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Sermons

LOS ALAMOS 1ST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
DAVE RING, PASTOR
FEBRUARY 3, 2008
A MEDITATION FOR HOLY COMMUNION
"GOD'S STRENGTH--AND WEAKNESS"

SCRIPTURE TEXT:  Psalm 18:1-15 (New Living Translation)
1 I love you, Lord;
      you are my strength.
 2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior;
      my God is my rock, in whom I find protection.
   He is my shield, the power that saves me,
      and my place of safety.
 3 I called on the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
      and he saved me from my enemies.
 4 The ropes of death entangled me;
      floods of destruction swept over me.
 5 The grave wrapped its ropes around me;
      death laid a trap in my path.
 6 But in my distress I cried out to the Lord;
      yes, I prayed to my God for help.
   He heard me from his sanctuary;
      my cry to him reached his ears.
 7 Then the earth quaked and trembled.
      The foundations of the mountains shook;
      they quaked because of his anger.
 8 Smoke poured from his nostrils;
      fierce flames leaped from his mouth.
      Glowing coals blazed forth from him.
 9 He opened the heavens and came down;
      dark storm clouds were beneath his feet.
 10 Mounted on a mighty angelic being he flew,
      soaring on the wings of the wind.
 11 He shrouded himself in darkness,
      veiling his approach with dark rain clouds.
 12 Thick clouds shielded the brightness around him
      and rained down hail and burning coals.
 13 The Lord thundered from heaven;
      the voice of the Most High resounded
      amid the hail and burning coals.
 14 He shot his arrows and scattered his enemies;
      his lightning flashed, and they were greatly
      confused.
 15 Then at your command, O Lord,
      at the blast of your breath,
   the bottom of the sea could be seen,
      and the foundations of the earth were laid bare.

PRAYER: "Father, open our minds, our hearts, and our spirits, to Your Holy Word.  May You be the focus, the only true focus, of the human words I am about to speak.  Amen."

MESSAGE:  On the last Sunday of this month I plan to begin offering pre-confirmation classes for young people in grades five through ten.  In the first session of those classes, we'll discuss the basic nature of God.  One of our scripture references for that study will be the text we've just read--the initial verses of Psalm 18.  I've offered similar classes in prior years and, after we read this text, I always ask the youth present this question:  "How weak is God?"  And I'm always met with strange looks and challenging replies.  "What do you mean, how weak is God?  God's not weak at all.  God's strong.  He's the strongest there is.  There's no weakness in God, none at all."

Certainly, it's virtually impossible not to recognize the strength of God.  When I moved to Los Alamos I quickly realized that, geographically, we enjoy a bounteous plenitude of mountains.  To me, these mountains are wonderfully refreshing, particularly  after living for ten straight years in some of the flattest terrain on all the earth.  I unashamedly love our mountainous surroundings.

I pose this question to you:  Who among us has ever constructed even a single mountain?  You can pump all the iron you want at the Los Alamos Fitness Center or the YMCA, and you still won't ever come close to being up to the task of mountain building.  Sure, nowadays we have scientific and technological tools to multiply our individual human strength -- so that a determined group effort might, eventually, succeed in constructing a mountain.  But what about a planet?  Or a galaxy?  No, there's only One strong enough to do those things, and His Name is Jehovah, the Lord God Almighty.  At the sound of His voice alone, the heavens themselves are shaken.  God is strength -- the very essence of strength, personified.

Bottom line though, to say that God is strong is not really saying much.  Frankly, if God weren't strong, how could He be "god?"  And for us to claim that our God, the Lord Jehovah, is a God of strength also isn't saying much.  The whole concept behind the term "god" assumes strength.  All "gods" are, by definition, strong.  Who would ever be attracted to put faith in a god that was weak?

On the other hand though, if God is strength, pure and unadulterated strength, how can God possibly understand us, in our human weakness?  God, the Mighty One, the rock and the fortress and the thunder from on high -- is so removed, so aloof, so different from the circumstances of human existence as to have no commerce with our frail state of being.  God's immortal; we're mortal.  God's all-wise; we're always making mistakes.  God's strong; we're weak.  There's no commonality, none whatever.

Until Jesus.  In Jesus the weak side of God, for the first time ever, is revealed.  In Jesus, all the limits and frailties of human life, including the worst one of all -- vulnerability to death --become part of Who God is.  In Jesus, we have -- to use a big word -- a paradox.  The strength of Almighty God is deliberately set aside, in order that God might know the weakness of human nature.

In II Corinthians 8, verse 9, the apostle Paul explains this strange paradox:  "For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich."  Almighty God, in Jesus, deliberately became human.  The owner of it all -- the richest ever -- became poor.  The immortal became mortal.  The essence of strength itself became weak.

Why?  Why this strange, out of character transformation by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords?  Why?  For you -- for me.  "...For your sakes He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich."

The Psalmist writes, "...in my distress I called to the Lord, I cried to my God for help...."  Were God only the Almighty One, that cry might go unnoticed.  Or, if noticed, God's reply might be, "What's the problem here?  Just suck it up, human, and quit your whining." But because God, in Jesus, has personal experience of human weakness, we can count on the fact that God understands, God listens, God cares -- and God intervenes.

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which we are about to celebrate here this morning, is a remembrance of both the weakness -- and the strength -- of God.  When Jesus says, "This is My body, broken for you -- this is My blood, shed for you...," He reminds us that God has a frail, weak, human side.  And when Jesus promises, in Luke 22:29, "I confer on you, just as My Father has conferred on Me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom, and you will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel," He further reminds us that God's weakness is His deliberate gift of strength to those who dare to believe in a God who is both, at one and the same time, strong and weak.

The strength -- and the weakness -- of God.  A strange paradox.  And a wonderful expression of His love -- for us.  Amen.

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