Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
We are talking this month about making change in our lives … beginning new journeys.
Many of us have changes we’d like to make in our lives and this is one of the times of the year when we tend to think about them.
Some of us might want to exercise more or lose weight. Some of us might want to stop smoking or drinking or using pornography.
Some of us might want to get new jobs or even new careers.
Some of us might want to fall in love and get married. Some of us might want to get help for our marriage or relationship. We might want to become parents.
We might want to relocate to another part of the country.
We might want to grow spiritually and have a deeper relationship with God.
Lots of changes we might want to make in our lives.
And then sometimes change happens to us whether we want to make changes in our lives or not. Sometimes our new journey is a forced march.
The lab results come back positive. Our spouse or partner doesn’t want to be with us anymore. The company is downsizing.
Or maybe we become a parent and it changes our lives in ways we never expected. Or we’ve succeeded at everything we wanted to do and have lost interest in our vocation. We’d been wanting more intimacy in our life but when we fall in love, suddenly it changes our life in ways we would have never guessed.
Sometimes even good things happening in our lives can take our lives into new directions that change everything.
We are following the story of the journey of the Israelites toward the Promised Land just after they have crossed the Red Sea, just at the very beginning of their new journey, in order to see what we can learn from them about change. They are in the process of a big change from slavery to freedom, from oppression to self-determination, from powerless to responsibility. What can we learn from the Bible’s description of their experience?
Last week we observed the Israelites very upset 45 days into their journey because the food that was available to them on their journey was not the same as the food they were used to back in Egypt and they were afraid that they were going to starve to death. They had to learn that, even if it meant not having meat, onions, garlic, and chocolate, God would provide for them on their journey. It might not be the way it used to be, it might not be the way they wanted it to be, but change would not kill them. They would survive.
Today I’d like us to look at what Moses had to learn as a result of the change in his life.
Moses had been very successful in Egypt. Very successful. He had taken a disempowered, disorganized, passive-aggressive group of oppressed people and he had organized them and empowered them and led them out of slavery. He had led them through the Red Sea. He was leading them on a new journey toward the Promised Land.
What Moses discovered was that what had worked for him and made him highly successful back in Egypt was not working anymore in the new journey he was on.
So Moses did what most of us do when change has come to our lives and what made us successful in the past isn’t working anymore. He kept doing what used to work but wasn’t working any more – only harder.
This is what we do. We keep doing what isn’t working anymore only harder.
Moses’ style – his hands-on, handle every problem himself, tell people what to do and make them do it, micromanaging way of leading-- had been successful back in Egypt.
On this new journey it isn’t working anymore so what does Moses do? He tries to micromanage even more, make every decision himself, he works from daylight past sunset until he is exhausted and everybody else is exhausted as well.
This is what we do when what made us successful in the past isn’t working anymore.
Let me use a purely hypothetical illustration. Say you are a very clear extravert and you are married to a very clear introvert. Let’s say you won her heart by being witty, entertaining and engaging. You made her happy.
Then, let’s say, you get married and now you are living together. When she comes home from work she sometimes seems distracted and unhappy. You won her heart by entertaining her and making her happy. So when she comes home from work unhappy you try harder and harder to engage her and make her happy. She tries to hide from you in her study to get a few minutes peace but you chase after her trying harder and harder to make her happy.
You finally say to her, “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Tell me what is wrong?”
And she says to you, “When I got home the problem was something that happened at work today, but now the problem is that you won’t stop badgering me for five minutes.”
What worked during your courtship may not work during the journey called marriage, and trying harder will only make it worse.
What used to work when we were part of a department of five people may not work anymore when we are part of a department of 40 people. What worked when you were rank and file may not work when you are a supervisor. Trying harder, pushing harder, trying to get more control, will only make it worse.
The international policies that worked during a time of empire may not work during a time of insurgency and only trying harder may make it worse, and isn’t war the ultimate example of trying harder.
Some of you know that my older brother Nevin died this week. He was an army chaplain … a veteran of the War in Vietnam. Nevin was a great guy and I hope you go to our webpage and read the blog I wrote about him.
But there were wounds in Nevin’s life as a result of his experience in combat in Vietnam that never healed.
All week since his death I have frankly just been angry that we have created another generation of combat veteran in two wars because after 9/11 we didn’t know what to do except what we used to work only harder. Shock and awe. Shock and awe. It isn’t working anymore. Doing it harder and harder wouldn’t work anymore. And veterans with PTS and lost limbs are paying the price because we send them into wars to fight in ways that weren’t working anymore only harder.
This is what we do – whatever isn’t working anymore, only harder.
Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Someone else defined neurosis as doing what isn’t working, only harder.
First point, this is what Moses did and what we all do on a new journey … what isn’t working any more, only harder.
The second point is this – Moses was so caught up in the situation, so buried in the situation he was in, that it never occurred to him that what used to work wasn’t going to work anymore no matter how hard he tried. He'd never be able to see it on his own.
He needed someone from outside the situation to help him get perspective.
For Moses it was his father-in-law Jethro. Jethro was a Median priest. He wasn’t even an Israelite. He wasn’t even part of the same religion Moses and the Israelites were part of. He had no shared assumptions, no shared history.
It took someone completely outside the system to say, “Hey, Moses, you keep doing what you are doing, you are going to kill yourself and all the people with you. Instead of more and more micromanaging, you’ve got to give up control and pick some smart people and empower them.”
Moses could have never seen that himself. He needed someone from outside the system to help him see it. He needed a consultant. Jethro was the first consultant.
All of us when change comes into our lives, maybe even the change we’ve been praying for, we need help learning how to live in the new place in which we find ourselves. We all need help when change comes.
We need a consultant, we need a therapist, we need a spiritual guide, we need a small group, we need a prayer partner. Some of the best money I ever spend in my life was to hire consultants and therapists … someone from outside the picture who can see what I, in my trying harder and harder, have been missing.
I want to say one more thing this morning. When the early Christians were trying to understand just who this Jesus who had changed their lives was, they came to the conclusion that he was a consultant sent from heaven to help a humanity who were trying harder and harder and succeeding less and less.
He was the one sent from heaven to teach us that trying harder and harder to follow the law so that we might justify ourselves wasn’t working …. That what we needed rather than trying harder was grace … accepting love as a gift, not a reward.
Giving up our attempt to total control our lives and world and trusting God and others.
Jesus was God’s gift to all humanity to teach us that the way of trying harder isn’t work, but the way of love will.
He can still teach us this today.
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