Today marks the last Sunday devoted to our year’s theme of being “Seekers on a Journey.” In our different seasons within the church calendar, we have sought to highlight how different aspects of this “seeking” or “search” might look. I trust that at least some of the services have spoken to you and encouraged you. My desire is that in some way God’s grace has touched your life this past year and that you have grown not just in knowledge or strength but also in understanding and in gratitude to the Creator God Who has not only made us but loves us and loves us deeply and completely.

Over the course of this week I have been challenged again to the very core of my being to keep on seeking this God Who calls us to seek and worship Him. It would be so easy to give up. In our own congregation some of us are going through tough times. We have experienced some of the difficulties which Shakespeare’s Hamlet described as the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” And then there is the grim truth of the Residential Schools Policy which is a part of our shameful past as a nation. Many of us have heard some of the deeply moving and horrific stories of survivors of these schools. The pain of this week has been considerable. The journey of the seeker is fraught with heart-ache and doubt. The frequent urge is to stop walking and pitch a tent. To turn around and go back. To forget about some goal and consolidate what has been achieved. To pull out our remaining funds, put them in a bag and bury it in a safe place. In other words, to give up. And yet our text tells us to keep on seeking.

The analogy of life as a journey permeates all of scripture. The Apostle Paul uses the journey motif to describe the story of the faith community. The most fulsome description of this journey of faith is found in Paul’s magisterial Letter to the Romans where he describes how all people, Gentile and Jew alike, are part of the story of God’s faithfulness. From the beginning of the humanity’s rebellion against God, we as humans have been destined to reap the consequences of our sin, that is, eternal death. And yet God’s mercy and grace have opened a way for humanity to be reconciled back to God. Now all people, Jew and Gentile alike, can be part of that great story of redemption.

Paul even says that the story of God’s people throughout time now becomes our personal story.

• We journey with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through uncertainty and promise
• We journey with Israel in Egypt, brought out of slavery, brought through many experiences (Red Sea, hunger, thirst, enemies, fear, boredom, temptation, disease, death)
• We journey with David, the prophets through all of the events of calamitous defeat, exile, return and then the hopeful waiting, the silence, the silence, the silence…
• We journey with John the Baptizer, Mary and Joseph and then Jesus, the disciples, the church and then us, the Gentiles all grafted onto the vine of God’s promise

The early church recognized itself as being on a journey both literally and figuratively. I have been fascinated with the origins and growth of the Celtic tradition. The lives of the Celtic saints were perpetually restless. They were always on the move, always searching. As I understand it, the Celtic monks understood this “journey” quality of the Christian life intuitively.  Restless and always in search of God, they may have stopped for a time at one place but then they would move on. This became their method of evangelism. Mostly hermits, they would find a place, build a crude hut, till the soil, give to the poor, heal the sick, pray for others and then slowly people around them would join them.  Eventually a number of brothers would form a small abbey.  Once a small community was formed many would pick up again and move to the next place. And so the journey would continue.

I take “journey” to be a word of encouragement and so I want to share with you as a valediction that “encouraging word” found in Isaiah 55: 6-11.

Seek the Lord while he may be found,
   call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
   and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
   and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
   nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
   so are my ways higher than your ways
   and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
   and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
   giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
   it shall not return to me empty,

 

1. “Seek the Lord while he may be found.” (6, 7)
   • The verb structure in Hebrews is continuous and incomplete.
     “Keep on seeking the Lord” while he may be found.
   • Parallelism—“Call upon him while he is near.”
     NOT  THE SAME AS—Yuri Gagarin—Russian cosmonaut, first man in space, who famously stated that even up in space he “could find not one trace of God.”
     BUT RATHER AS—someone making the wager, a woman seeking a pearl, a shepherd seeking a lost sheep.
   • The consequences of this seeking are clearly stated by the writer:
     • So that God may have mercy on them
     • God will abundantly pardon
   • Unfortunately, too many people see God otherwise: as the one who is the cosmic killjoy. The writer of this wonderful chapter says otherwise.
   • “Seek the Lord not to feel guilty but to feel accepted and loved.
     Seek the Lord not to be doomed to a legalistic lifestyle but to live in freedom.
     Seek the Lord not to be punished but to be loved and cherished.
   • Live freely and joyfully.  God loves to extend mercy and pardon.
   • Seek God because that is where home is.
     Augustine “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”
     Our homesickness is a clue to our present condition—The Prodigal Son came home. Walker Percy asserts that we’re “lost in the cosmos.”  Keep on seeking the Lord. You won’t regret it.
     
     
2. For my thoughts are not your thoughts. (8, 9)
   • There is a fine line between faith and doubt—sometimes I feel both at once. They don’t mix and I sense the incongruities of holding mutually contradictory feelings simultaneously. The prophet recognizes the difference between the transcendent God and humanity.
   • Karl Barth called it the “Infinite Qualitative Distinction” between God and Humans. Job knew about this infinite qualitative distinction and found himself at a loss for words when questioned by God.
   • Our questions and God’s answers sometimes don’t line up.
     • Job learned that he was not meant to believe God’s answers.
     • Job was meant to trust God.
   • Unfortunately some people tend to think they know all too clearly mind of God. They throw around the notion of “God said” a little too freely.
     For example, John Ortberg writes in his book Faith and Doubt:

     My friend (Pentecostal) Gary was at a service once when a man stood up and addressed the congregation:  “Thus saith the Lord, ‘As I was with Abraham when he led the children of Israel across the desert, so shall I be with you.’”  He sat down and his wife whispered something in his ear.  Then he stood back up. “Thus saith the Lord, ‘I was wrong.  It was Moses.’”

   • Job doubts God’s character and goodness and charges God with absence and silence.
   • His friends speak well of God and try to argue him to belief.
   • But somehow when God speaks, he is angry with Job’s friends, not Job.
   • Job’s friends had certainty.  Job had faith.
   • Faith produces growth and faithfulness, not necessarily certainty.  Faithfulness is better than certainty but it doesn’t feel as good.
     
     
3. (my word)…shall accomplish that which I purpose (10, 11)

• What is our purpose?  Why are we here?
  A Prayer for Owen Meany or its movie counterpart “Simon Birch” sees a boy, stunted in his growth by genetic disorder engaging in a relentless search to discover his purpose for living. There must be a reason why he was born like he was.
• I would put it to you that this is our desire as well. We want to know why we are here. As Christians, this question becomes even more important because we believe that there is purpose to our lives.
• Furthermore, we believe that we are part of God’s purposes and that they will be accomplished.
• Our task within the church is to help seek out the gifts in our brothers and sisters so we all can become part of God’s fulfillment of His purposes.
• Everyone has a part to play.
• Our journey is intended to produce consequences…to build character and to demonstrate what the coming reign of God is like. Paul gives a brief list of these “fruits” in Galatians 5:22—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• This is the hard part. The shaping of character, the building endurance, the dependence on God even in the midst of silence, absence and loneliness. But we are not forced to do this alone. We are give the Spirit of Christ to help us.

So we walk resolutely and confidently, not because we have a mantra or set of beliefs, but God himself walking with us, leading us, yes at times even carrying us. Amen!

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