Power to Walk Away

Genesis 19: 24 – 28

 

The thesis of last Sunday’s sermon was that if we don’t experience the real power of God, the power of Jesus, the risen Christ in our lives, it is may be because we have remained unmoved by God’s continual beckoning of love and grace. We may have failed to move from the relative comfort of where we are to the more uncertain future to which he calls us. And, I have asked us to be in prayer together, as individuals and a church, for the remainder of this year to see if God might reveal some new “step forward” that he would give us.

 

But even if we do perceive God’s calling for us to take such a faithful “step forward,” either in our personal lives, or together as a church, there is, of course, no guarantee that we will actually take it. Why? For two reasons I think. The first we have already alluded to. Stepping toward God always moves us into the arena of his power and away from the arena of our power, and that’s usually scary for us. We like to do things that we can control and know we have the resources to accomplish.

 

This helps, I think, to explain the great irony of the Presbyterian Church today. I can safely say that no Christian denomination has more gifted, talented, intelligent, wealthy, and otherwise capable members than the Presbyterian Church. We are, however, being “out performed” by churches filled with far less gifted people. Why? Because they may know something we don’t. They may know that they can’t do it (i.e. build the church). We, for all our pious theology to the contrary, think we can. I think one of the reasons, perhaps the reason that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is in decline today is that it is filled with brilliant, talented, capable people who cannot move. Cannot move out into the danger zone, beyond our own sphere of power and control, to where God works and moves. And friends, by my observation, this is a spiritual malady that comes in both liberal and conservative flavors.

 

The solution to this first obstacle is, I think, prayer and mutual support. Only in humble, seeking prayer can we find vision and courage to let God start pulling us toward where he wants us to be. And we need to do this, as a church, in a way that is mutually shared, so that no one is excluded, and that, when we move, if we move, we can move together.

 

The second obstacle to our moving in faith toward God, and I think for most of us, by far the most difficult, is that stepping toward God, not only means stepping out of our power sphere and into God’s, but, that, in doing so, we are almost always required to leave something behind, something to which we may be passionately, though irrationally attached. What could that be? Well, there are at least as many things as there are people and churches. But you can count on this. It is always something that you would be better off without, but to which you are hopelessly attached. Don’t we all really already know this? Don’t we all have something in our lives that is keeping us from knowing the full joy and peace of God in our lives, something that keeps us from taking that simple step toward God because it holds us so tight? It is a deep part of our life, our self-esteem, and, we think, our happiness, but in truth it is killing us. Remember the reaction of the Israelites when they faced the Red Sea? “Better for us to have been slaves of the Egyptians!” They actually preferred slavery to the uncertain future of freedom with God.

 

The tragic story of Lot’s wife is, without doubt, the most graphic example the bible gives us of how an unwillingness to move to where God would take us can destroy us. You don’t have to be a bible scholar to understand this story. God calls Lot and his family out of the city of Sodom because it is to be destroyed. Lot obeys, but his wife “looks back,” the scripture tells us. This can also be translated that she “halted,” or even “went back.” Regardless of the original meaning of the word, the meaning of the text is the same. Now Sodom is clearly a bad, bad place, and God has done a wonderfully gracious thing toward Lot and his family in calling them out. Why, why would Lot’s wife look back? Because it was her home. It was where she had a fine house and presumably some social standing. She had security. She knew where the super market was. It’s where her friends were and where she went to church. There was, of course, only one problem. Sodom was dead. God would not abide there, and given the choice of moving toward an uncertain future with God or the home she knew and loved, Lot’s wife chooses to keep what she has, and dies along with it. The irony is that salt was a very precious commodity in those days. We would better understand the scripture if it said she was turned into a pillar of gold. In death, she was still precious by human standards, but to God she was useless, and because of that, she was truly dead.

 

Folks this stuff is not just a “bible story.” It is real life. When I was the youth minister at the Covington Presbyterian Church some thirty years ago, I got involved in trying to assist a man who, along with his wife, was being evicted from their home. This had been a nice middle class couple living in a nice middle class house. Financial problems came through a series of “disabilities,” physical, mental and spiritual (in my opinion). Adding to the problem was the fact that the man simply could not give up his “stuff.” He could not let go of the things that brought him a sense of success and well-being, and it made it impossible to truly help them. He had been living with no electricity for three months, so he could stay in his house, but now eviction was upon him. He was renting his present house, but had gotten so far behind on his rent that his landlord now had a lien against all his furniture, and his automobile.

 

The church, to the tune of $600 (1975 dollars), cut a deal with the landlord that allowed him to keep his possessions under condition that he would immediately vacate the house. Two weeks later we got a call from the fellow. He was about to be evicted from the motel in which he had been living. I went to see him. Outside of the motel room, were two U-Haul trucks, for which he also owed back rent, filled with his things. Running from his room to one of the trucks was an extension cord to which he connected his two chest freezers full of meat. When I suggested to him that perhaps it would make better sense to have disposed of the meat and the freezers, he became exasperated, and said in manner that clearly indicated he thought I was crazy, “What good would that do? It will cost me more to replace that meat than to keep it.”

 

Yes, we roll our eyes and shake our heads. That is pathetic. But friends it is no less pathetic than some of the ways we live in denial about the things that debilitate us as human beings made in the image of God, things that rob of us of God’s presence in our lives, of his joy and peace. I don’t know what ultimately became of that man and is wife, but, you know, if his miserable and pathetic condition moved him to finally let go of whatever it was inside of himself that could not let go of his stuff, to cause him to cling with such desperation to life as he had known it, and to step toward God, he might just be a luckier man than you or I.

 

As we pray to discern what God wants us to do, how he might want us to move as individuals and a church toward him, it is very likely God will expose some stuff we need to get rid of. Stuff we really like and think we need, but which is actually killing us. What hope do we have of giving up things that have been a part of us so long? How can we root out obstacles to our moving forward in faith that may be buried so deep that we aren’t even aware of them? I think the answer is (and will be) the wondrous joy and peace that we receive whenever we move toward God even just a little bit. God’s joy and peace is the one thing in true faith for which there is no substitute. O, there are many counterfeits, but they are all exposed whenever we experience the real joy and peace of God. God’s joy and peace are not our possessions, but are his gift to us when we leave things behind, things we need to leave behind, for his sake. They are his gift whenever we take even small steps forward in faith. And when you experience this joy and peace, it quickly becomes the “pearl of great price” for which you will gladly sell everything you have.

 

I think really it is our only way out, the only thing more power to us than our slavery to things that bind us and hold us to the “kingdoms of this earth” and away from the kingdom of God. The scripture, again, shows us the way. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” When we get even a small taste of the joy and peace that God alone gives us, we find power to walk away from anything that would keep us from having more.