A Place of Holy Mystery

BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 29 JANUARY 2022 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

Once upon a time, I was teaching a class of ninth graders about arguments. We were working through definitions of important terms, and we had spent an entire class period talking about the problems inherent in the concepts of “facts” and “opinions.” I’ve shared versions of that lecture many times here at Revolution, so I’m not going to retread that ground tonight, but the basic point was that the line between these two concepts is much blurrier than we might think, and when we get right down to it, there are good reasons to be deeply skeptical of the things we often feel very certain about in our lives. For the entire class period, I was also being observed by the dean of curriculum at the school. He and I had a lot of ups and downs in our relationship, and I was secretly pretty nervous about this observation, especially given the content of the class that day. In any case, after doing a lot of difficult work with the students for an hour, we reached the end of the lesson, and I closed by asking them to consider a question: “Is there any real way to know what is True?” They didn’t have to write an essay or anything–I just wanted to start our next class with that question: “Is there any real way to know what is True?” The bell rang and the students filed out. After the last ninth grader left, the dean came up to the front of the room where I was standing, and I’ll never forget what happened: he frowned a bit, looked me in the eye, and said, “a student should never leave your classroom confused.” Then he walked out. 

That evaluation did not go well. 

The reason I’ve never been able to let this story go is because, even after thinking on it and thinking on it, I’m still convinced that confusion, when it’s tied into a process of challenge and follow-through, is actually an incredibly important part of how we learn. It can be hard and even unsettling to face questions like the one I asked those students that day! But the consequence of not facing them–of living with shallow assumptions about what you know and why you think you know it–is brittleness in the things you believe. 

I bring this up because this week, we are continuing in our series (Un)Certainty by moving from the personal ground we have covered in the first two weeks to the communal ground we want to think about before the series concludes. In Week 1, we talked about the danger of waiting on feelings of certainty in our lives, especially when it comes to taking a chance on religious faith. The point of that message was that seeking out and depending on absolute certainty before we take uncomfortable and difficult steps in our lives is really a way of stalling out our decision making, and it leads to simply continuing to place all of our trust, all of our confidence, in ourselves. I talked about my decision to quit smoking at the end of last year, and how I realized that all the time I was spending hemming and hawing about whether quitting was worth it really just amounted to more time doing what I wanted. To actually see change, I had to decide: is my confidence best placed in myself…or in someone or something else? 

Then, last week, we talked about how we move forward from a decision to take our confidence out of ourselves and put it elsewhere. Looking specifically at Christian faith, we asked: how does confidence in Jesus actually grow? What we discovered was that it grows slowly and steadily as we let go of the things we depend on for control…and see how Jesus is faithful to us, step by step. When I stop looking to money as a way of controlling my life and start to follow Jesus’s example by living generously, I’m presented with all these little moments to pause and ask: is this working? Does my life feel more or less full? Do I see fruit from this? And if the answer is yes, I can move forward another step with a growing sense of confidence in where Jesus is leading me…and in Jesus as a leader in the first place. 

Tonight, we’re shifting our focus to what happens when an entire community of people begin taking these small, careful, and even experimental steps along the same path: what does a church seeking confidence, a church embracing uncertainty, look like? And what might the benefit be to a larger city or a larger community if it is home to such a thing? In a nutshell, here’s what I think we’re going to find: I think a church embracing uncertainty becomes an oasis of mystery and wonder in a desert of arrogance and pride. A church community has both an opportunity and a responsibility to proclaim the existence of a God-sized God and to foster a different attitude about what it means to live well in the world. Churches can remind the world of the scale of eternity and the unfathomable gift of God’s attention and love. Churches can make a case for the necessity of justice, and they can give permission for grief and lament when justice is denied. The role of a church is important in the world, in our world…but in order to embrace that role in the ways we are meant to, we must stop pretending we’re okay, or that we have it all figured out. 

In the first century, as Christian communities spread outward from Jerusalem, where Jesus was killed and then rose from the dead, to areas even beyond the traditional borders of Jerusalem in Europe and Asia, they, too, ran into the temptation to offer easy answers, to offer certainty, in place of the mysteries of God. And it fell upon the early leaders in the Church, such as the apostle Paul, to try and steer them back to a place of wonder and uncertainty. There are a lot of places in Scripture we could go to talk about this, but I want to center on one letter, from Paul, to a specific Christian outpost in Asia. 

The church in Colossae, like most predominantly non-Jewish early churches, faced significant pressure to integrate their faith in Jesus as the Son of God with the conventional polytheistic religions of the day. This would mean placing Jesus within the pantheon of Roman gods as another–or even a favorite–god to worship. I recognize we don’t face exactly the same pressure in our day as Christians, but there is a kind of overlap here, as the root of this temptation was less about believing polytheism and more about categorizing and labeling the strangeness of Jesus himself: if Jesus is a god, we can take all the things we already believe about other gods and use them to make more sense of him! But in his letter to the Colossians, Paul instructs them not to do this and instead to embrace the mystery Jesus represents. If God actually is God, Paul reasons, we should know better than to try and simplify or summarize Him down. Instead, we should wonder at how an infinite God was fully present in Christ…and then wonder all the more at how Christ is present within us! Here’s how Paul puts all of this: 

My goal is that [all the regional churches] may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. 

Colossians 2:2-10

There are three parts of that passage I want us to dig into. The first is in verses 2 and 3, which state that Paul’s goal is for the churches to have the “full riches of complete understanding”…which I’ll admit seems like a message that is at odds with my point! If the goal is “complete understanding,” what’s so wrong with trying to get to the bottom of who Jesus is, or even of trying to kind-of “bullet point” your faith: shouldn’t we be able to do this, if the goal is “complete understanding”? But Paul continues, saying that the actual state of completion isn’t quantitative, meaning that you have all the data, but qualitative, meaning that you are achieving the fullness of an experience. Paul says that the point of understanding is “that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” I’m not going to get bogged down in the Greek here to prove the point, but I would ask that you take my word for it that the present tense in this verse is no accident: the goal is to know the present mystery of God, as it is still being revealed by a living Jesus, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That is to say, Jesus didn’t appear once in the past in order to spill all the beans about God. Rather, Jesus is still living, and through a relationship with him, one has direct access to the bottomless mysteries of God. The point isn’t finishing the God Encyclopedia! The point is being fully and intimately connected to God through His Son. That’s a bit abstract, so I’ll summarize our first point here: the goal of the church is to help folks plug into God. Jesus is the way this happens…and we, as a church, proclaim and demonstrate that Jesus is someone with whom you can actually have a relationship. You can talk to him; he can talk to you. You can get to know his heart, and his character. And your confidence in him can grow over time. 

So, then what? Paul challenges the notion that being a Christian is something you simply sign up for! This is, in my view, the most dangerous temptation churches give into: in a desire to make becoming a Christian as easy and appealing as possible, we act as if a prayer and a dunk in the tub simply moves a person from Column A, which is for hellbound demon-lovers, to Column B, which is for heavenbound saints. “Which column do you want your name to be in?” But when we do this, we sell Jesus woefully, woefully short. His desire isn’t that we join his team…his desire is that we know him, and let him more deeply know us. Paul writes it like this:

just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

Colossians 2:6-7

To “receive Christ Jesus as Lord” means exactly what it says: the first step in building a church, especially in non-Jewish cities like Colossae, is to set yourself up somewhere in the town square and proclaim that there’s a new King in charge, and you should hurry and get on board with him before he comes to check in. When folks were stirred by the apostles’ messages about what kind of King Jesus was–a King of love and mercy; a King with compassion for the poor–many people were eager to pledge their allegiance. This is what Paul means by “receiving Christ Jesus as Lord.” But if a person’s goal is just to get on Jesus’s good side, Paul says they’re missing the point: Jesus is already here, and you are invited to live in him, to be rooted and built up in him, to be strengthened in your faith and connection to the kind of life God intends for you. It’s not just about allegiance; it’s about learning to belong in God’s Kingdom. To summarize the second point, the work of the church is to foster deeper relationships between people and their King.

And then finally, Paul instructs the church about the ways the church must differ from the religious institutions which surround it. He says, “see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” He is referring here to the cultural temptation to boil any religion down to its philosophical core, common in Hellenistic or Greek-influenced cultures: “don’t let other philosophers simplify Jesus for you…and don’t try to simplify Jesus for them!” This is human wisdom you’re chasing. But if God is really God, shouldn’t He eclipse what philosophers can know? You can learn about Him…but you can’t hope to contain him! 

Man, as a pastor, I feel this temptation on a weekly basis! When we get to these teaching times each Saturday, I want more than anything in the world to finally summarize who Jesus is and what God is up to in the world in such a short, memorable phrase that everybody here will go “Aha! I get it! That’s Christianity!” Each week, I give myself 7 days to come up with such a miracle, and then 30 minutes to spit it out. But this verse reminds me that this is precisely not what a church should be doing! My goal isn’t to simplify, or to strip the Bible down into less. My goal is supposed to be to see the Bible as an arrow pointing to more. Paul says the only person or thing to ever summarize the fullness of God is Jesus Himself: “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form…and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.” What if we paused on just that point? The infinite greatness of God was miraculously contained in the person of Jesus–who ate and drank, made friends and enemies, performed miracles and died, by human hands, on a cross. The wholeness of God died there. Paul says this is a “mystery,” and he’s right…but not in the “whodunnit?” sense, where the riddle gets solved in the end. Rather, Jesus is a mystery in the most grand and cosmic sense: he is a being in whom there is fundamentally more at work than we have the ability to hold…or boil down. 

But we fundamentally and absolutely do not treat Jesus like this in the American church. In what I think is often a desire to “help God seem relatable,” we treat Jesus like the most simple and obvious things: he is God’s loving arms, wrapped around the world; he is the sacrificial lamb, killed on behalf of all us sinners; he is our Jiminy Cricket-type spirit-friend, here to give us little blessings and to keep us company when we’re lonely. We want so much to have the right metaphor for Jesus, and in search of it, we run away from any sense that there might be a part of Jesus we’re not capable of having. That he might actually be too much for us. We prefer a Jesus who comes into our lives to help us out of trouble. 

We prefer stories where we get to stay the main character. 

We don’t like to leave the classroom confused. 

But mystery is part of the point. The witness of the church is the God-ness of God. That’s the third thing we see here, I think: just as Jesus is somehow home to the fullness of something impossible, the church is meant to be a home to that fullness, too. We’re not able to fully understand this. We’re not meant to know how to boil it down for easy consumption, to make it sing-able in a worship song. We’re supposed to be a testimony to the impossible, to the unimaginable. And we’re called to this because the world needs it. This whole time, the world has preferred a version of God that helps to explain us: why we’re here, who we are, what we’re meant for. But the truth is that we exist in order to testify to the nature and the mystery of Him: we feel love in a way that overwhelms us, but is just a fraction of the Love of God. We sense justice, but in a way that barely imitates the righteous character of God. We build communities and cities and nations, but in ways that are like sandcastles compared to the Kingdom of God. The point isn’t that we should feel small or pitiful or insignificant: the point is that in us, the mystery of God dwells. 

So, as a church, our calling is to hold onto and embrace that mystery. To seek it out, and to live in the midst of it. When we do that, we bring a bit of its light into our world, and we have this chance, as a church, to say to the world around us, “Hey! That sense you have that there must be more–that people and jobs and governments aren’t enough, that we are just the tiniest parts of something bigger than we can see or understand–that sense is right! Come join us as we commit ourselves to that mystery! Help us see how much more deeply we can know it, if we seek it together! Help us pour out the beauty and the love of it in the world, as we experience and discover it, so that we’re all richer for it!” 

Perhaps that’s too abstract, but for this one week, I don’t think we should apologize for that. This one week, I think it’s best to walk away with a question instead of an answer: “If God is here, what on Earth is going to happen?” The goal isn’t to figure out the right answer; in that sense, this isn’t “homework.” Rather, let’s just sit with it for a minute and see if we can’t begin to see a bit more than we could see when we came in this evening: if God is here, what…on Earth…is going to happen?

In Search of Confidence, Part 2: Letting Go

BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 22 JANUARY 2022 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

Tonight, we’re continuing in the second week of our new series, (Un)Certainty. Last week, we started this series–and, in fact, started our year–by looking at the difference between certainty and confidence. We said that certainty is paradoxical: we put tremendous value on certainty, on being sure, in our culture…and yet, we live in a time when certainty seems deliberately hard to find. As we dug into that, we started to uncover that certainty can feel like a basic need…but in truth, it’s a mask for a desire for safety and control. So, when we consider that the world our God made seems designed to frustrate that desire, to give us so little certainty, we’re forced to rethink things: how can we square ourselves with a loving God who won’t let us know everything, or feel safe on our own? The answer we began to wrestle with is that perhaps we’re not intended to find safety and security on our own; perhaps we’re made not for certainty, but for confidence. 

This year, we want to spend our time during the teaching portions of our services each week keeping that wrestling match going: what is confidence? How can we have more of it? How can we put more of our trust in God…in a way that doesn’t demean or cheapen our value, as bearers of God’s image? Our hope is that we emerge from this year with a greater and deeper confidence not just in God’s authority, but also in God’s love…and His ability to equip us to be people who can share His heart with others. 

To that end, our question for today is: how does confidence grow? And the answer we’re going to find is: curiously, faithfully,…and sacrificially.

There’s a story in the Bible that gets at all of this, and you can find it in the tenth chapter of the gospel of Mark. Jesus and his disciples are making their way from Galilee, a more rural region of Israel in the north, to Judea proper, where the capital city of Jerusalem is found. As they walk, many people come out each day to meet them, to hear Jesus speak, and to see Jesus work miracles. We pick up in verse 17, which reads

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. 

“One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is  to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” Then Peter spoke up: “We have left everything to follow you!” 

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and, in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Mark 10:17-31

This story is commonly referred to as the story of the “rich young ruler”–although the age of the man isn’t clear, and we don’t know about his wealth until after he exits the stage. But in any case, the basics of what we see here are that a man calls Jesus a “good teacher,” and then he asks Jesus a question: what do I need to do to earn eternal life? On the surface, it’s a reasonable thing to wonder, and Jesus is the right person to ask: he has been talking all throughout his journey about the Kingdom of God, what it will be like, and how folks can be a part of it. But there’s a catch to how the man frames his question that Jesus picks up on: he wants to know what he must do.

We often give this character in Scripture a hard time, but in the context of Judaism–a religion with a long history of people agreeing to covenant relationships with God and then letting down their ends of the bargain–it’s not a ridiculous ask, and Jesus doesn’t immediately criticize him. Instead, Jesus gives the man the “right” answer, which is to obey and keep the Law, or the Ten Commandments. The man seems to have anticipated this response, and so he’s quick to say something amazing: he tells Jesus he’s already done this. Check! 

At this point, if you’ve been reading Mark’s gospel, you know this guy just messed up. Jesus has been saying all along that the purpose of the Law is to equip us to see and share the heart of God, its Author. In the verses just before this story, Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce, citing the guidance of Moses, and Jesus tells them that the laws take into account the weaknesses of human beings, but the desire of God for His people is more lofty and uncompromising. In other words: the Law doesn’t save you; the Law puts guardrails on a path aimed at understanding the character and the love and the will of God. So, the rich young ruler is missing this point. He’s kept the letter of the Law…but missed its purpose. 

So, we brace ourselves for Jesus to just totally roast this kid. But what does the gospel say?

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Mark 10:21

So, let’s work this through: how does what Jesus says answer the man’s question? How does it answer his question compassionately, after Jesus has seen him and loved him? There are 2 parts to Jesus’s answer, both of which are necessary for this man to find the hope he is looking for:

First, Jesus tells him to sell everything he has and give it to the poor. Why does he say this? On the surface, it’s certainly a good idea: living generously and helping the poor are good, moral things to do. But of course, Jesus says it because it exposes and pokes a hole in what the man has revealed about himself, which is that his confidence is in his ability to make himself feel safe. He’s mastered the Law, but he hasn’t internalized its purpose, its Spirit: mastering the Law is just another way he is trying to hold onto control–something his material wealth is also doing for him. So, his wealth becomes this analogy for his whole attitude towards life. Jesus gets this, and by telling the man to sell all he has and give it away, he’s trying to point the man towards his key problem, which is that pursuing God’s Kingdom means letting go of your own. Jesus is compassionate in this when he tries to tell the man, “Hey! Your wealth isn’t going anywhere–it transfers! You’ll have treasure in heaven, in God’s Kingdom! But you’ve got to let go of the things that are holding you back here first.” We’re hard on the rich young ruler, but we certainly make the same mistakes, don’t we? We put our trust in our ability to have control–especially when it comes to following all the rules! But is that what the rules are really for? 

The second thing Jesus says is to come and follow him, and again, there is deep love and compassion in this answer: Jesus knows that if the man were to give his sources of safety away, he would need new ones, and Jesus is offering to take care of him! But again, the man’s confidence isn’t really in Jesus, after all (even though he called him a “good teacher”). We get a rare picture in this story of how someone reacts to Jesus’s challenge, and we see the man’s face fall; we see him walk away sad, because he had great wealth. We get the sense that Jesus knew this would happen…and that he is sad, too. And then, Jesus turns to his disciples and tells them, twice, that following is particularly hard for people who have the means to convince themselves that they can create their own safety, create their own certainty. This is our mirror! We need to see ourselves in it, because it’s much easier for those who can clearly see the limits of themselves to put their trust in God. 

Of course, the disciples still struggle. They say, “who then can ever be saved?” Which is an odd response–especially since none of them seem wealthy. But my sense is that it reveals just how much everyone trusted the power of rule-following, the power of self-control, in their day. It also implies that the disciples had a bit of a “health and wealth” mindset about God, and they might have seen wealthy folks as folks with whom God was well pleased! One imagines Jesus was a bit disappointed in them…until our old friend Peter chimes in. Peter seems to have tracked the story a little more closely than his friends, and he is characteristically quick to point out the right answer: he says “we have left everything to follow you!” And Jesus lays out just what this will mean for them: their community, their security–and their suffering–will certainly increase. 

The story of the rich young ruler is about the illusions of safety wealth can create, and it’s about our arrogance when it comes to following the letter of the Law (even when we miss the spirit of it). But it’s also a story that reveals what it is Jesus is trying to show everyone, what he’s trying to offer everyone…and why that can sometimes be such a hard sell. Following involves hardship and danger…which means that prioritizing safety is fundamentally at odds with what Jesus asks.

At the outset today, we framed our question as how does confidence grow?, and I said that the answer we’re going to find is that our confidence grows curiously, faithfully, and sacrificially. Here’s what I meant by that: the root trouble for everyone in the story–the ruler, as well as the disciples–is that they just want to feel safe with God. They want to know that He really does love them, and He really is working out what’s best for them, in the short term and in the long term. For the rich young ruler, safety is something you can create by following the rules and being wise and industrious–by being “wealthy,” in the context of this story. But Jesus points out that this is an illusion: you can’t put confidence in God that you’re already putting in yourself. For the disciples and Peter, though, safety is something you create by backing the right horse and getting the right ending: “Jesus works friggin’ miracles, so if we put in with him, surely we’ll get a heavenly reward.” But Jesus’s interaction with the rich young ruler should challenge them, too, because the safety Jesus was inviting him into wasn’t about outcomes, it was about an ongoing relationship and God’s personal presence with them. If the rich young ruler’s mistake was searching for safety in what he has already done, and if the disciples’ mistake was resting in what Jesus will eventually do, the actual place where confidence seems to grow is in a daily, living relationship walking alongside Jesus right now. It’s not about what you had to do to earn that walk; it’s not about what reward that walk will eventually get you. The confidence, the goodness, is in the walk itself! And walks require those 3 things to grow, to be productive: they require curiosity (to even get them started), faithfulness to the process of them, and acceptance that sacrifice is an inherent part of choosing to do this thing versus something else. Curiosity, faithfulness, sacrifice: these things help our confidence grow, because they keep our confidence living and active–not tied to the past or the future. 

What we need to get at, as we move forward this week, is processing and beginning to trust that growing confidence in our relationship with God–in His love for us, in His commitment to our good and our maturity–is one reason why we are all here. It’s one reason why church is worth doing, why it’s worth committing to. As our confidence grows, two incredible things happen: first, we start to live, little by little, like Kingdom people, which is to say like people who live out the kind of hope and love for others we learn about through our relationship with God. And second, we start to see a community forming around us that encourages and supports that transformation. We become a real church, which is to say that we become a community of people, with Jesus himself as our head, who can offer a taste of God’s Kingdom to the world God loves and is committed to transforming. What I’m learning these days as a pastor is that this isn’t work that starts with me, or with a great mission statement, or with programs…it’s work that starts with us, choosing day in and day out to take the small steps that will help us all grow in our confidence in Jesus: in who he says he is…and in who he says we are. 

That choice is going to look different for each of us, just as it looks different to the rich young ruler than it does to the disciples. But it begins with introspection. It begins by looking at ourselves and how we are feeding our desire for safety, for control…and learning where we can let go, and see where letting go takes us. We won’t always move forward; there will be times when we retreat back into ourselves. But if we keep faith with each other, and have grace for one another, our uncertainty can be transformed from something that terrifies us into something that has promise and power and potential. 

With all of that in mind, I want to take a moment tonight to do something a little bit different–and to encourage anyone watching to do something different, too: I want us to have a real moment of quiet to turn all of this over inside ourselves. The question might seem vague, but I want you to think on it: what is my “wealth”? What am I holding onto for a sense of control or security? Write down what comes to mind, or at least try to name it and hold onto it for yourself. And then, if you’re comfortable with this, I want you to actually close your eyes and pray: “God, what would happen if I set this down? What would happen if I trusted you instead of myself? In your mercy, please tell me…because I know you want me to have confidence in you.” 

In Search of Confidence, Part 1: What’s So Wrong with Certainty?

BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 15 JANUARY 2022 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

Tonight we are kicking off the new year by introducing our teaching theme for 2022, which is (Un)Certainty. In planning for this theme, the preaching team and I thought a lot about the moment we are in right now, and it was important to us that we focus our sermons this year on ways we can best live and respond to where things are, while also continuing to build on where we have been. Last year, we talked all year about hope, and we need to begin by saying that that conversation must continue: the hope we have been exploring–the hope we can find and hold only through our relationship with our God–is and always will be our anchor as Christians. But to say “we have hope” in one moment doesn’t mean that hope won’t waver or tremble in the next! And so, in 2022, we want to spend our time digging more deeply into both the way our hope can grow…and the pitfalls that can hold that growth back. Exploring uncertainty–or more specifically, our desire for certainty, and our discomfort when we can’t find it–is the bedrock of that conversation, and so this is where we will focus our time: what does it mean to be certain, to be sure? Why do we live in a world that seems to have been created to frustrate certainty? And what do God’s patterns of revelation and deliverance…and sometimes, His seeming silence…teach us about how we are meant to be and to live? 

Seeing as how this is the first message of the year, I don’t want to bury the lede! So, here’s what we are going to be wrestling with in 2022: Certainty isn’t the same thing as confidence. And God’s pattern of behavior, in history and in Scripture, calls us to confidence.

2021 was a big year and a tough year for all of us, for a whole host of reasons. But one reason it was both big and tough for me is because it was the year I quit smoking. Some of you know this and some of you don’t, but for essentially all of my adult life, I have been a smoker. The habit never got “out of control,” in that smoking for me never escalated to a pack-a-day habit or a behavior that created big rifts in my relationships. But I spent the last many years as a “one or two cigarettes a day” kind of guy. For a lot of those years, I wrestled with when and how and why I should ever quit: I tried half-heartedly a few times; I did the thing where I would buy a pack, have a cigarette, and throw the rest of the pack away, swearing it would be my last (before caving a few days later). And for most of that time, the biggest obstacle, the biggest justification I used for my behavior, was that I couldn’t really convince myself that it was making any real difference in my life. I didn’t feel short of breath, I wasn’t spending huge amounts of money…nobody was really ever asking me to stop or complaining to me about it. It felt like my little thing: a private vice that I relied on to relax or to process stress. I remember thinking many times that if I knew it was going to kill me when I was 60, I would quit for sure…but did I know that? I would joke that the worst thing would be to go through the trouble of quitting and then end up getting hit by a car: what a waste. And so, I just kept going: cigarette after cigarette, pack after pack, year after year. 

Then, last year on my birthday, I told my family that I didn’t want to be a smoker at 40, so I would take my 39th year to break the habit. After tons of procrastinating and excuses (with a bit of backsliding), it’s happened: last Thursday was my birthday, and the habit is broken. 

But here’s the thing: it sucks. And do you want to know why? Because in those moments where I’m craving a cigarette, all I can think is that I’m still not sure it’s making any difference. That car could still be coming for me…or the cancer cells could already be hiding out in my body. I’ve made a health decision that might never make a difference…and I won’t even really know for 20 more years. Here’s why I’m bringing this up: because this week, I realized that all this time, what I’ve really been wrestling with isn’t smoking, it’s certainty. I would have stopped smoking sooner if I just could have known for sure something bad was on its way. And I’m struggling with having stopped at all because I still don’t know for sure if it’s made any difference. I feel like I would have such an easier time making decisions if life could just give me some data, some clarity, some guarantees about how any of this is going to work out. My parents used to do that: I had rules, and if I broke them, I got consequences. School used to do that: I had assignments, and if I did them, I got good grades. But life doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo: if I just knew what would happen, I would do what I’m supposed to do. 

But what I’ve started to realize lately is that the whole time I’ve been waiting on certainty, I’ve been living in confidence: I might not have known my choices were hurting me…but I was acting as if they wouldn’t. I was putting my trust in myself and, I suppose, in my ability to just “not get sick.” And I’m learning that this is always the choice we are making, every minute of every day: are we placing our confidence in ourselves…or are we trusting someone else? The search for certainty, I think, amounts to little more than a stall tactic. If I can’t be sure that you know what’s best for me…I must know. 

But do I? Our first teaching text for the year gets at just this tension…although I would contend we often miss it when we hear the story. It’s found in the 14th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, and you have likely heard it before: it’s the story where Jesus walks on water and then calls his disciple, Peter, to walk out on the water to Him. Here’s how it goes:

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. 

Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

“Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Matthew 14:22-33

More often than not, when we read this story, we focus on Peter’s fear: he set his eyes on Jesus, he began to do something miraculous…and then he let his concerns for worldly things distract him, and he sank. There’s an easy lesson in that: keep your eyes on Jesus. There are probably a hundred hymns and worship songs that say just that. But I don’t know if that’s the best take away, because it ignores two really important bits of context:

First, Matthew 14 of course comes after Matthew 8, which includes this brief story:

Then [Jesus] got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”

He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

Matthew 8:23-27

What does this story teach? Well, it taught the disciples–including Peter!–that “even the winds and the waves obey” Jesus. So, although when Peter steps out of the boat and sees the wind, he knows Jesus is still in charge. He knows Jesus can calm the waves, just as he once calmed the storm. What he doesn’t know is why Jesus hasn’t done that. He doesn’t know why Jesus is asking him to step out of the boat when there are still waves all over the place. And that erodes Peter’s confidence…specifically because it introduces uncertainty. Can Jesus only do one miracle at a time? Is Jesus setting a trap? Is Jesus a bit aloof, not paying attention to Peter’s fears? After all, he has been away all evening. Peter doesn’t doubt, Peter is afraid…and he has good reason to be! What in the world is God getting him into?

The second bit of context is Peter’s job before he became a disciple. We learn about this even earlier in the gospel of Matthew, in chapter 4:

Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee. He saw two brothers. They were Simon (his other name was Peter) and Andrew, his brother. They were putting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Follow Me. I will make you fish for men!” At once they left their nets and followed Him.

Matthew 4:18-20

I think this tells us two really important things about the story in chapter 14: first, it tells us that Peter must be comfortable on the water. Peter likely knows how to swim! So, sinking–even in waves–isn’t some instant death sentence for him. And second, it tells us that Peter knows boats. He and Andrew are dropping nets from one in the very moment they meet Jesus; Jesus even references it in His recruitment speech. And this, I think, is the key detail. It’s the thing that puts what Jesus has asked Peter to do in its full context: Jesus asks Peter to get out of the boat. He asks him to take an uncertain step in an uncertain environment for an unclear and uncertain purpose away from the very thing he seems to have the most certainty about. Fishermen trust boats! Boats keep them alive; they make work possible. But nobody knows anything about water-walking! Peter is, quite literally, walking from the known…into the unknown.

Let’s look at that passage one more time:

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

“Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

When I quit smoking, I started to realize that I’m always putting my confidence somewhere: I’m always acting on what I believe to be most true, even if I don’t know what is certain. When I was smoking, I was placing my confidence in myself. And now that I’ve quit, I’m placing my confidence in what doctors and researchers are saying will happen if I keep smoking. I was never neutral, hovering somewhere above my life and gathering all the facts before making a decision: I was living by confidence the whole time…and certainty was this never-achievable phantom that I used to ignore that I was really just trusting myself. 

For Peter the fisherman, the boat feels like certainty…but it isn’t: boats sink, boats tip over; we know Peter knows that because Peter was one of the guys freaking out when Jesus calmed the storm before! But fishermen (like the rest of us) are quick to rebuild the illusion of certainty in order to justify self-confidence. Which is exactly what makes what Peter does in this story incredible! When he sees Jesus walking on the water, whose idea is it to step away from that boat? It’s Peter’s! He’s the one who says, “tell me to come to you on the water.” He’s the one who is trying to shift where his confidence lies, from himself to this unbelievable man he has chosen to follow. When Jesus says, “Come,” he gets out of that boat…and he starts to do the impossible. But shortly, his fears start to wear him down–which makes sense, and is an entirely reasonable response! As a result, he begins to sink. But then the big moment comes, the big turn happens which I think we always get so wrong about this story! As he’s sinking, Peter, the fisherman, the swimmer, the guy surely just a few feet from the boat in which he has placed his certainty, cries out, “Lord, save me!” 

Why not swim? Why not call out to the others, who are much less mysterious and strange than Jesus, and who surely have rescued flailing swimmers before? Because Peter’s confidence is in Jesus…or at least he wants it to be. He keeps looking at Jesus, even when his fear could be driving him back to where he’s comfortable. 

This year, we’re going to be talking a lot about confidence and certainty, and in a nutshell, here’s where we can start this conversation: for a million reasons, we all want certainty in our lives, especially in times like these, when answers and clarity feel so hard to come by. But we also need to consider what it means for our God to have created a world where certainty is so rare, where so much is unknown, where our perceptions are so limited, and–most importantly–where the desire for certainty so often leads us to put all of our trust in ourselves. What if what we are really meant to chase isn’t certainty but confidence? The problem isn’t that we don’t need saving. The problem is that we prefer to try and save ourselves. And yet, the story of Scripture, the revelation of God, and the experiences we have with the Holy Spirit teach us over and over again that God is capable and that God is trustworthy. The Bible isn’t a magic answer book with 100 rules for right living! The Bible is a testimony that God both desires and is worthy of our confidence. And stories like Peter walking on water exist to teach us that in order to put our confidence in God, we must take it out of ourselves. We’ve got to stop making excuses for why we are our own best bet. We’ve got to stop falling for the old lie that if we just knew a little more, if we could just be a little more sure, we would make the right decision. We’re always placing our confidence somewhere; we’re always living out trust in someone! What if a new way, a better way, to think about your journey with faith is as a series of opportunities to take little steps of faith, little exercises in trust, towards real confidence in God actually being who He says He is? There’s nothing about Scripture, there’s nothing about Jesus’s journey with His disciples, that suggests this is a one-time, all-at-once decision! What we actually see is that God is patient, God is willing to earn our trust (even when He doesn’t need to!), and God is forgiving when we panic and try to grab back onto our boat. 

So, what if this is the year we all try to take those small steps together? It could be. Maybe for you, your “boat” is financial security: you want to live more generously, but you just need a little more certainty first. Look around at this community God has drawn you into and know that hey, you’re safe! Take that small step and give $10 a month to a cause or a neighbor or a ministry you believe in. Move towards generosity, and see what happens in your heart and in your life. Maybe your “boat” is relational security: you know closer and deeper relationships would be good for you, but you are afraid to trust anyone more than you trust yourself. Look around: is it possible you are safe enough to take one small step, and if a friendship holds your weight, to take another? Maybe your boat is workaholism–that might be mine! You need to earn everyone’s respect in order to feel worthy. Can you take a step out? Maybe it’s politics: you fill your week with news and podcasts and voices that help you feel certain you are right…but deep down, you wonder, “if I take a step out of my bubble, will everything fall apart?” Climb over the side of that boat: the water is fine. Our “boats” are a false sense of security, a hollow confidence; what we have a chance to choose is a living and real relationship, not just with anyone, but with a God who might be worthy of our trust, who is willing to take things a step at a time…and who reaches down for us when we stumble and sink. 

All of this is to say that “uncertainty” isn’t something to fear! It’s an opportunity to think through our confidence…and where we are placing it. Let’s walk this out together this year, bravely and trusting that we are not alone.

2021 Year-In-Review: Permission to Hope

BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 1 JANUARY 2022 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

Each year at Revolution, we build our teaching time each week around a specific theme, and then, on the last weekend of the year, we recap where we’ve been and what we’ve learned. This past year, our theme was Permission to Hope, and we began like this:

As Christians, we are Hope-Embodying People in the world, [but] being a hopeful person doesn’t mean always being happy, or ignoring the hard things that happen in our lives. [Rather,] real hope–Christian hope–is…precipitated by waiting (as we just finished reliving during Advent), given life amidst humility and hardship (as we celebrated at Christmas), and it is ultimately aiming at the cross, at suffering and sacrifice. And yet, even though Christian hope is hard, it is also full and complete. It is joyful and good. Because it is always grounded in God’s loving relationship with us.

That was then (and is now) a dense passage, so we spent most of the year trying to break it down. In the end, we concluded that

being a Person of Hope means being two things: It means being a person in a trusting relationship with Jesus yourself. And It means being a person living out the values of that trusting relationship in their relationships with others.

Hope, then, isn’t a wish or a dream or the power of positive thinking: Hope is a person, a Savior, who you can believe in your deepest heart sees you, and will come through for you. And then the challenge, in light of the discovery of such a hope, is trying to give a taste of that same faithfulness to others. 

So, after a year of thinking on this, it’s worth asking: how are we doing? How are we feeling? Do we have–and do we trust–our hope? This year has put us to the test. Honestly, it’s worn us out. It’s worn me out. If I take a moment and gather the courage to open the little box where my hope lives…what will I find in there? Is it still breathing? Is it still living?

This past week, I found out something somehow both exciting and sacrilegious for me, as a child of the ‘80s: I learned that The Goonies is getting a reboot on Disney+. Like more than a few of you, I grew up with The Goonies and I loved it: what kid doesn’t love a pirate treasure hunt movie? At some point during the pandemic, Meredith and I introduced our own kids to this movie, and now it’s a recurring joke in our house because, as my daughter Evangeline pursues drama club and acting in middle school, I tell her, before each audition, that there is only one true monologue she should perform, and it comes from The Goonies. It is without question one of the greatest monologues of all time. 

It happens in this moment at the end of the second act of the film when our heroes are at their lowest point: they’ve gone on this ridiculous quest looking for treasure not for their own sake, but for the sake of their community, which is on the verge of being sold to a bunch of greedy land developers who are going to displace everyone. The real estate deal equals the end of the Goonies’ friendship…so they’ve got to find a fortune or their friendship family–like some of their biological families–is going to be torn apart. It’s an ‘80s kids movie…which means it’s also a divorce movie. 

In any case, they overcome trials and troubles and end up in a cave where, sure enough, they find glittering gold and silver everywhere they look. It’s One-Eyed Willie’s treasure! Except that it isn’t: they’ve discovered the bottom of the town wishing well, and there’s no way it’s enough money to put off the deal. Their quest is over; the dream is dead. And then, in that moment, the character “Mouth,” played by Corey Feldman, starts scooping up coins and pocketing them. His friend, Sean Astin’s “Mikey,” tells him that’s an awful thing to do, and then we get this: The Greatest Monologue Ever. Mouth picks up a coin and says,

“This one. This one right here. This was my dream, my wish. And it didn’t come true. So I’m taking it back. I’m taking them all back.”

Chills. It’s amazing. But what’s happening here? Mouth has lost his hope, he’s lost his confidence that some fantastic treasure is going to save their community. So, he’s taking what he can get for himself. He’s broken-hearted. He’s filling a hole…from the bottom of a hole. But of course, this isn’t the end of the movie: hope arrives right when it’s most needed, and the kids go on to find the real treasure they almost traded for a few pitiful coins. 

Some of you who have grown up in the church just felt your cheesy-sermon radar light up: “okay, Kenny, really? ‘Don’t trade the earthly treasure for the heavenly one’? Are we really doing this?” A little bit! But if you can, turn that radar down just for a few minutes. Give yourself ‘permission to hope,’ we might even say. 

Back in January, we kicked off the year with a sermon titled “What We Want to Believe and Why We Don’t Believe It.” The thing we said we want to believe is that God is going to fix the brokenness in our world, the dangers we are facing. And the reason we don’t believe it is because we struggle to see the limits of our abilities when we imagine what God can do. We talk about this during Advent, too: our expectations of the Messiah are always too small, too caged in our own cultural worldview, for the God of the Universe to ever fit them. So, we start finding hope when we let go and look for wonder and mystery instead of easy answers. 

From there, we went on to look at the book of Hebrews, which we studied in February and then again in November. We chose Hebrews because that’s the book in the New Testament that most directly attempts to work out just how unexpectedly wonderful Jesus turned out to be. The author digs through the stories and prophecies of the Old Testament in order to reveal how Jesus not only meets every expectation, he blows those expectations out of the water. He isn’t just here to beat up on Rome or punch tickets to heaven: he’s here to actually bring God’s tangible Kingdom to Earth, not through lightning bolts from clouds, but through his actual, human body, living here among us and then dying the last seemingly-hopeless death any human will ever die again. He’s everything. He’s the Goonies’ treasure-of-all-treasures! So, 1st century readers, don’t trade him for the wishing well riches of a mere general or king. 

So, we start to hope by letting go of our expectations, and then we recognize that our God has a history of blowing our expectations away!

From there, we went through a series called In the Valley, which focused on God’s intimate presence with us in the midst of grief, and then a series on 1 Peter called Nomads, which focused on God’s corporate presence with us when we gather as a church in his name. Our summer saw us remember God’s faithfulness in a collection of stories from the Old Testament, and then we told our own story as a church, in a series called (re)Revolution, where we were reminded of God’s faithfulness, past and present, to us. In all of this work, our goal was to discover that it really is safe to trust wildly and passionately and desperately in God: he is faithful. 

And now, in the wake of another Advent, what I hope we are ready to see is that this expectation-defying, world-changing treasure-providing, covenant-keeping, promise-fulfilling, life-giving, church-building God is personal, too. He doesn’t just see us…he sees you. 

Because right now, at this point in our story as a community, the biggest danger we are facing is not that God isn’t good, or that God won’t be faithful, or that God’s Kingdom is somehow going to skip right over the city of Annapolis in order to arrive in some other place. The biggest danger we are facing is that we will lose hope. This one, this right here: this is my dream, my wish…and it didn’t come true. So I’m taking it back. We can’t trade God’s promises for a handful of coins, for too-small expectations for what God is using this community to do. He works miracles; but almost by definition, miracles defy expectations. So, what are we open to seeing from God this year? And can we find, in that very openness, the permission to have and to hold a living hope that can sustain us in anything, and through anything?

Back in January, we closed our first sermon on our theme with a verse from Romans that is often used as a benediction, despite not coming at the end of a book, or even a chapter! It reads like this: 

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. 

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. […]

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:1-13

There are two key observations here, which I want us to reflect on as we move towards a conclusion for this morning…and for 2021. 

The first observation is that “everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” When the author talks about “everything that was written in the past,” they are referring to all of the Scriptures, and what we learn from all of that record-keeping is most-importantly this: it’s okay to put your trust in God because He comes through! What is called for, in those ancient stories, is endurance, or a willingness to be patient and remain open-minded about God’s deliverance. When we get impatient, as someone like King Saul does, we start to “fill in the gaps” we perceive in God’s plan with our own ideas…and this can lead to disaster. Additionally, when we get close-minded, our hearts harden and we miss the beauty and the wonder and the miracle that’s right in front of us: this is what we see, over and over again, with the Pharisees in the story of Jesus himself. So, real hope dodges both of these pitfalls: we have endurance, and we remain open. These are lessons from Scripture, and through their encouragement, we hold fast to our hope. 

But where does that hope itself come from? Our second observation is in those closing verses, which read, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” This can sound a bit like Christian-ese, so let’s do our best to break it down: we see here that God isn’t just the god of anything, he’s the god of hope. We said this year that the best way to define “hope,” in a Christian sense, is as a “living trust in the faithful person of God.” That definition rises out of moments just like this one, in Romans: the “God of hope” fills us with joy and peace as we trust in him: because we know he will do what he says, because we have seen him do it over and over again, so when we trust in him, we can find peace and rest, and even joy and excitement, about what we can feel confident we are going to see him do. This is the first part of the equation! Our God has proven himself–all the Scriptures attest to this!–and so, as scary as it can be to lay our burdens down at his feet, when we do it, we will get something greater in return: which is the very Spirit of God, the life-giving Breath of God, breathed into us and filling us with the joy and peace that are the fruit of our hope. 

For the last 12 months, we have very intentionally avoided talking about Star Wars in connection to this idea of hope…despite the fact that probably the most famous movie quote with the word “hope” in it of all time comes from that silly and–I’ll say it!–bad movie. You know what I’m talking about: Princess Leia kicks off the whole parade in the first film by saying, “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope.” For her, “hope” isn’t a wish, it’s a person: her “hope” is Obi Wan; he is the person she trusts to bring things back to rights…as long as she can get him this message. What’s wild to me about this goofy movie is that, for all its flaws, it gets this exactly right: Princess Leia sends out her message and she is desperate; a damsel in distress. But the next time we see her, we see a woman who knows her message got through…and now she is all fire and fearlessness. She lectures her rescuers; she couldn’t give less of a crap about the evil Empire. 

This (I hate to say!) is a pretty doggone good picture of what Romans is talking about: God is our living hope. When we call out to him, when we surrender ourselves and our expectations to him, we don’t live in fearful anticipation, crossing our fingers and throwing wishes at a genie in the sky: we have hope. We may not know what God’s plans are going to look like, but they won’t be stopped, by us or anybody else, and at the center of them is his holy and immeasurable love for us! So what in the world could keep us from living with contagious confidence for the sake of those around us? 

So, here we are: the year is wrapping up, and we’ve made not one but two movie references in a video sermon. Geez, Louise. 

I think it’s important to say this: I have hope. I feel it. It’s not that I “discovered” it this year…but this year has taught me a lot about it. I have hope because…well, I’m learning that it doesn’t do much good to trust in anything else! 2021 has beaten down my plans, it’s beaten down some of my dreams. It’s beaten down my ego. I’ve seen a church that was dormant, that was almost hibernating, for a year wake up…and in nearly equal measures, I’ve seen folks wake up to rediscover that there is life and truth and challenge and belonging here, and they are more committed here than they’ve ever been. I’d put myself in this camp, praise God. And I’ve also seen folks wake up to discover that the glue that held them here was some combination of commitment and habit and obligation. Now, they’ve broken free of those things…and they are moving on. This is heartbreaking every time. On a personal note, I’m still trying to figure out what grief really is, and how we go about feeling it and working through it, as parts of a church family. I don’t know; I feel overwhelmed so often.

But what I’ve learned this year is that this church isn’t mine to lead, or to rescue, or to grow. And more importantly, I couldn’t do any of those things if I tried. Our only hope is the God of the Universe. I don’t say that with even a hint of desperation or sadness: I say it more and more each day with delight and excitement: our only hope is the God of the Universe. And what’s more–what’s blowing me away today–is that that God sees me. That God sees us. That God sees this church, and this city, and my neighbors. He sees us, and he loves us unbelievably. 

You know what’s at the heart of that sad scene from The Goonies, the one with the great monologue? At the heart of it, Mouth feels invisible: he threw his coins into that wishing well, and they didn’t go anywhere. No miracle happened. Nobody saw him. Nobody cared. And that echoes the grown-up world in the film: the land developers don’t care; the parents have all given up. He takes the coins because he’s on the verge of deciding, right there as a 12 year old kid, that the only genie, the only god, he can trust is himself. That’s the treasure he’s scooping up: his own money, his own effort.

But there’s so much more out there. Sure, in the movie the answer is (as always) just buried treasure; it’s a poor analogy. But what I want us to see here, to take away, is that we’re not invisible. We’re not throwing coins down a well. We’re not trying to get God’s attention with a spell or an offering or a prayer. We are known. We are loved. Right now, this tiny church made up of all us tiny people: God is moving, and working out good, and bringing his Kingdom among us. He sees us; he hears us. He has invited us into his house as daughters and sons. What are we afraid of? What could we fear? 

And, if we let the excitement of this hope fill us up, what in the world could keep us from sharing that all over? What could we ever pour out for someone else that God wouldn’t rush to pour back in? What would change in the world around us if we felt secure enough in God’s love for us that we could give our attention freely and generously to others? What wild transformation that would bring! To be the ones not just remembering that there is a greater treasure out there, but calling out to every person at the bottom of their own wishing well to tell them that they can keep going, that we will keep them company: there is so much more hope in this life than we could ever bottle or exhaust or run out of. 

So, as we close, I want to shout this prayer out to our God, and I’d ask that you pray with me:

God, may this year be a year of wild abandon, of hope and life abundant. May we be people of such generosity it stuns us; may we see your Kingdom come in ways unimaginable to us. You give us permission to hope; let us live that truth out in such a way that our lives give similar permission to others. To our children. To our friends. To our coworkers, our neighbors. To those in need around us, to those around us who are quiet and afraid. May we have confidence and joy in abundance, hope in abundance. And let our eyes be wide open as your Kingdom comes. Give us excitement for what comes next, because only you can bring it, only you can deliver it. Give us peace in the midst of wonder, confidence in equal measure with curiosity. You are our God! You are our God. We wait on you; we trust in you. Amen.