God-Promises: The Promise through Brokenness

Snakes have always creeped me out. Maybe that’s why I loved living in Ireland during my college years – a wonderful guarantee of no snakes. Legend has it that Saint Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland after a forty day fast. While that story may be more symbolic than anything, It seems like that is what the people from our Numbers Scripture this week could really use right now.

Read Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21.

God’s people are not happy. They don’t have any food, and they detest this miserable food. Wait, what? They sound like the child who opens the refrigerator, stares at all the food, and declares that “We have nothing to eat!” Now, the people have been complaining for a while in the wilderness. The Israelites complain about their wilderness experience, longing for the comforts and the certainty of slavery. In the previous chapter, the people spoke against Moses and wished that they had died. In our passage this week, they not only speak against Moses, but they speak against God as well. And rather than instantly providing the solution, as God did with the provision of manna, quail, and water out of a rock, Numbers says that God sent poisonous snakes.

After hearing about the 10 Commandments last week, I would wager to guess that the people have broken the commandment to not use the Lord’s name in vain. As we have talked about God-Promises these past few weeks, we have heard that God is the promise-maker and the promise-keeper, knowing that we are the promise-breakers. And we know that God brings us back into the covenant time and time again. Yet that does not mean that there are never consequences to the breaking of promises.

Brokenness seems to be a state of being for us as individuals, as a church, and as a world. But we do not like to acknowledge it. We want to skip Good Friday and go straight to Easter, we want to skip chemo and be rid of this cancer already, we want to not apologize and just have our relationship go back to the way it was. The truth for us in the Numbers story is that we must admit our brokenness to God and to each other. The truth for us is that sometimes healing and provision is not instantaneous, but a long, hard journey through the wilderness.

But we are not on that long, hard journey through the wilderness alone - God doesn’t leave us in our broken state. God works through brokenness of the body of Jesus to bring us the antidote to sin and death. The Good News from John is that our God turns the ultimate humiliation in death on a cross into a victory over sin and death. The Good News is that Jesus came not to condemn but to save the world. The Good News is that Jesus is lifted high in the wilderness of our lives in Topeka in 2012.

Know that in our brokenness, God is working in us and through us to lead us to the path of shalom.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

P.S. If you are feeling particularly broken, come join us at the service for healing and wholeness on Sunday at 5:00 pm.

Survival After the Flood and God's Promise of New Life

Lent 2012 at Trinity will be a time to ponder God-Promises  -  those promises God vows throughout the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament), culminating in the ultimate promise of salvation and eternal life through the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  We will celebrate this final, climactic covenant on Easter, April 8th.

Meanwhile, in Genesis 9: 8-17, God initiates and establishes God's first covenant.  After flooding the corrupt and wicked earth, saving 2 of every creature and Noah's extended family, God shoots his unstrung war bow across the sky to remind us of God's vow never to destroy the earth again.  In God's act of re-creation (beginning again with a remnant) is the promise of new life.

The problem is:  we continue to sin.  And as we begin Lent - 40 days for contemplation to consider our wicked ways - Jesus begins his ministry with his baptism in Mark 1: 9-15.  Immediately following his baptism, Jesus is driven into the wilderness, where temptation besets him.  This is the same wilderness of our lives, where temptations flood us with the attractiveness of the idols and lies that we can be in control and be our own gods.

The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.  In this permanent, eternal covenant, God's mercy trumps God's judgment.  God's Promise of everlasting life, with the possibilities of new life that only God is mighty enough to grant, we find the comfort and challenges to partner with God in our kingdom wilderness.  May the rainbow always remind us of the possibilities that we might bridge the gap between what is and what can be as God works through us.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley