SERMON 504

PENTECOST 3 – JUNE 17, 18, 2006

1 SAMUEL 15:34-16:13, PSALM 20, 2 CORINTHIANS 5:6-17, MARK 4:26-34

WALKING BY FAITH AND NOT BY SIGHT

Beloved in the Lord, grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and from the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.

As we consider our lessons for this 3^rd Sunday in Pentecost we shall do so under the theme, WALKING BY FAITH AND NOT BY SIGHT. Paul tells us in our lesson from Corinthians that as long as we live, or as he says it, as long as we are at home in the body, away from the Lord, we have to walk by faith and not by sight. The only way we can live by sight is when we leave this body and are no longer away from the Lord.

We will begin this meditation with a story from the January issue of bits and pieces. “Coach Jackson, May I have a word with you?” asked Billy. “What’s on your mind?” answered the coach.

“I noticed from the roster that I’m swimming the backstroke in the relay tomorrow when we compete against Central.” “Yes.” “But I do much better when I swim freestyle,” said Billy, “I know that.”

“Then why do your keep signing me up for races I don’t have enough experience in? I’m right for the freestyle-why won’t you let me keep doing what I’m good at?”

“Let me show you something,” said Coach Jackson as he retrieved an old football trophy from a shelf in his office. “I got this when I was about your age. The funny thing is I never wanted to play football. I didn’t think I’d be any good at it. I was more of what they called a loner back then. I preferred more solitary activities like swimming and running.”

“So how did you wind up playing football?” asked Billy.

“Basically my dad convinced me that I would be a better person if I occasionally stepped outside of my comfort zone and tried new things. And he was right,” said Coach Jackson with a shrug of his shoulders.

“So does this mean I have to swim the backstroke even though I’d rather not,” asked Billy?

“What it means,” explained Coach Jackson, “is that if you ever want to be better than you are now, you’ll have to go outside of your comfort zone to achieve your true potential.”

WALKING BY FAITH AND NOT BY SIGHT! We have been called by our Lord Jesus to walk by faith and not by sight, to walk outside of our comfort zone, to do what we do not want to do because we are so directed by the Lord, and go where we do not wish to go.

Samuel discovered that walking by faith and not by sight was to walk outside his comfort zone. You remember that Samuel was taken by his mother Hanna to live with Eli the Priest and serve God in his very early years. She had promised God, that if he gave her a son, she would give him back for service.

Samuel had to step out of his comfort zone right away. You remember that God called to Samuel, still a small lad, in the middle of the night. After three calls and three times reporting for duty to Eli, Eli realized and told Samuel that it was God and not Eli who was calling to him in the middle of the night. Fearful thought it must have been Samuel replied to God and told him, “Speak, Lord for your servant is listening.” He was way out of his comfort zone.

Then, when Eli later asked Samuel what God had said, Samuel in fearful trembling was forced to tell Eli of the judgment that awaited Eli’s family.

Samuel discovered that when you are a prophet of the living God you are always being asked to step out of your comfort zone, and walk by faith and not by sight.

In the lesson for today from Samuel we find Samuel in the same predicament. He was grieving because Saul had been so unfaithful in his calling as king. God told him to stop grieving and pouting and go and anoint another king, the one God had chosen, walking by faith and not by sight.

Can you imagine some one being told to go and anoint another king when Saddam Hussein was king over Iraq? That was a sure way to get your head cut off. So it was for Samuel. But Samuel stepped out of his comfort zone again and did exactly what God told him to do. And lo and behold here he was anointing David, King over Israel, after trying unsuccessfully to anoint all the others from among Jesse’s sons first. And guess what happened next? The Spirit of the Lord fell mightily upon David and led David forward from that day onward.

Samuel was never able to accurately tell what the Lord was about to do next. He learned time and time again that following the Lord was indeed a walk by faith and never by sight. God’s surprises are never ending.

Paul certainly learned that he had to walk by faith and not by sight. He tells us so in our lesson for the day. Indeed, he tells us, that we are not even to regard one another from a human point of view any longer. In the kingdom of God into which we have been grafted by faith, ushered in through the waters of Baptism, we have become a part of the new creation. The old has passed away and everything has become new. God is at work in us and through us and for us in his majesty and might and no one ever really knows what God has in store for us, either in this world or in the next. We walk from one surprise to another, urged on by the love of Christ which knows no end and no boundaries.

On one missionary journey Paul said, “I intend to go this way.” God came to Paul in a dream and said, “Paul, you are going by another way into another country.” God even arranged to have a man appear to Paul in a dream telling him to come over to Macedonia and help them.

In our Gospel lesson for the day we listened to another one of the parables of Jesus about the kingdom of God. Jesus talks about some one scattering seed on the ground, and how he goes to sleep every night and rises every day, and suddenly, he knows not how, the seed grows up as if out of no where. We planted a few beans and carrots and suddenly they have appeared as plants, ready in a short time to produce the fruits of the earth.

Jesus compares the kingdom of God with seed being planted, the seed of course being the Word of God. Jesus talks about the smallest of all seeds, the mustard seed, growing and becoming one of the greatest of all shrubs.

So it is with the kingdom, he tells us. The Word of God is the seed and it is scattered through out the world, sometimes by us and sometimes by others. But the seed of the Word of God has the very power of God in it and it will by the Spirit produce the fruit of faith among those where the seed of God has been scattered.

Samuel had no idea that God had chosen David and that the Spirit would fall mightily upon him when he was anointed. As we walk by faith and not by sight we have no idea how and where the fruit of the kingdom will appear by God’s power in those to whom we are called to minister day after day.

Billy was asked to start swimming the backstroke when all he wanted to do was to swim free style. His coach demanded that he get out of his comfort zone and do the backstroke and then move on from there.

In the Church of Christ, we all tend to be a little bit like Billy. It is very difficult for us to move out of our comfort zones. It is so difficult to break out of our normal pattern of living and open ourselves up to the direction of the Spirit.

Do you know how difficult it is for congregations to move to a second service? We managed, by the activity of the Spirit, to invest ourselves in three different services. There are so many Lutheran congregations in our city who need to move out of their comfortable pattern of living and gathering together only for themselves. We need to open up to the world outside. It is possible to move and to think beyond ourselves.

Do you know how difficult it is for people in congregations to start visiting with their neighbors and inviting them to church? That is certainly not a very comfortable thought at all. Do you mean that we ought to actually start to visit and talk with our neighbors about the faith, and even invite them to church? Do you mean that we ought to begin scattering the seed of the Word of God all around us? There are actually some 8000 + people in the neighborhood of our church. Do you mean that we should actually start calling on them too? There are large numbers of people who have left this congregation over the years for a number of reasons. Do you mean that we should actually start contacting them and inviting them to join the fellowship here and regularly attend one of our services?

We are all called to walk by faith and not by sight. We are all a part of the kingdom, the new creation that God has brought into being in Jesus Christ. As members of that kingdom we all are bearers of the very Word of God, Christ Jesus living in us, and the very Spirit of God living in us and directing our paths. We are God’s very own people, a kingdom of priests, set aside to minister to the world.

God came to Samuel and told him to go and anoint the one of God’s own choosing. God came to Paul and sent him on his numerous missionary journeys. God continues to come to us asking us to start learning the back stroke, moving out of our comfort zone. We are the vehicles through whom God scatters the seed. Let us learn to walk again by faith and not by sight and ask God where he is sending us next, and be ready to speak to all who God sends our way.

“Everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” WALKING BY FAITH AND NOT BY SIGHT is the call that God is extending to each one of us today and every day of our lives.

AMEN!