Sermon for 8th Sunday After Epiphany

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Sermon for 8th Sunday After Epiphany

(also Sundays after Pentecost and before May 29)

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"You Are Not Forgotten"

Isaiah 49:8-16

"Free as a Bird"

Matthew 6:19-21, 24-34

"You Are Not Forgotten"

Isaiah 49:8-16

Have you ever felt forgotten? Have you ever been left behind? It's an awful feeling. To be totally abandoned. You feel like you don't count for anything. Someone has failed to consider you worth remembering and you feel like you count for nothing.

Israel felt forgotten. They had been carried off into captivity. Because they had put their faith in alliances and military power and other gods, God Almighty allowed them to be conquered and carried off to a foreign land. They felt abandoned by God. They felt utterly alone and hopeless.

The Psalmist put their feelings into words. "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the willows we hung our lyres, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?"(Ps. 137:1-4) How could they be God's people when they felt that God HIMself had forgotten them?

Have you ever felt like God had forgotten you? Sometimes it happens. People sometimes enter into periods of spiritual darkness in their lives. Like the Israelites in exile they feel utterly abandoned by God. They feel alone and forgotten by their own Heavenly Father.

But God spoke to these people who felt forgotten. Through the prophet Isaiah, the same one who had foretold their defeat and exile, God spoke to them. God said, "In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you." Another word for "favor" is grace. At an appointed time of grace, God will answer Israel. When the time is right.

You know sometimes God does not work on the same timetable as we humans. God knows when the time is right. God has a plan and most of the time we don't know the details. So we have to trust God.

When we are in the dark spiritually and feel forgotten we have to know that God has a plan for us. At the right time on a day of salvation God will answer. We are not forgotten.

Isaiah goes on "I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, … saying to the prisoners, 'Come out,' to those who are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.'" On one level God is talking to the Israelites in captivity and saying "I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people." In other words God has not forgotten them but God is the one who has been preserving them. Sometimes God lets our world fall apart around us but he holds us up through it. If the Children of Israel could still mourn and struggle to sing the "songs of Zion" in captivity, then they were not completely lost. If they were lost they would have just given up on God and worshipped the gods of the people who captured them. But God was sustaining then through the crisis.

At the same time God was giving them as a "covenant to the people." A covenant is a promise. Their very existence was a sign and promise that God would not abandon his people. Who was it a promise to? Well, first to Israel; all the believers in God that lived back then scatter throughout the world, but maybe also to the nations or Gentiles. God had not forgotten them either.

That brings us to another level on which we can understand this prophesy. Who has God given as a promise, a covenant, a testament to the people of the world? As a Christian I have to say "Jesus." In a moment of grace at the right time God gave his only begotten Son to be a New Testament to the world. A living, dying, and living again sign of God's promise that we are not forgotten. And through Jesus God has said to all who are prisoners of sin "'Come out,' to those who are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.'"

Isaiah describes how God would provide for them and bring them home again. Then he says, "Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones." God did show compassion. God did bring the people out of Exile. A new king arose who allowed the Israelites to return to their homes. They returned and rebuilt the temple and the walls of the city.

When we read in the New Testament about the temple and Jerusalem we are reading about a place and structures that were begun by the people who returned to Israel in fulfillment of this promise. And when we read about the people of Israel in Jesus' day we are reading about their descendants. God did sustain them and care for them and bring them back to the Promised Land and enable them to rebuilding the culture and lives.

To us all that is history. But to those people it was just a dream. It was a promise made by God through his prophet. Yet Isaiah tells them to "Sing for Joy" because God has comforted them.

There is a lesson in this. Sometimes things seem so dark. Light seems only a dream. But God promises to bring us through the dark and into the light. God promises us that we are not forgotten. In those times we have to act on faith and praise God for not forgetting us even though we feel forgotten. Not just think positive but act on the assurance of an unseen truth that God will deliver us at the right time.

Sure God had promised the exiles that he would deliver then and make them a sign to the nations. Isaiah had even told them that they could start celebrating that deliverance before the fact. But they still felt forgotten: "Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.'" God replied to them, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." It seems inconceivable that a mother can forget her child but I have seen it happen. Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia can make a mother forget even her children. A mother might conceivably forget her children, but God cannot forget us.

I accompanied someone in an ambulance once and the EMTs were writing the patient's vitals on their palms and wrists. Later I asked one of them about that. He said, "In the heat of the moment I could forget something from the time I get the information from the patient to the time I have the chart to write it on." He also said that if he wrote it on a piece of paper he could lose the paper, but he would never misplace his arm. God says, "I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands."

Have you ever felt forgotten by God? Know that you are not forgotten. Oh sure the preacher high and mighty up in the pulpit with his nice white robe says I am not forgotten, but that doesn't change the fact that I feel forgotten. How can you know God has not forgotten me?

God gave his only begotten Son as a sign that he has not forgotten any of us. Jesus is a covenant to the people. God could no more forget you than a mother for get her child. In fact Jesus went as far as to allow God's love for you to be inscribed on his hands. And those nail prints are there to this day. No matter how you feel know that you are not forgotten - that truth is written on our Lord's hands!!

"Free as a Bird"

Matthew 6:19-21, 24-34

Jesus said "Consider the birds of the air, they don't worry about food so don't you worry none." Well that is just fine if you're a sparrow. They don't even know how to sow or reap so why should they worry about it. They don't have car payments and house payments. They don't have college loans to pay off. They don't have to pay for medical insurance and such.

Then Jesus says, "Consider the flowers of the field, they don't work or sew." Well, that's fine if you are a dandelion. They don't have to worry about their children. They just send them off on the next breeze.

The birds and the flowers may not have anything to worry about, but as for me I have plenty. I have bikes and braces and broken arms and college expenses to plan for. I have payments and insurance and taxes and such. I have a family and responsibilities galore. I can't be carefree like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field!

Of course Jesus is not saying that we should be carefree. He is not saying we are or should be like the birds or the lilies. That's impossible. We have brains and God expects us to use them. God gave us the ability to sow and reap and gather and plan for the future. God doesn't expect us to just turn those abilities off and return to nature, or pretend we have no responsibilities.

It would be irresponsible to act like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. It would be unfaithful for us not to plan for the future and work toward it. We have to toil and work and plan because we have been called to do that. God wants us to use our God given abilities responsibly.

So what does Jesus mean when he said "consider" the lilies of the field and the birds of the air? The point in considering the birds and the flowers is that God cares for them. They are unable to think and plan ahead. So God in his infinite wisdom cares for them. The birds can't grow their own seeds so God provides seeds for them to eat. The flowers are incapable of producing clothing so God clothes them marvelously.

And if God cares for them how much more will God care for us. This is one of the cornerstones of Christian Stewardship. I know you usually think of "Stewardship" as giving. But "Provision" is a part of Stewardship too. If God provides for birds which are a dime a dozen and wild flowers that wilt and die with the first frost, then our Heavenly Father will certainly care for us who are created in his image.

That doesn't mean we don't think and plan ahead. We still have to act responsibly. But we don't have to worry. Not because we are oblivious like the birds or the flowers, but because we know that God will provide. We plan and work but we don't worry because we trust in God's provision.

That's a liberating realization - I can think of the future but I don't have to worry about it! It may be liberating, but it is not easy to come by. I was sitting with a group of pastors one day. We were discussing church finances. One of the pastors expressed concern that offerings had gone down at his church. He was concerned because his salary came out of those offerings.

Then one of the other pastor's asked, "Is that offering really the source of your salary?" We all agreed on a theological level it wasn't. God is the source of provision for all our needs. Sure on paper the money that was used to pay the preacher might have come out of the funds placed in the offering plate, but ultimately God is the one who provides what we need. That's easy to say, but a little harder to live by. All us preachers could agree that this was the truth, but it is still hard not to worry.

God, who cared for the birds and the flowers, will provide for our needs. It may appear on paper that it's the company you work for or whoever it is that sends you a check every week or month that provides for your needs. But ultimately that employer or those investments are just the vehicle God uses to provide for your needs. God is the one who provides. We can all agree with that in our heads, but it is a little harder to affirm it in our hearts - even for preachers sometimes.

Which brings us back to something else Jesus said. He said "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth ... but store up treasures in heaven." If God, and not the bank account or job, is the true source of our provision, then shouldn't that be the place we invest ourselves. I'm not just talking money here. Shouldn't our hearts and lives be invested in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus points out that what is invested in this world will pass away. In this world moths and rust and the whims of the market can take our investments away. But what we invest in the Kingdom endures for eternity.

When you give to the church you are investing in the Kingdom of Heaven. Don't think of what you pledge as an amount of money you are giving away. Think of it as an investment in the furthering of God's kingdom. It will go into the programs and ministries of the church or into the expanding of the facilities that host those programs and ministries. So let us all, without worry, invest in the Kingdom of Heaven!

Like Jesus said "You can't have two masters - You can't serve God and wealth." If you serve wealth you will always be worried about what you will eat and what you will drink and what you will wear. But if you invest your life in God, he will provide for you just as he provides for the birds and the flowers. It's your choice. Will you invest in God or wealth.

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