Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.
Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long.
Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you.
You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.
Hear my prayer, Lord; listen to my cry for mercy.
When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me.
Among the gods there is none like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours.
All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name.
For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God.
Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever.
For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.
(Psalm 86:1-13)
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Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago as the week was drawing on, “Have you started your sermon for this Sunday yet?” To which I replied, “Life is a sermon, so in that way the sermon is always started. The real question is – have you finished your sermon for this Sunday yet?” I stand by that answer. Indeed, life is a sermon. If you're someone who preaches on a regular basis, then everything you see and everything you experience is fodder for preaching. Everything you come across has the potential to stir sermon thoughts in your head. No matter how simple or how profound, every moment is a sermon waiting to be preached. And quite often the simplest things are the ones that leap out at you and say: “hey – here's a sermon just waiting to happen.” Something like that happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting at the Welland Hospital. I parked my car on the east side of the main parking lot and got out and started walking to the main entrance. There are sidewalks that have been built for our convenience for us to walk on. So, I was walking along the sidewalk heading south, and then at the end of that sidewalk there'd be another one turning east leading to the driveway, leading to the hospital door. Nothing complicated about it. Until I got about halfway down that north-south sidewalk – and this is what I saw:
And the light bulb went on! Here was fodder for a sermon! Remember the rule – the simplest thing can be a sermon crying out to be preached!
So, why was this so important to me that I decided it was a sermon crying out and that I even decided to take a picture of it? It's a path. It's a path across the lawn on the west side of the Welland Hospital. So what? Well, I started to think about what this path represented. It was easy enough to get to the main entrance of the hospital without having to walk across the lawn. You just use the sidewalks. Depending on how fast you walk, maybe you'll save about 30 seconds to a minute by cutting across the lawn. To me, for whatever reason, that well worn path spoke to me at that moment. It represents a lot of things that can affect and afflict a Christian life: impatience, laziness, lack of good stewardship, lack of respect for God's creation. All of these things flooded my mind on that day as I gazed at the well worn path outside the Welland Hospital.
The path is a reminder that we don't always walk the way that's been prepared for us. The path demonstrates that the extra 30 seconds it's going to take to use the prepared sidewalk is too much for us to be bothered with. The path demonstrates the casual way in which we as humans disregard our responsibilities as stewards of God's creation. The path is a reminder of what we see all too frequently – that we don't care about how we mar and distort that which God has created. If it's to our advantage we'll just take what we want (in this case a shortcut that saves us a few seconds) and not care about the consequences we leave behind. The path itself, I suppose, isn't all that important. But it's the image that got hold of me that day, and reminded me of an important truth: God has a path for us to walk; God has laid that path out. It's the way of Jesus, the way of faith and faithfulness. Choosing to walk any other path (either deliberately or thoughtlessly or for whatever reason) is a sign that something's out of kilter in our spiritual lives. This particular image struck two chords with me that I want to share briefly this morning.
The first is the biblical principle that we're stewards of the earth. The earth doesn't belong to us and it's not there for us to do with it whatever we please. Psalm 24 tells us that “The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it ...” In the creation story of Genesis, it's written that “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” I think the principle extends to all of what God created. We're “to work it and take care of it.” Instead, we too often choose to abuse what God has given us; to exploit it for gain rather than to care for it for God. And when we commit ourselves to acting in that way there are inevitable consequences. On a micro scale, like in a green space outside the hospital, our unwillingness to use the way that's been prepared for us and to instead trod across the green space leaves an ugly scar in the middle of the green space; a constant reminder that people have been here – and that people have been either too lazy or too impatient or just too thoughtless to use the way laid out for us. On a macro scale we see it in many ways: pollution, climate change, the extinction of species, water shortages in many parts of the world, famine, drought. We see it clearly. But just as people continue to walk the path outside the hospital for no particularly good reason, so do we keep doing the same things that are rapidly leading us to environmental disaster. Why? Because we haven't taken our responsibilities as stewards seriously, and we haven't followed God's way, and we haven't cared enough to really think about the consequences. Since it's for our convenience, we're quite happy to let young Gwendolyn (who we just baptized) and others like her deal with the consequences of our actions. It's sad, but it's true. Even sadder but still true is that this attitude is so ingrained in some people's lifestyles that I know of serious Christians who either deny the obvious and clear scientific evidence of the calamity that awaits if we don't do something or who actually believe that it's true but that we shouldn't do anything to stop climate change and other environmental problems because it's God's way of bringing about the apocalypse. Seriously. I've heard that. And it happens because – stubbornly – we don't want to follow the way of the Lord.
The second thing this image reminded me of was the havoc we can wreak in our own lives and in the lives of those around us when – again – we choose not to follow the way the Lord has laid out for us. If this path represents physical laziness and impatience, then it's important to remember that spiritual laziness and spiritual impatience are equally serious issues that have the potential to bring about equally devastating repercussions. You know, God's way is really not that hard. Love God and love others. Care for those who are in need. In fact if you want to really simplify it, from an ethical point of view all of Christianity could probably be summed up in three words: “don't hurt anyone.” But we do it all the time – out of laziness, out of impatience, out of indifference. How many of us have been hurt by poorly chosen words (or by deliberately hurtful words) or by the careless and thoughtless actions of those around us? There's an easy answer – all of us. At one time or another all of us have been. And, the sad thing is, at one time or another all of us have been in the position of being the ones doing the hurting in one way or another. Because we don't want to follow the way of the Lord. It's really not that hard – but maybe it does require a little more effort than we're willing to put out, or a little more thought than we're willing to put into it. Maybe it means offering a little more forgiveness than we're willing to offer; extending a little more grace than we're willing to let go of. And the result is broken relationships; barriers erected in our own families, barriers erected within the family of God. All because we don't want to follow the way of the Lord.
In Psalm 86, the author (and the psalm is commonly attributed to David) understood all that God had done for him. There's a whole litany of what God has done for him, and how God has blessed him, celebrating God's continuing and never-ending presence, faith, support, mercy, forgiveness and goodness. And yet, for all that the author understood what God had done (and how God acts toward us is surely a sign of how God expects us to act) the author still has to say “Teach me your way, Lord ...” And with that plea, the author represents pretty much all of us, because all too often we just don't get it, or we don't want to get it. We prefer our way to God's way – and the consequences can be devastating. My hope is that we're not just going to ask God to teach us God's way – my hope is that we're actually going to be willing to learn it and to follow it!
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