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Let me understand the teaching of your precepts; then I will meditate on your wonders.              Psalm 119:2

Weekly Sermons

Having Fun with the Lord    

Isaiah 66: 12-14

You shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice. Isaiah 66: 12-14

It’s been a long time since someone bounced me on his knee. In fact, just last week I turned 51 – and the thing about being 51 is that you have to admit that now you are in your fifties. Someone once told me that when you are 50 you don’t really have to say you are in your “fifties”. It’s an iffy kind of thing – you’re fifty but not necessarily “in” your fifties. But when you’re 51 there is no doubt about it – you are in your sixth decade of life. You are there. It’s been a long time since someone bounced me on his knee.

But something in this text from Isaiah seems to remind us of how we can be a kid again. In fact, it is not just a return to childhood. It almost seems like a return to infancy. It talks about being fed like a baby and being carried around on the hip of your Mom. It talks about how your parents would take you and bounce you up and down – and what baby doesn’t like that? You can almost hear the giggles in the background. It talks about how God comforts you like Mom used to comfort you when you were very little. You could have scraped your knee or fallen down. You are crying your eyes out but through the tears you look up and there is Mom running toward you. And somehow she makes everything right. You can’t even remember how she did it. You just knew that everything was OK and somehow the “boo boo” didn’t hurt anymore. That is what God wants to do for you today. He wants to give you a return to those days when somehow in your heart you knew everything would be OK because Mom and Dad were there for you. You didn’t worry about making ends meet. You didn’t worry about whether your life had meaning and fulfillment – who cared as long as you could play out in the back yard in the sunshine? You didn’t worry about whether the insurance would cover a particular doctor’s visit. Mom and Dad were there. Mom would make the pain go away. Dad would figure it out. And life was fun. Your biggest concern was how to have fun on a beautiful summer day. Well let me ask you, when was the last time you had fun with your heavenly Father? If you can’t remember then it’s time to sit in His lap and bounce on His knee again. Isaiah says you can.

But most of us in the world feel we can’t. And why is that? Probably because for most of us, especially lately, life seems to be more like the world Jesus described in the Gospel reading. I look at Luke 10 today and the words of Jesus do inspire me but they do not make me giggle and remember the joyous and carefree days of childhood. Luke 10 is important and the words of Jesus are true. But they are a lot about judgment today. What are some of the things that you find in the Gospel reading? You find overworked laborers. There is too much to do and not enough resources to carry out the task and the laborers are tired. You read about lambs who are in the midst of wolves. It seems as if Jesus recognizes a lifestyle of living day to day where it is hard to plan for the future; or it doesn’t make sense to plan for the future when you don’t know and can’t know what each day will bring you. There is a lot about rejection in the passage and specifically rejection of the Christian message. We see the name Sodom and we remember Sodom and Gomorrah as the synonyms for moral filth and degeneracy and as Jesus said of His own day and age that things if possible were even worse. Jesus spoke about the attacks of Satan and demonic assaults on His children- and to all of this we can easily say, “Hey, that’s our world.”

Now do small children live that way? Do they worry about these things? No. Right now there are two commercials on TV that I love watching. One of them is the one about the Most Interesting Man in the world. He is the most interesting man who lives vicariously… through himself. He is so interesting that art museums do allow him to touch the art. The other commercial is the one where the little baby in the high chair is sitting at a computer screen carrying out electronic stock market trades. It is obvious they are dubbing him by having him order 6000 shares of whatever and I laugh every time I see it. I laugh because it is like the Most Interesting Man in the World commercials: they are absurd. Having a little child in diapers sitting at a computer keyboard worrying about the stock market and its ups and downs is so absurd we laugh at it all.

Well as a Christian I’m not always laughing. And I certainly am not living in Isaiah 66 bouncing on the knee of my heavenly Father. I relate more to Luke 10 with its exhaustion and judgment and world of Sodom and Gomorrah and an age that seems more and more determined to utterly reject the message of Jesus Christ and His love. And most of the time by God’s grace I do not throw up my hands in despair. It is exciting to fight the battles and to live in an age where you can make a difference for Jesus Christ! But once in a while I want to bounce on the knee of my Heavenly Father. You and I need to just laugh and be carried around by our Heavenly Father – we need to remember that being a child of God is fun!!! Even in the world of such stresses and worries and cares.

The key is to find the way from Luke 10 to Isaiah 66. And the way to do that is founding the reading from Galatians 6. For tucked in the middle of that passage is those two wonderful words, “New Creation”. St. Paul today under inspiration said that what really counts is being a new creation. That sounds an awful lot like being born anew as if it really were possible to be that infant bouncing on the knees of the Heavenly Father once more. Well how can I be a new creation in Christ?

Galatians 6 tells us that it starts with “restoration”. You and I need to be restored to God the Father. It is because those judgments and stresses and rejections of God and His love that Luke talks about are in fact part of our world and our reality. The Lord knows that you and I are caught personally in these things and we have needed somebody to restore us. You know, the one negative about children is that they do enjoy it when someone is “caught”. You can see that glee in their eyes as they tell a guilty friend or brother or sister, “Oooh, you’re going to get it.” That’s what Luke 10 has as a big part of its message: “Oooh, you’re gonna get it.” But it is not in our hearts to rejoice when someone is caught in sin because it is not in the heart of God to feel that way. Instead, God says to us who are spiritual that it is we who should be people about the work of restoration and we do it in a spirit of gentleness.

I love the way that good old Martin Luther put it for us all. He wrote these words in a sermon given almost 400 years ago based on 1 Peter 4:8 which reads: “Love covers a multitude of sins.” This is what he said: “Learn here to seek your neighbor as a lost sheep, to cover his shame with your honor, and to let your holiness be a cover for his sins…. You men, whenever you come together, do not hack people to pieces. And likewise you women, when you come together, cover the shame of others and do not make wounds which you cannot heal…. Why? Because you would that it should so be done to you. That is what Christ does. He, too, keeps silent and covers our sin. He, too, could bring shame upon us, and tread us under His feet, but He does not do so. And you must do the same.”

Galatians today said that this occurs when we teach each other the Word of God. Because in that Word the Spirit of the Lord sows the seeds of salvation. And we are directed to the cross of Jesus. Luke 10 talks a lot about judgment and rejection but it happened at its worst at the cross. That’s where Jesus bore the rejection of the world and the rejection of God His Father as He suffered the justice for sins that should have been ours. He took that old man so burdened by the cares of this age that is each one of us and He crucified that man in His own broken and beaten body on the cross. – and what’s left is a new creation – a new infant in faith who is never abandoned by the Heavenly Father but is scooped up to bounce on the knee of the Lord Himself.

I don’t totally understand this but I think I saw some of it this past week at the Vacation Bible School. It was easy to laugh there and to feel the cares of the world evaporate. If we could only tap the energy level those kids have we would have no energy shortage into the next century. It was delightfully exhausting and wonderfully faith strengthening. And when we sang songs that had simple words: “We believe.. and we belong…. We belong… and we believe.” – there was a simple childlike answer to the cares of the world that weigh you and me down. You always belong to the family of God. You are never alone. Those children with their words “we believe” were not having existential crises like we often do wondering if there really were a God or not. They believe—and they had in their hearts the wonder of creation that could look at the world God made with amazement and childlike awe.

God is not saying that we need to be a child to believe. But Jesus did say that we need to be LIKE a child in the way we believe. For when we do all of a sudden we recapture the fun of being a child of God. We have that joy that fills the heart and makes tired bones flourish again. The cross of Good Friday has done its work – Jesus has removed the judgment and the filth and the exhaustion. The empty tomb of Easter now does its work – for you are a new creation, and infant about to explore all that eternal life has to offer – Have fun today with God and remember to laugh your head off as you bounce on His knee. Amen.