Building Paths
Tony E Dillon Hansen
08 September 2019
A Sermon based upon Jeremiah 18:1-11, Luke 14:25-33, Psalm
139.
Let us begin with prayer. May the words of my mouth and
meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, Our Rock and Our
Redeemer!
Happy Rally Sunday!
As we getting ready for harvest and doing fall
preparations, it feels somewhat appropriate to consider the lesson today since
we are in one way bringing summer to a close while preparing for next season. I
would like for us consider what it means to be “building paths.”
Paths of Discipleship
Today I thought about spending some time talking about
the tough lesson in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus
is describing conflict and challenging traditions, especially those that do not
promote the good path, (e.g. compassion, social justice, and love.) Jesus outlines
for us this thing called discipleship.
Jesus roots this in the Deuteronomy law of “loving God with all your
heart and mind” and as well your neighbor - Because loving God should not be at the
expense of your neighbor (or vice-versa.)
In following, this law Jesus tells us that we must be
willing to carry the cross – telling us that discipleship is not just about fun
and games – but about real sacrifice, difficult decisions, and being
uncomfortable. Who carries the cross and why?
When are we called to carry it? How
does this “build paths” if to focus upon a painful end? Question is would you
have been the one to help Jesus carry on the way to Calvary?
We know that Jesus is not doom and gloom but wants to
give a full perspective about discipleship ( there are more than one way.)
If we look then at the lesson from Jeremiah, we see Jeremiah’s
image of the potter and that fits fully with Psalm 139 saying God knew us before
we were formed.
Pottery and Projects
The semi-continuous readings through Jeremiah offer us a
journey from a call, to question and to formation. I will admit that I am not a potter and my experience
with pottery includes walking through a market looking at pieces, the movie Ghost
(with Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Swayze) or even the parody of the potter
wheel scene in Naked Gun (with Leslie Nielsen).
My experience is limited but I have witnessed people making
pots on a platform, spinning with wet clay and forming into a vessel – or spoiled
if it fails. As a creative artist in other ways, or even working a garden,
landscape, or working on software. There
is a platform, a thought and image, design and implementation.
These can all be seen in this image of the potter. So where are we in this?
Again, to begin a project, one must first have an end
goal in mind (remember Luke 14:28). From that image, we set a foundation and
journey through implementation. (That is
very corporate sounding I am sure.). Yet we are building a path that we are
taking.
Project Steps:
First, Our project needs a foundation. The engineer considers
a foundation by its “integrity” and a good integrity is needed for building. The
Potter needs a solid platform to begin because a wabbly wheel is nearly impossible
to manage. Here, we have God as a solid foundation, and as we have talked about
in Hebrews, we have a history and faith stories in our scriptures to help that
foundation.
Let us continue building our path.
That foundation in history and faith reminds us that our
project needs faith that we will even finish. (how many of you got into project
that never completed?). Even with a goal in mind, we need faith that we can achieve
because we will find the path is not always perfect and will involve struggle.
Again, our lesson from Hebrews 11 a couple weeks ago,
reminded us that faith is complemented by discipline – not the command and
obey, but our attention and focus. If we lose focus, (to use the potter
metaphor), our project can literally get out of hand as the pot starts to fail or
alternatively we just quit trying. Discipline is finding strength (grit) and relationships
to help keep the faith because we are not alone.
Another way to say this is that discipline is having the
flexibility to change and to reach out for help when needed because we do not
need to do this alone. Don’t give up, be
flexible and learn from lessons. We know we will fail along the way because I
have learned that a project becomes a series of daily projects that rise and
fall.
Our project building path needs: 1) integrity, 2) faith, 3)
discipline and 4) flexibility. (if those words are too big: God, belief, commit
and grow.)
Switch Perspectives
If we switch perspective and be the sculpted, this may
make even more sense with God, our Potter.
We, being formed, have foundation and faith in our
Creator. Incidentally, do we honestly have faith in this sculptor? If we do, then
we, being formed, can have discipline and flexibility to let God be. Do we have the flexibility to be molded in
the image of God or are we so stiff and unchanging or careless and giving up? If
you let yourself be flexible, be formed, be seen and be created by our great
Creator, then you might truly realize how beautiful you can be.
...
Be Formed
With that, I am going to let our Creator do some molding,
and I hope you let yourselves be molded.
As this is considered to be “Rally Sunday,” let us rally
and be inspired by the Potter
to create and to build,
to learn and to grow,
to form and be formed,
to do justice and be justice,
to transform and be transformed;
to love and be love.
Yes Let God help you
To realize just how beautiful you are;
To love God with all your heart and mind and to love your
neighbors – no matter where they are on life’s journey;
To carry the cross for God and for your neighbor;
To dare greatly and be dared to be great;
To have faith and be faith;
To remember your history and become legends;
To take time to remember and be who you are;
Let the spirit work for you, be with you and be you!
Thanks Be to God.