Sermon Archives

August 15, 2010
Pastor Jim Bangsund

"Playing with Fire"
Jeremiah 23:23-29

The story has already become legend. Last Monday, August 9, Steven Slater, a flight attendant on JetBlue airlines, got into an argument with a passenger who was trying to remove a bag from the overhead bin while the plane was still taxiing. Slater asked the passenger to sit down, but the passenger continued to remove the bag, which struck Slater in the head. Slater asked for an apology, and the passenger apparently refused and swore at him. Slater then marched to the rear of the plane, got on the public address system to say he'd had it, grabbed a couple of beers, pulled the escape chute, and slid off the plane into history. He's in trouble with the law, but not with the public, where he's suddenly become something of a cult hero. Go figure. Watch for him on the talk shows - assuming his lawyer keeps him out of the slammer.

What a story. But it started me thinking along the quirky lines of one of my what-if daydreams. What if God had done that? Here he had made this wonderful world and placed us in it to tend it and enjoy it and we turn our backs and decide to go our own way. We diss him, and say we'd rather do things our way. So what if God at that point had gotten so disgusted that he pulled the cord to the exit chute and disappeared through a wormhole in spacetime, leaving us to stew in our own juices? What a thought. He'd have had good reason to do so, of course. But, when all was said and done, God didn't bail. Rather, he became intensely involved with us, up and in close. And some of that intensity is found in today's first lesson.

Jeremiah was a young man, born into a priestly family, who lived in Jerusalem some 600 years before Jesus. Tough times. A series of foul kings had allowed the nation to sink into flagrant social injustice and idol worship. The wealthy wrote the rules so as to rip off the blue collar folks, and idols and images had even been brought into the temple area. As a result, God had raised up the powerful nation of Babylon against his own people. Jerusalem's days were numbered.

But then Josiah appeared, one of Israel's only two really good kings. Josiah came to the throne at the tender age of eight, was faithful to God, and at age 26 had them clean out the temple. When they did, the priests found a long-forgotten scroll - God's law. For 700 years, they had neglected such things as the Passover. Can you imagine?! What a discovery. Things soon changed as Josiah continued a series of reforms.

It hit Jeremiah like a bolt from the blue. Surely the nation needed to hear about this rediscovery of God's Word, and so Jeremiah became an "evangelist" of the covenant. He went from village to village calling people to obedience to this rediscovered book of the law.

Now if Jeremiah had been the sole voice in that hard generation, he might have had a better chance. But there were other competing voices, self-proclaimed "prophets," often employed by the king. They brought a much more politically correct message, soothing to the king's ears. And they did so boldly, without fear, as if God were some minor local deity whose wrath could easily be avoided. God responded through Jeremiah:

"Am I only a God nearby," declares the LORD, "and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares the LORD. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" declares the LORD.

These false prophets had had dreams, they said, in which God had spoken to them. God replied through Jeremiah with intensity:

"Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?" declares the LORD. "Is not my word like fire," declares the LORD, "and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

These false prophets were "playing with fire," as it were - as dangerous a game for adults as it is for children. And as I read Jeremiah, three questions for us come to mind. First, How big is your God?

How big is your God? God asks a strange question in Jeremiah. "Am I only a God nearby and not a God far away?" Sometimes we're so eager to talk about God being as close to us as our next breath - and he is, of course - but as we do, we begin to speak of God like he's just our good buddy. But God is far more than a buddy. We worship an awesome God, and as close as God is to us, he is also the one who created the grand expanse of stars and planets and lies behind and outside of them.

On Thursday evening, we had the opening school BBQ out in the courtyard - a wonderful night of parents and kids and hot dogs and chili. But the image that grabbed me the most was that of a number of strong young fathers holding small children in their arms. The day had been long, and some of these kids were tired. But there they were, nestled snugly and contentedly in the strong arms of their fathers. A father is far more than just a large child. Children look to their fathers for things not even a mother can provide - and certainly far more than other children can provide.

I remember when I was perhaps eight years old, living down south in San Bernardino. Ours was a rather rough and tumble neighborhood, filled with families that were themselves filled with little boys. And some not so little boys. Butch and Brian were a couple of slightly larger tough kids who at times terrorized the rest of us. One day, they had signed off the day by threatening to beat the snot out of me the next day, and I went home terrified. I told my father and asked him if he could do something about it, and I remember the sense of confidence I had when he headed out the door and down the street to talk to their father. Now my father is not a confrontational person, and I have no idea what he said when he got there; but he handled it well and there were no more problems. It was through experiences like that that my early images of God were being formed, and they were good images.

We need to know that God is far more than just man writ large. There are times - perhaps today is one of them - when you need nothing more than to know you are being carried this moment in the strong arms of God. Indeed, as God emphasizes through Jeremiah, he is not only the God who is as near to you as your next breath but also the God who created and exceeds the universe itself - and yet cares for you. How great is that? And, of course, it's not just that we need a God larger than we are; but that's the way he is. How big is your God?

The second question: How strong is his word? How strong is his word? God's word is like fire, Jeremiah tells us, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces. I don't imagine you've ever burned your fingers or smashed them picking up a Bible - yet we should come to scripture knowing that it has that kind of cleansing, enlightening, life-reshaping power. It's not so much what the Bible is as what it does - what it does to your life and mine when we have a true encounter with it.

Let me be honest with you, preaching is always a sobering thing for us pastors, sometimes a fearsome thing. We are tasked with bringing you God's Word - not our own word, but God's Word. We're dealing with fire; anything less serious than that and we'd be just playing with fire - as were the false prophets of Jeremiah's day.

Because of this, we Lutherans take a high view of Scripture. In fact, most of what you see around us - the altar and pulpit, the pews and musical instruments - is just extra, when it comes to Lutheran worship. For Lutherans to "do church" requires only two things: preaching of the Word and the Sacraments (that is, Baptism and the Lord's Supper). That's all: Word and Sacraments. With them you have church; without them you don't. And that's why we read three lessons from God's Word whenever we gather for worship. Because God uses these powerful words to change your life and mine. Without a serious encounter with those texts you'd just be listening to our personal opinions, and if that's all we're about then we all may as well just stay home.

Now, it's not always comfortable, hearing that Word. God's Word can have a bite. Jeremiah describes it as not only like fire, but also like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces, and I think of my own stony go-it-alone self-centeredness. I really do want to do things my way. And if you're honest about it, you'll admit you're pretty much the same. How strong is God's Word? Strong enough to break away that stony outer shell and bring about a changed and anchored life.

Which brings us to the third question: How sure is your anchor? Just like in Jeremiah's day, we live in a world with many competing truth claims, many things that would claim your loyalty and your life - and that of your children, as well. How sure is your anchor? What centers and holds you in this life? If God doesn't gain a grip on you through an encounter with his Word, you can be sure someone or something else will try to. It won't be the idols that filled the temple in Jeremiah's day, but it may be something like a cult, astrology, crystals or any one of a dozen new-agey claims to truth that daily swallow up otherwise clearheaded 21st century folks like you and me.

Some years ago, we had a close family member who, though raised in a strong Christian home, had wandered over the years. Wandered away from his moorings far enough that Scientology got ahold of him. By the time we heard about it, he had poured many thousands of dollars into the group and was starting to get sucked down the drain. Thanks be to God, after a lot of telephoned challenging and encouraging on our part, and no small amount of struggle against the organization on his, he did manage to get free.

How sure is your anchor in this life? Are you anchored in that which will really help you keep centered and secure when you are confronted by such things? Of course, you yourself can't really anchor your own life any more than I can mine. Not deep down, secure and immoveable. But you can put yourself in a place where that anchoring can begin to happen - a place where God's Word can start having its way with you - such as reading it daily, and being here where it's read and preached.

[Conclusion:] Well, that was Jeremiah's hope for his people, too - that God's Word would have its way with them. And later, when God turns from the false prophets to his people's future, we find a promise which reached beyond the time of Jeremiah to the beginnings of what God would finally do through his people for the sake of the world. In Jer 29 we read:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

And when Jeremiah, in dismay, saw his people trampling the covenant, that Word so recently recovered in the temple, God responded with the promise of a "new covenant" in which he said "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" - a new covenant that eventually found its fulfilment in the coming of Jesus, the Son of God.

You know, the issues of Jeremiah's age have never gone away. The indifference of the rich toward the poor, the chasing after enticing but wrong-headed new religions, the cynical dismissal of God as distant and impotent - if he exists at all - that's certainly not just stuff of an age gone by. That's so much a part of our own age that Jeremiah could walk right in and feel at home - or, more to the point, feel just as uncomfortable here as he did in his own time. Yet when all is said and done, when the fire has done its work, and the hard rock within you has been broken in pieces, God still knows the plans that he has for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Again, though in many ways our daily lives differs from Jeremiah's as much as an iPad differs from the scrolls on which his prophecies were written, there is still this: today, just as in Jeremiah's day, there are many voices around you - from videos to the classroom to the magazines you read - challenging the fiery word of God, competing for your attention and commitment, seeking to claim you body, mind and soul. Are you a kid in school? Grade school? Middle school? High school? What do you do when your friends push you to do things you know you shouldn't do and that you don't even want to do? God knows about what you go through, and has given you his Word - the Bible - to strengthen you as you read it. Are you in the workaday world of most of us adults? Where do you find the courage to stand for what you know is right when people at the top want corners cut or a document shaded in its disclosures? Again, God seeks to speak to you through his word - here in church where we read and preach it each Sunday and also at home when you take time to spend reading, reflecting and seeking God's direction.

It's a big book, the Bible is. Not everything in it applies right off the page to your life in Silicon Valley, but a lot of it does. The important stuff does. I know I've mentioned this in the past, but one of the best ways to develop a healthy encounter with God's Word is a simple 2-1-1 reading program each day: two pages of the Old Testament, one Psalm, and one page of the New Testament. I say I know I've mentioned this in the past because several of you who are doing this send me e-mails off and on asking about this passage or that as you work your way through.

It's 2-1-1, because the Old Testament is so much bigger than the New. Read like that faithfully, and you will get through this fiery hammer-like word in a year. Two pages of Old, one Psalm, one page of New. It will change your life as God applies both hammer and fire, breaking away the stony layers of resistance and even rebellion, and warming and enlightening you as you grow in faith and understanding. And then, as we start rolling things out in the Fall, I encourage you to join with other fellow travelers through God's word in some of the classes we offer. You know of them from the newsletter and bulletin, so I won't say more.

How big is your God? How strong is his Word? How sure is your anchor? The answers are found in this powerful Word which comes to us like fire, and like a hammer which break a rock in pieces. Amen.