A Faith of Convention or Intention?
The Rev. Samuel Schaal
August 31, 2008

Exodus 3:1-15
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

Summer is about over. At least here at church, it’s almost fall and we’re on the cusp of yet another church year. This year is not just the start of another church year, given our new schedule of worship at 8 and 10 a.m., and the new educational Discovery Hour for all ages in-between. We’ve managed to get a little bit of new space in the Atrium by taking out some of the coat racks, making a better space for fellowship and coffee, as we move from activity to activity in this new schedule.

It’s a big change for the church. And in this time of year perhaps you’re facing other changes: new schools for some of our kids; new routines for the adults. The shift to the fall season marks an increase in the pace of life from the lazier days of summer. Temperatures cool, the earth greens a bit before expressing a burst of color, then going into hibernation, so we see and sense and experience a shift in things.

We’re about to be in transition to a new season, a new schedule, new activities, new things. The flow of life is about to change. So maybe it’s a good time to look at change, to look at the flow of life and our place in it.

One common theme of our Scripture lessons is intention—the divine intention, and the response of the human intention to the divine call.

In the Old Testament lesson we heard that great story of Moses and the burning bush where we see God calling Moses to be a great leader in freeing the Israelites from their slavery. And we see Moses’ reaction: Who, me? Who am I that I should go to free the slaves?

The saga continues past today’s reading and Moses continues to bargain with God. Finally, Moses says, “Oh my Lord, please send someone else.” Then God gets really ticked and says he’ll give him what he needs and belatedly Moses begins to move his intent in line with God’s intent—and moves, not under his own human power, but with God’s power, and begins the difficult process of leading the Israelites to their Promised Land.

Notice that God expects Moses to free the slaves. This God who commands the cosmos, who spins the whirling planets, this God who orders a burning bush to appear that is not consumed, sees that the people must be freed and you’d think he would just free the slaves, but instead he expects this Moses to go and do it. God expects a human to go and do what essentially is divine work. And—this is an important part—God promises Moses that God will be with Moses in that effort: “I will be with you.”

So we see that being a religious person is not merely believing, but moving under the command and under the power of God, it is going somewhere, it is doing something, it is responding to God’s call. God did not call Moses into a passive religiosity. And in the Christian experience that follows in the early fellowship of Jesus followers, neither do we see God calling them to a passive experience.

Jesus rebukes Peter after Jesus announces his intention to suffer and be killed. (Of course, it’s not really Jesus’ original intention; it’s God’s intention to which Jesus responds, as we see in the larger story.) This did not fit Peter’s hopes and he rebukes Jesus, hoping this would never have to happen. And Jesus tells him to reframe his thinking from human things to divine things, that he must go to the cross and that his followers must also take up their crosses to follow Jesus.

Now, we think of the idea of taking up your cross to mean bearing a burden, but perhaps what Jesus is talking about is risk. To take up your cross was to risk death. We have to remember that in this early community forming around Jesus, following this new and strange messiah was not considered honorable or respectful by the larger society. In fact, it invited shame and derision. It placed one at risk of losing everything, even life itself.

How different it is today. It is widely perceived in our society that the churchgoer is conventional: that attending church is something that is perceived as honorable and respectful, but such was not true in Jesus’ day. Jesus—and we see this expressed in many other gospel accounts as well—was not calling people to a conventional faith, to a faith of the known or the status quo. He was calling people away from the limiting conventions of the day, toward a new faith, toward a new experience with God, toward a new and bold and dynamic and rich and risky life—a life that enlarged the accepted boundaries of the day; a life that welcomed children; a life that welcomed those outside the purity code of the day, a life that welcomed all, without exception, to the fellowship and to the wider mission of life in God.

And we see this new ethic expressed in the Romans text. For Paul, obedience to the covenant with God in Jesus Christ, Beverly Gaventa says, “is not merely a matter of keeping rules. It is an act of being massively and completely transformed, readied for a new life in the world, which is marked by liberality and hospitality. Paul provides an inventory of new life for those who are changed and renewed by the gospel.”

For Paul, as for Jesus, and as for Moses (once Moses got the message), being in the household of God had nothing to do with an ordinary faith as then understood. In each of these examples we see divinity calling humanity not to conventional mores of that society, but to a life of intention: using our human powers in line with our experience and understanding of the Divine Life.

In other words, it matters what we do. It matters in the big things and it matters in the daily and mundane things. It matters how we live, and we need to live in the flow of divine life.

But this is not always easy. It is rarely easy, I would say. It is not easy for us to change what becomes for us the regular and routine.

Just this last Tuesday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, columnist and psychotherapist Philip Chard wrote about the challenge of change, of how so many of us say we are open to change and personal transformation, but really how few of us are up to the challenges because of our fear of the unknown.

He said, “I’ve worked with countless clients who, upon reaching the edge of their mental ‘diving board,’ elected not to leap into their ‘new me.’… So if you’ve been on a mission to remake yourself or some portion of your life but have had little success, try examining the benefits you accrue from staying the same.”

It is so difficult leaving what we are used to, even if what we are used to isn’t that great. Moses could probably more clearly see the benefits of staying in the fields instead of facing up to the military and political powers of his day. Peter did not want to lose his beloved Master. But by letting go of the familiar, each was taken to a place, not more comfortable at all, but a place where their work could make God and God’s household more manifest in the world.

But it is not easy. We want to hold to the familiar.

One of my favorite songs that for me is an intensely spiritual song, is a song by Garth Brooks, “The River.” It’s a country/western song, and though I’ve got the accent, I’m not particularly a country/western fan, but this song speaks to me deeply of my own journey through life. It’s not explicitly religious, but I read into it deeply religious meaning.

Garth says:

“You know a dream is like a river
Ever changin' as it flows
And a dreamer's just a vessel
That must follow where it goes
Trying to learn from what's behind you
And never knowing what's in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores...and
“I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry
Like a bird upon the wind
These waters are my sky
I'll never reach my destination
If I never try
So I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry. ”

The river is God’s will for creation. There is a certain flow in life that moves in concert with God’s will for us and for all. We get lost in a tributary from time to time, perhaps we end up stuck on the shore, perhaps we try with all our might to swim in the opposite direction, but there is a flow to life and to God that we cannot control. This is God’s intention.

And yet this does not mute our human intention. Garth says, “I will sail my vessel.” I have never sailed but I have observed that it takes skill and sometimes strength and sometimes cunning to sail successfully. It is not merely getting your boat out in the river and going with the flow, it is using the strength of the river or ocean—and the wind—as power, and one’s own skills, one’s own intention, to get where you need to go.

So “I will said my vessel” til the river runs dry. ‘Til one’s life has completed its course.

Of course, if we get stuck in the daily conventions of our lives; if we lose track of where we are supposed to be going, life passes us by:

“Too many times we stand aside
And let the waters slip away
'Til what we put off 'til tomorrow
Has now become today
So don't you sit upon the shoreline
And say you're satisfied
Choose to chance the rapids
And dare to dance the tide... ”

Dare to dance the tide. Dare to align your intent with the divine intent; dare to give yourself over to God’s will and to God’s work. Dare to move beyond mere convention, beyond mere politeness, beyond mere niceness, beyond what our society merely expects of you or of me, dare to dance the tide of the amazing transformation of life in God with and through Jesus Christ—and in the community of Christ.

Garth merely expresses in popular music an idea as old as the Christian faith. Church father Ireneus said in the second century:

It is not you who shape God;
It is God that shapes you.
If then you are the work of God,
await the hand of the Artist
who does all things in due season.
Offer the Potter your heart,
soft and tractable,
and keep the form in which
the Artist has fashioned you.
Let your clay be moist,
lest you grow hard and lose
the imprint of the Potter ’s fingers.

Staying soft and moist is staying flexible, open to change, open to the ongoing intention of God in our lives, inviting us to move our lives from our little conventions, to Holy Intentions. It leaves us open and attentive to hear God’s call, and moreover, to respond to God’s call in our lives.

So may it be.

Amen.