Sermon for April 22, 2018

Lessons: Exodus 17:1-7/Matthew 4:1-11

Title: “Three Special Words”

“You are special.” Just three words, but no three words bring more delight to the ear. Imagine what this world might look like if that blessing were regularly conferred on each of the billions of people living on this globe. Think of the confidence that would inspire. Think of the hope that would communicate. Imagine the number of lives rescued from the brink of despair.

“You are special.” I would be extremely surprised if those words hadn’t been directed to each of you at many times in your life. We can thank God for that. There are some, but not many, who have attained the longevity and status we enjoy without having their essential worth and dignity repeatedly affirmed.

It should surprise no one here this morning that “you are special” is the central truth God wished to convey in creating us. Right from the get go scripture insists that our specialness is our birthright. That, after all, is what the business about “created in the image of God” is all about.

God, however, recognized at the outset, if I might be bold to interpret God’s intentions, [God recognized] that the concept “image of God” might be too nebulous and abstract for us to understand. Ultimately he reasoned that some specificity might clear things up.

It takes all of twelve chapters in the book of Genesis before God gets around to spelling out what image of God really means. It is in that twelfth chapter that God enters into a binding contract, or covenant, with a flesh and blood ancestor of ours, one Abraham. Abraham will become God’s agent in bringing the term image of God to life.

The project all got started with those three words, “you are special.” But God didn’t stop there, he went on to declare that Abraham was so special that no one would ever forget his name. God ordained that Abraham’s ancestors would keep his name alive from generation to generation. Through them, God declared, I will make my will known. Through them I will define what it means to be created in my image.

God placed a great burden on Abraham’s shoulders, but hey, God was never going to let Abraham and his heirs forget that they were special. It was not for nothing that Abraham, later to become a nation called Israel, would be referred to as the chosen of God.

Over generations, Israel, the Jews, would wear that label proudly, unfortunately in many cases too proudly to suit God. As one generation passed to another Israel began to resent her dependence on God. Just as the adolescent seeks to assert independence through acts of rebellion, Israel wanted to stake out her own identity. That might not have been an altogether bad thing if in asserting her independence she had not violated the covenant established with Abraham so long ago, and more recently through Moses.

You will remember that the covenants were established upon certain expectations that God maintained regarding Abraham’s heirs, expectations grounded in the Ten Commandments and other laws. In following those commandments and laws, God’s prophets declared, the people would enjoy the fullness of life.

What’s not to like about the fullness of life? Israel it happened didn’t like some of the fine print that spelled out what fullness of life on God’s terms meant. The idea of placing God’s will ahead of her own was not acceptable, especially when personal danger threatened.

Danger has always, and will always be part of life, but the consistent theme of scripture is that we can trust God to get us through it. Israel’s ability to trust was compromised time and time again by the series of obstacles that stymied her.

Israel found those obstacles to be most imposing in the wildness before she settled in the Promised Land. Her wilderness trials constantly undermined her confidence that God was good to God’s word. If for her the Promised Land and the fullness of life were synonymous why was God so heedless of her welfare?

Has some setback in your life ever caused you to question God’s methods? May I answer for you? Absolutely. Have you ever felt the wilderness close in? Absolutely. There are times when all of us have wandered in the wilderness unsure of where we were headed. At such times it’s only natural to lay our disappointment, grief, despair at the feet of God. And that’s exactly what the children of Israel did. Why did God bring them into the wilderness to suffer? After all, as bad as things were, life was better in Pharoah’s Egypt.

Why if they were so special, the very image of God, did they have to suffer? They were entitled to better.

So where did the Jews acquire that sense of entitlement? Wasn’t it God who said, “you are special?” Wasn’t it God who elected them to be covenant partners? The children of Israel could fairly reason that they were entitled to a better life than it was proving to be. After all, they were chosen.

The notion of entitlement came naturally to the Israelites. It comes naturally to us. Invariably those who have been favored in life, as the children of Israel were, adopt the belief that entitlement is deserved, a right. That way of thinking, of course, can have bad results.

The children of Israel believed they deserved better than they were getting. In their eyes they had done everything that God had expected of them. They reasoned that their faithfulness should be rewarded, and, oh, by the way, they should enjoy the freedom to decide what form their reward should take.

It’s the freedom to choose they wanted. If only God would consult them before he did something impactful.

Wouldn’t it be great if God checked in with us before he acted? If after all we are special, the apple of God’s eye as it were, it only follows that such a courtesy should be granted us. But it doesn’t work that way, does it? Our entitlement, at least in God’s eyes, doesn’t extend as far as we might wish.

We may well be the chosen, the beloved of God, but God doesn’t seek our input before he acts. I can think of several situations where a “heads up” might have spared me regrets. If only God were more responsive when we are most vulnerable. After all what is all that business of “you are special” and entitlement mean if God simply does his own thing guided by some mysterious purpose we can’t unlock? “You are special,” “you are loved,” doesn’t amount to much particularly when we are exposed to the inexplicable and devastating setbacks in life.

The children of God wanted God to act consistent with how he and his prophets represented him to be. And how can we blame them? What they failed to understand is that the inconsistencies they laid at God’s feet were not to be found in God but in them. They failed to live consistent with the terms in the covenants setting forth their responsibilities to God. They couldn’t bring themselves to trust God, the very basis upon which their relationship with God was established.

Even though Israel couldn’t bring herself to trust God her sense of entitlement led her to assume that God could be counted upon to overlook that lapse. Her attitude might well have found expression in the words of German poet and journalist Heinrich Heine who once declared, “Of course God will forgive; that’s his job.” The entitled would like to believe that God should give their convenience, interests, and wellbeing priority status.

Entitlement can have tragic repercussions. Embracing that philosophy, Hitler contended that the Aryan race was entitled to rule over the races he defined as inferior. Those Western Europeans and others who established the slave trade in Africa believed they were entitled to treat the black man as goods to be sold or traded. Our forbears on this continent thought they were entitled to dismiss the rights of Native Americans to enjoy title to their lands and a way of life of their choosing. Capitalism promotes the view that those who work hard are entitled to their rewards. Nothing wrong with that, but what if it means that billionaires accumulate vast sums while millions of others scrape by?

We find Satan playing the entitlement card with Jesus in our second lesson. Entitlement, Satan reasoned, might be an allure by which he could put Jesus under his power. If indeed Jesus was the Son of God he was entitled to use the power at his command anyway of his choosing. So he got started, “Test your powers, [ Son of Man] by turning those stones into bread.” Jesus didn’t take the bait. “Ok, don’t like that idea, why not do something dramatic to display your powers? Why not climb to the uppermost part of the temple and throw yourself off. Beneath your dignity, Jesus, I can understand that. There is a price, however, you won’t be able to refuse.” With that Satan took the Lord up to the highest mountain with a view embracing “the world and all its splendors.”  “Take it all in, Son of Man [declared Satan] you are entitled to reign over that vast realm. “Fall down and worship me, and I will deliver all of that into your hands.”

What do we learn in that face-off between Jesus and Satan? Two things. First, our various entitlements come to us gifts from a loving God. Second, we can be enticed to misuse our entitlement by forgetting that God bestows the entitlement in the first place.

What entitlement can we point to that did not come to us as a gift from a loving God? How we choose to use or abuse those gifts is up to us. In the hands of a Hitler entitlement becomes a vile and destructive instrument. Much evil has been done in the name of entitlement.

Later in the gospel Jesus asks this question, “for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” What gain is there to possess everything and forget the one who gave us the gifts? Yet that is what Israel did, and that is what we also do. Three words sum up that attitude, and those three words are “I earned it.” The statement is innocuous enough, but it contains a danger presumption, the presumption that the gifts and advantages the subject of that statement used in “earning” his various advantages were self-derived entitlements.

You have perhaps heard the quip about the person who was born on third base all the time believing that he hit a triple. There are millions of the self-made, “I earned it types” who have succumbed to that delusion.

What do you have that you did not receive? [the Apostle Paul asks] And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”

There is a statement in our Presbyterian book of confessions that to my mind frames the issue of entitlement best. The statement is this, “Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage.”

God would not have us forget that we are special, that indeed we were created in his own image. This life we have been given, this very day we have been given, is but a gift. All that God asks from us is that we receive it with gratitude.

Now there are circumstances in each our lives when particular gifts we have cherished, abilities we used to great advantage, and loved ones who brought joy to our lives, have been taken from us. Many times the cost of parting with those gifts has been enormous, so costly that for a time some of us have felt shut off from God, while others of us have turned away from God entirely.

There has never been, and I suppose there will never be, any final answer to be given to why the same God from whom we receive so much can also require so much when a cherished part of life is taken from us. Yet, that said, does God ever leave us defenseless? There are events in life that give us the appearance of being defenseless, abandoned and on our own. Was Jesus himself not driven to his knees in the Garden of Gethsemane at the prospect of losing his life?

There are events in life that give us the appearance of being defenseless, abandoned and on our own. Here I think is where that second half of the Presbyterian confession comes in, “Life is a task to be pursued with courage.”  And what is the source of that courage? It is God who stood with Jesus in his hour of need. It is God who through Moses braced Israel in her hour of need, “Do not be afraid or terrified…for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

“Never leave you nor forsake you” may appear to be mighty empty words in the wilderness passages of life. So, let’s be frank and admit that reality. We are only human in so doing. Yet let us not forget that God sanctified our humanness, made it holy in other words, declaring, “I have created you in my own image.”

If that is so, do you think for one minute that the God created us in our own image, and sent Jesus to be our companion in the wilderness, would ever abandon us there?

What we experience in this world create doubts, in some cases serious doubts, about our destiny under God. Those doubts cannot be brushed aside and dismissed, and to do that is not the task to which God has applied us. Doubts are a reality we will concede, but let us not allow their reality to displace a greater one.

Friends, when at our creation God declared “you are special” he really meant it. This faith to which God’s providence has led us, assures us that through this life and for the life to come God will never leave us or forsake us. Why? Because out of his love for this world, and us specifically, he established a plan for this world whereby the wilderness that to us often seems so imposing now will open to that promised land that for now we only see in very brief glimpses. God assures us that the clearing is ahead. And, this much we know, friends, God doesn’t make rash promises. Anything else we need to know? AMEN

PRAYER

O God, how blessed we are to be created in your image with the gifts of our five senses to savor this world’s delight. To the gifts you have already given, grant that we may become more fully aware of your presence in the things you have created.

How seldom, if ever, we pause to reflect upon these lives we are living. We are consumed, O Lord, so thoroughly by the details of daily life that we have become desensitized to questions of meaning and purpose. Grant that our worldly concerns not so thoroughly detain us that we confuse an imitation for the life that is really life.

Lord, we know so little, even as you have revealed so much. Lessons taught by your prophets, illumined and your holy word, have failed to reach the innermost recesses or our hearts. Even as we proclaim our devotion with our mouths, lessor ambitions continue to compromise the loyalty to you we profess.

Created in your image we so often model our conduct on the things the world values. We misuse our entitlement by asserting selfish claims to things you meant to be shared. We deny our obligations to our fellow human beings, and to the earth that sustains us. We have diminished ourselves in your eyes, O God, but grace abounds. In Christ’s victory on the cross you revealed powers that even today, this minute, are at work to redeem and restore creation to its intended state. We give thanks that your commitment to us is so profound that even in our failures to do your will we remain your beloved, your agents of renewal.

We give thanks for gifts immediate and close at hand. We thank you, Lord, for the freedom we enjoy to worship you in this place with these friends who through the gift of your providence share a portion of our lives. May the bonds we share continue to be strengthened in our mutual dedication to serving you.

Each of us brings particular concerns to this place, O God, that have not been voiced today.  We know that nothing that occupies our hearts remains undisclosed in your sight. You assure us, O Lord, to you do listen, always, and act. Grant us the courage of faith to belief even as doubts seek to undermine.

For this day and for each other we give thanks, praying the prayer…