Church on Morgan
June 14, 2015
Good morning, everybody. So if you were here last week, we started a brand new series called Beautiful Things. And I got that sort of ball rolling, tried to frame out what we'd be doing this summer. And it really kind of boils down to this, in Psalm 19, the psalmist says that the heavens declare the glory of God, and at the firmament, His handiwork. The day and night, all of creation, it just pours forth speech. It's speaking all day long, the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the oceans, that God is good. And so often we miss it, right, that our lives are just so busy, we walk by this incredible place that God has put us in, and the message that all of creation sings. And so this summer, each week, we're going to take a different sort of piece of creation that we're surrounded by, and we're going to slow down long enough to see what it might have to say to us about the character, the nature of God. And this morning we're going to be talking about oceans. We've got a special guest so excited that Hope Ledbetter is going to be with us. Some of you know Hope. Some of you are new to Edenton Street, otherwise you would know Hope. And so I was telling our folks earlier this morning, Hope's kind of a legend in these parts, right? There's this thing that happens when, you know, I think it was about a month ago that I asked Kylie, who led us in the prayers of the people, would you just do the welcome this morning, right? And it's just a welcome. But when she got up and did the welcome, something shifted in the room, and I thought, well, that, you need to do that again. So as she did that again, and now I think there's something that we notice in folks, our job as the church is to recognize gifts and graces in people's lives, and to go, that's a calling, like, that's something special that's happening in you, and Hope was one of those folks that it wasn't, like, one person sort of saw that and said, hey, Hope, like, you're pretty good at, like, teaching people about God or leading God's people, but an entire community for years and years and years gathered around her and said, no, seriously, don't waste this gift. And thankfully, Hope's just so wise beyond her years that she's been pursuing this calling for many years now. She's a June, she just finished her junior year at UNC Chapel Hill. She's about to start her senior year. She currently interns all summer at Christ United Methodist in Chapel Hill and their youth ministry there under a great friend of mine, Rush Beam, and so we have her on loan for one Sunday morning to speak to us today, and before she comes, I'm going to read the scripture for us this morning. It comes from Psalm 29, and typically after a scripture reading here at Church on Morgan, we'll say something like the Word of God for us, the people of God, thanks be to God. But this summer, as we are in this series about creation, we've actually got kind of a new refrain, and you'll see it at the very end of the scripture passage, and so I invite you to join me in that when we get there. So here now, the Word of the Lord, ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord, the glory of His name, worship the Lord in holy splendor. The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders, the Lord over mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty, the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Syrian like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh, the voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl and strips the forest bear, and in his temple all say glory. The Lord sits and thrown over the flood, the Lord sits and thrown as king forever. May the Lord give strength to His people, may the Lord bless His people with peace. Friends the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Hope come share with us. Well, good morning friends. As Justin already shared, my name is Hope Ledbetter and I am so excited to be in this place of worship with you all this morning. And as many of you know and as Justin kind of touched on, this church does have such a special place in my heart. So what a gift it is to be able to be here and to worship with you all. And as someone who is raised in this church and by this larger community, I hope that you have already found that this is a place where you belong and a place where you are loved deeply. I came several weeks ago to sort of check out this service since I knew I would be with you all this morning and let me tell you what, the Holy Spirit is present in this place. It was so clear to me even in that one interaction, the God is at work and is doing something quite beautiful here. What an incredible worshiping community this is. Friends will you begin this morning by praying with me. Father, God, my prayer is that your voice will be heard this morning. My prayer is that your word will be proclaimed. Lord, make me less so that you might be greater. Amen. Have you ever had a moment that took your breath away? Have you ever seen a sunset and thought that you might never see a sight because the oxygen in your lungs to go out so quickly? Have you ever looked up into the night sky and felt so finite? Have you ever stood next to the ocean and wondered in awe of our God? And right now, and as Justin has already said, we are in our second week of this sermon series called Beautiful Things and it's we stop to look around at this beautiful creation around us. And we will explore these moments that cause us to stop and to stand in awe and explore together how we can begin to see God more through creation as we spend more time outside this summer. I think many of us have found ourselves saying or heard other people said before that they see God in creation. As a young child, I was always kind of confused by this notion of seeing a living God in a creation that I perceive to be still in an animate in some ways. I wondered how people could see a living yet seemingly invisible God in the mountains or in the hills or by the sea. I often thought that this was just a cop-out answer. One of those answers that you just give without really truly understanding what you're saying but you just say it because you've heard it said over and over again. However, I've come to realize that this is certainly not a cop-out answer and that seeing God through the creation that God made is quite a beautiful way to learn more about God, who God is and who God created us to be. This morning we'll begin to explore God's creation through talking about water and more specifically about the ocean. So let's begin this morning with a quick poll. Many of you do look very tan this morning, so I have to ask how many of you have already been to the beach this summer, just a quick raise of hands, man. And how many of you, if you haven't already been, are planning to go at some point this summer? Yeah? Few more of you. If you don't already have plans, maybe still trying to make those, get them in the works. Do we have any people here this morning that aren't really beach people like you might go but may not love it? Okay. I'm coming here. I can tend to be one of those people, so I have to ask. So it seems that many of you will be heading to the beach in these weeks to come if you haven't already been. Summer seems like a time when we want to spend more time outside soaking up the raise of the sun. And it's not uncommon for water to be close by, whether that just be in the spigot, in the sprinkler outside, or whether it be by the ocean. A couple of friends before we get too thick into this, I do have a confession to make, and I already kind of alluded to it, but I'm going to spend the rest of this morning talking about the ocean. And the truth is that I don't really love the ocean, but don't get me wrong, I think the ocean is beautiful, however, I'm honestly pretty terrified of it. I never truly learned to swim super well, so when I'm around water, it just makes me like a little bit anxious, and on top of not being the most confident swimmer, at the ocean the fact that you can't see the bottom, plus the fear of this rip tide, it just gets me a little bit anxious. And if that isn't enough, then this kind of tiny small detail that the ocean just seems to go on forever and ever beyond the horizon much further than I can really see or even begin to fathom often puts me over the edge. Like really, if I were to get stranded out there, how in the world am I supposed to get back alive without just floating out into this great abyss? So every week during the summer, my family goes down to the beach to Emerald Isle with my mom's extended family. And every year I bring my little purple inner tube, in case there is a particularly calm day and I decide to be brave and get into the water for like really just a few minutes. But in the back of my head every year is this image of myself and my purple inner tube and the big abyss of the ocean just floating about, lost and a bit panicked. This image alone probably keeps me perfectly content on land with my book more often than not, enjoying the peace and the sound of the waves crashing instead of being out in the water and fearing the waves crashing over my head and pulling me out to see. Now that is just the beginning of my ocean stories, but I wonder what yours are. I wonder what comes to mind when you think about the ocean. Do you fear the ocean like I do? Or do you find great peace and great calm in the ocean? Is there something about it that keeps you coming back year after year? Maybe you go to the same beach each summer. Maybe you have tons of memories at the beach with your friends or your family. Maybe you love the water or maybe you are like me and stepping out into the water might be the most terrifying thing that you would do all summer. Maybe you like to sit by the water with a good book or take a long walk by the shore. Or maybe you are heading off to the beach right now and for the past 30 minutes you've been recounting that packing list in your head. No matter what it is, I invite you this morning to think about the memories you might have connected to the ocean. Has there been a time for you that you have stood by the ocean and simply stopped and stood in awe? Has there been a moment for you that you've spent at the ocean that you will never forget? And for me this moment came on the small island of Eleuthra in the Bahamas about three years ago. Now some of you may know the stewards who are part of the church on Morgan and if you know them then you also probably know that their oldest daughter Sarah has been living in Eleuthra for the past three years. And I had the privilege of going down and visiting Sarah the first week that she moved there three years ago and while I was there Sarah was showing us around the island and had arranged this big tour that we could go and see all of the beaches and especially her favorite parts around the island. And now the great thing about this one beach that she was taking us to she told us you know it's super tucked away and no one knows about it and when we get there we'll probably be the only ones there. However what we didn't immediately realize was that the reason people probably didn't go to this beach is that it was super tucked away and about an hour car ride down a long dirt road. So here we were in Sarah's itty bitty tiny load of the ground car driving down a dirt road praying that every bump that we went over didn't cause us to bottom out. And finally after lots and lots of driving we made it to this beach and Sarah was certainly right. It was beautiful well worth this hour long drive that it took to get there and the many more hours that it took to get to the beginning of this dirt road down the island. Ever have I been so happy to be at the beach. But more than that I remember just stopping and being able to see with new eyes this beautiful creation of clear still water. Maybe some of my decreased anxiety had to do with the relief of the end of the long drive flow to potholes near bottom out. However it was no longer scary in that moment that the clear glassy water seemed to go on forever. But instead it was refreshing that we had made it to our destination and off of the dirt road and on to the beautiful water. I felt an overwhelming sense of God's peace in this moment and serenity washed over me and that has caused me to never forget it. Now this moment as you might imagine did not cause me to lose my fear of water. But it did give me a greater appreciation for the beauty that can be found in the midst of the chaos that I previously perceived water to be. As you may have noticed this morning our scripture lesson that Justin read for us brings at these two almost juxtaposing images of who God is. The scripture began with a command or perhaps an invitation to give credit to the Lord for his glory and for his strength and to worship the Lord. And pretty quickly the scripture moves on and speaking about what begins to speak about what I want to focus on which is the voice of the Lord. And then following that the scripture concludes with a pretty drastic move from describing the power of the Lord and stating that the Lord gives strength to his people and blesses them with his peace. It is this moment from describing the power of the voice of the Lord to the fact that the same Lord blesses his people with his peace that I want to focus on this morning. So let's look back at what scripture says about the voice of the Lord. It's pretty intense so I'll break it down a little bit as we go along. It reads, "The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders, over the mighty waters." And commentary suggests that this psalm might have been written during a thunderstorm and includes a lot of images related to thunderstorms that you might can imagine. So this helps a little bit with the imagery. We can almost see the Lord and God's glory thundering over the mighty waters. I picture that this is a storm that is brewing over the ocean, although it is not particularly clear where it was actually written. And again we'll pick up. It says, "The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon." And as I learned the cedars of Lebanon are giant trees in Lebanon and they are so well known in Lebanon that they're actually pictured on their national flag. I saw a picture when I was googling cedars of Lebanon that has a tree taller than you can imagine and then you see at the very bottom of this tree a couple people that were standing and looking up to it, so these trees are huge. And we'll pick up again. It says, "He makes Lebanon skip like a wild calf, Syrian like a young wild ox." And as I learned, Syrian is another name from Mount Herman, which is a mountain that is known to be seen from anywhere in the Holy Land. So this is a landmark that many people would know what it was talking about. So let's pick up again with some more storm imagery. It says, "The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning. The voice of the Lord shakes the desert. The Lord shakes the desert of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forest bare." Now, I don't know about you, but when I read these words, they make me a little bit anxious. These words have such power and these words proclaim that our God not only is and can do all of these incredible things, but that simply the voice of our God can cause these giant cedar trees to split or the highest mountain in the Holy Land to skip. And friends, I know that you know this, but just in case, can we all just agree that mountains are pretty heavy, but this psalm, this psalm is proclaiming that the voice of our God causes the very mountains to skip like a young, light, wild animal. That's crazy. And friends, these words might also instill fear in you. You might have already decided, as Justin was reading the scripture, that you don't want any part of the scary God that shakes the deserts and breaks the giant trees and is the Lord over the waters. And part of me wouldn't blame you for that because frankly, it's hard for me to imagine anything making a mountain skip. And I probably would not want to run as fast as I could, I probably would want to run as fast as I could away from it and not towards it. And I definitely wouldn't be crying glory as verse 9 in all of God's temple say that they cry as this Lord is Lord over the deserts and the trees. But let us be reminded of how the psalm ends. Verse 11 reads, "The Lord gives strength to his people and the Lord blesses his people with his peace." I love that the psalm ends with this verse. How beautiful it is to say in the same breath that our God is powerful and then also that the Lord blesses his people with peace. The fact that our God is mighty and powerful and is portrayed as such has often led people to question whether the God of these scriptures in the Old Testament is also the same God of the scriptures in the New Testament. I've often heard friends say that they have a hard time believing that the God who is the Lord over the floods that covered all of the earth is the same God that sent Jesus to die in our place out of great love for us, God's people. But friends, who created you with his own hands and breathed life into you? Whose very image were you made in? Do you believe that the same holy God that created life out of dust cannot do these great things that the psalm speaks of? Do you know that the same holy God whose voice is majestic and powerful and thunders over these mighty waters is the same God that brings us peace and gives us his people strength? Friends let us proclaim this morning that we worship the God that simultaneously reigns over the waters but also offers us life and peace by this very water. But hope you might ask, how is it that something so majestic and so powerful and mighty could also be peace? How is it possible that these two things can go together because in my head they don't seem to add up? You might wonder. And so I ask you, is not the same water and the crashing of the tide that I have feared all of these years, the same water that brings me immense peace as I sit outside of the waves and under my umbrella and watch it go in and out? Is the raging of the storm and the violent crashing of the waves not the same water that mesmerizes us as it gently kisses the sand over and over again? Friends can water only be one thing. And here is the good news friends, if our God is a God whose voice can make the very mountains skip in the desert shake then might we trust God with the mountains in our life or the desert that we seem to be walking through? Might God move the mountain that seems immovable? Might we believe that God can bring us out of this dry desert and into new life? Friends if our God is a God of might and power then might we believe in this power and the things that we don't see as being possible? Might we believe in this God who says that nothing, nothing is impossible with him? Might we trust the God who can speak and crush the cedars of Lebanon to also speak into our own lives and to crush the things that have taken up and welcome roots? Might we believe that this God who takes our fears and offers us the strength and the peace of the Lord? May I even be so bold to ask you this morning. Friends is this God the same God that you worship. I find it easy to pick parts of the God of God that we like, those parts that we might seem easy such as God is the God over the beautiful sunsets and the beautiful night skies. But God that same God is not the God over the raging sea because that God is mighty and scary and powerful and how can God be all of those things at once? Your friends, I love this psalm because it reminds me that God is both and. God is both the God of power and might and the God of peace, yes, both and. It may be so bold enough to ask you again, do you tend to worship the God of power and might? But forget that that God is also the God who bears peace to God's people. Or perhaps I should ask, do you focus too much on the peace that God bears and have forgotten the power and the might of the one who created you? And I would love to leave you with a story or rather an image that has stuck with me for many years. Several summers ago about this time, I was preparing to go with a large group of kids and some teachers from the school that I was interning at down to the beach. It was a trip that many of the kids had been looking forward to for a long time. And as is common with most school groups, the director came out before we left and gave the students a big pep talk before they got on the bus. Since many of the students were not strong swimmers and had never been to the ocean before, they were told over and over again, don't get in past your ankles. Do not touch the water past your ankles. I was curious as to how this would pan out with tons of elementary school children going to the water. Would they be able to resist the temptation of just running into the beach? Would they really be able to resist splashing in the waves? And so as we were there, I kept a careful eye on the youngest in the group. And I was relieved that the students did a great job. They all followed the rules and played by the beach. Most of the afternoon melted away as we ran along the sand, skipping and singing and passing around the camera as we took silly pictures. But as the afternoon drew to a close, I remember looking way down the beach and I saw someone sitting in the water and splashing in the waves as they drew into the shore. My gut reaction was to assume that it was a student or perhaps a mischievous fifth grader. However, as I realized, this was not a student, nor one of the mischievous fifth grade students. But instead, it was my good friend Reagan, who was the math teacher. Not only was Reagan sitting in the water in his soaking wet full clothes, but he was splashing in the water and pooling in the water to shore and cupping it with his hands and pouring it on to him. I had to laugh because like a good rule follower, he was sitting with just his ankles in the water. But I could tell that as I walked over, he was getting a little bit anxious. And as I walked towards Reagan, he looked up with me with a beaming Reagan smile and he said, Auntie Hope, as he called me, is this okay? In the moment, I only remember laughing and applauding Reagan for following but bending the rules a little bit. But I think that there is something really beautiful about this moment. I think Reagan reminded me to fear the water. And he demonstrated this by following the directions and not going in past his ankles. But Reagan also reminded me not to let the fear of the water keep him from the peace and the joy that the water brings when it washes over you. As a friend, I invite you into a life of both and, I invite you into a life of both the fear and remembrance of the might and the power of the water. But also the joy that it brings when you allow it to wash over you. And as you leave this place, my hope is that when you see the ocean this summer, whether it be just on Facebook or Instagram or whether it be in real life, that you might be reminded of both the power of our God and the peace that God offers to you each day. My hope is that when you see the ocean, you will remember that the thing in your life that you've been trying to release is not too big for the God who reigns above the waters. My hope is that when you see the ocean, you will remember that yes, our God is a God of might and power, but that the same God breathed life into you and longs to be near to you. But you receive the kind of peace that only this God can bring. And friends, may you go forth and receive this peace. May you ever remember the might and the power of our God to move the mountains and to crush the mighty seeders in your life. And may you never forget the joy and the peace of our God, and the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. Will you pray with me? Father, God, we welcome you into this place. We pray that you will open our hearts as we respond to the word that you have spoken to us. Might we remember that you are the God who brings this peace, that you are the God who controls the ocean, but that you love us and long drawn near to us. Amen. Hey, every week here at Church on Morgan, we respond to the word by confessing our sin together and hearing grace spoken over our lives again. We do this because on one hand, I think both sides of this equation are equally countercultural and so needed. One, to remind you that you're not sufficient, that you're incredibly needy, that this is not sort of a world we make it through on our own, that we have deficits, this thing we call sin and brokenness in our lives, and so we confess that together each week, but then very quickly before we move to the next moment, we remind each other too that this is a world we live in soaked with grace. That God loves us and extends grace to us far beyond what we can imagine or deserve, and so this morning as hope is shared, we remember that, man, God speaks so powerfully through the oceans, God speaks so powerfully in our lives, but more often than not, for many of us, we don't take the time to listen. Or instead of running into the ocean, we run away from it. And so I invite you to stay in this morning with me as we offer up a confession together. Would you join me now? Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will. We have broken your law. We have rebelled against your love. We have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray. Free us for joyful obedience through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. Friends, here now the good news of the gospel, that Jesus Christ died for us while we were yet sinners and that this proves God's love towards us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. As reconciled people, not only to God, but to one another, let us exchange signs of peace with each other in this room, saying peace be with you. [MUSIC]