Steven Hovater's Blog

My small group has been talking about different kinds of prayer disciplines for the past month, and it’s prompted me to work through Psalms in a more deliberate way.  For the past couple of days I’ve been mulling over the Hebrew text of Psalm 1, eventually coming to the translation above.  Below are some of the meditative thoughts the Psalm has led me to so far this week.

Surroundings

This is a wisdom type psalm, or a Psalm of orientation, and so it more or less flows out of the way the world normally works, the way things should work.  It’s a generalization.  I wouldn’t have to poke around to hard to see exceptions here, but when you look at the opening verses about the wisdom of not surrounding yourself with wicked, evil, cynical people, it’s hard to argue.  I don’t think it’s an argument for cloistering ourselves up and insulating ourselves from the world, but a warning about the consequences of taking on the viewpoints, behaviors and assumptions of people without making some sort of judgment about who we’re listening to.

Personally, it’s the bit about sitting in the seat of cynics that has challenged me the most as I’ve meditated on this part of the Psalm.  The old translations use “scornful”, or “mockers”, or “scoffers”, which are just outdated enough to lose their bite.  When I started reading the word as “cynics”, it became more personal in a hurry. There is simply so much of this attitude, whatever you want to call it, in every corner of our culture. The spirit of mocking, judgmental cynicism is remarkably contagious and corrosive to the human heart, and who among us hasn’t felt the pull of all that negative gravity? You can’t drink all that poison and still thrive.  There’s a place for pushing away from those directions, and choosing, deliberately, to live with a different set of attitudes and assumptions. It might be hard work, but worthwhile.  It’s a path of blessing, whatever that means.

Blessed

I’m not really sure what that means – blessing.  That first word in the Psalm is fairly easy to translate, but it hard to get my mind around.  What does it mean to be blessed?  Things are just going to generally go your way? You’re going to feel good, or be lucky? Better parking spots or quicker lines at the DMV? Obviously it’s a positive designation–I mean, who wouldn’t want to be blessed? But still, the Psalm leaves me wondering what the content of that word “blessed” is when it just stands all on its own in a context like this. Reading the Psalm, the best I can come up with is that “blessed” in this context means something like “stable”, “secure”, “possessing meaning”, and “successful”, all rolled into one word.  Basically, “blessed” is the guy everyone wants to be. (Side note, culturally laden: The Dos Equis and Old Spice commercials might be seen as parodies of “blessed” Ha!.)

The safest part of the blessing bestowed here is that is eventual.  It relies on the watchful eye of the Lord to bring it about, but also just seems to be the natural order of things (not necessarily separate concepts here). As improbable as it seems, the psalm affirms that it is worthwhile to stay the course and pursue a life of righteousness and integrity.  That idea is easily questioned, and is often questioned even within the Psalter. Nonetheless, this psalm offers me the words to prayerfully consider in integrity as a source of blessing, and my cynicism and wickedness as threats to my own safety, security, and purposefulness. As I pray trough the Psalm, I find myself saying to God, “Please, let it be so.  Let it be true. I want to be the righteous man, and wholly desire the blessing. Let it only be true…”

Two things made me laugh and think in the last couple of days.

One: I was at a birthday party for a lady who was turning 93.  Her friend looked at her, and said frankly, “You look old.”

Her friend is 97.

Later on, they decided she meant to say, “You look young.”

I’m not really sure, though.  There are so many thought provoking angles on this conversation.

Two: Thanks to Matt Dabbs for posting this.  The video included there made me laugh, made me uncomfortable, and made me think.  I’m not sure I really buy it all, but I can’t think of anything that’s different with it than what Jesus taught.  That’s what really makes me squirm. My biggest reservation is the question, “so what do you think you should do on the beam to really impress God, anyways?”

One of the gutsier things that pops up repeatedly in Paul’s letters is his unapologetic claim that the churches he ministers should imitate him. I think a case could be made that this element carried more importance in Paul’s understanding of his ministry than we might typically acknowledge, perhaps due to our preference for his more self-effacing statement about being the “chief of sinners”. Coming to grips with the other side of the equation, the bold “be like me” thrust, provides us with some good food for thought, though.

One “be like me” statement is a more critical element in the letter to the  Philippians than is usually acknowledged. Philippians is full of some very personal and passionate narratives of Paul’s life of faith, and of course the wonderful material in chapter 2 highlights Christ’s example of selflessness.   In the end of the second chapter though, the letter shifts to notes about a couple of Paul’s co-workers, Timothy and Epaphroditus.  It’s not the part of Philippians we typically read devotionally or in worship, but Paul’s discussion of these two brothers really serves a critical part of his rhetorical strategy in the letter.  Paul’s purpose in the letter is to help solve a divide in the church, most apparently caused by a rift between two women in the Church, Euodia and Syntyche. His letter works to that end, and all thats written there about Jesus, Timothy, and Epaphroditus works to that common purpose.  They serve as examples, showing the letter’s recipients that the people they honored and loved all lived selfless and sacrificial lives.  Importantly, the autobiographical bits of the letter in chapters 1 and 3 aren’t diversions, but importantly fit directly into that rhetorical strategy, calling upon the Philippians’ desire to be like Paul, even in his sacrificial way of living for the sake of Christ.  All of that, of course, brings us to Phil 3:17.

It’s near the end of his rhetorical push, after Paul’s given all those examples, and he says, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” It’s not a side statement, but an important part of his messge in the letter, and perhaps even his whole ministry.  Paul isn’t scared to say, “Be like me.” It’s really a mouthful.  Complementing Timothy and Epaphroditus as examples was one thing, and the Christological section is natural enough, but the offering of himself as an example boldly punctuates his argument with a deeply personal conviction, giving ultimate testimony that what Paul genuinely believes in the behavior he wishes the recipients to practice.

I want to live like that.  I want to live in such a way, that I can freely turn to the people I love and say, “This is the way to live.” I want to have that boldness and the integrity that makes it possible.

Our vitality as a community of faith depends on the life example that members of our body make available to others.  Typically, we only offer limited visions of ourselves, the self-effacing messages of our own weaknesses, a message which says, “Don’t be like me.”  It’s important for the sake of our ongoing community, though, that we learn to give testimony to how our lives have followed Jesus’s way, and what that has meant and looked like.  How has our path of discipleship changed us?  In what way could I commend my path to others, saying, “It would be good for you to become something like me.”?  I know many of us feel the responsibility to live that way in our families, before our children.  What about in our community of faith?

Our family has been in such an intense transition phase for the last two months that it is with some measure or relief that I can look into this coming week and see what looks like a pretty normal week.

Yeah, right.

It might lack things like buying and moving into a new house, new baby nieces, a new work routine, ordination ceremony or those first awkward sermons, but I bet its really all that normal. “Normal” is a mythical creature on par with unicorns and leprechauns, and you can miss out on a lot of living by chasing it.
Things like loving your family, doing work that you love, deepening your friendships or encountering real life human beings, in all of their oddities, isn’t normal, it’s the extraordinary gift of life.

“Normal” is overrated. In fact, the more I think about it, I’ll be quite disappointed if my week turns out to be normal.

I hope you have a crazy week, too.

(Note: This week’s posts will likely be short and have a few typos. We won’t have home internet until Later this week, so I’m writing on my phone!)

(This is part two of the Exodus Sermon Series)

Today, we move in our series on Exodus to a well known section, the appearance of God to Moses in a burning bush.

Exodus opens with the birth of Moses, and the stories of his early life are full of promise, perhaps even destiny.  His mother defies her oppressors in the act of saving his life.  She claims the opportunity to raise as her own, but shrewdly creates the opportunity for him to live and learn as part of the Egyptian aristocracy.  Early on he rejects the safety of his social situation to identify with his oppressed people. He interjects himself to fight injustice against them and between them, but is forced to flee when his own people reject his authority and reveal his vigilante actions.

As our story this week opens, Moses has been living in Midian as a fugitive from a crime committed forty years ago in Egypt.  He’s started a new family, gotten a new job, a new life. He still lives in a measure of fear, fear that his past will catch up with him.  Instead, in this story, Moses is forced not to confront his past, but his future.

Here, at the burning bush, God beckons Moses to join him in an outlandish mission.  God shares his own mind with Moses, the Lord reveals his plans and vision of the future, and even his very name.

It is profound that God’s identity is revealed in this story of calling. It is in the context of this story, where God calls Moses to join him in plan of redemption and deliverance, that the Lord reveals his personal name. It is when God acts that we discover what he is to be called, who he is.  This is a story about identity.

But it’s not just the Lord whose identity is revealed in this story.  This is the definitive story in the life of Moses, the moment in which his identity must forever be determined.  It is the most important question he will ever face: how will he respond to the call of God? From this moment on, his life will not be defined by the promise of his early life, his status as a fugitive or failed advocate for justice. His role as a shepherd or even his identity as son, husband, or father will ultimately take a backseat to what is decided this day, this confrontation with a God who demands his future. Whether or not he obeys God’s call will determine Moses’ identity forever.  Much depends on this encounter.

In chapter 3, God reveals to Moses what God is going to do.  The conversation between Moses and God begins with God making this announcement (Ex. 3:7-8):

“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Caananites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”

God reveals to Moses what God is going to.  There is no doubt who is taking action here.  The Exodus will be God-powered. The exodus is not to be an act of Moses’ strength or will, but God’s. God declares, “I have come down to deliver them.” Of course, it must be this way. Who else but God could stand against Pharaoh? Who else but God could command the powers that are to definitively defeat the armies of Egypt? Moses had already tried his own at bringing justice, years ago, and failed.

Perhaps it is for this very reason that it is so surprising that God immediately follows his declaration that “I have come down” with the stunning bid to Moses in verse 10, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” The God-powered Exodus depends on Moses.

It is a demonstration of Gods power, but God freely chooses to invite Moses to participate.  God makes Moses what he could not become on his own, a deliverer, a force of justice and redemption. The Lord chooses to act through Moses.  It’s an incredible affirmation, but not an unusual one. Lord chooses to act through Moses, just like later he will choose to act through Joshua, Gideon, David, Saul, Elijah, Peter, James, Paul, Epaphras and Timothy.  Just like he chooses to act through you and me.

“But, wait a minute,” you say. “Isn’t that stretching things a bit?  After all, this is Moses we’re talking about here. Don’t you think the call of Moses is a different deal, an exceptional occasion? Perhaps, but you have to realize:

The call of Moses is not the call of Moses.

Confused? Fair enough.  But think about it: is it just Moses that is called here to participate in God’s plans? Aaron, too, but that’s the easy one. After all, he’s the one God tells Moses to take with him when he makes his demands to Pharaoh. But is he the only one?

What about in the elders of Israel? Here at the burning bush, in 3:18, notice that Moses isn’t going straight to Pharaoh, but to these elders, and then they’re all going to go together to meet with Pharaoh.  What about Joshua, who becomes Moses’ assistant and successor? What about Hur, who along with Aaron holds up Moses’ hands while Joshua fights the Amalekites in Chapter 17? What about those are selected as judges over the people in Chapter 18? What about Bezalel or Oholiab, who end up being in charge of the craftsmanship of the tabernacle, or the Levites who are charged with taking care of it? What about the scores of men and women who contribute to building the Tabernacle, or the entire nation that gave generously for the project?

Moses is just the first domino.  He’s the one God speaks to first, but the call of Moses is not just the call of Moses.

The call of Moses is the call of all Israel.

And so it often is with us.  Somebody begins to hear and act on the word of God, begins to respond to their calling, and sometimes it turns out that others join in and discover their own calling there as well.

[The following is very congregation-specific.

As part of encouraging that process, we want to have a forum to have some of those conversations, so on

July 18 we're going to have an event called "Outreach Sunday". The whole idea behind it is the recognition that Your calling may not be just for you.

Here's how it's going to work.  After class on that Sunday, we're going to gather for a potluck in the gym. Around the gym, we're going to set up some booths, tables where people can share in some of the ways they've become involved in outreach ministries, and perhaps share some opportunities for you to come alongside and join them in that effort.  I'm very excited about the possibilities of what can happen when we dedicate this time to listening to the ways God has already started to move us into action here at Cedar Lane.

Here's what we need to pull this thing off:

We need people willing to share their calling and their food.

We need people willing to pay attention.

Paying attention is really critical to this event, and truthfully, it’s critical to our episode with Moses as well.  ]

In the version of this story that is in most of our heads, I think this whole thing starts when God’s booming voice calls out, “Moses, Moses”.  However, notice how particular the text is in how the story actually unfolds in 3:2-4.

“And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here am I.”

Often I wonder, what would have happen if Moses had just turned the other way. I wonder if this was the first time it had been there, or if maybe the bush had been in these familiar grazing grounds for a long time, but this was the time Moses finally got up the courage to check in out.  Doesn’t it seem like the Lord waits for him to investigate t before speaking to him in a clear voice?

But what if Moses had just said, “Whoa, that’s scary!” and hurried back home, or “This bush makes me feel uncomfortable.” What if Moses said, “I’m not comfortable with the difference between this bush’s culture and mine?” Okay, that last one’s unlikely — for Moses.

But for us, I think we come up with all kinds of reasons to turn away from burning bushes, those places where if we stopped and looked for a moment, we would easily hear the voice of God calling us to serve.  The truth is, our world, our community, is full of burning bushes, waiting to be recognized. But we have to learn to pay attention to burning bushes.

This sermon started with the concept of Identity. This is a story that reveals god to be an acting God, a calling God.  It is the episode that brings Moses into the action, forever shaping his identity.  It can do the same to us, if we listen.

This week’s sermon is on the burning bush theophany, and the ensuing call of Moses and his remarkable dialogue with God.  One part I’m not going to spend much time on is the set of excuses that Moses offers as he hesitates to accept the immediate call of God.  Moses questions how he can possibly be the one chosen for such a task as freeing God’s people, he wonders if the people will question his authority, if they will ask who has sent him. He argues that he is not eloquent enough to fulfill God’s mission, and finally he desperately says what he’s been thinking all along, “Lord, please send someone else.”

Moses is convinced that he doesn’t have the ability to do what God asks.

In a way, he’s right.

In fact, Moses had already attempted to intervene on the Hebrews’ behalf, and failed.  He had already experienced the limitations of his own abilities to create justice, had already had his authority rejected, many years ago. Perhaps like many of us, Moses thought of his failures before as a sign of what would happen if he tried again.  And so, he didn’t. He withdrew and was content to live as an exile in Midian rather than risk his life and fail again.

So his excuses aren’t without any basis.  But that doesn’t make them right. The major difference this time around isn’t that Moses is more eloquent or wise, it’s that this time he acts on the behalf of God.  The one fact Moses can’t get around is God’s promise, “I wil go with you.

The question isn’t “What can we do?”

The question is “What can God do with us?”

On June 15, 2009, Kelly and I adopted Micah Marie and Israel Ann. What a blessing for our lives! It’s crazy now to even try and remember what our lives were like before then. Parenthood has already been so fulfilling, so rewarding, and so frustrating.  The world’s best kisses and giggles are totally worth those long nights trying to get the little boogers to go to sleep. Every day is still a wonderful adventure, and Kelly and I never know what they’re going to discover and learn even the next day. They talk about all kinds of stuff.

Right now they’re all about Aunt Martha’s babies, Jonah (thanks, Curtis!), catching lightning bugs, getting married (not on my life), playing in the water, and watching ‘Bama in the world cup (please don’t tell ‘em).   Who knows what they’ll be into tomorrow.  I do know that Kelly and I will be all into them.

Adoption can be a tough thing. All kinds of crazy things happen, and it’s no wonder that the process is terrifying to a lot of people.

Still, I don’t want to let today pass without giving my testimony that for Kelly and I, the process has absolutely been worthwhile.  It might not be for everybody, and some people are better equipped to serve kids in other ways. But I also know there are a lot of kids out there that just need somebody who’s committed to loving them deeply. You can make a tremendous difference in a life, and it might just be yours.

It’s worth thinking about.  Happy Adoption Day, babies.  

It took me a while to get completely through The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns, but that was really more about my crazy life transition than the book. The book itself is extremely readable, written in a style that’s very accessible. Personally, I’m really glad about that, because this is a book I wish a lot of people would take time to read.

The Hole in Our Gospel calls for the church to fully engage in the various humanitarian crises that affect the poor of the world, such as hunger, injustice, AIDS or other diseases, and the lack of clean water. Stearns effectively uses three rhetorical weapons to issue this prophetic call. The backbone of the book is autobiographical, chronicling Stearns own spiritual awakening and professional transition into leadership at World Vision, an evangelical humanitarian organization with a wide reach. Stearns breaks from the autobiography into sections that detail the span of several humanitarian issues. Using the broad strokes of statistics and more focused stories of individuals, Stearns does a really great job of bringing the reader into the realities of poverty in the modern world. These are facts most of us want to hide from, and at times the book is brutal in forcing the reader to recognize the reality of human suffering in the world. The last part of the book, and perhaps the weakest, is a smattering of Biblical interpretations and theologizing. It’s not that Stearns is way off the mark in those areas, but a book can only do so much, and this is the weakest part mostly because it can only be minimally developed.

As a whole, I think the book was very compelling, and makes my short list for books I think I’d like the whole church to read, and really absorb. We wealthy Christians really must wrestle with what our wealth means before God as we live in a world full of suffering. There will certainly be a reckoning for our failure to do so.

(Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a complimentary review copy through Booksneeze)

I’m going to publish sermon manuscripts here from time to time, and I wanted to say a little bit of how the manuscript functions for me.  It is rarely a word-for-word version of what actually gets delivered from the pulpit, but its part of my preparation cycle when I’m taking the parts of thesermon and working out how they might fit together, how they might sound.  It gives me a chance to tweak the sermon structure and do some word-smithing with particular parts of the sermon.  It’s a part of crystalizing the sermon itself, part of the discipline of preparation, but I don’t usually think of the manuscript as the final version.  and it might sound like a weird nuance, but I want to be clear that between the manuscript and the actual spoken word event, the real sermon is the latter.  The manuscript is a written document reflecting the sermon, the sermon itself is a spoken word.  I think they are both useful, although not exactly the same thing.

I welcome any feedback on either versions of the sermons I intend to post here. As with any post, if there’s an element in the sermon that leads you to another though, please share in the comments.  The more voices, the better!

Israel was indeed a nation born of promises.  It was an entire nation that traced its lineage back to one man, Abraham, a man who had received an outlandish set of promises from God.

At the beginning of Exodus, though, it seems as though those promises were merely empty words.  We find Israel, who had been promised Canaan as a homeland, living as slaves in Egypt.  How they got there was simple enough to explain. A long time ago there was a famine in Canaan, and the only place to get food was in Egypt, so, to Egypt they went.  They stayed there until the famine passed, and went it did they decided they liked it well enough, and stuck around. Why not, right? They were comfortable, they were provided for, and after a few decades, they were as at home in Egypt as they had ever been in Canaan anyways.

Eventually, though, they fell prey to the fears of the powerful in Egypt. To prevent them from becoming a threat, a Pharaoh enslaved them, using them to build his own wealth and power. And so, their not-homeland became a home of oppression for them, one in which they lived without dignity, humanity, or possibility. Even Moses, the man who is to be God’s instrument of deliverance, sees no other way.  He is willing to fight the injustice himself, and he does but, he is quickly forced to recognize that he is no match for the injustice his kinsmen face, and he flees.  While in exile, he starts a family and gives his child a most telling name, Gershom, saying that this name was because  “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”

Do you see what’s off key there?  Doesn’t it sound like Moses has bought into his current situation as an exile from his real home, which he seems to think is back in Egypt.  See, that’s part of the problem.  Israel was too at home in Egypt.  It becomes clearer and clearer as the story goes on that while Israel didn’t really want to be slaves, they also didn’t want to leave Egypt.  They really don’t even understand how extensive, how radical, God’s deliverance would be.  His actions in the Exodus would completely redeem and redefine Israel.

The Exodus is a story of complete and utter redemption, God’s way.  It is the story of how God responded to the cries of his people, how he called out an unlikely leader to help him utterly defeat the forces that were against his people.  It’s a story of how The same God who collides with the powers of Egypt brings his people into covenant with himself, for the sake of living in community with him.  It is a rich story, and over the next five weeks we’re going to see how this remarkable story of redemption can redefine us, just as it did Israel.

[Let us pray together.]

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel-and God knew.

-Exodus 2:23-25

This is the true beginning of the Exodus story.  While it seems clear enough that God was behind the earlier story of Moses’ birth, the text makes it abundantly clear that it is the crying out of Israel that triggers the Exodus event. In the next chapter, Moses is twice told that God is acting because he has heard the cry of Israel.  Later on, in chapter six, after being initially rebuffed by Pharaoh, Moses is told again, “I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.”

Israel had become too at home in Egypt, and had disregarded their identity as people to whom God had made incredible promises.  They had become complacent, had fallen asleep.  But when their suffering became unbearable, when they could no longer stomach the status quo, they cried out to God.  And while it may be that they really didn’t know exactly what they were asking for, the simple act of their crying out to God provoked the Lord to action.  It signals to the Lord a crack in their complacency, a readiness for redemption. Their cry means that they are stirring from their slumber.  Crying out is waking up.

It means waking up to all the things around us that shouldn’t be tolerable, but have become so.  It means waking up to our own sins, to our own limitations.  It means realizing that we are not at home in Egypt, that things aren’t just fine, that things must change.

As we begin this journey together, I want to simply ask you to cry out to God with me. Let us cry out to God that, even though we don’t yet know what needs to change around and within us, we are indeed desperate for his intervention, and we rely on his redemption.  Let us cry out, not just in this moment, but habitually, as we continually encourage each other to abandon the things that would enslave us, to prepare ourselves for God’s redemption and redefinition.  Let us be a people that cries out to God. Let us be a community that is always waking up.

We can do this, because crying out doesn’t require much of us.  It doesn’t require us to be courageous or wise, pure or particularly holy.  We don’t have to be smart, or eloquent. Crying out only requires one thing of us, honesty.  Our cry to God, just like Israel’s, flows from an honest assessment of who we are before God.  It requires us to be hints about our flaws and weaknesses, about our limits and sins.  When we cry out we confess ourselves, we confess who we are and what we cannot do on our own.  And so, it requires us to be honest with ourselves as we speak to the one who already knows the truth about us anyway.

We may take that honest cry to God, knowing that we cry out to a listening God. Exodus affirms that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God of action, who responds to the cries of his children.

And lest we think that God only hears the cries of his people, that he only acts here because it is actually Israel, let me share with you another passage, Isaiah 19. Isaiah will not allow us to think about God’s listening ear in exclusive terms.  Like Jonah, Isaiah blows open the limits of God’s attention and care.  Speaking of Egypt, Isaiah writes, “When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them.” The Lord will hear and respond to the cries of even the enemies of the Lord’s people, the original oppressors themselves, the Egyptians! Don’t be afraid that you are too far gone, to distant from God, that he can’t or won’t hear your cry to him.  The Lord is a listening God, and is ready to respond, even to Egypt, even to you and me.

One more thing.  Everything I’ve said before assumes that when we read the story, we identify most with the part played by Israel.  But what if, in reality, we actually are best represented by the Egyptians? Maybe not Pharaoh, or even actual slave drivers, but just run of the mill Egyptians.  Innocent of direct oppression, they are complicit with the system, and destined for the same destruction as Pharaoh. What if we, who are used to being on the top of the world’s power structures, are more like these Egyptians than we are God’s oppressed people?

It’s a horrible, offensive thought, isn’t it? But the more I think of it, there is really only one way to be sure. If we don’t want to be like the Egyptians, we have to learn to be like God. And this story gives us a clear picture of one important way to become more godly.

If we want to be like God, we have to learn to listen like God. We have to be willing to stop and hear the voices of hurting people, the voices of people who cry out against all the things which oppress them, to the things that enslave them.  The God we serve is an attentive God. This texts affirms that God does in fact hear, he does in fact care, and he does respond! This simple fundamental fact is one of the first places we must meet God if we truly wish to be a people like him, who model our lives after him. We know we have to listen to God, but have we not learned to listen like God? We must hear people, give attention to people, be willing to respond to the needs of people.  We must work to hear what he hears.

And so, let us all cry out to God.  Let us cry out for our own redemption.  Let us cry out on behalf of those around us who need redemption, and let us cry out that we may have open ears to the cries of those suffering around us.  Amen.

(Please feel free to comment, or see this note about sermon manuscripts)