“Finding God Amidst the
Distractions”
Isaiah 1: 1, 10-20; Luke
12: 32-40
First Presbyterian Church,
Henderson
August 11, 2013
Isaiah 1:1-20
1The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.10Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! 11What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. 12When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. 14Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
16Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. 18Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Luke 12:32-40
32 ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.35 ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
39 ‘But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he* would not have let his house be broken into. 40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’
We live in a world full of
noise and distractions. Cell phones,
tablets, cars, TVs, radios, intercoms, other people around us, our own
thoughts… we can’t escape it. Even as I
was working on this sermon, sitting alone in an office in the back corner of a hospital,
I found myself distracted by the loud air vent and the clicking of the keys on
my computer keyboard. It took me a few
times to even get started since the people I share my office with were having
their own conversations while I had emails popping up in the bottom corner of
my computer screen- I had to wait until they left. Right now as we sit in this Sanctuary- a
place that many think should be or even is free of all distractions- some of
you might be looking at the floor, others are passing notes or making grocery
lists, some might be engaged by the patterns in the beautiful stained glass
windows, while the rest of you might be looking through your bulletin trying to
figure out who I am or what happens once I am finally done up here.
Our society is an active
one- always buzzing with the new and exciting word on the street. Escaping noise and distractions is difficult,
if not impossible. News spreads like
wildfire through the internet, social media, TV, radio, and even the old
fashioned, dare I say it, newspaper.
Even if we were to turn off all of our devices our minds would still be
racing as we try to figure out what we are missing.
For that very reason, I
want to try something… I want everyone to take a minute to double check that
all of your phones and tablets really are turned off… not just on vibrate.
Now- I want you to close
your eyes and take a deep breath.
Slowly.
Now, let it out
slowly. Clear your head of all of the
distractions. The grocery list can
wait. The windows will be here later on
in the service for you to marvel at.
Just relax and let it all go. If
you think of anything, think of why you are here today- to worship our Lord
God.
It’s not easy, is it? When
was the last time you were able to truly clear your mind… or to just focus on
one thing? That is what I hear as the
charge in today’s Gospel lesson- let go of all of the distractions and orient
yourself toward God. Now, they may not
have had all of the technology to distract them when this was brought to the
table but they definitely had their own form of distractions and it was just as
hard for them as it is for us today.
This morning’s texts, both
the Gospel reading and the Old Testament reading, place a focus on orienting
and focusing ourselves towards God. Even
as far back as Isaiah, the Israelites were charged to redirect their focus from
earthly sacrifice and ceremony to the actions of servitude called out by the
Lord. I guess it is safe to say that it
is quite clear that as humans, we have always been a bit distracted.
This raises a very
important question for me- WHY are we so distracted? What makes it so hard for
us to keep our focus on one thing… and it isn’t like this one thing is small or
easily forgotten. What is so big and
important that our focus is taken away from God so easily?
At least in my experience,
we tend to get distracted mostly if we are worried or excited. This morning’s Gospel reading cuts that out
of the equation at the very start- “Do not be afraid, little flock…” Do not be afraid. Do not worry.
Relax. Let it all go. Whatever it is that is troubling you or
distracting you… do not be afraid. The
text goes further and becomes even more nurturing- “it is your Father’s good
pleasure to give you the kingdom”. God
has not forgotten us or left us out to dry in our distractions- God continues
to be with us and desires to give us all of the treasures of Heaven, and according
to the Greek (eudokesen) God already has given this to us and it has been
expressed to us already both at Jesus’ birth and baptism. This “kingdom” is a gift from God that
transforms our identity and our activity as God reigns over our human hearts,
minds, values, and actions. We see this
actively taking place in the life and the teachings of Christ’s ministry on
earth.
So, we have been told to
not be afraid because God desires to give us the kingdom (and already has
through Jesus Christ). What do we do now? How can we let go of our fear if we are still
surrounded by all of our earthly distractions?
The text continues to encourage us to go against the grain of society
and place value in God’s kingdom rather than the earthly things that enhance
our earthly status. By moving focus from
what helps us climb the ladder to helping others, we are not only letting go of
our own distractions but we begin responding to God’s call to show compassion
and mercy for those in need as required in this morning’s text from
Isaiah. When we place our focus and
treasure here, our heart moves here as well.
Before we go too much
further, I do want to take a minute to clear something up. This text can easily be read as “get rid of
all of your things and go out to help everyone else, forgetting your own
needs”. However I have a hard time
believing that God is calling us to totally get rid of everything we own,
rather I believe that we are called to move our value from these earthly possessions
to the treasure of the ultimate kingdom.
The God that is calling us to transfer our value placement is the same
God who told us to give to the government what is the governments- this God
seems to understand that as humans we do have needs, God is just calling us to
place our value on the one who ULTIMATELY meets ALL of our needs, not just our
earthly needs.
Along with this call to
re-orient our focus and to let go of distractions, this text calls us to then
look toward the future and Jesus’ coming- his Parousia. This is when God’s kingdom will become
complete and manifest in this world- however we have no idea when that will be
(despite all of the predictions that we come across in media on a daily
basis).
The image of the servants
waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet so that they can
simply open the door as soon as he knocks speaks volumes to me. These servants are not taking turns staring
out the window so they can run to the door as soon as they see their master
appear over the hill- they are simply waiting.
Maybe they are doing a bit of cleaning or maybe they are sitting around
the table laughing and telling stories- either way they are there and ready for
when the master does arrive, but they are not necessarily worrying about when
the master will actually arrive. They
are solely focused and concentrated on their one given duty- serving their
master.
I have spent the past 11
weeks serving as a chaplain at Rex Healthcare in Raleigh. Part of my job as a chaplain is to be “on
call” periodically, meaning I carry our main phone and a pager. Whenever someone needs a chaplain during the
night or if there is a death, the nurses will call this phone. In a hospital with 414 beds, it is impossible
to predict when a call will come in so the on-call Chaplain carefully winds
their way through the night grabbing foil with their dinner… just in case,
taking short naps… just in case, taking short showers… just in case. Unless it is their first time on call, a
chaplain rarely sits at the desk staring at the pager waiting for it to go off-
they are simply aware that it might (and likely will) go off at some point and
they need to be prepared.
I think that is what this
text is calling us to do- to be ON the lookout, but not THE lookout. Continue to live our lives serving others and
sharing the Word of God so that when the Lord comes, we are ready… don’t sit
here and try to predict when so that we can relax until we are almost out of
time and then prepare. Just as our
placement of values was flipped upside down earlier in the text, the servitude
is flipped upside down now- when the master arrives to find the servants awake
and waiting, the master then begins to serve them- not as compensation for
their work but rather as a gift, much like the kingdom is presented to us by God.
Our passage today calls us
to re-orient our focus on the only one who can truly meet our needs and the one
who gives us, with pleasure, the kingdom.
We are called to live our lives in a way that serves the Lord but isn’t
always staring out the window waiting.
If we become the like the ones who stare out the window and wait, we
become much like those in Isaiah who focused on what sacrifices needed to be
made to the Lord rather than what they could do for others while they wait for
the Lord. When we try to figure out when
the Lord is coming so that we can prepare ourselves, we become like the
chaplain on their first on-call- never eating or sleeping or shower, but simply
staring at a little black box so they can then run upstairs to see a patient. Neither situation lends its hand to us being
prepared- if we focus on sacrifices for the Lord, we aren’t focusing on the
Lord truly calls us to do in the kingdom; if we stare at the pager, we aren’t
physically prepared for the two-hour visit.
They say that good things come to those who wait… but they also say that
even greater things come to those who don’t worry about when something will
happen and continue to live their lives instead.
While the fact that we
have constant connection with the world through our technology does help us in
one aspect, it also detracts from the most important thing that we should be
paying attention to. We are constantly
presented with problems to solve, things to read, jobs to do, and ways to
simply waste time. Our minds move in
hyperdrive as we try to keep up with the world and even in a sacred space like
this sanctuary, we find ourselves trying to do multiple things at once. We are servants busy in another room on the
other side of the house- when the master comes home we will have to run across
the house and down the stairs to let them in.
If the pager goes off, we may not even hear it. Just as the servants are called to do one
job- to serve their master, we are called to do one job- to serve our
Lord. How can we do that if we are
constantly distracted by everything else in life?
Take a moment to think
about what distractions you find in your life… maybe it is that project at work
or getting the kids ready to go back to school, maybe it is that news story
that you have been following or that game of candy crush you have been playing…
Are those distractions
taking your focus away from God and the kingdom?
Now, take a moment to lift
these distractions up to the Lord… Let them go…
Breathe… slowly and deep.
How can you live your own
life focused on and preparing for the Lord?
The text tells us-
“Do not be afraid, little
flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom… you also
must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
All thanks be to God- the
one who desires to give us all that we truly need and the one who we live our
lives in preparation for. Amen.
