St. Andrew’s Pictou, October 16^th 2005

 

Retrieving Balance

 

Exodus 33:12-23

Matthew 22:15-22

 

Sometimes we over do it, when we are working hard and trying our best to do all that we have to do and we slide into anger and resentment. What I have said is not a reprimand; it is a usual human reality. We can only go on for so long, doing the best that we can, and then we get over extended. We loose a sense of balance because we need to be recharged, realigned, or reconnected. We can’t continue along the same way that we have been doing. We need help.

 

It is exactly at this point of frustration that we find Moses in today’s reading. He has gone through the long process of getting the people out of Egypt, they have gotten the manna and the quail from heaven, water from a rock and he continues to lead the people through what appears to be a “God forsaken wilderness;” he is frustrated and weary.

 

But Moses doesn’t whine and complain, being a healthy man, he knows what he needs and he tells God what it is.

 

More or less Moses tells God, “You tell me to bring the people up, but you don’t tell me who will go with me. You have said ‘I know you by name and you have found favour in my sight’ so how are we mortals to know that is true? What’s the evidence that you know us and find favour with us? May I remind you that these are your people that I am leading. If you don’t show your favour with us, how will we know that we are distinct?”

 

Moses was just like you and I: he was losing his balance. He doesn’t like doing all of this on his own, he felt he should receive some support for this work from the boss; he wants the relationships between God himself and the people closer, more intimate, and strengthened.

 

Moses wanted the components of his life realigned, rebalanced in a way that would make them function better again. He wanted to retrieve the balance that he had before he got frustrated.

 

Don’t we often want that? Things get out of kilter and we want to retrieve our balance?

 

The amazing thing here was that God said, I am going to give you what you asked for because you have found favour in my sight and I know you by name!

 

But Moses was on a roll and he asked for even more; he wants to see the glory of God!

 

God agrees, but only gives Moses what he can take. To see the fully glory of God would kill him so Moses hides in the clef of a rock, God puts his hand over him when he passes by, so that Moses sees God’s glory, but not enough to kill him.

 

Moses does not see God’s face. God said, “…you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”

 

If there is one thing we can all take from the Word of Lord this morning is like Moses, when there is an opportunity in life to go for more, we should go for it!

 

For Moses, God was his fulcrum, his point of balance for life.

 

For Jesus, God was his fulcrum as well.

 

We read where the Pharisees and the Herodians went to entrap Jesus.

 

First they compliment him on his sincerity, how he teaches the ways of God in accordance with the truth, shows deference to no one, in showing no partiality. Then they hit him with their question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

 

Jesus asks for a coin, points to the emperor’s picture on the coin and then proceeded to knock them off their feet with his answer: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

 

CASE CLOSED: Jesus 1, Pharisees and Herodians, 0. They left in shame.

 

They had hoped to trick Jesus into a literal translation of the Jewish law, and put him at odds with the Roman occupiers, or if he answered in another way, he would alienate the Jews.

 

Their trick didn’t work because Jesus Christ was a very well balanced man: the Gospels tell us that he related well to men, women and children.

 

Personally I find it amusing that Jesus’ enemies have given us an unbiased view of him as a man: he was sincere, that he taught the way of God in accordance with the truth and didn’t show partiality to anyone; he didn’t show favourites. (Remember now: that is how his enemies described him!)

 

We all need balance in our lives, and we all have times and experiences that throw us off balance. When that happens we need to retrieve our balance.

 

Moses and Jesus both gave us the recipe for “balance retrieval.”

 

There are three components in this balancing act: ourselves, God, and other people.

 

Balance in our lives comes to us when those three entities are in synch with each other: God is the fulcrum where we balance ourselves with our lives.

 

You will notice that Moses was off balance when he was out of touch with God. The Pharisees and Herodians were out of balance when they were out of touch with the people and God and were forging ahead with their own personal, ill-conceived, agenda.

 

You will find the exact same thing will happen in your life. Anytime you find that your personal psychological, spiritual balance is out of whack, consider yourself, God and others, and see which one of those three needs re-attachment, or realignment.

 

I have been experiencing this exact same kind of loss of balance lately with trying to get a handle on this church, that is to say, where we are and where we need to go. I went to a board meeting and that helped. Then Murray Hill, Nancy Sharpe and myself had a meeting on Friday and then all the dominoes fell over and the picture fell into place and I then knew and could articulate where we are and where we need to go.

 

This church, as the vast majority of all mainline churches is in a decline. When I went to my church in Toronto in 1990 the average attendance had dropped to 43 and when I left to come down here two years ago, it was about 100 on Sundays. They also received two major bequests last year that resulted from that ministry.

 

It may not surprise you that nobody ever came to say, “You were the weakest church in the presbytery in 1990, ready to close and the situation has been completely reversed. How did you people do that?”

 

Being that virtually all of the churches in the presbytery were in decline, wouldn’t you think that they would have been interested, but they were not. I and the members of our church would have been happy to show and tell. When I spoke at presbytery and showed a graph of how the presbytery had declined from 12,000 to 6,000 in 30 years, and that we would die if we carried on with business as usual, they were silent. They did proceed to carry on with “business as usual” and when I left 5 years later, we were down to about 4300 members.

 

So the question remains for “the Kirk” as to how we do it. How do we reverse a decline?

 

The first thing is that we have to realize that we cannot just continue with business as usual; there is no such a thing as a holding pattern, there is only increase… and decrease which is the path towards death.

 

The central theology of the Christian church is “the incarnation:” (Christmas) God’s love came to planet earth as a man, as a baby really, as a human being.

 

When Jesus left us to return to the father, he told the church that now “we were it:” we were him; we are the body of Christ.

 

Our task as a church is to interpret that incarnation of God’s love… into people’s lives.

 

So there is just one task, but we will find, literally hundreds of ways of doing it.

 

But to change direction, from decline to increase, we have “to repent.” Now the word, “repent” means “to come to a new way of thinking.” (In other words, our thinking in the past has created a decline and our thinking in the future has to be different from the past to create an increase.)

 

For any church in decline, to change directions, to go from decline to become a thriving congregation, the people of that church need to repent, they and we need to come to a new way of thinking; “a Christ kind of thinking” that is diametrically opposed to the way the world thinks and functions, but is the essence of the kingdom of God.

 

I will be talking more about this in the future, but remember that those Pharisees and Herodians met Jesus head on and would not repent. They would not listen to Jesus face to face, and therefore walked away from him and faded into the dustbin of history.

 

We remember Mary and Martha. Lazarus, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because they were willing to change the way that they thought and embraced Jesus’ version of reality; a wonderful kind of reality beyond comprehension he called the Kingdom of God.

 

My friends, have no fear; the kingdom awaits!

AMEN                                                                         Rev. Alan Stewart