Why Worry About Words?
Genesis 1:1-5, Exodus 20:7
A
Sermon Preached by
University
Congregational United
Will you pray with me?
Word beyond all words, may
only your word be spoken, may only your word be heard. Amen.
Today we continue our preaching series on the 10 Commandments and consider the third commandment, “You shall not make wrongful use of God’s name”. (Exodus 20:7)
Today I invite us to consider two questions:
What do we mean when we say, “God”?
And how might we make wrongful use of God’s name?
I’d like to begin by having you think about the God you believe in.
If its helpful take out a pencil and write your responses to these questions or draw a picture of what comes to mind when you think about who God is for you.
Who is the God YOU believe in?
Does your God have any power?
We love the creation story, God speaking creation into being. (See Genesis 1:1-5)
Can God still do that?
Can God still create or does God only create through us?
As followers of Jesus, we speak of a God who intervenes in history.
Did God in Jesus break forth in history by taking the form of a human being?
Can the God you believe in bring life from death?
Or is your God one who stands back and cheers us on but finally can’t do anything?
Is your God one who loves and loves us passionately?
Is your God the God of the psalmist (see Psalm 139), a God who “formed you in
your mother’s womb”?
Does your God name you as beloved? (See Mark 1:9-11)
Or is your God an impersonal God, one who doesn’t know you?
Do you have a relationship with God?
And does God have a relationship with you?
It is sometimes easier for us to talk about the God we don’t believe in. We hear all the time people talking about a God we just don’t believe in. But who is the God you do believe in? That is an important question and I hope you will take time to listen to that question.
Two years ago, the National Study on Youth and Religion conducted the largest and most detailed study of teenagers and religion ever taken. Their study showed that religion is a significant force in many teenagers lives.
They also showed that youth’s religion and spirituality reflect the world of adult religion, especially the religion of their parents. Few teenagers today are rejecting or reacting against the adult religion into which they are being socialized.
In fact, what the study showed is that the God that most teenagers believe in is the God most of their parents and most of us adults believe in.
Who is that God that is most
worshipped in the
The researchers noted that there are some general characteristics of the faith that most people have in our country today.
1) A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught by the Bible and most world religions.
3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4) God does not need to be particularly involved in ones life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5) Good people go to heaven when they die.
Again, few teenagers would lay these five points out as clearly and concisely as this but in general this fits as the dominant faith of teenagers – and most adults, in our country today.
Well what does all this amount
to? The authors summarized that there
are basically three main tenets of the faith of most of us in the
1) Central to living a good and happy life is being a good and moral person. This means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one’s health, and doing one’s best to be successful.
As one girl from
2) The
dominant religion among
As on girl
from
you, I
don’t know, it’s like God is God. He’s
just like somebody that’ll always
help you
go through whatever you’re going through.
When I became a Christian
I was just
praying and it always made me feel better.”
3) Finally,
most of our teenagers believe in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and
defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally
involved in one’s affairs – especially the affairs in which one would prefer
not to have God involved. Most of the
time, God keeps a safe distance. As one
boy from
What else do we know about this God?
This God is not Trinitarian, did
not speak through the Bible and prophets of
This God is not demanding.
God actually can’t be, because God’s job is to solve our problems and make
people feel good. In short, God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: God is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.
Perhaps the worst this God can do
is simply fail to provide God’s promised therapeutic blessings, in which case
those who believe in God are entitled to be grumpy. As one boy from
This is the God, the God of what the authors call, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” that most teenagers - and most adults believe in.
And such a God is not big enough to meet the challenging and demanding times in
which we live. Times like that we have
had before, times like these today, and times like the ones we will have as
individuals and as a society will face in the future.
A God who has carried people through such challenging and demanding times is the God of Genesis – who calls forth something out of nothing.
The God of Exodus who hears God’s people crying out in pain and anguish in and does not leave them alone but leads them out to the promised land.
The God of Jesus Christ who knew the suffering and brokenness of the world, who was tortured, suffered and died and in whose resurrection showed that death is not the last word.
This is a God that is big enough to believe in – a God we need to face the challenging times in which we live.
You don’t have to go anywhere outside of this building to hear God’s children crying out. They are right here among us. They are our young people. And they need to know a God who hears their cries, who will come and lead them forth step by step out of bondage into freedom.
Our young people are struggling, hurting in a hundred different ways today:
They are in our hospitals struggling with depression.
They are at home lying in bed having just been diagnosed with a chronic illness.
They are here today struggling with schools that aren’t meeting their needs.
They are here struggling with decisions about sex and alcohol use.
They are right here and among us and they need us to be bearers of the Gospel of
Hope which is the gift we as church have been given by the God of Hope.
A God who calls us to go and meet them there in these suffering and broken places – not to take all away, make it all better, explain it all away – but to be there with them, pray with them, remind and proclaim the hope and power of the resurrection. The God of Genesis, Exodus and Jesus is at work in places just like the dead-end, growing, challenging, hurting places that our young people live.
It is the God of the cross – that God, right there, in that cross we look on each Sunday. Here in this suffering. Here is this torture and pain. Here in this suffering and death. Here in this crying out – “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” Here in this place where God cannot be – God is. This is the face of God our kids and we need to know and hold to. This God who says “I am there in your suffering and with you in your dying. I am there. And death is not my last word”.
Our kids need a faith and a God big enough to raise the dead which are the dead end and suffering places in which they live.
A God who hears our cries.
A God who hears and meets us in our suffering and pain.
A God who seeks us out and finds us where we are.
A God who reminds us of our place in the story, this story of death and resurrection – that happens each and every day because that is the way of life, the way of God.
A God who we dare enough to believe in who sends us out with all we have - prayer and accompaniment – and leads us forth to be the amazing people we were created by God to be.
This is the God we meet at the major junctures of our lives.
It is the God we need to know is there – A God who can turn these dead end places into places of new life. A God who can empty graves and make us rise to new and more abundant life. Hear in these places of suffering, pain and death, we need you God to do your work.
I stumble and tremble right in these juncture points.
“God, don’t call me forth!
God don’t make me change!
God are you really there?
Is there life on the other side?”
You and I all know what those junctures are like:
They are like that stepping forth on the first day of kindergarten.
The terror of being a senior in high school or getting a drivers license.
They happen when we turn to one we love and say, “I do”, or hear the news “I am
having a baby”.
It happens when we step forth and follow what we hear as God’s call to us though we know not where that is taking us or where it will lead.
It happens as we wait with others to let go into their death.
Those junctures happen throughout our lives and they happen particularly intensely in our adolescence because we are living through these changes for the first time.
Our young people are living every day with physically changing bodies, growing brains, and significant endings and beginnings each and every day. They need people who have gone before them, people like us to meet them there in these places of endings and beginnings. People who believe in a God who meets us there and leads us forth to resurrected life.
To make wrongful use of God’s name is finally to say, “God I finished with your changing me and calling me out.”
It is to take refuge in one season - holding on, holding on tight with everything we’ve got and not letting go into the ongoing work of God. At such times of challenge and change I want to take all my Popsicles with me and not go through this time of emptying one more time. We need to help each other do that. We need the help of a God who knows us and meets us and calls us forth right in such places.
During the amazing choir anthem today, I looked out the window at the leaves falling. And I wanted to cry out, “Just give it up! Just let go! Fall is turning to winter – and winter is a good season too. For without winter, spring would not come, followed by summer, followed by fall once again.” I want a faith big enough to fall, even into times of suffering and trial and challenge. I want a faith that lets me know God is there and God doesn’t leave me there but leads me forth to new and resurrected life
Friends, today, we are challenged to step forth as the people of the big enough faith - to be the people God needs us to be – people of the resurrection, people of hope. For the sake of our young people, so may we be.
Amen.
* * * * * * *
Thanks to Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton. (p. 162-171) for the quotes used above.