Saint James UCC of Hamburg, NY

Exodus 8:20-32; Luke 9:21-27

Preached by Rev. Robert Matlack
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Here in Western New York, there are many people who get very excited about their sports teams. We all know people - and perhaps you're one - whose mood is determined by how their team does. They invest too much importance, too much of themselves into what is after all a game.

If the Bills or the Sabres or UB or their High School team wins - they're happy and all is right with the world. On the other hand, if their team loses, then nothing is right with the world no matter what else is happening. When the season ends, they go into a sort of holding pattern - looking ahead to next year, and everything else in life is secondary. These are people who need to remember that it's only a game - a game intended for our enjoyment, but not something that gives meaning and purpose to our lives. These are people who need to let go, and let God.

Now let's be honest. We may not be an out of control sports fan, but there are times when we're looking for meaning and purpose in our lives in all the wrong places. There are places in each of our lives where we've decided that we need to do it on our own. We try hard. We judge our success or failure on the results of our efforts. Yet somehow, we have forgotten that however hard we try, life, our life isn't in our control. Yes, some things will happen because of us. Other things will happen in spite of us. Some things we can influence the outcome on, but many of the biggest things in life are totally out of our control. Those are the places where we need to let go, and let God!

That's not a new problem. Back in the time of Moses they faced the same issue. The Israelite people were in bondage to the Egyptians. God was determined to free them and bring them to a new land, but the Pharaoh was unwilling to cooperate. He tried to hold on to them even tighter. He didn't want to let go, but God was determined, and however hard Pharaoh might try to resist, in the end the Israelites would be free. It took a whole series of plagues for Pharaoh to get the message "Let go, let God". Even then it didn't really sink in, because Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army after the Israelites, the army which as you remember drowned when the waters of the Red Sea closed back on them. His efforts to fight God were doomed to futility, as are all such efforts.

Even the Israelites needed to hear this message. They were the people whom God wanted to rescue. God was bringing them to a new way of life, a new freedom and opportunity, but they too resisted. While their slavery wasn't easy, it was familiar. They resisted God's efforts to free them, fearing that things would only get worse rather than better. They found it difficult to trust in God's promises, because all they could see was Pharaoh's power and Pharaoh's punishments. They too needed to be convinced, and it was only reluctantly and with many false starts that they learned to let go, and let God.

Samuel Butler wrote a novel called The Way of All Flesh. The main character in the story, Ernest Pontifex, is a young ministerial candidate who has a nervous breakdown. In his case, the breakdown occurs because he is caught between two opposing views of life and religion - an older, traditionalist view and a newer, more liberal way of looking at things.

When his breakdown has occurred, a wise doctor makes a special recommendation to Pontifex as a cure. He sends him to the zoo to watch the elephants. That's right, to watch the elephants, and amazingly the prescription works. Standing daily before these great big animals and watching them slowly and methodically move from side to side in their pits, Pontifex feels a new rhythm being established in his being. It's slower, more deliberate, than his old rhythm. It steadies him. He gradually finds his balance again in the ageless balance of the elephants.

Frederick Buechner has a phrase in his writings which I think describes the change in Pontifex. Buechner talks about "Living from within out, not from without in". In other words, amidst all the craziness of the world around us, the craziness, the hecticness that it's so easy to get caught up in, amidst all of that craziness, if you live from the outside in, that craziness rules your life. It takes over and has control. But when you live from the inside out, then you start by getting back in touch with God's presence and God's peace inside, and that presence and peace moves through us into the world around us. Instead of being controlled by the world, we allow God's presence to flow into the world through us. Instead of being caught up in the feeling that we have to do everything, we start to let go, and let God work through us and our lives.

That's such an important difference, and so let me reflect with you for a moment on how powerful a difference that is. When the Israelites were in bondage in Egypt, they never would have had the courage to leave on their own. If left to their own fears, they would still be in Egypt today. For them letting go and letting God was literally the difference between life and death, between slavery and freedom, between fear and hope.

The difference was just as radical for the disciples of Jesus. They clung so tightly to a vision of the Messiah that what they were looking for was a physical kingdom not spiritual salvation. They wanted freedom of the body instead of freedom of the spirit. They were bound to their expectations, and they weren't open to God's plans. They were enslaved just as surely as the Israelites were in Egypt. If it was up to them, Jesus would never have risen because He never would have died. They could only see their way, not God's way. Yet somehow Jesus was able to show them a new way, to open new possibilities, to teach them that what they really needed to do was to let go, and let God.

The difference is just as critical in our own lives. We get caught up in the craziness of the world. We all do. At times it seems almost impossible to resist. There's so much to do, so much to plan for, so much to organize, that we run from one day to the next without ever really thinking where we're going or why we might want to get there.

We become so wrapped up in our problems and concerns, with what we think we want, and what we think is best, so that it's easy to shut out what God wants for us and from us.

Yet somehow God is calling us to care, to feel, to be present to the world around us not just in our busyness, but with compassion and love. Somehow God is calling us to let go of some of the hecticness, and to realize that it's not as important how much we do, as how we do what we do. If we accomplish many things today, but never feel God's presence in that work, then it is empty. If we touch many lives today, but haven't allowed God's love to flow through us to them, then we've missed another golden opportunity. After all, our task is to bring God's healing love into the world around us, how widely that love spreads is up to God as long as we let go, and let God flow through us to touch and change the world in which we live and move and have our being.

Amen.