08 24th Sunday after Pentecost Dream of Faithfulness
My friends, I greet you today in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Today, we dream about faithfulness and what that means for us and our lives right now. To do that we will look at two stories.
Allow me to introduce you to a woman named Naomi. You may have already met her in a Bible or Sunday school class. You could have encountered her by chance in a devotional reading. You could have crossed paths with her in a sermon. One thing is for sure. Once you have met this woman, you are not soon to forget her. Because Naomi has an amazing story. Naomi and her husband, Elimelech lived in a little town known as Bethlehem. But there was a famine, and this little town which will latter be famous for having no room, is currently suffering from having no food. Which is a tremendous irony, because the name Bethlehem means, “house of bread.” So Elimelech and his pleasant Naomi, pack up their two sons and head to the neighboring country of Moab.
Now Moab was to the Southwest of Bethlehem on the other side of the Dead Sea. We do not know how long this little family remained in Moab but Elimelech passed away. Leaving Namoi with her two sons. These guys married two locals, one was name Orpah, and the other Ruth. The lived together in the land for ten years, and tragically both of Naomi’s sons died. And with them her hopes and dreams. For in that culture a childless widow was about as helpless as a person could be. It was your worst nightmare.
Namoi encourages her young daughters-in-law to return to their own people, after all in this situation there would not be much hope for them. Orpah, follows direction and returns home. Ruth, does not. She utters one of the most famous speeches in all of the Scriptures, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die— there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!”
It is a picture of faithfulness, and one that grabs your attention. It the midst of Namoi’s horrible grief here comes Ruth with her great faithfulness. Her commitment is a total and complete commitment it is not just a surface change, but it is completely and 100% adopting all of that which is life for Namoi. It is really a marvel.
Now that is quite the order. If this is the model of faithfulness then dreams of faithfulness may seem intimidating. I mean who can live up to that. Especially in this world of ours where there are so many things that are fighting for our attention. Almost everything can be considered a priority and when everything is a priority then nothing is. So how do we talk about faithfulness and what it means to be faithful when there are so many things to be faithful to, that it is impossible to balance it all? There is work and home and country and neighborhood, there is church and sports and friends and parents and business trips and vacations and… how does one find faithfulness when there are too many things to be faithful too?
We’ll get back to that. But before we do one more story of faithfulness that can contribute to our dreaming of faithfulness. It begins with Moses taking two tablets and going to the mountain because the first tablets were destroyed. Do you remember this story? Moses had been on Mt. Sinai for forty days and forty night and, well the people got a little anxious. So they build themselves a couple of golden arches. Wait a minute that’s not right. They build for themselves a couple of golden calves. Moses comes back down from the mountain, sees what has taken place in his absence and well, he freaks out on them. He throws down the tablets that God had given him and well, basically here we are. God is ready to send the people on their way, keeping good on his promise, but no longer going with them. But Moses pleads on behalf of the people.
Early in the morning he takes the tablets up the Mountain, per God’s instructions and the Lord descends in a cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name, “the Lord.” The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, “The Lord, The Lord a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.”
This is one of the most amazing statements of God’s charter and person. Our God is not known for wrath and vengeance, but rather for his mercy and grace. His steadfast love and faithfulness. In a world where it is hard to be faithful because of all the things that demand from us. In a world where it is hard to find faithfulness because we are being pulled in so many different directions. We can take great comfort in knowing that our God is faithful. It is one of his characteristics. When our God makes a promise he is going to keep it, because he is faithful.
But at the same time he is also a God to be taken seriously. He does not let sin slide. If he tells us to do something, we need to be doing it. If he tells us not to do something, then we need to refrain from it. The grace that God gives is not a cheap grace. But it is grace. When we compare God’s wrath to his mercy, his mercy far outweighs his wrath.
For you and me and all who believe that wrath that we deserve was paid for on the cross by Jesus. Our God is faithful to you and me as he gives us salvation and forgiveness and everlasting life. These are gifts that are for us now, and allow us to live in the freedom of a relationship with our Faithful God.
So what does this all mean? It means that because you and I have a God who is faithful to us, we can live in the assurance of that faithfulness, and dare to dream of faithfulness in our own lives. Do you feel the pressure from too many different things in our lives, pulling us in too many different directions? Now I say this as one who also struggles with these, but I believe that this is something good that we can work on together and encourage one another in our faithfulness.
In a world where there is so much competition for our time and energy it can be difficult to tell how best to invest it, how best to be faithful. There should only be three priorities in our lives. First is our God, he is to be above all. Time spent in prayer and in the Scriptures should be our top priority. Daily devotions should be the last thing that we move from our schedule and not the first. Worship and receiving the sacraments, should be the center of our week, as we receive forgiveness, life and salvation in these gifts.
Second is our families. These are people that God has placed especially into our lives. With the exception of God our families should be second to none. Just as Ruth was faithful to Namoi so our faithfulness should be evident to our families. This is true especially as we deal with our children. And what it means to raise them to be faithful followers of Jesus. This is a task more difficult to do, if we or they are too busy to be spending time together.
Third is our work. Don’t hear me saying that work is not important. But compared to the other two it should be a distant third, yet there is something to be said for faithfulness in work, especially since at work we are able to bear witness to God’s love in Jesus through the ways that we interact with the people around us.
The dream of Faithfulness is one that comes as a result of God’s faithfulness to us in our lives. In his faithfulness we find all the comfort and strength that we need to be faithful to the three most important areas in our lives God, Family and Work. These are the priorities to set guide our lives by.
As we live our lives in this way, the faithfulness will become one the characteristics of our community and will affect how we conduct ourselves and interact with one another. And as we are faithful in our lives we will be bearing witness to God’s faithfulness. And this dream will no longer be a dream, but will be a present reality in our lives. Amen.