God is a Difficult Houseguest

<Listen along to the sermon here.  Sermons are meant to be heard more than read. Also please note: if Jesus had a Twitter account he’d most certainly have many followers but few conversation partners…hence his need to chat on the road to Emmaus.>

II Corinthians 9:8

October 4^th, 2015

Are you ready?

Do you not know that God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, people of God?

You will always have enough of everything in order that you may share abundantly with others in every good work.

The word of the Lord

God is a Difficult Houseguest

One of the arguments for God’s existence that has been batted around is what I refer to as the “Motel 6” argument.

Now, look, as with all philosophical arguments for God’s existence or non-existence, it’s not going to satisfy.  Just know that from the get go.  All philosophical arguments for God’s existence or non-existence (you can’t prove something doesn’t exist, right?) are like a Hallmark movie: you’re going to find some place where the plot doesn’t connect.

But this kind of argument is about plausibility.  So the Motel 6 argument goes like this:

Imagine you’re checking into a motel.  You put the key card in the door, you open the door, and you find that your favorite music is playing as you walk in.  The temperature is just right in the room; just the way you like it.  There are your favorite foods waiting for you on a table.  A chair that is perfect for your height and size is pulled up right next to it.  The bed is made just as you make your bed, and the TV is turned to your favorite channel.

If you walked into this hotel room, you would imagine that someone knew you were coming, right?  And not in the abstract, but in the specific: they knew you were coming.  The chances of them getting all of those details correct by chance is just astronomically inconceivable. They know you.

You.

The argument ends with the conclusion that because there is human life on earth at all, with the improbability that the nitrogen and oxygen levels are just so, that must have been designed, and if there is a grand designer it is God.

Now, expel from your mind right away any sort of thought about agreeing or disagreeing with the argument.  As Peter Rollins, that mad Irish metaphysicist notes, figuring out if you agree or disagree with something is actually just allowing it or disallowing it into your worldview.  To listen to something, you have to open yourself up to a story, a statement, a thought as being naked and without judgment.

What I want you to think on is this: how do you know if someone is expecting you?

What are the things that need to be in place for you to feel welcome?  And not just generally welcome, that you are welcomed?

In the scriptures we find God and God in Jesus showing up in the weirdest places.  Early in the Bible God shows up as three foreign travelers to Abraham, who begs them to stay and entertains them in his tent and is blessed by it.

By the way, this scene will be reversed in the Gospel of Matthew where three foreign travelers will show up at Jesus’ home where they will be welcomed.  Scripture has unexpected symmetry in some places, and in other places where you expect symmetry you find none.

But that is indicative of God’s way.  You don’t know what to expect when you’re entertaining God…which makes God the most difficult houseguest.

I mean think on that other story in Genesis where Jacob is camping by the river Jabbok and a stranger starts wrestling with him in the night.  It is God wrestling with him and Jacob refuses to let go, even after being injured, and God blesses him.  What a great thought for those of us who have spent long hours tossing and turning at night over a decision.  It truly is wrestling with God.

But you don’t expect that to be God.  God is supposed to be about blessings and nice and kind and…you don’t expect God to be a wrestling fan.  You can’t predict that.

Or let’s fast forward a bit.  In the New Testament past Good Friday and Holy Saturday to Easter Sunday morning.  In the Gospel of John we find Mary weeping beside Jesus’ empty tomb, expecting that someone has taken the body to do who knows what to it, and then like a strange lurker comes Jesus walking along amidst the graves and Mary doesn’t recognize him.  Because, why would anyone hang out in a graveyard anyway.

And then her eyes are open and she sees Jesus and the thing is you just can’t predict where you’re going to find Jesus.  He apparently has a thing for graveyards.  The God we see in Jesus is a difficult houseguest because there is no way you can anticipate that way to make God feel welcome, right?

You just can’t predict it.

Take one final example.  Imagine that scene at the end of the Gospel of Luke where the disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus, the disciples named Clopas and…well…we don’t find the name of the other one.  Maybe it’s supposed to be you.

Anyway, they’re walking and Jesus shows up on the road.  This is after the resurrection and the whole area is tweeting about it and Jesus plays dumb and anyway, they don’t figure out it’s Jesus until at the very end when they start to eat dinner with him and he does the very Jesus-y thing of breaking and blessing bread and, boom, their eyes are opened.

You don’t expect Jesus to be wandering the back streets, right?  You don’t expect Jesus to be in disguise.  How can you prepare for a God who surprises us?

I’ll tell you how: you collect high chairs.

No, seriously, you start collecting high chairs.  Dieter Schulte tells this wonderful story of how in the lean years the church started collecting high chairs.  And, sure, there weren’t enough babies to fill them…at least not yet.

But, as he said, “They wanted to be ready for the babies if they came.”

And now?

Filled high chairs.

And see, here’s the thing: it wasn’t mostly about being prepared for babies.  I mean, that was part of it.

But it’s more about being prepared for God.  Because God showed up that way at least once.  And as wind and fire and a wrestler by a river and a homeless guy who hangs out in graveyards, and as a random man walking along the side of the road making conversation.

We, people of God, must be ready.  Because God is alive in this world, Christ is alive in this world, and God is a difficult houseguest because you can’t expect how God will show up or what God will need.

You know, I’ve heard many times in my life that “God will do what God will do” or “God will make a way.”  And I agree with that in principle.

But when God does choose to work in that miraculous way, we call that…well…a miracle.  In fact, Lutherans are keen on saying that God primarily works through things: bread, water, wine, hands, humanity.

You.

So, when it comes to being prepared, to being ready, when it comes to something like this capital campaign where, at our heart, we’re trying to reflect with our building who we are as a community, what has to hit home is that, yes, it is God’s world, and God can do as God wants to do.

But it is up to you, me, us, to do it.  It is up to us to help people know that we’re expecting them with better hallways, accessible floors, updated lighting, new flooring, better bathrooms.

It’s up to us to be aware that God traverses these halls daily, weekly, and when we’re honest we must say that we’re not prepared.

But we can be.

Mark Allan Powell, a professor and pastor at Trinity Seminary in Columbus, Ohio notes that, “The church is not a club but a living body, composed of all persons who have been made alive in God through Jesus Christ.”  Luther Memorial is not this building, it is these people, and the people who have yet to join us.  And we must be prepared for their living bodies.  Little bodies who need flooring that is not asbestos.  Old bodies who need good lighting for failing eyes.  Differently abled bodies who need access to the pastor’s office and our Sunday school floor.  Bodies who need new spaces to set up shop as we’re out of office space.  Bodies who need different meeting spaces that are now at a premium in our church.

The church is a living body and it must be accessible and open to all living bodies wherever it gathers.

And, as Paul in II Corinthians tells us, God has given us everything that we need to help people know that we are expecting them within this space that this church body gathers.

But…but…

But it will be a challenge.  Over the next three years we’re asking parts of this church body to invest in a new way over and above what they have been already. The giving we’re asking for is on top of your regular giving. It’s an overflowing gift for an overflowing grace. It kind of reminds me of those Mary’s who went to the tomb that Easter morning.  They went lugging spices to prepare the body of Jesus even though they had seen Jesus die.  They were going the extra mile for a body that meant so much to them. It wasn’t reasonable; it didn’t make a whole lot of sense for them.  But they were surprised by the radical resurrection, the transformation that happened when they arrived.

But, as Mark Allen Powell again notes in that great book “Giving to God,” “It is in the move from reasonable to radical that the goodness of God takes hold of our lives and transforms us according to the gospel.”

And we can transform this building, according to the gospel configuration of being open and accessible and inviting to all.

You know, the people who walked these halls along with the God who they served back in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s…they knew we were coming.  They wanted to make us feel as welcome as possible with the resources they could muster and their latest technology.

And now our sights turn to the next 60 years.  In 60 years will Luther Memorial, the living body, be sitting here in this building, looking around and saying to themselves, “Those people were expecting us, by God.  They knew we’d be here.  They knew we’d be here with our canes and chairs, with our poor eyesight and good eyesight, with our babies and families and ministry needs.  They expected us.  They expected God to still show up in us.  They expected that we’d still be experiencing the grace overflowing from this ministry.”?

In 60 years I will be surprised to be alive.  Most of us here will.  But we can invest in something to outlive us here.  We can change thousands of lives for the future of this ministry here.  We can provide the welcome for the God who will continue to show up in this body for years to come.

Look, God is a difficult houseguest…but we can do this.  We can see some needs. We have been given everything in abundance to share with others and welcome God the guest, welcome Christ the living body, welcome ourselves anew into a new space for the next 60 years.

When people come and sit in worship in 60 years here in this space, I hope they say, “These people knew we were coming.”

Amen.