Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are Integral For Unity Being One Race And One Blood”
“Pairing and Pressing” – 1 Samuel 1:4-20, Mark 13:1-8
Jesus says, “Beware that no one leads you astray.” Much to think about friends.
To whom do you look for guidance and wisdom in your life? To whom do you pair yourself and press forward?
Yesterday, I had a discussion with our son, Rob, about life. Rob is very successful. He is the youngest Associate Director at 34 years old with the Boston Consulting Group. Yes, Rob is up for promotion. We discussed career advancement, the salary, bonus structure, and medical care.
Rebecca and Rob’s daughter, Blake, was born in August 2023. God gifted Rebecca and Rob their beautiful daughter through invitro fertilization. Janet and are so grateful that they are in a state that would allow such a pregnancy. And they were able to harvest two other viable eggs. Rob is an amazing young man. Yes, he is wrestling with career advancement and his desire to be a responsible and loving dad to Blake and husband to Rebecca. At the end of our conversation, Rob called me wise. I wept.
Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert in their book When Helping Hurts share the following story:
One Sunday I was visiting one of Africa’s largest slums, the massive Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. The conditions were simply inhumane. People lived in shacks constructed out of cardboard boxes. Foul smells gushed out of open ditches carrying human and animal excrement …. I thought to myself, This place is completely God-forsaken. Then to my amazement, right there among the dung, I heard the sound of a familiar hymn …. Every Sunday, thirty slum dwellers crammed into this ten-by-twenty foot “sanctuary” to worship [God]. The church was made out of cardboard boxes that had been opened up and stapled to studs. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a church made up of some of the poorest people on earth. I was immediately asked to preach the sermon. I quickly jotted down some notes and was looking forward to teaching this congregation [about the sovereignty of God]. But before the sermon began, I listened as some of the poorest people on the planet cried out to God: “Jehovah Jireh, please heal my son, as he is going blind.” “Merciful Lord, please protect me when I go home today, for my husband always beats me.” “Sovereign King, please provide my children with enough food today, as they are hungry.” As I listened to their heartfelt prayers, I thought about my ample salary, my life insurance policy, my health insurance policy, my two cars, my house, etc. I realized that I do not really trust in God’s sovereignty on a daily basis. What I have buffers me, shields me from most economic shocks. I realized that when these folks pray “Give us this day our daily bread” their minds don’t wander as mine so often does. I realized that these slum dwellers were trusting in God’s sovereignty just to get them through the day, and they had a far deeper intimacy with God than I probably will ever have in my entire life.[1]
Confrontation with the basic necessities of life brings the point home that our simple need for the basics is enough to compel gratitude for what we do have and a rejection of the complexities of life that consume our lives.
1 Samuel 1:4-20 addresses the joy of a life well lived with giving of oneself as the centerpiece. Each one of us carries the purpose and nature of God throughout life. Each encounter we have, every person we meet, gives us the opportunity, through our “giving,” to be or receive “…that mystical, hopeful, riveting, and terrifying catalyst that fuels the ongoing story of God.”[2] Hannah pursued understanding her barrenness. Her petition of God to give her a son never ceased. The circumstances of how our births and families of origin came about are as different and varied as each of our interests. Such is the case of Samuel. Hannah named her son, Samuel, from the root word “to ask.” God answered Hannah’s prayers Hannah’s prayer is much like Mary’s in that both are praying in confidence that God will end oppression and raise up the poor. Barrenness is a profound issue in Scripture. We cannot make a universal application to a miracle by God. Science has a lot to say.
In the Gospel of Mark, Mark provides a picture of the significance of our existence in the moment. Life as we know it will not remain forever. The things, institutions, and people that we cherish will not last forever. The end times have always been and so has our preoccupation with knowing when. The end of the kingdom of this world is inevitable and the new kingdom will come. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Things we think will last forever do not. I remember the Northridge Earthquake of 1994, September 11, 2001, and when the sky darkened, and a tornado devastated the community of Moore, Oklahoma in May 2013.[3]
Our life’s purpose is quite simple: to witness to the good news of the gospel, so people do not take hope in things that most certainly will be destroyed. Because of Jesus, all that we are and do in the home, retirement, office, school, neighborhood, church, and leisure, can be done with a sense of urgency in that it matters. Interactions with others can model God’s work of redemption. Our lives, the way we live in God’s purpose of loving God and others, is how we participate as best neighbors in God’s mission.
Daily living is not an end in itself, it is a means. Both God and human give of themselves for the sake of meaning to be experienced in life. As Christians, we see our lives as existing for the sake of others. Mike Slaughter in The Christian Wallet writes, “We form and grow relationships in the margins of our lives. It is also within those margins that we do acts of kindness or service toward others. Most critically, it is in the margins that we build our right relationship with God.”[4] Bearing one another’s burdens and taking responsibility for the day’s toil and cares is the call of being a follower of Jesus.
Radical dependence of the entire creation upon God is what is needed in the human experience today. Think about it. Life is a tangle of relationships. We all desire to receive comfort in our grief and to give comfort to the grieving. I concur with Richard J. Foster, the author of Freedom of Simplicity, “We have no independent existence, no self-sustaining ability. All we are and all we possess is derived.”[5] We must re-think and re-gift years of being conditioned to live for ourselves.
Enduring persistence in our dependence on God is a spiritual discipline. Pair yourself with God and others. Press forward with purpose. Experience the call of following Jesus. Amen.
This sermon was preached the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, 17 November 2024
by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary
at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas
Copyright Ó 2024
Steven M. Marsh
All rights reserved.
[1]Adapted from Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts (Moody Press, 2012), 64-65.
[2]G. Malcolm Sinclair in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 295.
[3]In the two paragraphs of textual analysis above, I have benefited from the thinking of Patricia K. Tull, Jared E. Alcantara, Leigh Campbell Taylor, Oliver Larry Yarbrough, Pablo A. Jimenez, Gilberto A. Ruiz, and Theodore J. Wardlaw in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 439-442, 442-443, 444-446, 447-448, 449-450, 451-453, and 453-455.
[4]Mike Slaughter, The Christian Wallet (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 198.
[5]Richard J. Foster, Freedom of Simplicity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1981), 16.
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