Sermon 9 - Opportunities
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
2 Corinthians 9:12
This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.
Psalm 50:13
Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
God doesn't need us. God doesn't need anything from us. God didn't need the sacrifices that the Israelites brought to the temple or the tabernacle. God doesn't actually need our belief or our praise. God does not need our help. God does not need for us to follow his law. God does not require anything that we say that we do for Him. God doesn't need us.
There is nothing that we do that God cannot provide for himself. God can do everything himself. In fact probably better than he can do it with us. Any of you who have children will understand this. When you are bringing up your children one of the things that you are trying to do is get them ready to perform certain tasks that are normal and essential for normal life. Like cleaning up your room, picking up your clothes, learning how to cook, learning how to do the laundry, learning how to run the vacuum cleaner. You know that when children try to help it would often be much easier just to do it yourself.
It is interesting to talk to your children, or grandchildren, and see what they remember from their childhood. It is often much different than you remember. I remember taking our grandchildren to see the aquarium. They remember coming to Grama and Grandpa's house and taking the garbage out to the garbage bin. They also remember helping out on shopping trips.
I definitely remember them helping out on shopping trips. We would make a shopping list; then we would go to the store. The grandchildren would ask what the first thing was on the shopping list and I'd tell them. We would have to go and get that first item, regardless of where it was in the store. If it was the furthest item in the store we still had to go and get it first. Then we would look at the second item on the shopping list and we go and get that.
Shopping trips, which might have taken a total of seven minutes if we were by ourselves, would take about one hour and thirty-four minutes with the grandchildren. We walked back and forth across the store in a very inefficient path in order to get all the things on the list in the order that they were on the list.
I really enjoyed going shopping with my grandchildren.
We gave them an opportunity to help. God gives us an opportunity to help.
For the past quarter of a century, I have helped those who work in the field of information security prepare themselves for certification as security professionals. They have an extremely difficult examination in order to achieve certification. It used to be written down on paper and consisted of 250 questions. Nowadays the exam is computer-based and if they are really good they can finish the examination in as few as one hundred questions. Because it is computer-based, the examination is modified as the examination progresses. For example, at a certain point in the exam if you fail a question in a certain subject area, the candidates for the exam will find that they are presented with additional questions that relate to that same subject area. A lot of the candidates for the exam kind of freak out at this point. They think that the computer is out to get them. It has found their weak point and is hammering away at it.
In the preparation seminars I try to dispel this idea in advance. I tell the candidates that if this happens, the computer is not attacking them repeatedly in the same subject area. The computer is actually giving them multiple chances, multiple opportunities, to prove that they do know something about this subject area.
Some years ago I read a short story that turned on the same theme. For a mystery story it had quite a profound theological point to make. One of the characters in the story noted that when we were faced with difficulties it wasn't God jabbing at us with test after test after test. It was, in fact, God giving us chance after chance after chance to do the right thing.
God gives us chances. God gives us opportunities. To help.
God does not need our help. God could do everything he needs to do, but God gives us opportunities.
And so sometimes when we look at a disaster or when we look at a difficulty that someone is facing, we ask ourselves, why do bad things happen to good people? Maybe that isn't the right question. Maybe the right question is, is this an opportunity?
When there is a disaster God does not need our help. God could provide safety and security and provision for everyone who has been harmed in that disaster. But maybe it's an opportunity for us to help out.
When there is a person homeless and hungry on the street, God does not need our help. God could provide that person with shelter and food. But maybe this is an opportunity for us to go to those places where the homeless congregate, or to that one person alone on the street and see what it is that they need. Maybe it's an opportunity.
When someone is facing a personal tragedy or trauma, God does not need our help. God can comfort the afflicted and probably better than we ever could. We could go and simply sit with them. We could go and ask how they are doing and really *listen* to the answer. Maybe it's an opportunity.
When somebody is lonely and isolated, and scurries into our church without greeting anyone, and scurries out again at the end of the service without talking to anyone, God does not need our help. God can comfort that person. God can bring that person to salvation if that is what is necessary. God can help out with that person's financial difficulties, or tragedy, or even loneliness. God does not need our help. But maybe it's an opportunity.
At the men's breakfast one morning, we were discussing the opportunity, for the churches, to become important to society once again. The pandemic has left a great many people wanting some kind of social engagement. The churches could take this opportunity to provide for different forms of social engagement, and different types of social services, and could possibly become, once again, the social center of the community. The need is there, and the opportunities are many, if we can only be creative enough, and marshall our existing congregants, to provide a safe social setting, a listening ear, a caring heart, for those who are isolated and in need.
Can we?
The men around the table this morning all agreed that it was a great idea. But when asked to contribute specifics in terms of what we could do, too often they diverted to stories of miraculous interventions, with no human involvement, wishes that the church would again become important, or complaints that the churches would not band together and agree to do this. It was extremely difficult to stick to the topic of what we could do, and not a series of complaints of what we couldn't do.
The story goes that when William Carey came up with the idea of foreign missions, he went to the head of (uncomfortably for me) the Baptist Church, and that he was, famously, or infamously, told, "Sit down young man, when God wants to evangelize the heathen he will do it without any help from you or me." And that statement is, in fact, correct! God doesn't need us. But William Carey did not listen, and went on to found the modern missions movement, if that statement does not sound presumptive, seeing as how the Catholics had been continually doing foreign missions for many hundreds of years. Are we faced with making the same mistake? Are we complaining, and cavelling, and not doing what could be done about addressing the needs that we do see around us, and will we be seen as short-sighted in a few years?
Do you want to do God's work? Do you want to grow God's kingdom? Do you want the church to be important in the modern world?
If so, you have to do something. You cannot simply sit and bemoan the fact that the church is no longer important in the modern world.
You have to start things. You have to propose, and start, and work at implementing, things, many things, knowing that most of them are probably going to fail. But you have to try anyways, or nothing will ever get started.
And, right now, the world is eating our lunch. The world is doing better. I am starting different things, in different places. The hospice society is willing to take a chance with me on two separate projects. I have proposed three other projects to the literacy society, and gotten a positive reaction. I am helping with emergency services, and they are allowing me to assist in a number of areas. All of these worldly societies, volunteer-based and charitable though they may be, are doing better than the church. It is quite possible that soon they will eat me up too, and that I will be working, more or less, full-time for them, and will not have time to assist the church in any projects.
They don't have to be my projects. One that came up at breakfast this morning was the idea of a men's breakfast that invites the homeless. It's a good idea. It fills a need. It could be used as a conduit to the churches. It has a number of benefits, both to the world, and to the church. And, undoubtedly, to God's kingdom. It just has to have some agreement behind it to do it, and a rather small amount of funding. It's doable, it's a good idea, and I don't know why it's not being done. But it isn't. There are objections. The churches won't agree to come together and help out with it. Why not?
It's an opportunity. Will we take it?
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