Pentecost 13                                 Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16                                         8/29/04

                                                      “Changeless Reality”

 

 

       “Campbell’s Soup At Hand”...”Just microwave, snap on the lid and go!”  I think this should be the  new icon for our society.  You know what an icon is – a piece of representative art (traditionally religious), meant to be the focus for prayer and meditation.  But, we don’t have time for that anymore.  In our fast paced, ever-changing lives, a can of soup you can sip while rushing to your next appointment, project, class or activity is far more representational of how we live our lives – too busy to even stop and eat, much less contemplate. And what are we running for?  Or perhaps, the better question would be, “What are we running from?  I have two complimentary theories.  The first is that we are running to try and keep up with all the constant change.  We hope if we just run fast enough, at some point we’ll get a handle on it. We’re like mice on one of those wheels in a cage.  The faster we run, the faster the wheel turns and the faster we have to run.  But, no matter how fast we run we never get there.   My second theory is that we are running from the reality that we will never get there.  Everything is changing at such a rate that we have no hope of ever catching up. 

 

     Uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) change is frightening.  And if we consider that most of the changes taking place around us are totally beyond our control, we could go mad with terror, so we run to maintain the delusion that we could be in control if we just run fast enough.

 

            Zip up your courage and take a peak at the reality of our lack of control:

            - Employment change – out sourcing

            - Your kid’s lives

            - National security

            - The church and it’s beliefs/practice

            - Even you favorite brand at the store

           

     So, we run, trying with all we have to avoid the reality of endless, uncontrollable change – the reality that there is no stable ground under our feet.  There is though one thing in life that doesn’t change: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”  This profound, life stabilizing truth can slip by us if we don’t stop in our rush to finish the reading.  This isn’t one of those way-out-there, intellectual sounding religious sayings that we can’t connect to our lives.  This isn’t something that will benefit us in the sweet by and by up in heaven.  Much, if not all, of the fear of change that we are running from and much of the terror at losing control of our lives is a fear of loss.  We fear losing things important to us: home, job, health, friends, reputation, security, power, etc.  In truth, even if we could hold onto and control these things for most of this life, we’d lost them at or near the time of death.  And so, the writer of Hebrews counsels his readers then and us today to hold lightly to the “stuff” of this life.  “Keep your lives free of the love of money and be content with what you have.”  Woops!  This is where you stop listening.  It’s where I would, if I hadn’t been writing this sermon.  “I don’t love money.  Why I can’t keep hold of it long enough to fall in love with it.  Every cent I earn goes to pay bills and pay for necessities.”            But, even this is addressed by the writer, “...for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’  So we can say with confidence, ‘the Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.  What can anyone do to me.’”  This is what that later verse that I’m using as my text is talking about.  The promise is not that Jesus will always be a 33 year old man with a beard, wearing a long white robe.  Nor does it mean that some high fallutin’ soteriological concept worked out bye a group of Biblical scholars won’t be challenged, even debunked at some time in the future.   No, what doesn’t change is Christ Himself.  This the Christ who it is promised will never leave us or forsake us.  Change is part of life and it and it never could be controlled.  Some change is pleasant.  Some change doesn’t seem pleasant in the midst of changing, but has a pleasant outcome.  Some change is anything but pleasant, but is survivable and can even strengthen us.  And  some change we live through just barely and there is nothing redeemable about the experience.  But, in all of that we have the changeless reality that Jesus is with us and will help us get through all the changes of our lives.  This is also the Christ who promises that He will always love us, no matter what.  Now, there may be a person here or there who claims they don’t need anybody’s love.  They may even believe it.  But, most of us admit that love does make our own personal world’s go round.  Unfortunately, we can’t control this either though.  I can no more make you continue loving me than I can make you love me in the first place.  I could try to make myself into the person I think you want, even sacrificing my integrity and authenticity, and live in fear that something I say or do will displease you, and thus, lose your love.  But, the reality is, I can’t control how you feel, and neither can you.  Feelings change and we can’t even control our own feelings much less anyone else’s.

 

      The one changeless reality we have when it come to feelings is that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”  That means Jesus’ feelings don’t and won’t change.  Jesus loved us before we were born, when His name was said in the splashing baptism water, when we first said it in prayer and even when we use it in a curse.  Jesus loves us no matter what throughout our lives, and will still be loving us when we say His name in wonder as we meet Him face to face on the other side of death.  No matter what happens in this life or the next Jesus’ love is a changeless reality.   That then gives us the ultimate changeless reality.  Because Jesus Christ is the same..., because He wanted to be with us and for us through out, because He wanted to give the ultimate in love, He gave Himself on the cross and then became victor over death in His resurrection. 

 

      Douglas John Hall, a popular theologian, states this so beautifully in his book, The Cross In Our Context.  He writes, “The theology of the cross... is nevertheless first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is _not_ that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but  that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intention and its potentiality, that its actualization, its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for. (page 24)”  And no matter how we may change, God’s love will never change.  He will always see us with that potential and as worth dying for.  By this changeless reality we have the assurance that no matter what other change we must endure, we have the ultimate reality of life with Christ into eternity.  That is an icon that can’t get used up and thrown away like a container of soup.  That is an icon that can sustain us through all change.  That is an icon whose changeless reality we can and must take time to face.  Amen.