Not Putting God (Or Ourselves) In A Box
- Pastor Serena Rice
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
A sermon on Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Colossians 3:1-11, and Luke 12:13-21
[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash.]
This past week was quite the juxtaposition for me.
On the one hand, I was preparing to lead worship for this Sunday, which always involves time contemplating and studying the scripture readings from the lectionary.
So, I spent (some uncomfortable) time with the cynicism of Ecclesiastes, and the litany of sins in the letter to the Colossian church, and the rapid-fire warnings against greed and its associated anxieties in the gospel.
It was like a greatest-hits of all the worst parts of adulthood.
On the other hand, I was serving as the camp chaplain up a Crossroads from last Sunday afternoon through Saturday morning, which meant most of my time for the last 7 days was surrounded by campers and summer staff ranging in age from seven to mid-20s.
And THAT was an immersion experience in the mindset of immediacy!
Lots of BIG emotions (both positive and negative) about things that would often be unimportant by the next mealtime, but which served as such a reminder about how real and all-consuming the PRESENT MOMENT is for the young.
Untempered cynicism vs. open displays of emotion.
Pauline theology of the old & new self vs. explaining Bible stories through crafts and games.
The universal constant of the human idolatry of money vs. a week of mosquitos, and eating outside, and camp songs.
It was a disorienting contrast, but in a way, I think that was helpful.
It was a built-in antidote to tunnel vision… a reminder that one perspective, one mindset, one narrow focus will always be too limiting for true wisdom.
And we need that reminder on a week that challenges “greed” because human beings like to try to make our truths simple and easily-digestible, with no messy counter-examples to make us uncomfortable.
As we talked about in our balcony conversation last Sunday, whichever “moral foundations” are most intrinsically compelling to us personally, we assume that they define fundamental morality.
That can feed into our easy judgment of people who are drawn to different moral foundations… but, perhaps even more dangerously, it can lead us into assuming that our standards for what is reasonable, or defensible, or morally obligated closely-mirror God’s.
That’s the tunnel-vision we need to be so careful to avoid with today’s readings… or really with any readings that hold up an uncomfortable standard against which to interrogate our assumptions.
We need to avoid any reading that sanitizes what Jesus is teaching and instead lean into the discomfort of Jesus’s teachings that might just generate some “big feelings” for us.
My favorite bible-to-real-life translator, Debie Thomas could have really been speaking for me when she offers this “takeaway” from today’s Gospel lesson:
“I need to stop assuming that my nearest and dearest concerns are also necessarily Jesus’s. Like the man who seeks arbitration in the matter of his inheritance, I am a stickler for equity and fairness. Jesus isn’t. Like the rich man in the parable, I tend to think that I’m entitled to do what I want with my own hard-earned money. Jesus doesn’t agree. Like both men, I tend to compartmentalize my life into convenient “secular” and “sacred” realms, such that loving my brother (or sister, or neighbor) as myself has little bearing on my totally reasonable legal pursuits, and contemplating my mortality doesn’t require me to compromise my 401K. Again, Jesus sees things differently. Where I see in part, Jesus sees the whole. Where I see what’s pressing along the surfaces of my life, Jesus sees the depths of my heart. Where I obsess over the temporal, Jesus fights hard for the eternal.”[1]
Ugh! She always calls me out!
But she’s right. Jesus does see things differently.
He can see things from our perspective. That’s the whole point of the incarnation… of God being born into a human life to share in our weaknesses and frailty and need… to know what it’s like to live as we live – bound by time, and bodies, and so many limitations.
But Jesus never only sees things from our perspective. He always sees the whole.
Jesus sees all of the frustrations the have disillusioned the writer of Ecclesiastes, but he also sees the signs of hope to which that writer’s misanthropy blinds him.
Jesus understands not only the question of rights in a squabble over inheritance but also the broken family relationships that can lead to such a fight, and he understands how money makes for a convenient deflection from pain and how finger-pointing feels easier than the work of healing.
He recognizes the instinctive thrill of acquiring excess in a reality where subsistence and scarcity is much more common, but he also knows that instinct is what creates the scarcity, and he knows it deserves harsh judgment.
Jesus sees the whole, and because of that, the pacifying justifications that seem so reasonable and realistic to us don’t stand up. He will not compartmentalize his morality. He won’t shrink down his teaching to make it more comfortable.
Unexpectedly, this lesson dovetails with the theme I explored all week with the Crossroads youth campers.
I talked with them about “not putting God in a box.”
Of course, I wasn’t talking with the youth campers about greed or mortality or retirement accounts.
We were talking about God’s “holy surprises” – about the ways that people so often keep their expectations of God small, limited to what seems possible from a human perspective, and how God over and over in scripture pushes past these limits, with promises, and giftings, and love, and generosity, and new life that they never thought possible.
The details were different than in today’s lectionary readings, but it’s the same lesson. The insight that our frame of reference is too small. The recognition that God’s reality, and wisdom, and goodness are not limited by what makes sense or seems reasonable to us.
And there is another parallel with my youth camp messages too:
Because a lot of what I talked about with the kids was about how we try to squeeze ourselves into the same kinds of too-small boxes that limit our expectations of God.
We think we’ll feel safer and be less likely to get disappointed if we keep our dreams and imaginations small.
But that’s not what happens. Rather, when we keep our expectations for ourselves small, that means rejecting the wholeness and life for which God has created us.
But that wholeness and life is there for us in Jesus’s invitation to see the bigger picture, by being rich toward God, rather than trying to store up treasures in our too-small boxes.
Now, that might sound like an unreasonably positive and inspiring note to end on for a Sunday when the readings span Ecclesiastes’ “vanity, vanity, all is vanity”, and Colossians’ call to “put to death in you whatever is earthly”, and a gospel parable that kills off a man the very day for the sin of making prudent plans for his retirement…
But here’s the thing: even when scripture issues dire warnings, I still believe that those warnings are a form of love.
It is the smallness of our expectations and desires that God wants to save us from.
It is for fullness of life that God wants to free us.
And for us to know that fullness of life, we’ve got to break down the boxes, even when that makes us uncomfortable.
Thanks be to God.
