"Again & Again: God Calls Us To Listen" a sermon on Mark 8:31-9:8

Mark 8:31-9:8
Again & Again: God Calls Us To Listen
Preached Sunday, February 25, 2024

I have a confession for you this morning: I am a bad listener.

Now, hear me out.

I sincerely and truly hope that, as your pastor, you have all felt listened to and heard by me. If I’m being honest with myself and my pride, I hope you at least think that I am a good listener. And I do believe that I can listen well. And I do believe that I have listened well with many of you. And listening is a skill that I have had to repeatedly practice and work hard at.

My gut-reaction is to interrupt with my own story that your story reminded me of. My innate response is to be thinking of how I will respond while you are talking. And I sometimes still do these things - I’m sure many of you have experienced them.

Thankfully there are always opportunities to work on my listening skills.

In seminary during our field education, we followed a set sharing pattern. One person was to share a story of their time working, no interruptions were allowed. One by one people were to respond in turns, sharing observations or thoughts. If you were the sharer, you were not allowed to respond until everyone else had had a chance. And once you responded, you were not to respond again. Taking turns like this made me realize how much I had to hold back my brain and my mouth from talking. It went against my instincts. And then, in pastoral care class, we had listening partners where we practiced hearing each other’s stories and feelings without interruption. Ask clarifying questions only. And then responding in turn, but keeping the attention focused on them instead of sharing from your own experience.

Giving someone your full attention.
Listening in the moment.
Taking turns to speak and listen.
Asking clarifying questions.
And keeping the conversation focused on the original subject and sharer.

These are signs of good pastoral listening and good listening in general...and they are things I work on constantly. I do strive, every day, to be a good listener. And it doesn’t come naturally to me - it’s something I have worked hard on and continue to work on.

Maybe you are inherently a good listener - good for you! Or maybe you’re like me and can relate to Peter, a chronic bad listener.

In this week’s Scriptures we have an example of Peter not being the best listener.

Jesus was telling him and the others that he would be killed. Peter does not want to hear this. So he pulls Jesus aside and is like, “Jesus! Stop saying things like this!” Jesus, who will have none of it, rebukes Peter, saying “get thee behind me, Satan!” And continues his teaching, not just to Peter, but the whole crowd, about what it means to be his follower - not the message that Peter wants to hear but a message of self-sacrifice, hardship, and impending loss.

If it’s hard to listen in general - it’s harder still to listen to something we don’t want to hear.

I know I struggle with this.

When I first hear a piece of bad news - especially if it interferes with my plans or what I want - I want nothing more than to put my hands over my hearts and go “lalalalalala I don’t want to hear this!”

Basically, this is what Peter did to Jesus.

Jesus: The Son of Man must undergo great suffering.
Peter: lalalalalala, I don’t want to hear this!

Jesus: The Son of Man will be rejected.
Peter: lalalalalala, I don’t want to hear this!

Jesus: The Son of Man will be killed!
Peter: lalalalalala, I don’t want to hear this!

We don’t like to hear things that contradict what we want.

We don’t want to hear that this Spring-like weather in February might not be good for us long-term.
We don’t want to hear that we have to exercise and eat veggies.
We don’t want to hear that we can’t afford that vacation we wanted to go on.

And of course, there are harder, heavier things that we don’t want to hear:

We don’t want to hear that our loved one’s diagnosis isn’t good.
We don’t want to hear that that job opening isn’t going to us.
We don’t want to hear what’s on the other end of the phone when we’re expecting bad news.
We don’t want to hear that we have to change, that things can’t continue like they are.

And then there are the things that go against our bias, our preconceived notions that we don’t want to hear.

Peter thought Jesus was to assume a throne and overthrow the Roman Empire.
He didn’t want to hear that he would suffer and die on a cross.

We don’t want to hear allegations of sexual assault and harassment brought against those we had previously considered good men.
We don’t want to hear the trauma and struggle of our neighbors.
We don’t want to hear that we ourselves are complicit or even benefit from systems that oppress others.




And in our current age, it’s even easier to not hear hard things or not hear things we don’t want to hear because on social media we can literally block, mute, or unfriend people that have differing opinions than us. Or keep them on our friend list and then just continue to shout over each other, not listening and learning from each other, but repeatedly stating how right we are, over and over ad nauseum, never actually listening and learning from each other.

I know that I don’t like to hear critiques or sometimes even constructive feedback. My first reaction is almost always to be defensive. This is something I regularly work on as well. Instead of immediately jumping to being defensive, I have to sit back and discern: is there a hard truth in this that I need to hear? And honestly, sometimes there’s not. But other times, I realize, I do need to hear it. And it’s not easy to hear and I don’t like it and it means I need to listen better and work on myself...but there it is. As Christians, we are called to listen. And we are called to listen to hard things to hear.

We are in good company though. The Bible is filled with stories of people not listening to God: from Adam and Eve in the garden, to Jonah in the belly of the whale, from whole tribes and nations refusing to listen to the headings of prophets, from the disciples and Peter - we are not alone.

6 days after Jesus rebukes Peter for not listening to him, for not hearing the hard things that Jesus was teaching, God speaks in a voice from the heavens: This is my Son, listen to him!

I heard one preacher describe this moment as Jesus’s exasperated parent moment. Just as a parent sometimes throws up their hands and says “Just listen to me!” Jesus was tired of over and over again trying to get the disciples to hear him, to TRULY listen to him and what he was trying to tell them about what it meant to be his follower, that he throws his hands up and enlists the ultimate parent, God, to just say “Listen to him already!”

This is the Good News though.

That although we, like Peter and many others, again and again, time after time, fail to listen to God, God never stops speaking to us and inviting us to listen - again and again.

The Bible is filled with examples of God speaking:

God speaking through prophets.
God speaking through dreams.
God speaking through the still small voice.
God speaking through the burning bush.
God speaking through miracles.
God speaking through angels and messengers.
God speaking through Jesus.
God speaking through the coming of the Holy Spirit.
God speaking through the disciples.

Again and again and again God speaks. Again and again and again, God invites us to listen - even if we didn’t get the message the first time.

And God is still speaking, reaching out and inviting us to listen today - what is God trying to say to us, if we would just listen?

God is speaking to us through the voices of the oppressed and marginalized.
It may be hard to hear - but we need to listen.
God is speaking to us through all of creation, crying out for us to repent of our earth damaging ways.
It may be hard to hear - but we need to listen.
God is speaking to us in the silence of our hearts, laying something on us for this season of Lent, something we need to work on.
It may be hard to hear - but we need to listen.

There is one more thing that sometimes is hard to hear but God is always, always saying to us, always inviting us to listen to, again and again:

And that is, you are my child and I love you.

So today, may we be less like Peter the bad listener...and more like those who have worked hard at listening. May we hear with clarity God’s voice, telling us the things we need to hear, telling us what it means and looks like to be a follower of Jesus.

God is speaking.
May we listen.

Amen.

"Again & Again: God Meets Us" a sermon on Mark 1:9-15

Mark 1:9-15
“Again & Again: God Meets Us”
Preached Sunday, February 18, 2024

Where are you?

This may seem like a weird question for a preacher to ask a congregation. For the majority of you the answer is: sitting in the Boardman United Methodist sanctuary. For the couple dozen of you who are or will watch online - there may be some more varied answers - at home, visiting family, in the hospital, in the car.

But this morning I am not only talking about our physical locations but the question - where are you? Emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

While our physical locations do affect our inner state - just compare your inner thoughts and being at the BMV versus on the beach… We also know that it rarely tells the whole story.

I remember a time, I believe it was actually February 2021 where my phone sent me a notification, “See where you’ve been this month!” And did you know, my phone had the audacity to show me two locations: my home and my then church - two locations not even a quarter mile removed from each other. Apparently I hadn’t gone anywhere else that month. The church was still online and outside only in the wake of Covid-19. Most of my meetings were on Zoom. I had a 5 month old baby who was nursing and we we tied together and being extra precautious around the pandemic because she was so little.

You could look at the phone notification - why my phone even sent it to me, who knows, and think “Wow. I haven’t been ANYWHERE this month.”

But in my inner being, that couldn’t have been any less true. I was in the middle of figuring out how to be a mom and a pastor. A mom and a person. I was struggling to keep my own anxiety, fueled by post-partum and by a lack of sleep, in check even while I worked tirelessly to be a non-anxious presence for my parishioners also navigating a global pandemic, their own losses and fears, and illnesses. And in the midst of it all, there were these intense moments of joy and peace and relationship and connection - at home with my family and at church with my congregation. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed more to God - prayers of help, prayers of thanks, prayers of just “wow” - than during that time in my life - a time where I seemingly barely went anywhere, but where God and I traveled over vast distances together.

So this morning when I ask: Where are you? I am talking about in your soul, in your relationship with God, with yourself, with the world.

Are you on a mountain top, marveling at God’s power and wonder - like last week when we read about Jesus’s transfiguration? Are you at a well - drinking deeply from the water of life? Are you being led beside still waters and made to lie in green pastures? Or, perhaps, are you in a wilderness - a desert, a place of temptation and trial, of self-reflection. Perhaps for you it feels like a place of denial, of fear, of lack and of want.

There is no shame being in the Wilderness. In fact, every year, our Lenten journey forces us to confront the wildernesses of our lives. Every year, we, with Jesus, are driven into the desert. We have to willingly step into the desert to know that even in seasons of sacrifice, of want, of hardship - God is there. Because there are so many times in our lives where we will find ourselves in the wilderness of our souls - driven there, not by choice, but by loss, by grief, by fear, by the pain of this world - and we will not be there by choice. It helps when we can say: I have been here before - and I know that God is here too. We can do this - again.

And that’s the theme for Lent this year, for our sermons and worship: Again & Again.

The creator’s of our Lenten resources describe it like this: “In Lent, we’re reminded that, again and again, suffering and brokenness find us. We doubt again, we lament again, we mess up again. Again and again, the story of Jesus on the cross repeats—every time lives are taken unjustly, every time the powerful choose corruption and violence, every time individuals forget how to love. With exacerbation we exclaim, “Again?! How long, O God?” And yet, in the midst of the motion blur chaos of our lives, God offers a sacred refrain: “I choose you, I love you, I will lead you to repair.” Again and again, God breaks the cycle and offers us a new way forward.”

So, yes. We are here at Lent again, we are in the Wilderness again...but we are not here alone.

Just as my short Google Maps timeline doesn’t show the full story of where I’ve been, this short passage of Scripture, well, it can seem like not much. It’s short, quick, to the point - but a LOT of ground is covered in it.

We have Jesus at the river Jordan, being baptized.
We have Jesus in the wilderness, being tempted, being with wild beasts, being waited upon by angels.
We have John being arrested, an event that affected Jesus greatly, a lynchpin for his ministry.
We have Jesus coming to Galilee, proclaiming the good news that the Kingdom of God is near, calling for repentance.

In six sentences we have three locations...but a whole LOT happening in each of those places. It’s not just about where Jesus has been - it’s about WHERE he’s been. The journey of being proclaimed beloved, of wandering the wilderness, of starting his ministry - and all the high, lows, peaks, valleys, waters and deserts in between.

Now, a whole lot could be said about Jesus and the journey he undertook in these three places and how pivotal they were for his ministry. But what I want to say today is: Jesus. God, has experienced the full range of humanity. Jesus has been there. Wherever you are, God has been there.

And wherever you are, God is there.

In United Methodist theology we have what we call prevenient grace - the grace that goes before. The grace that is there before we know it. Wherever we are, wherever life takes us, physical locations and on our spiritual journeys, God is already there, waiting for us, with us.

So today let me ask: Where are you? Are you some place you’ve been before? Asking, how did I end up here, again? Are you at a high or a low? Are you in the Wilderness?

Wherever you are, even if it is a lonely place, a hard place, a barren place...know that you are not alone. God has been there. God is with you. Whether we know it or not - God’s grace surrounds. Again and again, no matter where we find ourselves, God will always be reaching out to us. Finding us. Offering us the grace to find God. God meets us where we are. Thanks be to God for that.

And that is one of the reasons that we will undertake the congregational wide discipline and joy of celebrating weekly Communion during Lent. Because we are entering the Wilderness together and in that Wilderness we need an oasis of blessing, a place of welcome, a constant reminder that God is with us in all places and all circumstances.

And so today, as a whole, we are in the Wilderness of Lent. Again.
But remember, before Jesus entered the wilderness - he was given a blessing by God. “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

God extends that same blessing to us today. God will, continually in our lives, offer that same blessing again and again and again. Because it comes with God’s presence. It’s part of God’s never-departing grace: You are my children. I love you. I take delight in you. I will never leave you.

Again and again, no matter where we find ourselves, may we find the grace that is always there and hear this blessing.

And so to close my sermon today, I would like to close with a poem, a blessing for the beginning of Lent, by Jan Richardson called “Beloved is Where We Begin.”

"If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.

But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.

I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved."

Amen.

"What's Love Got to Do With It?" an Ash Wednesday sermon on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 and Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
“What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
Preached Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024

There has been much amusement and speculation about Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day falling on the same day. Now, the last time this happened was just a few short years ago - 2018. But before that the last time it happened was 1945. Pastor friends have joked about making ashes in the shape of a heart on people’s foreheads. Still others have been sharing memes or little comics about the coincidence. My favorite is the one where someone asks a pastor what their Valentine’s Day plans are. To which the pastor says, “smearing dirt on people’s foreheads and reminding them of their mortality.” To which the pastor is met with a face of shock.

I have particularly enjoyed the Ash Wednesday Valentine Day Cards that have popped up on my Facebook news feed. Who doesn’t want a romantic card that says, “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, being my Valentine, is an Ash Wednesday Must.” For others, they say they will give up chocolate for Lent….starting tomorrow. Others are bummed their Valentine’s Day celebrations will be filled with ashes and reminders of mortality…

But since Valentine’s Day isn’t just the Hallmark celebration of love but the Roman Catholic celebration of the Feast Day of St. Valentine ...which is the anniversary of Valentine being bludgeoned with clubs and beheaded so…I don’t think he’ll mind so much that his day is a day that is shared with reminders of our own mortality. It might not fit well on a greeting card - but it is apt for the religious reasons behind this day.

And I would say these days aptly go together for another reason: Because both days really are about love. For us Christians gathered together today to start our Lenten journey together, to repent, to remember our mortality, and to participate in the imposition of ashes - we might wonder what does love have to do with ashes? Or, in the words of Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it?”

Well, actually, everything.

While Valentine’s Day focuses on human love that has its barriers, faults, and limitations, Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent serve as reminders of God’s perfect, limitless love.

In today’s reading from Joel, the prophet reminds us that God is abounding with steadfast love. That steadfast love is with us in all seasons of the Christian year and seasons of our lives. And yet we often fail to recognize it or live our lives in accordance with it.

Enter the season of Lent. A time in the lives of Christians to repent and redirect our lives toward God - this is in preparation both for Easter, Christ’s resurrection, and Christ’s final, triumphant return and redemption of all creation.

Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, traditionally serves as a reminder of our mortality and our limitations and the need to repent in light of those things. We gather together to worship God, to read Scripture, to confess our sins, and to be reminded of our mortality, that from dust we came and from dust we shall return. This is one of the most counter-cultural observances of the Church. As a society, we like to pretend that we are infinite. We imagine ourselves like little Buzz Lightyears, all saying together, “To infinity and beyond!” We shy away from death - relegating it to hospitals, funeral homes, out of our homes, and every day sight. But it is an everyday occurance, it is part of our reality. It will happen to each and every one of us. And so, we need to be reminded of our humanness, our faults, our limitations, our mortality. We can think of Ash Wednesday as a test of our emergency broadcast system, as Joel said, “Blow the trumpet, sound the alarm!” It’s our yearly reminder that while we are yet alive, we came from dust and to dust we shall return.

And love is at the center of that statement.

God made us out of dust because God loves us.

The book of Genesis creates an image of a loving God. A God that takes their own spit, mixes it with the dirt on the ground, and with their own hands, fashions humankind in God’s image. This is a hands-on God, a God who puts their own self, their spit, their sweat, their blood into their creation. A God that looks at it and blesses it and says it is “very good.” This is our loving Creator God who made us from dust and watches over us.

And Scripture tells us that because God first loved us, we can love. And so the repentance of Ash Wednesday and of Lent is really a return to that love. We have stored up our treasure in earthly things. In things that are finite, in things that moth and rust consume, where thieves break in and steal. In titles, in money and other measures of success. In ourselves and our selfish desires. In our own insular circles. In things that don’t honor and glorify God. Ash Wednesday is a reminder that our treasure is where our heart is - and while we are called to love God, our hearts are often preoccupied with other earthly things.

And so Joel says to return to the Lord “with all your heart.” God wants all of our heart, of our love. And so on Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are mortal. And that every life is a gift, no matter how long or how short that life is - and that God loves that life. And we need to use whatever finite time we have, to love God and to love neighbor. To live lives not for ourselves but to glorify God and to serve our neighbors. And so when we repent, when we lament, those are songs of love to God. As we turn from our sinful ways, from self-centeredness, from greed, from whatever is stopping us from loving others - we are moving toward the love of God.

So on days like Ash Wednesday, we mourn our own mortality. We lament our errors and sinfulness and we repent - we turn toward God, toward Love.

And so what form does this repentance, does this love take during Lent? Let’s take a look at the text from Matthew. This text is not telling us to not practice piety…

It is telling us that when we give alms, give not out of your own gratification, but give out of love.

When you pray, do so not out of wanting to look good, but for love of God and those we pray for.

And when we fast, when we receive ashes on our foreheads, don’t do it as a way to impress others with how religious you are, do it for your relationship with God. To prayerfully and purposefully deepen your relationship with a God who loves you and a God who desires you to return to God with all your heart.

And so today, ashes to ashes, dust to dust - What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Everything.

Amen.

“We Will Do, We Will Go: Dream” a sermon on Jeremiah 29:11-14

Jeremiah 29:11-14

Luke 8:4-15
“We Will Do, We Will Go: Dream”
Preached Sunday. February 4, 2024

Today we are starting our third and final week of our sermon series - “Trusting in God.” My hope for this sermon series is that it would help us process all that was, is, and could be in the life of our church so that we can move forward into the bright future together, trusting in God.

We started with talking about the things in the life of our church that we are mourning. In the midst of our country’s grief-adverse culture, it is important to acknowledge and process our grief so that we can capture the energy and ideas of the past for the present and future instead of desiring so strongly to go back to what was that it holds us back from what is and what could be.

The two biggest things we are mourning collectively as a congregation are people who are no longer with us in the pews due to death, relocation, or other factors and mourning the lack or loss of ministries we once had around children & young families.

You can see the congregational responses to what we are mourning on the yellow note cards in the narthex.

Then we transitioned to talking about what we are grateful for. We realized that gratitude isn’t just an emotion, it’s an ethic. And the more we practice gratitude and the more we give thanks to God, the more that gratitude shapes us into more caring, loving, and generous people - exactly the kind of disciples that God needs us to be to follow where God is calling us to go.

Reading your responses to what you’re thankful for in the life of the church was overwhelming in the best way. The biggest thing that we are thankful for in this congregation is for the community here, the way we are friends and family, siblings in Christ, to one another and the sense of belonging that many of you get when you’re here and surrounded by each other. What a great thing to give thanks for! There were so many wonderful thanksgivings that you all shared last week.

You can see the congregational responses to what we are giving thanks for on the purple notecards in the narthex.

Which brings us now to dreaming - what are our dreams, our hopes, our visions for the future of our congregation and of the Church as a whole? Where do we feel God is leading us? What plans do we feel that God has for us? What seeds are being sown or have already been sown, in the fertile soil of our congregation, that will produce fruit for the Gospel? Fruit that is more than our practical minds would dare to count on but that our dreams and imaginations - blessed by the Holy Spirit, could begin to hope and pray for.

And while it may seem antithetical, we are going to start our time talking about our dreams for the church…by talking about church decline. You’d think this would have belonged in the mourning sermon - and it belongs there too cause it’s all connected. So many people remember the heyday of the church but they haven’t mourned it so they can get stuck wanting to go back there so badly, that it actually keeps them from dreaming about the future. One of the unique perspectives that I bring as a millennial pastor is…I simply wasn’t alive during the time that many church goers in America want to go back to. Yes, the church of the present is different from even the church of my childhood and youth - but I can’t go back to a church I was never even a part of. In his book “On the Brink of Everything” - Parker Palmer, American Quaker theologian and writer, talks about the generations on their path of life like the surface of our planet - a globe. The younger generations which are at the top of the globe can see farther ahead and shout down to the older generations, painting them a picture of what is to come in the future. The older generations, further down the path, down the curve of the earth, and with more experience can shout up, sharing the wisdom they have learned along the journey. I have hope for the future of the church, guided by the wisdom and experiences of those who were here in the churches quote-on-quote “heyday” when the sanctuary was filled to the rafters.

Yes. The Church, big C Church as a whole, is declining. In an article published only last year by the Atlantic, they say that forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the last 25 years. According to a Gallup News Study, in 2021 for the first time in eight decades of tracking data, attendance at a church, mosque, or synagogue dropped below 50% of Americans. If you belong to or attend a religious institution - and you do because you’re here - you are in the minority of Americans. This decline is not just happening in Mainline denominations - like United Methodists - but across the board too. Studies show that church attendance is in decline in America at Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical congregations.

A recent training on church hospitality I went to framed it like this. The national average for decline in Average Weekly Attendance, in one year, is a decrease of 32%. 1% of that decline is due to death. 7% of that is those who leave through the back door, quietly or during times of transition. 9% of that decline is due to the transient nature of our lives - changing jobs, retiring, moving away. And 15% of that is just that people are attending less than they used to. Whereas to be considered a regular churchgoer, studies used to consider that as weekly or at least every other week, now regular church attendance is considered once a month.

So our average weekly attendance at Boardman United Methodist Church is 144, and that takes into consideration those who worship online with us and those who worship with us in the sanctuary. If we experienced zero growth - no new members, no guests, no baptisms, over the next several years - which, side note, statistically, only 15% of first time guests come back to worship with a church a second time - so hospitality and welcome and making connections with first time guests is so crucial - but, as I was saying, if we experienced zero growth, at a rate of of decline of 32% a year, it would only take 7 years until there were only 10 people in this sanctuary.

Hold up. Take a deep breath. Stay with me. You might be thinking - Pastor, isn’t this a sermon on our hopes and dreams for the future? Not our fears? Not the uphill climb of the harsh reality? Hear me as I say this: I have hope for the Church with a big C, the Church universal. And I have hope for this church, our specific congregation. Even in the face of the harsh reality of the world I do not think God is done with us. God is NOT done with us. God has plans for us. God has dreams for us. Even now, God is tending to seeds that have been planted in the soil, preparing us for the fruit to come.

I don’t think the Church of the future will look like the church of the 50s, 60s, 70s - or even the 80s, 90s, our aughts - And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing either. I believe that God can and will do a new thing with us - if we are just faithful and move forward with trust and open hearts.

With all this in mind, let us turn to our Scripture lesson from Jeremiah this morning. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope…”

This is many people’s favorite verse. I myself had it on a little notecard, taped on to my college freshman dorm room when I was going through a hard time...but I also think we like this Scripture because it seems to be comforting. Sometimes we use it as a security blanket when bad things are happening in our lives. But it’s important to note that in its original context, this was not necessarily what the original audience wanted to hear. To them, it was not so comforting.

God’s people were in Exile. What they wanted to hear from God was that they were being delivered. That their land would be restored. That they would be freed. That it would be puppy dogs and sunshine from here on out - but that is NOT what God says to them through the prophet Jeremiah.

In the verses before this, God says to them: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Basically, settle down and build roots in Exile cause this is going to last a while. Not only that - but pray for the land where you are in Exile. This is not the news they wanted to hear! This is not what they were hoping for…

AND YET. In the midst of it all, God is saying, “But don’t you know that I have plans for you to flourish?”

This message is not said to any one individual but the whole community in Exile. That, yes, this is not what you wanted. This doesn’t look like what you thought it would look like. But I still have plans to use you. I am not done with you yet. I want you to flourish for God’s Kingdom.

Through all the years later, do we hear God’s voice saying this to us today?

What so many want to hear from God is - “I will take you back to the way things were!” But what God is actually saying to us is, “Settle in, get used to your new reality, the world in which I have put you - and - do not give up hope. Cause I can use you in any and all circumstances. I have plans for you that you can’t even begin to conceive of yet! Cause it’s a new thing that we will do - and let me tell you this, you will flourish.”

People of Boardman United Methodist Church, you will flourish.

And so, allow yourself to dream. Allow yourself to pray for the future of this congregation. Allow yourself to open up your heart and mind to the new thing that God will do within, through, and for us.

Every week of this sermon series I have talked a little bit about the history of the song we will sing after the sermon and how it relates to our theme. Today following the sermon we will sing Trust & Obey. The hymn was inspired when the composer, Daniel B. Towner, was performing and sharing music at a Dwight L. Moody revival service in 1886. In his own words: “Mr. Moody was conducting a series of meetings in Brockton, Massachusetts, and I had the pleasure of singing for him there. One night a young man rose in a testimony meeting and said, ‘I am not quite sure—but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.’ I just jotted that sentence down, and sent it with a little story to the Rev. J. H. Sammis, a Presbyterian minister. He wrote the hymn, and the tune was born.”

How powerful of a statement is that - “I’m not quite sure - But I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.”

Can you imagine if every person in this church had that attitude toward what God will do with them and with this congregation. We don’t have to know exactly what the future will look like in order to trust God, obey God, and dream along with God. We simply have to be open, not give up hope, and keep on dreaming.

So today, during the Prayers of the People, I will give you time to write on the green note card in your bulletin. On that note card I’d like you to write a dream you have for the church - it can be as vague or as specific as your dreams are. Your dream can be as big or small or whatever size seems right to you. I only ask that you keep your cards anonymous - don’t write your name on it as I will display them in the narthex next week. More than that, I will share with you what your collective dreams are, share them with the leadership of this church, and I will read over and pray over each one of them.

Because I believe that God is not done with us and God has plans for us to flourish - in this may we trust and obey.

Amen.