God Calls Me to Do What?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 31, 2015

God Calls Me to Do What?

Jeremiah 3:15-16

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart,

who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.

And when you have multiplied and increased in the land,

in those days, says the Lord, they shall no longer say,

“The ark of the covenant of the Lord.”

It shall not come to mind, or be remembered, or missed;

nor shall another one be made.”

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The joke is surely older than I am:

“How many Presbyterians does it take

to change a light bulb?

Six – one to change the bulb and

five to lament how much better the old one was.”

There are variations on the joke, of course:

How many Presbyterians does it take

to change a light bulb?

Two: one to change the bulb,

and one to complain that his grandparents

had donated the old bulb to the church.

Do you hear a pattern?

A pattern that Presbyterians perhaps

don’t embrace change very well,

don’t embrace the new?

I don’t think it is a characteristic

unique to Presbyterians –

it is something we find in all churches.

In fact, it may be something about us as humans:

we struggle with change,

we struggle with the new because it is unknown.

The old is something we know,

we feel comfortable with.

Yet change happens;

today is not the same day as yesterday

and tomorrow will be yet a different day.

None of us will be the same tomorrow,

We’ll all, from youngest to oldest,

at the very least be a day older,

the chemistry in our bodies

constantly changing within us,

even as the world around us changes, too,

a world God created to be in

constant motion and movement.

It is not a cliché, it is the simple truth:

things change;

we change;

everything changes.

That is God at work,

the Holy Spirit at work

constantly blowing through life,

a breeze bringing the fresh and the new,

carrying away the old and the stale.

The three short sentences we heard in our text

don’t convey the enormity of the change

God was proposing some 2500 years ago.

God was telling his children that he planned

to wipe away centuries of history,

centuries of tradition.

Speaking through the prophet Jeremiah,

God was telling his children

that the Ark of the Covenant

would no longer be the center of their worshiping life;

The Ark of the Covenant

would no longer be important;

the Ark of the Covenant

would be forgotten,

and disappear into the pages of history.

To the people hearing God’s words

through the prophet

the very idea had to seem inconceivable,

simply not possible,

a change beyond anyone’s ability to imagine.

The Ark had been too central,

too important to the Israelites

for too long for them to imagine life without it.

Do you remember the Ark of the Covenant?

It was the box God instructed Moses to build

to hold the two tablets of the covenant,

the two tablets of the Law we call

the Ten Commandments.

God designed the box;

designed it to be beautiful, majestic,

made of acacia wood

and then covered with gold inside and out.

It was to have an elaborate cover,

and strong rings at each of its four corners,

through which the levitical priests could slide poles

to allow them to carry the Ark,

so the Ark could move with the children of Israel

through the wilderness;

so the Ark could lead the children of Israel.

It was a man named Bezalel

who built the Ark, fabricated it,

following the plans given him by Moses,

the plans Moses received from God.

Once it was completed,

and the tablets of the covenant put inside the box,

the Ark became so holy

that no one was allowed to touch it,

not even Moses’ brother Aaron, the Chief Priest.   

The Ark was then placed in the Tabernacle of God –

it would be another few centuries

before Solomon would build

the Temple in Jerusalem

where the Ark eventually was placed

in the Holy of Holies.

                 

In the Tabernacle,

the Ark was placed behind a heavy curtain

so that it could not be seen.

Only Moses could approach it,

for the Ark was God’s throne and footstool;

and it was from the Ark

that Moses would hear God’s voice

as God instructed him.

As Scripture tells us,

When Moses went into the tent of meeting

to speak with the Lord,

he would hear the voice speaking to him

from above the mercy-seat

that was on the ark of the covenant

from between the two cherubim;

thus it spoke to him.

(Numbers 7:89)

Carried by the priests,

the Ark of the Covenant led the children of Israel

through the wilderness

and eventually to the Jordan River,

and then across the river,

out of the wilderness,

into their new homeland,

the land flowing with milk and honey.

The priests carried the Ark

into the waters of the Jordan,

as deep and as wide as the river was.

But the moment they stepped into the river,

the water stopped flowing,

and a dry passageway appeared

for the children of Israel to cross

into their new land.

Moses’ successor Joshua called to the people,

“When you see the ark of the covenant

of the Lord your God

being carried by the levitical priests,

then you shall set out from your place.

Follow it,

so that you may know the way you should go.”

(Joshua 3:3-4)

And the people followed,

as they had followed for decades,

the Ark reflecting the very presence of God.

The Ark was captured by the Philistines

in the time of the prophet Samuel,

more than a thousand years before

the birth of our Lord.

and with its loss went the hope of the people.

A cloud of gloom descended on the people

that was so dark, so thick,

that when one woman gave birth to a son,

she named the boy Ichabod, which meant,

“the glory has departed from Israel.”

(1 Samuel 4:21)

Eventually the Israelites recovered the Ark.

And in time David became King,

and decided that Jerusalem would be his home,

and that it would also be the home

of God’s tabernacle and the Ark.

David and others were so ecstatic

about having a permanent home for the Ark,

that they danced before the Ark

“with all their might,

with songs and lyres and harps…”

(2 Samuel 6:5)

David danced with such abandon,

and with such effervescence,

that his wife later scolded him for what she thought

was conduct inappropriate for a king. 

Centuries later,

when the Babylonians invaded,

they destroyed the Temple Solomon had built

to house the Ark.

We have no history of what happened to the Ark,

so we can let our imaginations run wild

and even imagine that the Ark once

fell into the hands of German soldiers

during World War II,

only to be recovered by our own soldiers,

and then boxed up and stored

in a nondescript government warehouse

somewhere in Herndon.

What is more likely

is that the Ark was destroyed by the Babylonians,

the box smashed and broken up for its gold,

and the two stone tablets inside

smashed as well,

smashed as completely

as Moses had smashed the first set centuries before.

When the children of Israel were finally freed

from their captivity in Babylon,

and allowed to return to their country,

some 500 years before the birth of our Lord,

Jerusalem was in ruins,

the great Temple utterly destroyed,

and the Ark of the Covenant gone.

The Ark’s history had been braided  

so thoroughly with that of the Israelites       

for so many centuries –

how could they hope to rebuild their lives

without the Ark?

How could they be a people

without the presence of God

reflected in the Ark of the Covenant?  

And yet, as our lesson teaches us,

God said to the people,

it’s time for a change,

time to leave the Ark behind,

time for a new way of thinking,

the old ways have past,

and a new day has begun.

Eugene Peterson captured God’s attitude

so well in his version of our from The Message:

“The time will come…

when no one will say any longer,

‘Oh, for the good old days!

Remember the Ark of the Covenant?’

It won’t even occur to anyone to say it—

‘the good old days.’

The so-called good old days of the Ark

are gone for good.”

Gone for good because God offered new life

for his children to embrace.

And so it is for us, you and me,

here and now:

God offers us the future each day,

saying to us:

“Do not remember the former things

or consider the things of old,

for I am about to do a new thing.”

(Isaiah 43:18)

God creates anew each and every day,

creates a future for us,

a future as God promises, filled with hope.

                                   

Our Lord Jesus Christ leads us into God’s future,

as the Spirit energizes us,

and graces us with the courage and the will

to embrace the future confidently, eagerly.

How many Presbyterians does it take

to change a light bulb?

One:

One to change the bulb.

                          

But then all to be thankful

for the light the old bulb provided

even as it is discarded;

and then all to stand joyfully,

confidently,

gratefully,

and hopefully in the light,

the light that shines from the new.

AMEN