Concordia Lutheran Church
August 22, 2010
His Presence Provides Stability
Hebrews 12:4-29
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace, the merciful love and peace of God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ be poured out on you, as the Holy Spirit guides your daily walk in God’s kingdom!!
The Parable of the Museum Journey
We start our look at the reading from Hebrews this morning, I would start with a pastor parker parable. This one compares the Kingdom of God and specifically our relationship with God, to a Day at the Museum, shared by a Father and a son.
The young man, age 8 or 9, is woken up by his father on a Saturday morning with the news – its time- we need to get going! The young man looks at his clock, groans, and rolls over. The dad’s voice echoes down the hall – come on – let’s go – the museum opens at 10.
Museum? Really dad? We are getting up at 830 on a Saturday so we can go to a museum? Can’t I just stay home? It’s going to be so boring, I hate museums, their boring and full of old people and weird paintings and… and… and..
Being as minimally obedient as possible, the boy starts to get dressed, and then gets distract by his set of toy soldiers, or perhaps grabs his ball and glove, and dreams of the soon coming day when the local field is clear of snow. Any idea of museum is completely gone from the daydreaming mind, until the steps are heard coming down the hall…
If you get moving, we’ll have a good time, I promise, and on the way home we’ll stop at the ice cream place…
Reluctantly, lethargically, the boy gets up, and gets in the car, moping the entire way. But the day will be a phenomenal day, for the boy overlooks something very simple. His dad knows him, and loves him.
Here ends the parable! Except of course, like all parables, it needs some explanation. The simple part is who is who. God is the Father, each of and every person is the son. The parable will demonstrate that being in the presence of God provides and incredible amount of stability, and indeed, the kind of awe found in museums of all types.
The Sinai Museum Assumption
Place of Awe and Inspiration
Don’t ask
Discipline is harsh and prevents damage
High level penalties
But the Assumption is wrong!
As we think about a museum, we think things like the words applied to Israel on Mount Zion, as told in our Hebrews reading. As I read them, it sounded like the warnings I would get if I were a child visiting the Getty. Look at the description in verse 18.
18 For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19 and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20 For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.”
The place is a place you cannot touch anything, if you do loud alarms will go off and the officers will come and get you and with voices louder than a trumpet they will make you wish you never touched anything, or heard of the place! Stoning might be preferable if I knocked over that fancy looking statue without arms, or if I spilled my strawberry shake over that funny blurry painting. I can still imagine the words, “Wait til your get home, young man!”
I think we sometimes view our lives as Christians in the same way. As if the commandments are don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t touch this, don’t eat that, as if the problem is that we will somehow destroy God’s creation. When we hear the word “discipline”, we come to think of it as the Drill Sergeant or mean Martial Art’s instructor who beats us into submission. In that mode of discipline, salvation is reduced from being God’s artwork, to a mass production line of the same item, or perhaps 12 different items that form a package.
I think this is a lot of how non-Christians perceive God, and those of us who claim to follow him. In that mode, God is someone to be in awe of, but that awe is based in seeing Him as the taskmaster, as the disciplinarian, as the wielder of the great paddle of life. But that is not who God has revealed himself to be, it is a conception of mankind, that wasn’t even true at Sinai. We have created another god, and worship him in fear of retribution. We become reactionary and defensive, like the child whose waiting to get scolded. Our view of who we really are in relationship with God is warped, because we aren’t looking to God as He revealed himself, but as though his goal was to produce perfect, holy, righteous clones. The god we create replaces the God of the Old Testament, who refers to Himself continually as I AM Who loves you.
The Zion Museum Reality
I said in my Intro, that by the end of the day, the boy would have had an incredible time at the museum, so much fun that he would be in awe. And that part of the parable is to be explained here.
Hebrews is clear – our museum Mountain is not like Sinai, its not like being the 8 year old boy taken to the incredible J Paul Getty Museum. Remember, the writer of Hebrews says we haven’t come to that mountain, but to Zion. Hear how that mountain is described,
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Being a believer is more like being the 8 year old, taken by your dad to the Children’s Science Museum, the place where you explore, and play and learn, all in the same process. A place that is full of experiments that don’t say “hands off” but hands on! There the father and son work together, attempting to make things happen. The role of discipline then changes as well, from stopping bad actions, to working to get things to work the best way possible. Correction is not about being scolded, but in getting the “experiment” to work.
Life can be like that museum too, when the kid tries the experiment on his own and gets frustrated when it doesn’t appear to work. But the father watching comes alongside the son, and guides him, and teaches him, and they together, they accomplish the task, and something magical happens, as they step back, laugh and give each other a high five.
That’s pictured in verse 5, 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.
It’s that word exhortation – its from the same word we get the Holy Spirit’s title, the “comforter”, the “Paraclete”, the one who comes alongside and helps you finish your task, or do something far beyond your ability. It’s God’s gentle, and sometimes not so gentle correction, and His loving assistance, like the father helping his son, that makes it work. As God works alongside us, lifting us up, helping us finish His work here on earth, there is even more awe than just observing the artwork of someone long since dead. That’s why even adults have fun at such museums, and there is joy expressed in scripture, as God’s people do the things He has planned for them to do!
Presence, Stability, Awe
That’s the difference, that’s what the New Covenant made abundantly clear – that our lives aren’t live alone, and simple observers of what has been done by the great people before us. It is not that we aren’t supposed to touch, that we aren’t supposed to relate, to live and to love. God wants us to be successful in those things, and the “museum”. That’s why Zion, the symbol of the place where God’s people are home with God, is called a festal gathering! A great celebration! A place where joy abounds! Where our work is made perfect, were we are accounted righteous, where our experiments work, guaranteed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
For because God is present, we have the ability to know we can get involved in life. We have the stability, and the encouragement, and the assistance! Even if we do the wrong thing, and it doesn’t work right, the Lord God is there, not to punish, but to train us, to correct and make right what did not work. I love how our passage presents it, 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
That is what this altar is about, this place where God comes alongside us, when it hasn’t worked all that well this week, and shows us that all will be made well. Were our liturgy, DS4 that we have begun to use over the last couple of weeks speak of this as a foretaste of the feast to come. Were God reminds you – you didn’t go it alone last week, I was there, I am here. And because He is here, because He stabilizes our lives, yes He makes us Holy!
I can imagine, the next time the dad offers to take the 8-9 year old to that same museum, as a young friend put it to me, the 8-9 year old would be “Sitting in the car, hopping all over the place!” May we so be in awe, as God comes alongside us, and creates masterpieces, not just of our work, but our entire lives.
For it there, that His peace overwhelms us, that we realize how incomparable His peace, His presence, His stability is, as It protects our hearts minds, dwelling in Christ Jesus. AMEN?
AMEN!
