Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 3/9/08
The Voice of Circumstance
Discerning God’s Will, Part III
Psalm 47
Acts 1:15-26
There is an old story, you may have heard it, about Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin going hunting at the ranch of a friend. When they arrived, Mantle went inside to check in with the rancher while Martin stayed out in the car.
The rancher gave Mantle permission but asked if he would do him a favor. The rancher had an old mule that needed to be put down and asked Mickey if he would take care of it. Mickey agreed, and as he returned to the car realized he had a golden opportunity to put one over on Billy Martin.
Arriving at the car he pretended to be very angry. “What’s wrong?” Martin asked. “No hunting!” Mantle screamed. “My friend told me we couldn’t go hunting on his ranch! Why, I’m so angry I’m just going to go out and shoot one of his mules just to show him.”
Mantle picked up his rifle and headed for the barn. Moments later he heard two shots. There was Billy Martin, rifle in hand, standing over two dead cows. “What are you doing?” he cried out. “Why I saw how angry you were and decided to show that guy he couldn’t fool around with me, either.”
This morning we are talking about how God speaks to us through our circumstances. That story of Martin and Mantle is a good place to start. It serves as a reminder of just how tricky trying to read our circumstances can be. Things aren’t always what they seem.
Jesus has just ascended. He has moved into that realm defined by neither space nor time. Heaven isn’t so much “up there,” as right here all around us. It is more like another dimension of existence just beyond our own, and it is there that Jesus now abides; from there that he and the Father will soon send the Spirit which is their very presence.
The disciples have gathered the followers together. We are told that at this point there were about one hundred and twenty of them, and that they now include both Jesus mother and his brothers. Peter rises to speak.
There are two things that happen here. First, the apostles decide they need to add one more to take the place of Judas, and second, having narrowed the field, they cast lots to determine God’s will.
Those two things tell us something of the disciples’ understanding of God. They believed that God spoke to them through their circumstances (they had eleven apostles but needed a twelfth in order to restore that sacred number which corresponded to the twelve tribes of Israel), and they believed that God was active enough and involved enough to actually guide them in their choice of lots.
God is at work, and God is moving. Those are basic, underlying convictions of the Christian community. It is not a belief that God is moving sometimes, or only in select circumstances. It is a belief, rather, that God is always moving and that our task is to discern what God is doing and then join him in that. As Jesus put it in John 5:19, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing…” Jesus, himself, established the standard for us.
The theology here is simple. It is at the point of application that we sometimes struggle. Where does cause and effect stop, and the active hand of God begin? If I apply for a job, for example, and get turned down, is that God speaking (is it God closing the door), or is it simply the result of the reviewer’s biases and expectations? The truth is, it could be one or the other or some combination of the two. We can’t be absolutely sure. As that story of Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin make clear: we might be able to see what is going on, but that doesn’t guarantee that our interpretation will be correct.
There is no question that the active God revealed to us in Scripture can open some doors and close others. Consider, just as one example, Peter and John’s miraculous release from prison in the fifth chapter of Acts. There we see the angel of the Lord going before them and literally opening the doors to facilitate their release. But we need to hold this stuff gingerly. It is too easy for us to get it wrong.
When I arrived at my last church and discovered that their financial crisis was so severe that they couldn’t afford to pay what they had promised, a lot of my friends (and most of them were pastors) saw that as a sign that God was closing that door. They encouraged me to move on.
Was it really God closing the door, or was it God making clear part of the challenge that lay ahead? As I read Scripture I don’t find God promising that ministry is going to be free of struggle or of sacrifice. In fact, what I find is just the opposite. Jesus doesn’t say, “Climb on in to the hot tub and let’s have a great time.” What Jesus says is “take up your cross and follow me.” Bonnie and I chose to stick it out.
My point is that we need to be very careful in the weight we give such circumstances. It is too easy to get it wrong, too easy to see God working where God isn’t involved at all.
But there is another kind of circumstance in which we can be sure. Here it is the circumstance not of events – of one door closing or another being opened – but what I would call “circumstances of the gap”. This is what the disciples were facing here in our text: the gap between their actual number and what they knew to be God’s intent; the gap between what is and what God intends.
When we see a child starving, or a homeless man lying in a gutter, we become aware of the gap. We know this isn’t God’s will. We know God wants something much better. Listen there in that gap, and we can hear God’s voice.
But that immediately raises the question of which circumstances, or which gaps we should be listening to. Listen to them all, open ourselves to all the poverty, all the suffering, all the oppression in this world, and we will simply be overwhelmed. We need some way to prioritize, some way to discern which gaps are speaking specifically to us.
Here it is helpful to think in terms of a series of concentric circles. Over the course of his ministry, Jesus didn’t heal everyone in the world or fix every problem. His greatest impact rather, was right where he was.
So in a similar way, the first circle for us, our highest priority, is our home, our family. There are any number of people who could probably serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but there is only one person who can fill your particular role in your particular home. There is just one husband to your wife; one mom for your children. That’s you. The very first place we should look for a gap, then, between what is and what God intends is right there in our homes. That’s the place where we should be listening most carefully.
Bonnie and I were married the same year I graduated from seminary and began my ministry. I majored in pastoral care. I had taken courses on marriage and family counseling. I knew the way this thing was supposed to work, but the truth is, I didn’t have a clue. That first year was awful.
Looking back it is clear that my operating assumption was that my primary focus should be my job. Bonnie and I were in love. I assumed our marriage would take care of itself. I was working a hundred to a hundred and ten hours a week. I was going for months without a day off. When I was home I was exhausted. And big surprise: our marriage suffered as a result. The tension between us had grown so great that by the end of that first year I was looking for ways not to spend time together. I was dreading our vacation.
Look at the gaps. What is God saying? One of the things that Bonnie and I learned from that first year is that we have to be very intentional about carving out some time each week just for the two of us.
The first circle is family. The next circle out is our church. That might surprise some of you, but the reality is that for all its flaws the church remains that vessel which God has chosen to impact this world. It is through the church that the Kingdom is proclaimed; through the church that lives are transformed through an encounter with the living God. There is no question where the community was in Jesus’ priorities. The question, rather, is the place we will give to it in our own.
You can probably guess how the other circles play out from this point. The third circle would be our work. The fourth, our immediate community. The fifth the larger community and so on.
We live that out as a church. God has placed us here in Fox Chapel. This community is our first and greatest responsibility. Think about our staff. Think about our program and the facility itself. It is clear that the overwhelming bulk of our resources are focused right here.
The next layer out for us is this greater Pittsburgh community. Over seventy percent of our mission budget supports ministries within a fifteen of twenty mile radius.
That doesn’t mean we ignore the rest of the world. The needs of the world are there, they are just further out in that series of circles. This morning we are commissioning two teams that will be going down to New Orleans. New Orleans isn’t in one of our primary circles, but some of our members have heard God’s voice in the gap down there. They have a passion for that ministry, and other members have gathered around that passion in support. Every one of them is paying his or her own way. The church is helping with some of the resources and supplies.
Family, church, workplace, community, nation, continent, world… the circles work their way outwards, the responsibility, the priority, tends to diminish with each band we pass… but in each and every one of those bands God is speaking to us. Sometimes God calls one of us or a group of us to focus on one of those bands that is further out for a season. But always, always, whether here or far away, God is there in the circumstances, asking us to fill the gap between what is and what we know to be God’s intent. The challenge for us is to be open to that voice. The challenge is to respond.