Prayer for Illumination
Dear God, the journey is long. We are tired and we are hopeful. Send your Spirit to be a light to our path, that by illuminating the way for us we might walk hand in hand with you and our brothers and sisters towards your vision of grace and truth. Amen.

Introduction to Scripture
For the past few weeks we have been focusing on Psalms. It’s important to know that the Psalms were written over a huge period of history by a portion of God’s people called the Israelites. These were the people who were once enslaved by Pharaoh in Egypt, led to freedom by Moses, who wandered in the desert for 40 years and who eventually settled in the “Promised Land,” (which is in the present day Middle East). The Psalms often use words that carried significant meaning and history, but much of this meaning can be lost for us without a closer look. Today you’ll hear the words “tent” and “holy hill.” In Psalm 15, these words refer to the temple built in Jerusalem on Mount Zion.

The word “tent” connects back to when the people were wandering through the desert toward the Promised Land and tents were their homes and their place of worship. The Psalms carried the people through times of prosperity and stability and later through times of exile in a foreign land with their holy temple turned to rubble.

As people of God who listen to God’s word for direction in another time and place with our own times of prosperity and struggle, may we listen to God’s word and find direction for our journey just as God’s people did thousands of years ago…

[Psalm 15]
[1 Corinthians 1:26-31]

My family used to go camping a lot when I was younger. I have a lot of fond memories of camping in State Parks during warm Nebraska summers. However, there is one camping trip that sticks out the most because in my family it is still referred to as the camping trip from “hell.” Camping is often glorified as fun out in God’s creation but it also exposes you to the elements of creation- sun, wind, rain. Let me tell you, we got our share of the elements on this camping trip. On the first day my cousins got severely sunburnt after refusing to put on sunscreen, then my brother stepped on a hot coal from the fire while running around barefoot. By the next night, the sunburn had struck it’s toll with my cousins causing them get sick inside their tent and in turn causing their dog to get sick all. over. the tent. My aunt and uncle packed up their family and headed for home, resolving to come back the next day to pick up their tent. Meanwhile our family stuck it out only to wake up in the middle of the night to a horrible thunderstorm and water flooding into our tent. So, we took shelter in the minivan until morning.

Commonly we think of tents as temporary homes for a short weekend or long backpacking trip. I know I was glad to be out of the tent after that horrible camping trip. Yet many around our community and world continue to live tents for periods of time long enough to seem permanent and are subject to harsh weather and a lack of food, water and electricity. For a while there was a known “tent city” in Atlanta under the underpass of Interstate 85 and 75 where some of our homeless neighbors lived. I remember visiting Managua, Nicaragua in 2007 and seeing the tent city of banana farmers who had marched to the capital to protest the deadly side effects of working with the pesticides on Dole banana farms. They remained in their tents for years because the struggle for change and compensation continued. In 1992 a refugee camp was built in Dadaab, Kenya as temporary housing for 90,000 refugees. 25 years later that camp is home to half a million people. Today the average stay in a refugee camp is 17 years- the entire length of primary schooling for our children here. No doubt we have heard a lot more in recent years and days about the refugee crisis in our world but we may not feel we have anything in common with refugees or even with our Atlanta neighbors moving around from hotel rooms to tent villages to the streets. Unless we have personally experienced these situations, we will never understand what it is like to flee or lose our home but in a way we still have much in common.

“O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?” (Psalm 15:1). As we hear these words of Psalm 15, at first glance it sounds like the writer is wondering, “who’s in and who’s out?” However, the word “abide” here in the Hebrew comes from the word which means “to sojourn” or to be the “resident alien.” In the Old Testament, “resident aliens” were those not born in your land but those among you whom you were commanded to love because after all, the Israelites were once slaves and foreigners in the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19:34). This word suggests that to be in God’s presence at all is a journey and that none of us journey into God’s presence based on our own doing or the nationality on our passport. Rather, it is only by God’s grace that we find ourselves in the company of God.

All of us today are in some way “resident aliens.” Even if you have grown up here in Decatur your whole life, at some point in history your family moved from her another part of this continent or another. Even more so, no matter where we have come from, as children of God we are here only by God’s grace and none of us are so perfect that we have reached the end of the journey of faith with God. From those who first sang this Psalm in worship thousands of years ago to us here today, it is clear that God’s people don’t have it all figured out. We are still wandering, journeying, and trying to live as God calls us to live. We hear the call- walk blamelessly, speak truthfully, treat your neighbor fairly; love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love you neighbor as yourself; welcome the resident alien in your land for you were once foreigners in Egypt. We hear these calls but we are still sojourners making our way towards the picture of life God paints before us- refugee and native born alike.

So, Psalm 15 provides for us not a “judicial procedure to exclude the unqualified,” but instead a promise and a picture of what the journey of faith looks like when God’s people reflect the welcome and love they have received from God in the ways they live in community with each other . For the Israelites who heard this Psalm in worship, it was important for them to be reminded of what it looked like to walk as children of God not because they already lived blameless lives, but because their lives continued to be turned upside-down. I imagine this was true for the earliest followers of Christ as well.

1 Corinthians tells us that there were divisions among the early Christians living in Corinth. On top of that it was considered foolish and dangerous to give your allegiance to someone other than the Roman Emperor. But Paul urges them to remember their call- to live as the redeemed people of God, and that this life is made possible by GOD and NOT because of their own power or noble standing in the community. I’d say we need these reminders today too, don’t we?

According to the world’s standards some of us are more powerful and noble than others. Some are born into races, economic statuses, and families or obtain jobs that give them more power and privilege. However, these are not the characteristics God chose as vehicles for the world’s salvation. Rather, God found power in weakness and brought salvation in the form of a child. Through Christ who became flesh and dwelt among us- we have all received grace upon grace as children of God (John 1:14-16). In the Gospel of John, the Greek reads that the Word became flesh and built his tent among us. So it is through Christ who pitched a tent and made his dwelling among us who showed us how to live as children of God. But we know we aren’t perfect at this and some days it is just straight up difficult, tiring and confusing to live this out.

In youth group we have something called the “Sunday School answer” (those easy answers to just about any question that we gave in Sunday school as little kids: God, Jesus, & love). These are of course age appropriate answers for some of our youngest children but as we grow-up they are the easy answers. We can sit here and say that the answer to living good lives on the journey of faith is Jesus and love, BUT if we truly follow the type of radical hospitality, insanely forgiving and un-discriminatory love that God displayed for us in Jesus Christ, then I believe we should be more challenged by our scripture readings. We need to be challenged because we can say all day that we should love our neighbors, go to church and speak the truth, without ever confronting the difficult reality of making this happen. We can proclaim that all are made in God’s image and equally deserving of love, shelter, nutrition and well being, but we know our world does not function as if this is true. Being challenged by Scripture is not about declaring who’s in and who’s out or about making us feel guilty, it’s about listening to God’s calling to be united on this journey together towards a world that is filled with the love, justice and equality that God displays towards us.

If you were to give and live more than just the Sunday School answer to God’s call what would it look like? Personally, I struggle with this every day. There are many days that I feel I am living out my call as I laugh around the lunch table with Global Village Project students from Syria, Somalia, Congo, and Burma and on Sunday nights discuss and put into practice our Christian faith with the youth. But there are many more days when I feel pushed to consider, what else might God be calling me to do? Am I doing the right thing, enough things or ignoring something? Following God’s call is a daily struggle.

So I wonder what it might look like for you to follow God’s call in a way that shows the radical welcome and love we have received from God? Given the various needs and issues around us, I realize it can be hard to know which way to go and not get discouraged. After all, there are issues of health, poverty, hunger, discrimination, bullying and slandering in our schools, and differences that divide us over worship styles, finances, politics, parenting styles and a whole lot more. When I feel overwhelmed by the notion of God’s call and the needs of the world I often go back to what Frederick Buechner once said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

So brothers and sisters, take comfort in the Good News that we are all on this journey together; it’s not about who’s in and who’s out. God has pitched a tent among us and showed us grace and truth SO THAT we might have the power to live out our calling- to seek God, to do what is right and to further justice not just for ourselves but for those who need it most. Today I pray that each of us would take time to remember who we are and where we came from, to listen for how the call of God is leading you beyond our Sunday School answers and to enter into the challenging but meaningful work of bringing about the kind of love and justice that God shows us in Jesus Christ. This way of life God has called us to is not an easy one, it is full of challenge and heartbreak but also with lots of love and joy. So I ask you, are you up for the challenge? Are you in?!

Rev. Allysen Schaaf
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, GA
January 29, 2017