When Your Faith Fails (New Beginnings UMC)

The slide you see in front of you now is the sermon slide.

I prayed when I prepared this sermon on the topic that I

picked months ago. And then this week happened and,

and I feel like I needed to change the sermon and I have,

oddly enough, the title slide still fits and the scripture

still fits all of the rest of the slides.

Not so much so we won't be looking at those, but I, I felt

the need to revise and change what I was saying today based on

events of this week. And so I'm going to do that

still in the context of Abram and Sarai and and their

experience. I, I will say though, that

because of the changes, this really isn't a kid friendly

sermon. It's not a kid.

You know, it's not like bad for kids to hear, but I apologize.

This, this is really talking to the adults today for so for the

kids, if this is boring for you, I apologize for that.

And I got to get my notes out so that I can get my information

right here this week. But there's a lot, a lot that's

happened this week. And, and, and I'm going to talk

about it. And some of what I'm talking

about is very controversial. Some of it I don't think it is.

And, and as usual, I'm going to try real hard not to get

partisan, but to kind of live in, in the, the cognitive

dissonance, cognitive dissonance of, of competing thoughts and

ideas. And, and I'm going to invite you

to join me in that as the time goes on here today.

But this week has been tough for a lot of folks.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk left many people reeling.

And, and one of the things I've always known, I've known of

Charlie Kirk for years. I've, I've watched his videos

before. I'm, I'm not a, I've never was a

student of Charlie Kirk, never, never like, but I'm, I'm aware

of him and have listened to some of his things over the years.

I'd always knew he was controversial, never realized

just how controversial he was. And until this week and it but

many men, I never realized, frankly, how popular he was

until this week. And many, many folks rocked and

shaken by his assassination. But his wasn't the only death

and in the only act of violence, yet another school shooting,

this time in Denver. Thank God no one was killed, but

two people were wounded. And coming just on the heels of

the shooting at the the School of the Annunciation up in in

Minnesota, where people were killed and many more were

wounded, his wasn't the only political assassination this

year. It was this week, but not this

year in the United States. And, and again, I got to get my

notes out because names sometimes fail to stick with me.

Yes, Hortman, thank you. Melissa Hortman and her husband

killed in their home. A A up in in Minnesota as well.

There were other in recent years and months, attacks and

assassinations. Daniel Andrel, who was a

district the son of District Judge Esther Salas, was shot and

killed in their home in New Jersey, an attack motivated for

political and ideological reasons.

The the killing, assassination, execution of the CEO of United

Health Group for political and ideological reasons.

State Senator John Hoffman shot and wounded in his home

alongside of his wife in a political assassination, Of

course, 2 assassination attempts against Donald Trump.

And in addition to Governor Josh Shapiro, whose residence was

firebombed while his family, he and his family were asleep.

Politically motivated. Those aren't all of them, but

there's some of them. And it's part of the reality

that we live in and, and all of these things that are happening,

all of this violence. Well, I think I, I didn't even

mention one that in some respects, I, I don't know, it's

how do you put gradations of horribleness on violence and

murder? But, and maybe this one had such

an impact because of the video that was associated with it that

I've seen, which is is the young Ukrainian woman.

And again, I got to look at my notes to say her name properly.

Irina Zarutska, maybe I still didn't say it properly.

I don't know if any of you saw that video.

She's a refugee fleeing from the war in Ukraine and came to the

United States and had refugee status and was brutally and

senselessly murdered on a train in North Carolina.

And, and there's video. Isn't this an awful thing?

I, I don't know the fact that we can now watch videos of murder,

actual murders online. And, and the video I saw, thank

God, doesn't show the actual murder, but it's, it's they had

security cameras on the in the train car and, and she gets

stabbed and the man who stabs her walks the length of the

train car with the knife, the bloody knife in his hand,

dripping a trail of blood. You can see it.

And there's almost no response. And I don't know if I'm missing

something. I didn't do a whole lot more

digging on it. And, and I'm and maybe a lot of

I'm not sure things happened later, but maybe it was just

that she was so far back in the train that no one realized what

had happened. But there was no one seem to

respond to her. These kind of things in this

this violence in the culture is an invitation from the world

around us for us to stop living by faith and to start living by

fear. It is an invitation to circle

the wagons and draw the swords and load the guns and defend

your own and the heck with everybody else.

It is an invitation to say maybe God even to say that either God

is not good or God is not powerful.

If all of this kind of stuff is happening and we're going to

have to protect and defend ourselves, it's that kind of

invitation. Events like this invite us to

live in fear rather than in faith.

And that's exactly what Abram and Sarai did in the passage

that John read this morning. We've seen over the course of

their life and their call from God that Abram and Sarai have

have at times acted with tremendous faith and and amazing

courage, trusting in God to provide them for them, to guard

for guard them, to care for them, and to deliver on His

promise that He would give them a child and through them a great

nation would be born. But something happened, and

maybe it was as simple as the passage of time without the

promise being fulfilled. And now they're both 10 years

older, or 15 older than they used to be, and there's still no

baby. And they can't imagine how God

can keep His word. They can't see how it's

possible. Sarai is past childbearing

years. They knew then, as we know now,

that change has happened in a woman's body and a woman reaches

a point when she can no longer bear children.

And they knew that had happened to Sarai.

And they're like, how can God do this?

And in fear, Fear for their legacy, fear for their future.

It's the children that's supposed to take care of them as

they are no longer able to take care of themselves.

Fear that the promise that God made wouldn't be fulfilled, that

God couldn't or wouldn't do what they said he would do.

Or maybe that they misunderstood God.

And maybe God really wants them to take care of this.

And they decide God's not going to do it.

God can't do it. We've got to do something.

We will take care of this on our own.

And so Sarah took her slave, a woman that she owned and she

controlled, and sent her to have sex with her husband so that

Sarai would then claim the child is her own.

And Abraham agreed to it. They did great harm, not just to

themselves and not just to their descendants, but to Hagar and

Ishmael in particular. Amazing horror.

We are told nothing about Hagar's level of consent in

this, because in that day and age, question of a slave's

consent was not on anybody's mind.

She had no freedom not to consent.

And the harm they did that day is incalculable to Hagar and

Ishmael and their descendants. But they did it.

They did it because they lost faith.

Their faith failed and they acted out of fear, and in so

doing they harmed themselves and more so Hagar and Ishmael.

This is what happens when we act out of fear rather than out of

faith, when we lose confidence in God to keep his promises,

when we lose confidence that God really is sovereign and really

is in control and really is over it all.

Now I'm, I'm going to talk a little bit about Charlie Kirk in

all of this. And I'm going to say upfront

that I know there are radically different views about Charlie

Kirk and I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a

minute. But, but starting off, I want to

say I'm not here to lionize or canonize Charlie Kirk.

And I'm not here to condemn or revile Charlie Kirk.

But his death has had such a cultural impact.

I want to talk about that and and and love him or hate him or

indifferent toward him. One of the things that he said

and he said more than once and I've heard the video, I've never

never saw him in person. I've only ever known him through

his videos is that when we stop talking is when bad things

happen. Charlie Kirk's stated mission is

to to to he he believed himself. He, he identified as a follower

of Jesus Christ, as a Christian and, and someone who was going

to zealously pursue the truth and engage in conversation and

debate. And his MO was to go to places

particularly that were hostile to him, particularly college

campuses, and engage young adults in debate.

And he would say, if you think I'm wrong, come up and convince

me. And he would have debates, open

mic debates with people that would come and talk to him.

And, and he did that because he felt and he believed that

talking and debating difficult and controversial topics was

important and necessary. And if we reached a point where

he said, if we can't talk anymore, that's when bad things

will really happen, when we can't talk.

And that's what he did, that's what he did, and that's what he

was doing when he was shot and killed.

Kirk leaned heavily into the 1st Amendment, freedom of speech,

press and religion. The Bill of Rights, including

the First Amendment, I believe, have very solid biblical basis.

In the simplest terms, God left people free to do stuff, even

bad stuff, and government and society is better when we leave

people free to do certain things, even if that freedom

means that they're going to do bad things, particularly in the

area of speech, that we leave people as free as possible.

That's what Kirk leaned into going to say up front.

I'm a fan of the 1st Amendment. I think freedom of speech is

important. I think it's a culturally good

thing, even though it is at times a very painful and

difficult thing. I need to say this as well,

though, that the Bill of Rights is not the Bible.

I think you can make a strong case that there is biblical

foundation for the Bill of Rights, but the Bill of Rights,

or but I'm sorry, the Bible has precious little to say about

rights. The Bible is far more concerned

about responsibilities. The Bible is far more concerned

about God's people learning not what their rights are, but what

their responsibilities are. And sometimes we have to

surrender our rights in order to do the responsible thing that

take on the responsibilities that God has given us.

And what are those responsibilities?

One of those responsibilities is truth.

Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life.

And we as church, as followers of God, we have a responsibility

to seek truth, to pursue truth, to elevate truth, even when that

truth is painful and difficult and hard to hear and hard to

accept and hard to believe. Now, that's always easier to do

when it's the other person that finds the truth hard to hear,

hard to accept and hard to believe.

That's when it's easy. Everybody loves that, but it's

just as important, even more important to be willing to

pursue and hear and receive the truth when it's difficult for

us. I've been confronted with that

again this week in some very real ways from some very loving

friends. And, and I'm in the middle.

I'm going to switch from preaching mode to testifying

mode and just tell you a little bit about my experience this

week. Before that, though, one more

general truth. One of the things I'm hearing

and I began to find myself repeating in my head and even to

other people is that something seems to have changed in our

culture. Something seems different with

these deaths and with this violence and with these

assassinations. And a friend of mine sent me a

link to a an independent journalist.

I don't, I had not experienced with him before.

He's an independent author and journalist whose name is Where'd

It Go in my notes? Where is he?

Keith Boinken. I don't know if you know him.

I haven't heard of him before. I'm going to listen to him.

Click the follow button. I'm going to listen to him

again. He pointed this out that none of

this is new in the United States, and he's absolutely

right. Like it or dislike it, hate this

truth or not, the fact is, is violence is in our DNA in the

United States of America. Our nation was born out of

violence. The violence of genocidal wars

against the native populations, The violence of a a rebellion

against the governing authority which was England, the violence

of the Spanish American War, the violence of the War of 1812, the

violence of the French and Indian War, the violence of the

Trail of Tears, and so many other things.

Assassinations are nothing new. There's a lot more.

I know we've had more than just Abraham Lincoln and John F

Kennedy, but I'm not a good enough in American history to

tell you all of them. But Abraham Lincoln and John F

Kennedy assassinated tremendous civil rights leaders like Martin

Luther King Junior and Malcolm X assassinated the terrible

violence of lynchings. Violence is in our DNA.

This is not new, and Boykin makes the point that I think

he's absolutely right that until we're honest about these things

with ourselves, we really never have a chance to heal from them

and move on and get past the violence.

So this is nothing new. Some other truths I'm confronted

with. Made a post about Charlie Kirk.

I, I, I have listened to his videos.

I knew some I, I, I, I knew he was popular.

I knew he was controversial. I did not realize how popular,

how controversial. Made a post with what I thought

was a relatively innocuous compliment toward Charlie Kirk.

He says, I, I, I'm not going to get in.

What are you, what I believe or don't believe?

I'm not going to get into today on, on Kirk himself, but I made

what I thought was a relatively innocuous compliment and

discovered it was not relatively innocuous.

And I, I don't have enough followers to have anything go

viral, but I have enough followers that are sufficiently

diverse in their ideological viewpoints that I had a little

mini firestorm right there on my Facebook page and a lot of, a

lot of hard feelings. But I, I, I noticed a pattern

and, and, and I noticed that there was a whole diverse group

of people that were angry about what I posted.

White, black, gay, straight, male, female.

It seemed that the people that were pleased with what I posted

were they were male and female, but we're all white and as far

as I know all straight. That's not true.

That's not true. I'll take that back.

Not all straight, but I did notice this, that every single

one of my black friends, and by the grace of God and the

patience of a lot of great folks of color, I have, I have a lot

of black folks that that claim me as friend.

And I then and every single one of my black friends that

responded to it, responded to it negatively.

And by the grace of God, I've learned to see that those kinds

of patterns are important. See, one of the things we have a

responsibility for is truth. Another thing we have a

responsibility to do is to listen, is to listen.

And, and I've had some folks over the years teach me that

that because I'm a white guy who grew up where I grew up, I have

certain blinders. There's certain things that I'm,

I'm naturally don't see or find more difficult to see and

perceive and recognize. And, and I have noticed that

that when, when, when predominantly white on this side

and predominantly black on this side on a, on a controversial

political topic, that there's something going on than just the

topic. That, that, that there's,

there's, there's a racialization of something that's happened

here. And some of those black friends

of mine reached out to me off of the Facebook news feed.

We've had direct conversation and communication, text

messages, those kinds of things. And we'll have some, some other

kinds of conversation going forward.

And, and I began to hear from them.

And and by the grace of God, I'm I'm trying to listen.

Some of them will tell you I'm not listening hard enough.

I'm trying and, and this dynamic developed that that is, is has

left me in a in an uncomfortable position.

I'm not looking for sympathy. This is not a plea for pity or

sympathy. Don't hear that just description

of reality, but it's a position that I hate being in.

But I think God wants us all to be in regularly.

And that's a position of cognitive dissonance.

See, here's here's where I am with this right now.

I've got people that I know well and that I know that they're

honorable. I know that they're intelligent.

I know that they're faithful. I know that they are filled with

goodwill toward fellow human beings and that they see Charlie

Kirk as an honorable, faithful, decent human being out doing the

work of God. And I have friends that are

honorable, intelligent, faithful, goodwilled people that

have goodwill toward their fellow human beings that look

and listen to Charlie Kirk and are absolutely convinced he's

out there doing the work of the devil.

And, and, and I know neither sets of people are crazy.

I know they're neither ignorant. I know neither set of group

people is faithless. And, and, and I'm going and both

kind of want me to pick a side and, and right now I'm just

stuck in the middle again. This is not poor pity for me,

but what do we do in that kind of situation?

What do we do if, if, whichever side I pick, the other feels

like they are being repudiated and rejected?

Now, here's the thing. I think that's where God wants

us. I think listening like that and

here, because I can hear where these folks are coming from and

I can understand where these folks are coming from, and I can

hear where these folks are coming from, and I can

understand where these folks are coming from.

And, and, and, and I think that's where God wants us far

more often than we want to be there.

Cognitive dissonance is a very unpleasant place to be.

It's a very necessary place to be.

I think Jesus demonstrated that in his own inner circle, his 12

followers that he called his disciples and his apostles cause

one of them was Simon the Zealot.

The left and right here are in no way correlated to where I was

before, so it's not like these groups are yet OK.

Simon the Zealot was a political revolutionary.

The Roman Empire would have called him, and using today's

terms, a terrorist who was engaged in political violence

against the Roman Empire. That's what the Zealots did to

get the Romans out of Israel. Matthew was a tax collector,

making his living working for the Roman Empire, taking money

from his people and giving it to the Romans, and that's how he

got paid. And Jesus had them both at the

table. He had them both at the table

and the only thing that they seem to have in common was

Jesus. And what, what I, what I find

tremendously frustrating about that is we're never told how

they or whether they resolved that.

We're never told that, that Simon and Matthew work things

out and they became friends and Simon changed this way.

And we're never any of that. We just know they were both

there, part of Jesus's inner circle, and I got to think the

other disciples were looking around going man, what do you I

think we're I've got it. Maybe some of them were taking

bets. What do you think?

Simon's going to stab Matthew in the back first?

Or will Matthew turn Simon into the Roman authorities first?

I'll wage you 2 shekels and a piece of fish.

They would have all been aware of this tension.

They would have all been there in the middle of that in some

way, shape or form. Pastor friend of mine used to

say, and he still says that to be follower of Jesus.

If we're really serious about it, it means that we become

comfortable being uncomfortable. And that means getting out of

our silos and really listening to people who are different than

we are and trying our best to hear them and understand, even

if we can't come to agreement. And we have a responsibility to

do that. We have a responsibility to

truth. We have a responsibility to

listen. And ultimately, we have a

responsibility to love. And we can't love without

listening and without truth. This is this is the story of

Hagar that we see here. Hagar, the very definition of an

invisible person in the world. No one who saw her running away

and saw her in the streets are the would have cared.

She was nothing in the eyes of most people.

A runaway slave, a pregnant woman who's run off, no value,

no space. Why even care?

Why be concerned? Just don't just walk away.

That has nothing to do with you. This is not your problem.

She is not your problem, she is nothing you even need to be

worried about. But God saw her of all the

billions of people. God saw her in her situation, in

her need. And God, knowing everything

about her, took time to listen and say, what are you doing?

Where are you coming from? Where are you going?

Giving her time and space and opportunity to tell her story.

No argument, no judgement, no condemnation, no

rationalization, no excuse making for anybody else involved

in all the people that heard her.

God saw her and God listened to her and God blessed her.

God is so faithful. Abraham and Sarai screwed up so

bad in this, and God is so faithful that God gave her the

promise, the same promise almost, not exactly, but close

to the same promise that he gave Abraham.

Don't worry, Hagar, your son will be the father of a nation,

a great nation, a powerful nation.

God blessed her, God's listened to her, God saw her, God

listened to her, and God blessed her.

And this is what God calls us to do as well, to listen, to love,

to bless, to do for others what we would want them to do for us,

even if that makes us vulnerable.

And in all of this, all of this truth, all of this listening,

all of this loving so that we can, we can Foster and nurture

life in this world, Jesus said I am the way and I am the truth.

He also said I am the life. And God gave life to Hagar, God

gave life to Ishmael. God gave them a future, God gave

them a hope, God gave them a legacy.

God brought life into the situation.

He even went back and worked with Abram and Sarai and they

got and got them back on the right track too.

And we're called to do the same, to find ways to bring life into

it. I don't know how that's going to

work out with some of my friends.

I, I hope we can, I hope we're able to work it out.

I used to when I was younger, I prioritized being right over

friendships and relationships. I've been, God's been working

with me on that, working really hard to prioritize friendships

and relationships over being right.

I don't know how all of this is going to work out.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I fear I might late lose a friend or two.

Again, I'm not looking for pity. I'm just telling my story.

I'm certainly not looking for praise because I'd stepped on a

landmine or I threw a grenade. I had, you know, brought this on

myself, but to find a way for life in all of this, to see the

space, the light, to listen, to attend, to love and see how life

can grow up and out and through. And in all of this, my daughter

is she is wonderful. Some of you've met her.

She's, you know, doing some neat stuff right now, including

teaching Hebrew grammar. She's very faith and church

minded. She grew up Methodist because

Amy and I were Methodist. She's now Anglican.

This is cool. She said something when we were

there visiting her that that I that's beautiful.

She's talking about redemption and, and she said these bad

things that happen to have a a bad thing in our life be

redeemed. It it doesn't I'm I'm I'm

leading up to what she said. Given you context, that doesn't

mean that God erases it. He doesn't.

Jesus had scars after his crucifixion and and she's been

through stuff and and she's close to a lot of other people

have been through a lot of stuff and she was talking about

redemption. She said when God redeems, he

doesn't make it such that the bad thing didn't happen.

When God redeems, he makes it so that you are better off after it

than you were before. Somehow God does that, that God

makes it better after even than it was before.

And God did that with Hagar, and he did that with Ishmael.

God did that with Abram, and he did that with Sarai.

And God can do that with all of this turmoil and violence that

we're facing right now. Not that we pretend it's

insignificant, not we print, it's unimportant, not that we

pretend that it doesn't matter, but somehow God is going to make

it better after than it was before.

And this is the hope and the promise that we have.

And because that hope and promise, we don't need to circle

the wagons, we don't need to draw the swords, we don't need

to get defensive. We don't need to just protect

our own and forget about everybody else.

We can live lives of love and truth, listening and caring,

pursuing relationship over ideology.

And we can be vulnerable while we're doing all of that because

we can trust in God to redeem whatever happens, to care for us

and for them through that, as we seek love and we seek

relationship and we seek compassion in an incredibly

diverse world. When our faith fails, when our

faith fails and we begin to act out of fear, we hurt ourselves

and we hurt the peace people around us.

But when we can live in faith, trusting in God that He is

sovereign and that He can and will redeem anything and

everything we might encounter. When we live in faith, we open

the door for the truth of God's love.

We open the door to listen in love.

We open the door to build life with others instead of death.

In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.