Until I Heard The Voice ...

Readings:
Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Audio sermon link:
http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/2EE8DA73-76FB-207B-6703-12AA2E32DAB2.mp3

In today’s Scripture readings we are told of two calls, the responses to which are different.

Nicodemus knows Jesus is “the real deal”, “the guy”, but when Jesus speaks metaphorically to him, he doesn’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. We like a world that makes sense. It’s our nature to try to make sense of things. We like to think WE are in control. We crave things predictable, we look for and gravitate toward routine

But ...

… with God, nothing is routine.

Pastor Johnson used a great metaphorical expression himself when he said:

If you want to travel with God, you have to ride the wind, not knowing from whence it’s come nor where it’s going.

If you truly want to follow God, it’s a scary thing lacking in security. But I heard a great sermon once where the preacher said, “If what you’re after is security, you better forget about ecstasy!! It’s really hard to be after both.”

Traveling with God is risky. Remember, Jesus has reminded us in Scripture that “the Son of Man has no home”. In traveling with God, we may be asked to leave family, friends, home, security, familiarity … for the cause. Nicodemus is the 1st born son. If he leaves, he will incur the wrath of his family, he will have abandoned family obligations, skirted rigid and well-defined cultural expectations. And when He is asked WHERE he is going, Nicodemus is told “to the land I will show you”. Not very specific … like this is no AAA trip-tick. It’s almost for sure an open-ended proposition. We’ll be asked to go to a place we don’t know where it is …

Readers of this blog will have to forgive the seemingly constant analogies to Dyersville, Iowa, but Ray Kinsella is asked by “a voice” to “build a field” because “if he builds it, they will come”. Nothing too specific about “they”. Later, after asking for, begging for clarification, he is told it is to “ease his pain”. No reference to whose pain or what kind of pain. One of Amy Madigan’s memorable lines from the movie is “This voice is not very specific, Ray!!” Townsfolk and fellow farmers more than once think Ray’s lost a few marbles plowing down his crop to build a field in hopes “they” will come and ease “his” pain. When pressed to abandon the folly, Ray often responds with “I don’t know … I just know I’m supposed to do this.”

We are told by Scripture today that we are to trudge on for the cause even when we lack as much detail and specifics enough to make us comfortable. We are told that anyone who questions us, curses us, calls us crazy, God will deal with. We are told to let God deal with those that would stand in our way … we are to just listen to “the voice”, the call.

The second call was that to Abraham who heeded “the voice”. Most of us are not sure “we’re going to make it”. All kinds of people telling us we shouldn’t go. And yet Abraham delivers … Ray Kinsella knows he must continue on.

There is an old Gospel spiritual that chants:

“Abraham, what God is this that requires your only son?”

It’s the God with The Voice that is hard to ignore. And one that if we choose to ignore it (for a time), returns again and again. Abraham is called by That Voice to do the thing he thinks he cannot do.

For this time next year, Pastor Johnson reminds us …

… someone will be singing in the choir who thought they couldn’t sing
… someone new will be volunteering at a homeless shelter
… someone will see something unjust on the news and it will eat away at them

Do we ride the wind … or keep our feet planted firmly on terra firma? If we avoid the risk and trade it for security, we will miss the thrill of the ride that only the wind can offer. If what we’re after is security, we can forget about ecstasy.

It’s not a sin not to ride the wind … but what we’re gonna miss is nothing short of … … ecstacy.