Exodus 16:1-12 "The Good Old Days"

         Be honest now!  Have you not sometimes wished for the good old days?  Have you not at some point yearned for a time in the past when you believed life was better than it is now?  A simpler time perhaps?  Or maybe it would be a happier time.  And where would you go to find those good old days?

         Perhaps you would go back to high school.  I know I personally would never do that, but those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer hold a certain appeal for me.  Ah, for the years of the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Drifters!

         Or perhaps instead of sitting in a church with less than 50 people on a Sunday morning, you would return to the days of yesteryear when every pew was filled because going to church was just what everyone did.  Would you return to the good old days when all the hymns were the ones you knew – and your parents knew – and your grandparents before them, and when the Sunday School was bursting at the seams with neatly dressed and always well-behaved children?

        Perhaps you would go back to the first days of your marriage when you felt so loved each and every day – or when your children were little and conformed to all the benchmarks Dr. Spock had laid out for growing boys and girls – or when your son had not yet brought his boyfriend home for dinner - or your daughter had not yet run away to California on the back of that guy’s motorcycle.

         Perhaps you remember when you never locked your doors at night, when people chatted with their neighbors on the front porch on warm springtime evenings, when Muslims were not around every corner, and African-Americans – from our culture’s perspective, that is - knew their place. 

         Perhaps you remember when air travel a delight and not a nightmare, and when youth sports were not played on Sunday, in fact, no stores were even open on Sunday.

         Ah, yes – the good old days:  The days of Burma Shave signs along the side of the road, Brill Cream (“a little dab will do ya”), rickety wooden roller coasters, the Mickey Mouse Club, and cheap gas. 

         Did you know there is a magazine entitled “Good Old Days”?  Its focus is – not surprisingly – nostalgia.  The magazine tagline is this:  “Remembering the old times through the stories of our readers.” The summary goes on to say that the magazine offers an opportunity to “step back in time with those charming stories about the good old days.”

         But were those good old days really that good?  Or do they just seem that way because, with hindsight, the past is so predictable?  We know how to navigate its waters.  We know where the trouble spots are. 

         Were those good old days really that good?  Or do they just seem that way because the present is so awfully complicated and the future so fearsome and outside of our control?

         The former Hebrew slaves that we just read about certainly felt that the past was worth hanging on to.  Only two months into their newly found freedom, they were thinking that maybe Egypt was not so bad a place to live after all. 

         You see, life had not been easy and predictable since they had followed Moses safely across the Red Sea and watched the demise of the less fortunate Egyptians: their chariots destroyed, splinters of wood tossed up recklessly by the waves, soldiers and horses alike screaming for mercy as the water closed in around them. 

         They were eerily alone now and had found no comfort in the vastness of the wilderness that stretched endlessly in all directions. This little band of early Israelites had walked many miles in uncharted territory.  The unleavened bread they had fled with was nearly gone.  They had already suffered one crisis at Marah where the water they had expected to find had turned bitter.  It was only because Moses threw a stick into the pool at God/Yahweh’s direction that it became fit to drink.

         Barely any food, no dependable source of hydration, hot desert sun, endless sweat, tired feet, blisters, sand everywhere, not a palm tree in sight:  No wonder Egypt looked so good.  What they would not give for the sight of the rich green of the Fertile Crescent and the Nile River – clear and cool – overflowing its banks!

         And it was at that moment, at the confluence of all the negativity about the present and the nostalgic visions of the past, when the Israelites went on strike, so to speak.  They sat down, refused to take another step, and complained bitterly to Moses and his sidekick Aaron.  “Why didn’t God let us die in comfort in Egypt where we had lamb stew and all the bread we could eat? You’ve brought us out into this wilderness to starve us to death, the whole company of Israel!”

         The grass is always greener on the other side – or so the saying goes.  The Israelites seem to have forgotten the backbreaking labor, the spontaneous floggings, and the brutality of Pharaoh.  They failed to remember the days when there was no bread, no lamb stew - no food at all.  They had repressed what happened when they failed to make their daily quota of bricks, when they were too sick to work, and when the slave master took out his personal frustrations on them.  And, come on, they never got to frolic on the Fertile Crescent or bathe in the cool waters of the Nile – ever.

         But now they felt so hungry, so thirsty, so dirty, and so alone.  That was the worst part – being in the wilderness, in the desert, and feeling so doggone alone: That - and knowing that they could not return to Egypt.  Returning to the way life used to be, to the good old days, was not an option if, for no other reason, than they were certain that the Red Sea would not part for them quite so readily a second time. 

        Of course, we know that this little band of ancient Israelites was not alone.  They had never been alone.  Yahweh/God was always just ahead of them, or just behind them, or sometimes right next to them.  God never forgot them.  Not even all their complaining and rebelling and threatening to turn around and rediscover their past once again, not even their clear desire to return to their chrysalis, to revert to their cocoon of safety and predictability could send their God away. 

         God/Yahweh always turned up – and often when the Israelites were at their worst. This time, in the passage we just read, God told them to quit their belly-aching and then provided that mystery food - those flaky little bits of bread-like substance that the Israelites called manna, which in Hebrew means, loosely translated, “What the heck is this?”  God also provided flocks of quail for them to snare and roast over an open fire as needed. 

         God is so good! Isn’t that what these verses are illustrating for us?  However, believing that (as good church-going folk like us are led to believe we should) raises a series of difficult questions. 

         If God is so good, then why do we try to reclaim the good old days?  Why are we so tempted to stay put and not move forward into the future?  Why do we fail to heed the words of Thomas Wolfe in his book, You Can’t Go Home Again:  “Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”  If God is so good, then why is the future – and sometimes even the present – so daunting? 

         There are at least three reasons I have come up with.  First, we tend to have a narrow and unrealistic view of the past.  As a Baptist blogger I read this week noted, “I can’t help but chuckle when I hear the Israelites talk about their wonderful past. They act like they grilled steaks every night, complete with Bojangles’ biscuits and sweet tea and a slice of chocolate pie for desert. They act like their life in Egypt was one of plenty, like it was such a great joy.

         (But what about these other instances we read about in the Biblical Book of Exodus?  After all,) the Israelites suffered through 400 years of slavery. For a time they grieved as they saw their babies thrown into the Nile River. They made bricks without straw. They suffered under their harsh taskmasters. Yet, when they think about it now, it was all so wonderful. I guess the grass is greener even on the other side of the Red Sea.”

         And so it is for us.  Our blogger goes on to say, “When we face hardship in the present, we tend to pine for the past. And in our pining, we tend to overemphasize the goodness of by-gone days and minimize the hardships.” 

         Think about it.  Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have led to unsightly skin cancer treatments.  Those well-behaved children in our Sunday Schools were also the ones who went under their desks during air raid drills and whose parents stockpiled canned goods in the basement, so frightened were they at the specter of nuclear war.  Our churches were filled but did not welcome anyone other than white heterosexuals – even if that meant excluding our very own son and his boyfriend. 

         Face it.  The good old days were not all good.  As our blogger notes, “life has always been a mix of hardship and blessing, of pain and pleasure.”  Times of challenge often distort our view of the past.

         Second, we tend to have an unrealistic perspective on the present.  The Israelites perceived themselves as being completely alone, subject only to the whims of the wilderness.  However, as our Baptist blogger suggests,  “the Israelites had God.

They had (God’s) presence with them in the pillar of cloud and fire and (God) had provided for them repeatedly…(And so) just as the past is never quite so good as we imagine it to be, the present is never quite so bad as we imagine it to be.”

         We too have God.  Perhaps then we should look for the signs of abundance that are all around us here and now – children growing up with open minds and hearts, people accepted for who they are, men and women coming to church because they actually have chosen to be here growing a community that is the Body of Christ. 

         Perhaps we need to trust that God will provide for our needs just as God provided for those of the ancient Israelites.  Perhaps we need to intentionally search out all the blessings that today can offer – all the ways that God has provided for us.

         Third, we tend to have little hope for the future.  As our Baptist blogger writes, “The people of Israel are in such despair that they wished they would have died in Egypt. They are saying that they would rather have stayed slaves and died after a life of slavery than to see the hand of God at work in their lives. The work of God was too painful. The way was too hard. They weren’t interested. Just a few weeks out of Egypt they are ready to pack it in and give up.”

         Sometimes it is hard to embrace the future.  It is so easy to look back at what we had rather than forward to the possibilities of what might be. 

         And yet, the God of Israel, our God, is not a God of the past.  Our God is the God of the future, the God of new possibilities, of new ways to relate to one another and to the world.  Our God seeks life and transformation over death and retrenchment.  And let’s not limit our God by thinking that God will provide for us now and in the future in the same way God has provided in the past!  Times change.  We change.  Our needs change. 

         The Israelites could not return to Egypt.  The butterfly cannot return to the chrysalis.  We cannot live in stagnation.  Like the Israelites, like the butterfly, we are called to new lives and new heights.  There are no good old days.  There is only the good new future.  We are called to let go of the past and look to that future, trusting in our God who is with us – caring for us, loving us – always.  

         And so – as we prepare to leave these sheltering walls for whatever lies ahead this week, may God bless us with minds and hearts open to new perspectives – able to see all that is provided to us each day in new and different ways. May God help us to let go of the past, so that the Spirit might lead us into a future where, though our faith may be tested, in the end, we will flourish.  And may God bless the butterfly within each one of us, emerging from its chrysalis and poised for flight. 

         

John 11:1-45 "Together (And Only Together)"

         Death has never been a great conversation starter – or sermon illustration either, for that matter.  I mean, just the other week, I told you about the caterpillar in the chrysalis facing death by digestion.  Some of you thought it was a disgusting fact to share from the pulpit.  However, in spite of our discomfort with the subject of death, we have this unending curiosity about it and how it all works. 

         Take the field of astrophysics, for example.  Those scientists write all sorts of PhD theses on how the universe will end, how it will die.  Will it turn back in on itself, or will it just keep on expanding until it can expand no longer and simply breaks apart, dissolving into nothingness?

         And then there are the English majors.  Will TS Eliot eventually be right? "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

         And what about the weekly news magazines?  When they are not talking about the latest tweet from Washington, they are publishing articles like one in ”Time” magazine that concluded that, trillions of years from now, the day will come when "the universe, once ablaze with the light of uncountable stars, [will] become an unimaginably vast, cold, dark, and profoundly lonely place." Nothing, another article said, will "save our descendants. . . from [the universe's] last, dying gasp."

         Most of us listen to all that science stuff and literary jargon while maintaining a suitably academic distance coupled with a vague sense of relief that, when it comes to the universe, no matter how it all ends, it will not be in our lifetime – so who cares what TS Eliot says anyway.  For the most part, we focus on more down to earth (no pun intended) concerns – like how to avoid our own death.

         And so, at one end of our socioeconomic spectrum, we find an anecdote in Kathleen Norris’ book entitled Dakota:  A Spiritual Geography.  The book is about living in the desolate, disintegrating, dying rural towns of South Dakota, and Norris relates a brief story about a visiting poet working with a third grade class in one such place. A child’s comment certainly provided one answer to this most perplexing question.

        "'When my third snail died,' the little girl writes, sitting halfway in, halfway out of her desk, one leg swinging in air, 'I said, I'm through with snails.'” She might just as well have said, “I’m through with life being sucked out of everything around me.  I’m through with death.” 

         And at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum is a story I heard on public radio a couple of months ago.  Apparently, a few young CEOs of some of our tech industry giants are closely following some intriguing studies. 

         These Gen X’ers and Millenials have so much money they scarcely know what to do with it all.  However, they are pretty sure that, even with profligate spending, their fortunes will last far longer than they are likely to live.  That being said, they are encouraging – and financing - research about not so much how to extend life to Biblical proportions, but how to extend life indefinitely and become immortal. 

         They might just as well have said, “I’m through with the thought of not being able to take it with me.  I’m through with death.”

         And yet, no matter how much we might wish differently, there is really only one endpoint here on earth – and that is the cemetery. That is certainly what Martha and Mary and all the mourners and wailers and hangers on in the Town of Bethany intuitively knew as Lazarus teetered on the brink of death.  And so, when faced with this stark reality, the sisters sent for Jesus, family friend and best all-around healer.  If anyone could save their darling, dying brother, Jesus could. 

         And so the Bethany messengers set out running to find Jesus and to tell him to come, come quickly.  “Lord, your dear friend is sick.  Lazarus is on his deathbed.  There is no time to lose.”

         However, Jesus, who had never been much of a procrastinator before, chose this time to dally.  The messengers had to return to Martha and Mary and tell them, “He is coming.  He is coming.  Surely he is on his way – but not yet.”

         But even then, it was too late.  By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus was dead – and had been dead and buried for four days – a significant detail, by the way.  You see, according to Presbyterian pastor Russell Smith, “Jewish documents from that time indicate that there was a common belief that after death, the soul hovered over the body for a period of time until decomposition set in. The climate of Israel encourages rapid decomposition, so within three days, a corpse will start to decompose. At that point, it was believed that the soul of the departed would recognize there was no hope of going back and would depart. So when John says it’s been four days, he’s making the point that Lazarus is totally dead.”

         The sisters, of course, are devastated.  Mary retreats to the living room followed by all the Judean mourners who had made their way into town.  Martha, who had always been the more impetuous and outspoken one, sets out to meet Jesus. 

         Before he even has a chance to enter the village, she rips into him, accusing him of not coming soon enough, thereby thrusting more than a little of the blame for Lazarus’ death onto his shoulders.  She wants to believe in all the resurrection and new life business he is talking about, but she is no dummy.  She knows enough Jewish theology to understand that nothing will happen until the end  - the real end – that day is surely far away and, chances are, will not occur in her lifetime.  Death has claimed him. She has lost her brother.

        Mary, in her turn, heads out to meet Jesus too with a bevy of mourners surrounding her.  As you would expect, there is great weeping and wailing and keening and gnashing of teeth over the death of one so young and promising as Lazarus. 

         By this time, the encounter with death has become a community event.  “He gave sight to a blind man.  Couldn’t he have saved Lazarus from death?  Woe is me!  Woe is Martha and Mary!”

         Faced with a sobbing Mary and all those keening comforters, Jesus’ eyes filled with tears.  It is a touching moment that, if nothing else, reminds us so profoundly of his humanity.  Tears ran unchecked down his cheeks and disappeared into his beard.  Still sniffling and wiping his eyes moments later, Jesus approached the tomb.  Nearly the entire community of Bethany followed him.

         Jesus calls first on the gawkers and mourners and comforters and hangers on.  He directs them.  “Take the stone away.”

         Martha, ever the practical one, (and with a wonderful little detail on the part of the Gospel writer, to boot) reminds Jesus that Lazarus had been dead and gone for four days now, and consequently there will be a bad smell.  As the King James Version of the Bible says it, “But Lord, he stinketh.”

         However, Jesus ignores her, seeming to know better, and shouts into the tomb.  His words echo off the walls of its farthest recesses. “Lazarus, (Lazarus, Lazarus, Lazarus) come out (come out, come out, come out)!” 

         There is a long moment of silence when the whole community holds its collective breath, pondering what will happen next.  Some fear that the smell will be too much to bear. Others hope that death is not the end.  Still others pray that life can somehow be infused into the lifeless.  All hope that the chrysalis will release a butterfly – in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

         “Lazarus, come out!” Jesus commands.  And, lo and behold, Lazarus does.  He stumbles into the light, tripping over the grave wrappings that bind him from his head to his hands to his feet.  His face is still covered with a bleached white cloth. 

         Lazarus sees the silhouette of Jesus before him and surely wonders just where he is.  It is like that marvelous line in the film, “Field of Dreams”:  “Is this heaven?  No – it’s Iowa.”  “Is this heaven?  No – it’s Bethany.”

         Jesus turns to the community standing around.  They are dumbfounded, and he simply says,  “Untie him, and let him go.”

         This story is so ripe for a sermon because a preacher can go off in so many directions.  Some pastors will focus on Jesus’ famous line that we often hear in memorial services:  “I am the resurrection and the life.”  Other pastors will zero in on the single verse:  “Jesus wept.”  Still others will use this tale for a conversation on death and dying.

         However, I would like to focus on the community that found itself in the midst of this tale – the nameless men and women who stood by and watched and hoped and trusted and comforted and supported first the sisters, Martha and Mary, and then Lazarus himself.

         We have the messengers who offered to run a race against time to reach Jesus’ with the news of Lazarus’ impending death – and who returned panting and out-of-breath to assure the sisters that the healer would come, only to find that their race had been in vain.

         As the word spread, there were the mourners who showed up not only from Bethany but also from other Judean towns and villages.  From far and near, they made their way to this home of despair to comfort the sisters. In between their assigned periods of wailing and keening, they made pots of chamomile tea and small sandwiches cut in the shape of triangles with the crusts sliced off.  They held hands and gave hugs and handed out hankies and made small talk in whispers.

         And how about the burley men who rolled the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?  They had left their sheep on the hillsides under the protection of young shepherd boys.  They had put down their shovels and hoes and closed up their shops early in order to be part of the social fabric that wove itself around Martha and Mary. 

         And don’t forget the really brave ones who stepped up when Jesus asked them to unwrap Lazarus and free him for whatever remained now of his life.  Not sure what they would find, they pulled the cloth off his face and were the first to see Lazarus’ eyes squint in the bright sunlight and then watch as his mouth formed the slightest of smiles, his first response to what had happened.  They walked round and round the once dead man now standing, bunching up the grave wrappings along the way.

         And finally there were the ones who did not seem to have any particular role.  However, simply their presence seemed to make a difference – strength, courage, and support in numbers, I suppose.  They were the ones who took the grave wrappings and neatly folded them.  They were the ones who misted the air around Lazarus with Fabreze.  After all, he did “stinketh.”

         Within the embrace of that community, Lazarus came out – and lived again.  Within the embrace of that community, Martha and Mary also came out – of their despair, their anguish, and their anger – and lived again. 

         One hopes that the community continued to embrace and nurture these three in all the years that followed.  After all, the community had made a gigantic difference and played an important role in this story – and I do wonder whether Martha, Mary, and Lazarus would have fared as well in isolation.  I believe they needed the community to survive and prosper.

         Kind of like us, you know.  We too are stronger as a church community than we are as individual church members.  We too need each other if we are to come out of our comfortable places and embrace the ministry and teachings of Jesus.  We too need each other if we are going to be the church in the world today. 

        We need the messengers who are going to spread the word about who we are and what we do here.  We need the comforters and mourners with their sandwiches and pots of tea to be there for us when the going gets tough and to mourn with us when our dreams die not with a bang but a whimper.  We need the heavy lifters who can help us roll away the stones of our hearts.  We need the ones who will unbind the world’s people and free them from their grave clothes. We need the ones who seem to have no particular task other than to be present, offering strength and courage and a helping hand every now and then - the Fabreze misters and the grave cloth folders.

         You and I, of course, are all of those people – sometimes one and sometimes another – constantly shifting roles as our energy and gifts demand.  Like the community in Bethany long ago, we each have a role to play in our church today as we seek to live the Gospel message, as we seek to make a difference in people’s lives, as we seek to call others out of death and into life again.

         In the end, lasting transformation is impossible in isolation.  Real change – real making a difference - is community-based, church-based, grounded in congregations that are not entombed in the past but rather are filled with people who understand that it takes the participation of all of us to make God’s dream for the world a reality. 

         Each role – from messenger to Fabreze mister - needs to be filled.  Together (and only together) will we come out of our comfortable places and follow Jesus.  Together (and only together) will we turn back the night, wake up, and greet the new day.  Together (and only together) will we roll away the stone and unwrap what will be.  Together (and only together) will we know what it is like to be that butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-17 "The Chrysalis has Cracked"

        Abraham is one of our best-known and most colorful Old Testament Biblical characters.  He is the root from which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all spring – the common source for the existence for the Big Three of world religions.  From orthodox Jews in their broad-brimmed black hats and beards to reformed Jews with their yarmulkes, from right wing fundamentalists to progressive Christians, from conservative and violent jihadists to moderate peace-keeping imams, they all originate from this Biblical icon named Abraham. 

         Abraham is the one who was all set to sacrifice his beloved and long awaited son Isaac at God’s bidding as a sign of his faith.  He is the one who fed dinner long after dark to three strangers, only to find that, in doing so, he had welcomed angels unaware.  He is the one with whom God chose to covenant, to have a special relationship with, on behalf of the humanity God had once created generations before. 

        However, prior to all those events transpiring, Abraham was the one called Abram.  He was married to a woman named Sarai.  He was an ancient senior citizen when we meet him in these verses we just read – one year shy of 100 with his wife not far behind. 

         In decades past – 25 years according to the Genesis tradition – God had told Abram to pack up his belongings, his wife, his sheep, goats, slaves, and servants.  God had instructed Abram to take them all and leave the Land of Ur, the place they called home. 

         If Abram was wondering why God had given such an unsettling and disruptive direction, it was because, along with the command, God promised Abram his own land and descendants:  Land because without it there was no place to graze one’s animals or pitch one’s tent to call home; descendants because without them – especially without sons – the family name would disappear in the blink of an eye. 

         But to date, lo those 2 ½ decades later, nothing had happened.  Abram and Sarai, his out-of-wedlock son Ishmael along with the child’s slave mother Hagar, their sheep and goats, and various servant, slaves, and hangers on were still wandering throughout the Middle East, even though they had faithfully obeyed God and left Ur on little more than a wing and a prayer.  In addition and perhaps even more vexing, Abram and Sarai still had no child of their own.

         By the time we meet up with the couple, land and descendants seemed less a sacred promise and more a flash of holy humor.  At his advanced age, Abram was tired of wandering year after year in the desert.  Moreover, with both Abram and Sarai deep into retirement, becoming parents would logically seem to be physically impossible – if not emotionally and psychologically taxing to boot. Being near centenarians, they were no longer spring chickens – even by Biblical standards!  Can you blame them if, after all these years of heartbreak, disappointment, and hard knocks, they found themselves scanning the horizon for the local retirement community and not the nearest birthing center?

         And yet, God appeared to Abram once more in these verses we read and reiterated the preposterous covenant promises.  “I promise that you will be the ancestor of many nations.  The whole land of Canaan will be yours.” Can’t have a nation without land, right? 

 “I will give you many descendants – more than all the grains of sand in the sea, more than all the stars in the sky.  And I will give you even more.  Sarai will bear a son.” Can’t have a family tree without kids, right?

         But Abram had heard all this before, right?  Maybe it is no wonder that this time he bowed so low in response that he rubbed his face in the dirt, quite likely to hide his giggles and guffaw.     Mennonite preacher Leo Hartshorn imagined Abram’s response and wrote in his blog, “You’ve got to be pulling our leg, God!  That’s a joke, right?  A multitude of nations from two old geezers without kids?  Stop!  You’re making me laugh!” 

         “Can a man have a son when he is a hundred years old?”  Abram asks, snorting back his laughter.  “Can my wife have a child at ninety? Yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard this before, God, like 25 years ago.  If you had not noticed, the wife and I are not getting any younger, and besides, these old legs are tired of walking.”

         As Reformed pastor Scott Hoezee writes, “You all know…the old college friend (let’s call him Floyd) who, every time you see him (which is only about once every other year or so), swears that he’s going to give you a call because, hey, isn’t it high time we had dinner and got caught up on each other’s lives!? ‘I’ll call you this week, and this time I really will!’

         But then he never does and so, although you know exactly what he’ll say eighteen months down the road when you bump into Floyd again, you won’t believe him. Maybe the first time or two you took the promised dinner seriously, but after a while you cannot help but chalk it up as ‘just talk.’”

         But God, of course, understands the situation differently.  “Land?  A child? Why not,” God replies to Abram, brimming with holy confidence.  “And, by the way (not missing a beat), you must name this son, Isaac” (which in Hebrew means “laugher”).

         And just to make it clear that God meant business and had no intention of backing away from those decades old promises, God told Abram that he and his wife would take on new names – a big deal back in those days – far more than a nickname.  He would be named Abraham, which means “the father of many” or “Big Daddy.”  And, in turn, Sarai would become Sarah, which means “Princess” or “One who gives birth to royalty.” 

        In the verses of this chapter of Genesis that we did not read, God goes on to demand circumcision as a physical sign of the covenant or special relationship that Abraham and his descendants will have with God.  And so, at the tender age of ninety, Abraham is circumcised along with his son Ishmael and all the male slaves, servants, and hangers on.

         With new names, new signs, and restored promises, God has called Abraham and Sarah, once and for all, out of their comfortable places.  The chrysalis is cracked.  They have been opened.  There is no possibility of turning back now. 

         And so it is for us.  You see, Abraham and Sarah are especially good role models for our faith journeys.  Though we are not circumcised as male Jews still are, we who are Christians reaffirm that special relationship with God when we are baptized and given a new name, “Child of God.”  It is a one-time physical sign of God’s promises. 

         And then there is the sacrament of communion, which we will share together today, where we regularly embrace God’s presence in our lives even as we remember the life-giving ministry of Jesus. This simple sharing of bread and cup calls forth a covenant that began with that Old Testament codger Abraham, way back when, who was nearing his 100^th birthday.

         We maintain that covenant with our God who constantly surprises.  It is a covenant with our God of endless possibilities.  It is a covenant with our God who, no matter who we are or where we are on our life’s journey, believes in us and in our ability to usher in God’s dream for a transformed world, a dream that we call the Kingdom or Realm of God. 

         God was not through with Abraham and Sarah even though they both were closing in on a century of birthdays.  Likewise, God is not through with any of us yet either. 

         I remember attending a college reunion once and listening to some of Joe’s and my baby boomer classmates analyze and discuss the world’s problems far into the night.  Many of them were slumped in comfortable couches, with a craft beer or glass of wine in hand.      These were women and men who had come of age during the Viet Nam protests, been followers and workers for Ralph Nader, and had ushered in the first Earth Day.  They had been raised on activism and yet now felt that activism was for another generation. They were done.  They were tired.  

         I am certainly hoping that they feel differently since November’s election, but I am not so sure.  They were pretty set in their ways and their belief that their days of involvement were over.  Change was the responsibility of someone else now.  They felt and, frankly, were acting old.

         How sad!  At least, that is what I think.  You see, I believe that we are always called to be engaged with the world and to take action – no matter our age.  I believe that, as Christians, we are expected to participate in transforming the world – and ourselves – no matter how tired we feel.  I believe that each one of us can – and must - continue to contribute something to the world – no matter how useless we might have been led to believe we are.  Each one of us needs to embrace our gifts (and we all do have gifts) and share them in the name of Christ for a better world. 

         Maybe we volunteer stacking food in the food pantry.  Maybe we blog.  Maybe we write to our Senators and Representatives on an ongoing basis. Maybe we begin a new mission project – weatherizing homes or assessing the needs of the elderly in our communities.  Maybe we referee youth soccer or umpire at Little League games.  Maybe we help people do their taxes or build a sustainable personal budget.  Maybe we do something that we have not even thought of yet.  And if we are not doing anything, God calls us to do something.

         God did not let Abraham use the excuse of old age – or a busy schedule – or a tendency to procrastination – or feeling too tired.  God did not let Abraham off the hook, even at the Biblically impressive age of 99, nor does God let us off-the-hook either.  The chrysalis has cracked.  We have been opened. There is no turning back now.