Sermon
of September 25, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Exodus 17:1-7
“Evolving Faith: Accepting Responsibility"
I'll let you in on a little secret about my personal life: On days when I arrive at the church office after 9 a.m., it is usually because I have been at a meeting at church that has gone long into the evening the night before. So I give myself a little slack the next morning…have a second cup of coffee at the kitchen table…and watch MORNING TV! I used to watch the beginning of "The Larry Elder Show." I didn't like him at first, but he looks a whole lot better now that he has been replaced by Tyra Banks. At least he had some substance to what he had to say! Anyway, Larry Elder's show always began with the phrase "It's all about personal responsibility." How true this is today - and how true it has been throughout this history of our faith - including the days of Moses and the Israelites as recalled in our Scripture lesson today.
So, I thought I'd talk today about how personal responsibility has evolved over the years. And I want to begin with this chapter, from Exodus, Chapter 17, those first seven verses because in that story that we heard from the travels of Moses and the people of Israel back toward the Promised Land. We have people who are saying, "It's not our responsibility, it's somebody else's."
That is one position that some people take: "Oh it's not my responsibility, it's somebody else's." Think about this story. We've been reading these passages from Genesis and Exodus for some time now. If you've been here a while you'll know that we found at the beginning of Exodus the people of Israel in slavery, in Egypt. The people cried out to God, Moses was appointed by God to take them out, they do escape during the Passover, they break through, the waters of the Red Sea part, and they get through. The Egyptians get crushed in the waters coming back and the people of Israel, the Israelites, are now safe on the other side, the Egyptians are no longer a threat, and they're making this long journey back up to Canaan to the Promised Land.
It's a long journey, it's a hard journey. They're tired, they're worn out. They've been in the desert in the wilderness and finally they come to this place, Rephidim, and they're camping there but the people aren't happy because there's no water. So what do they do? They immediately say, "We don't have any water, Moses." And it says that they found fault with him and one of the translations says they "quarreled" with him and later they "murmur" against him, saying, "Moses, we don't have water, and it's your responsibility." Every person in that camp has been in the same situation, including Moses. He's probably the most tired and most worn out of all but they say, "It's not our responsibility, it's Moses', he's the one who's got to get us the water."
There were other alternatives you know. They could have all camped there and said, "Gee, there's no water. OK, let's this group go out and look for water that way, and this group go that way, and this group go that way and spread out and send everyone out looking for water, and they'd probably find it if the community took responsibility as a whole. But they didn't, they said, "It's Moses' responsibility" and they start to tear him down and even to accuse God of leading them to this place and they were better off in Egypt where they at least had water.
It's a common thing when we try to foist responsibility onto somebody else and say, "It's not my responsibility, it's somebody else's." I think we all know of all kinds of situations where it's very common for people to say "It's somebody else's responsibility, it's not mine." That classic case, you've probably heard it too many times, is the one about the hot coffee spilling in the person's lap. "It's not because I'm clumsy! It's because McDonald's made the coffee too hot." It's not my responsibility, it's somebody else's.
This morning I was walking from where I park my car, down there by the mailboxes, and as I was walking in, I was walking along the side area and my ankle turned on a piece of a branch that was there. Luckily I didn't get hurt, but it was one of those situations where I could almost have sprained or cracked my ankle. I was thinking, "What if I did? First of all I was thinking, "How does this work into my sermon?" I need one more illustration for this first point…and I'm thinking, "Well, if the insurance companies get hold of it they're going to ask me how it happened and I'll say, 'Well, I stumbled on that branch.' 'Whose property was the branch on?' 'The Town Hall.' 'OK, let's see if the Town Hall's got any money.'" It's not, "I'm clumsy again because I wasn't watching where I was going and I stepped on a stick." Instead, it might get to the point where we should see if the town should pay for this because they were liable for the branch being on the ground.
I don't know if that's the way it would have gone but I think sometimes that's how things do go. We can't just say, "It's my fault. I was responsible, I didn't walk right, I didn't see the stick there." Time and again we see that people are reticent to take personal responsibility and want to see that somebody else is responsible, just like the people with Moses saying, "You get us some water, and it's not our responsibility."
Well after that there was a movement in the evolution of responsibility in Psalm 8. We read Psalm 25 today but Psalm 8, I looked back. Julia used that last week - that's the Psalm that is part of the children's Sunday school lesson for this month. In Psalm 8, the psalmist writes first about the beauty of creation, "Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is thy name and all the Earth; thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted and I look at the heavens and all of creation I see the magnificence of creation." And then the psalmist says, "Thou hast given us dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under our feet." A movement - an evolutionary step forward:
It's not somebody else's responsibility, it's all of our responsibility. It's our responsibility together, the psalmist is saying, to care for creation. We are responsible. God has given dominion over the works of thy hands, which means creation. God has given it to all of us, to share. We all have a role. Thou hast put all things under our feet…even the branch! The psalmist is saying that all the beauty, the bounty, the wonder of creation, we're all responsible for it together. We're responsible for making sure that the air is good, the water is good, the land is not overused, that wildlife does not become extinct - all of creation is something we share responsibility for. We share responsibility for each other, too, as Connie said in the children's message, beautifully, because we're part of creation, too. We're part of the glory of creation and we share responsibility for one another in coming to one another's aid when it's needed sometimes.
I've been thinking about how we're all concerned about the price of gas and we're being told the same things we were told back in the '70's when there was the old gas crisis, which a lot of you don't remember but I do remember. We were told we had to slow down-only go 50 miles an hour-you can't be going 65 because you're wasting gas and it's too expensive. You've go to make less frequent trips to places because the more frequent unnecessary trips we make, the more we burn up that gas and the more expensive it is. Well it's all true, but we shouldn't be doing it just because it's expensive. We should be doing it because we feel a whole responsibility as God's people for God's resources, the energy and other things God gives us to make our lives work.
And I'm the biggest offender, I can tell you this. This is something I have to learn. It's not about the money, it's about preserving the resources. I make lots of unnecessary frequent trips. I'm trying to be better about it. That nice convenient market down the road, Highland Park Market, I've been known to go in there sort of around 7:00 or 8:00 at night and somebody says, "Haven't you been here before, a couple of times today?" I find myself doing that sometimes. When something is convenient, I find I might not carefully make out a list and think, "These are all the things I need to do" and get them all at once, I may think, "Well I'll go and get this and if I forget anything I can go back and get it later." We all need to think about how we can make our habits better so that we can do things like preserve the resources and creation. Not because of the cost, but because we share total responsibility for the quality of the air, the water, the land, the creatures, and one another. We share responsibility for one another, too.
Another good example is our church. We share responsibility for things and the needs and the care of our church. In a little while the Stewardship Board is going to meet and I said that because there's all kinds of little things that we have to deal with. We have to think about how to deal with the windows that are not working too well. And the hole in the parking lot of the walkway that goes to the parking lot from the Sunday school building in the back, and whether we want to buy our oil ahead of time this year because it might be cheaper to buy it all ahead of time, and a couple of other things that need fixing and caring for. In our church that's just not my job or Julia's job to take care of those things, it's not even just the Board of Stewardship's job; it's all of our job, together, to care about those things and make sure that our church is good order. The Stewardship Board has responsibility for trying to come up with a way to do that, but all of us should care about that.
And a real little thing-in that little grassy circle in the middle of the circular parking lot there was a crushed plastic bottle and I decided to just keep walking by it for a few days to see what would happen. It was there for a couple days, three days, four days, a week, it was there 10 days. So I picked it up last week, and I was curious. I'm sure a lot of other people walked by there and nobody bent down and picked it up and put it in the trash. Now I'm not picking on anybody, but that's just a little thing, too, it's all our responsibility. Somebody probably didn't throw it there, somebody probably dropped it by accident, so pick it up, throw it out. Shared responsibility.
Well the final stage of responsibility is getting away from, "It's somebody else's responsibility" and making the move to "It's our responsibility" and finally, "It's my responsibility." One of the other lectionary readings today was from Matthew Chapter 21. It's a parable Jesus teaches that begins like this: "What do you think? A man had two sons and he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today' and he answered, 'I will not'. But afterward he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same and he answered, 'I go sir', but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? They said, 'The first'. Jesus said to them, 'Truly I say to you the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you'. For John came to you in a way of righteousness and you did not believe him but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him and even when you saw it you did not afterward repent and believe him."
At the heart of that parable Jesus is teaching that each one has responsibility for doing the things we are called to do. The two children were told by their father, "Go work in the field" and one of them said, "No." But then he thought about it, had a change of heart, change of mind, and he went and took the responsibility and said, "It's my responsibility to do what my father told me." The other one did the opposite. Jesus is saying, "That's what's important, is for us to take responsibility for our own lives." On one level to do the work we're called to do but on another level to prepare ourselves for the Kingdom of God, which is the greater level of that parable. Each one of us is responsible for saying, sometimes, "It's my job to do this. It's my job to take personal responsibility and so something," whether it's undoing a wrong or doing something intentionally that's right.
I have a great story to finish with that goes well with this. In 1986 the first group from our church went to Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi. We did our first work camp and worked on our first house. And about two weeks ago when Hurricane Katrina left all the destruction along the Gulf Coast, including a great deal in Biloxi, a lot has been focused on New Orleans but there was also a great deal in Gulfport and Biloxi. Shortly afterwards, someone who had been on that first trip with us in 1986 called up and said, now, 19 years later, "I work for a capital management company and some employees and I want to do something for Back Bay Mission" and I said, "Really?" and she said, "Yes, we all felt like we'd like to do something more than just give a check to an organization. We'd like to do something, and I remembered our trip to Back Bay Mission. I knew all that it did in the community and I told my co-workers about it and they said, 'Well, let's try and do something'."
So in the intervening two weeks that person who went on the work camp 19 years ago and some of her co-workers have been in communication with the executive director of Back Bay Mission and are working towards trying to put together something that will get the mission back up and running again. It's just incredible to me, it's just one of those stories I really love about how things happen in churches, that somebody had this experience a long time ago but it stayed with them, it stayed in their heart, and when distress came along they remembered it and said, "That's where I can do something. I can take some responsibility for helping to make a difference in that place." They didn't say, "Oh, I know the Red Cross is going to take of things" or "Oh, FEMA's going to take care of things" or "Oh, the government's going to take care of things." They all will, but she said, "I can do something too. I remember. I know something about what's there. I know who can make a difference. I know how I can help now." She took personal interest and a personal responsibility in trying to make a difference.
The good news today is that we have made great strides in our faith over the years from the time when people would say, "Oh it's somebody else's responsibility. It's just Moses - he's got to go do it. It's the leaders, it's the professionals who are supposed to do it," to, "No, we all have responsibility together for all things in creation," and then within that context, most importantly, "I can do something. I can make a difference." And I know from my own experience and I'm sure you do, too, whenever we do that, whenever we take personal responsibility to undo a wrong we've done or whenever we take personal responsibility to step forward and do something right and just say, "I can do something, I have the power to do something here," it leaves us with a wonderful feeling. Both situations leave us feeling like our souls have been blessed, our lives have been renewed, filled with joy, and it all comes from saying, "I can do it, I will do it, I will take responsibility for that."