Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“The God of Risks”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Matthew 2:13-23
When was the last time you took a risk? There are about 37 hours left in 2007, so as you look back at another year gone by, can you pinpoint those times when you laid it on the line and took a risk?
Children do that, don’t they? They take risks. The little ones among us are probably the riskiest, most curious danger seekers around, right?
Matthew 18:2-3: “[Jesus] called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’”
Let us pray…
Lord, do something fresh and new among us. Do something that we can’t do for ourselves. Bring us a future, open, bright, and hopeful. Bring us a world that we could not construct by ourselves. And then give us the courage to live into the gift of your future, to take up residence in the new world that you give us. Amen.
A few weeks ago I took my son, Mac, to the park, and I thought it was going to be our usual routine: Maybe I’d walk up the steps of the playscape with him, go down the slide with him in my lap, and then spend some time at the swings. But right off the bat I could tell that things were a little bit different.
Mac didn’t want me to go up the steps. In fact, he didn’t want to go up the steps at all. Instead, he wanted to climb up a ladder to bypass the steps altogether. But the footing on this ladder was spread kind of far apart for a little kid. And more than that, I didn’t think Mac had the strength enough in his little arms to pull himself up this ladder.
But that’s what he wanted to do. So I said, “OK,” and I started helping him up this ladder. That’s when the boy turned around and snapped at me, “No, I do it!” I threw my hands up and said, “OK, you do it.”
Seemed pretty risky to me. I’d never seen him do anything this physically challenging on a playground yet. But he took the risk and climbed that ladder and ended up on a platform about five feet off the ground all by himself. He yelled down at me, “I did it,” and then he proceeded to swoop down the corkscrew slide without hesitation.
This is how kids take risks. They don’t think about whether they can do something; they just do it. And it scares the life out of adult onlookers. You see a 2-year-old in a restaurant walk up to a table and reach up for a full glass of water that just barely within her reach and you can hear this helpless whimper from adults.
The risks children take are dangerous, but for every time they fail in their attempts to climb a ladder or drink from a cup without a lid or jump down from a high spot, they try again. And gradually they learn and succeed. And every time they succeed, they gain more self-confidence and take more risks.
So, Jesus tells us we have to be like these little daredevils if we have any hope of entering the kingdom of heaven. Now that we’re adolescents and adults, that can be dangerous, don’t you think? If a child takes risks by attempting things that may be beyond their physical capabilities, then adults, acting from that same mindset, can get hurt.
I don’t think Jesus looks at adults who take the risk of driving while talking on their cell phones and eating a hamburger and says, “That’s the idea!” I don’t think Jesus looks at the adult who chooses to climb up on their steep roof to put up Christmas lights when no one else is around to help them and says, “Yes! That’s the spirit!”
If that’s what Jesus wants us to do when he says we must become like children, then we may as well start mimicking Johnny Knoxville and Steve-o, filling our underwear up with raw meat and walking a tightrope over a pool of hungry crocodiles.
We need to realize in our risk-taking that there is a difference between being childish and child-like. The child who takes risks does so without regard for whether they can do it, and the result is always a lesson learned and the empowerment to take more constructive risks. When was last time we took a risk like that?
Here’s an example. Steve Martin is a successful comedian turned actor turned writer. Many people in my generation and following don’t acknowledge that the expression, “Well, excuse me,” came from Steve Martin. And decades after his last stand up act, tons of movies, some of which are not comedies, Steve Martin is still known for being a widely successful, revolutionary comedian, and a wild and crazy guy. On paper, he was the most successful standup comic of his time. And Steve Martin is not funny.
That’s not me being critical, that’s Steve Martin being honest about himself. Now, how did Steve Martin become so successful as a standup comic and comedic actor when he’s not funny? By taking a lot of risks.
In his autobiography, Born Standing Up, Martin says that what he lacked in talent he made up for with perseverance. He spent 8 years observing standup comedy, 10 years performing it unsuccessfully, and 4 years basking in wild success. For a guy like Steve Martin, who thinks of himself as more of a serious perfectionist than anything else, being a successful comedian took a lot of risks. And what he lacked in talent, he made up for with perseverance—risks.
Looking at a success story like Steve Martin’s might make us rethink our New Year resolutions. Our resolutions tend to be about what we can put our mind to, never to do with a risk that we might take.
According to Pittsburg’s About.com, the top ten New Year resolutions are:
1) Spend more time with family and friends
2) Get fit
3) Tame the bulge
4) Quit smoking
5) Enjoy life more
6) Quit drinking
7) Get out of debt
8) Learn something new
9) Help others
10) Get organized
I’m not saying prayer doesn’t help when you’re trying to tame the bulge, but if one puts their mind to it, it’s possible. Taking risks goes beyond our devised thinking and sometimes even beyond our physical limitations.
This morning’s Scripture from Matthew is all about risks. The birth of Christ took place and everyone marveled at this gift from God, but it wasn’t until many years later that the scriptures we read in Matthew were written as an account of that Christmas story. And the Matthew text is a point for point examination of how prophecies were fulfilled.
Joseph took his family to Egypt to protect them from Herod, and a prophecy was fulfilled: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Later, Joseph takes his family to live in Nazareth, safely hidden from Herod’s son Archelaus, and another prophecy is fulfilled: “He will be called a Nazarene.”
God gave the gift of a savior to the world, but that gift couldn’t come to fruition without simple human beings taking risks—scary, hopeful, impossible, faithful risks.
We practice our faith comfortably in a nation and in a town where being a Christian is applauded. But let us remember that the United Church of Christ was formed by pilgrims who took the risk of sailing to this new world in an attempt to escape religious persecution.
The forebears of the UCC left Europe on nothing more than a prayer and a charge from their pastor on that ship, John Robinson, who said, “God has yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy Word." That charge sounds a lot like a certain slogan we boast in our UCC churches these days; that “God is still speaking.”
God is still speaking, yeah, but it takes the child-like risks of simple folks like you and me to help those Divine words reach the ears of a broken world.
If that’s not enough to get you thinking about taking a risk in 2008, think of it this way. James Allison is a Catholic priest and theologian. Allison says we have a Herod-like history that God our Creator sees as a journey to a promise. And Allison asks, “What manner of heart is this?” What manner of heart is this? It’s a risky heart. It’s the heart of a God who takes risks.
The Christmas story is all about God’s heart risking it all on humanity. It’s a Herod-like world now, and it was a Herod-ruled world then, and that’s the world God risked sending the Christ-child into. God risked it all on simple folks who were willing to take risks of their own—simple human beings getting up, despite their self-doubts and best interests, and fulfilling prophecies for the sake of the still-speaking God.
I offer to us this morning that God is taking a risk on us. In this last message delivered at Friends in 2007, let us hear loud and clear that God is taking a huge risk on us. And this is what it is: love.
God is risking love on us. The gift of Christ is nothing less than a piece of God’s own heart, and God is love. That’s the risk God takes on us: to love us. So in 2008, how will we respond? If we’re going to love God back, how are we going to show that love?
Well, that’s where risks come in, because to love God back is a risk that we are all called to take. Loving God back means that we focus less on the love of money and more on the love of neighbor.
Loving God back means that we nurture ourselves instead of simply whipping ourselves into doing more and more and more each day.
Loving God back means that we let our grudges and contempt slide into the pit and let reconciliation and new hopes rise in praise to our Creator.
Loving God back means that we add to our list of New Year resolutions something so simple and so impossible as this: “In 2008, I will make the world a better place by…”
And if you are skeptical by nature and you are even now going to those limitations in your mind (I’m too old to make a difference. I’m too uneducated to raise awareness. I’m too busy to take on a challenge. I’m too tired to go the extra mile. I’m too boring to do something interesting. I’m too ordinary to get that spark going for God), remember to be like children who don’t think about what they can’t do before they put faith in what they can do.
Romans 8:26-27: The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.
We’re that much closer to the New Year now. Our resolutions can be hard or they can be easy, but for God’s sake, let’s make them risky. God so loved the world that God sent a savior into a world that had to take risks to bring that salvation to light. Our risk is whether we will love God back, and how we will show that love.
It’s easy really. Just take it from the wild and crazy guy, the unfunny Steve Martin: “What I lacked in talent I made up for with perseverance.” Amen.