and congregations need to keep speaking and listening to each other, a reason which point to the very nature of God.

What sort of a God do we have?

1.Is God like the Energizer bunny which keeps going and going and going....?

Is God thus the persistence of the past?

2.Or, is God the one who calls us from the future to be different from what we have been?

Does God open to us a new future on that basis?

The average god is of the first sort; but the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, the God who brought Jesus out of death, is the second kind of God.

Luther had a helpful phrase when he said that your God is where you hang your hope.

So, when we in our day look to the future, where do we place our hope?

Do we hope that things will stay mostly as they are, or do we hope that they will be radically transformed into what God intends them to be?

Let's use an illustration of both kinds of belief:

1. We know people who more than use the stock market and pension portfolios; they worship them.

They do hope that things continue much as they have been; one big happy capital gain, forever.

So what happens to such persons when the stock market takes a nosedive, as it will sooner or later?

Their hope is gone, as if their god has abandoned them, and they are candidates for depression or suicide.

2. On the other side, we have persons such as Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, or John Paul II.

Why are they endlessly fascinating to us?

At least part of the reason is that they are clearly not worshiping a god who keeps things as they have always been.

They anticipate the God who changes us and points us toward a goal.

Mother Teresa worked among the poorest of the poor in India, in a society which still says that if you are poor or sick or alone, it is your punishment from some former life.

The attitude in that culture is that no one can or should help you....that's the way things are, have been, and will always be.

Mother Teresa ignored all that, went out, picked up one person, cleaned up and cared for that one person until he either recovered or died ….and then went out and did the whole process again and again...

...as a sign of a different future.

She was looking to the time when God's people are brought together in the true community to which he calls us.

By her simple actions, Mother Teresa witnesses to her hope in the Lord God,

the God of the second sort,

the God who transforms the present into his intended future,

the God who raises Jesus from the dead as the model of what that future will be.

The future will not just be the same old thing over and over again, it will be God continuing to direct us toward the goal he intends.

Each time we gather around the spoken Word, and the Word acted out in Baptism and Communion,

God is working to turn us around from measuring everything by what has been, and instead to view things from what they will yet become.

And God will surprise us!

Think about that congregation of first believers in Damascus.

Paul, the man who has sworn violence against them, is on the way there, but by the time that he arrives, his life has been completely changed in its focus.

Earlier he had been trying to keep a list of rules as a way of proving his worthiness to God.

Now he truly honors God by following the direction of Jesus, and depending on Jesus' worthiness and not his own.

He is pointing to Jesus as the future of God and not as a dead past.

What an amazing and shocking surprise to the folks in Damascus.

They were initially skeptical, which was a reasonable reaction.

God has been surprising us all the way through the scriptures.

--He chooses an itinerant desert trader named Abraham – just because, and gives him a 3-fold promise which indicates that he will become a blessing to the nations of the world.

How can this be?

It has nothing to do with how good Abraham was beforehand, and everything to do with the nature of God and his promises.

--Or think of the words of II Isaiah who conveys God's promise to a group of people who have been dragged hundreds of miles across the desert, and subjected to humiliation and exile in Babylon.

God says, “I give you as a light to the nations and a covenant to the people.”

What?! That is outrageously unrealistic!

Yet, that is the promise.

It all depends on the transforming power of God.

--God surprises the people in that synagogue.

--And God takes this cranky little Pharisee Paul and turns him into an apostle of that blessing to the nations.

Who would have thought it?

Who could have expected it?

But that is the kind of God that we have.

And we hear that as Good News to us.

Here we are, just regular folks.

Often cranky, not often distinguished, all ages and sizes.

And God has called us to a future far different than any past we have ever had,

to a community in Christ more comprehensive than we can imagine.

There is lots more for us to discuss, as our congregation Council works to fashion a fresh mission statement and set goals in the coming months.

God is always busy working on us, opening fresh ways to understand our life and work together.

It happens in groups who work together in the United Church organization,

It happens when people come together to assist the work of St. Anthony's Center, or the Shepherd of the Streets, or Family Promise hosting.

It happens when we speak in Jesus' name to a newly-widowed neighbor.

It happens when we walk away from a juicy gossip session.

It happens when we come together in worship and study.

When the Lord meets us on the road, shakes us up, and says, Follow me, let's keep listening and then speaking and doing. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.