Focus, Focus, Focus

Focus, Focus, Focus
Hosea 11:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

Colesville Presbyterian Church, Silver Spring, MD
July 31, 2022

Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ang-VgqERI (Sermon starts at 30:17)

Scripture often confronts us with the reality that God’s people have grown tired of God’s love. It’s like the air we breathe; we just do it. Losing the focus of being in God’s love, we wander off to seek other reasons for our being. We search for our focus in a host of distractions, forgetting that our whole being desires, hungers and thirsts after God. That’s what we were created for – “nothing else can satisfy our restless hearts, until they come to rest in God,” in the words of early 5th century North African theologian Augustine.

Hebrew prophet Hosea, whose words were read earlier, had been instructed by God to marry a sex worker, a lover who had no abiding love, but loved whoever was at hand to meet their mutual current desires and needs. Hosea contrasts the rent-a-sex-partner life-style with the steadfast love and faithfulness of God. The prophet paints a Norman Rockwell style portrait of a mothering God teaching her children to walk, celebrating their first steps, bouncing them on her knee, cuddling cheek to cheek with them, and caring for them with a mother’s heart, even while the people of Israel wiggle and squirm to get down and away to do their own thing.

We are not all that different from our Israelite spiritual ancestors, sad to say. We thoughtlessly wander off to pursue one thing after another in hopes of finding something better for ourselves. Yet God consistently visits our transgressions and childish tantrums with a holy embrace of love that will not let us go.

Think about the love with which God has loved us. That love does not come to us because we have earned it, asked for it, even pleaded for it. God’s love is poured out on us because we are God’s namesakes, human beings created to bear God’s image. God overwhelms us with a love so complete, so full, so wonderful that, having received this love from God, our the cup—our life—should overflow with love for others, all to the glory of God.

Yet, because we are restless creatures often consumed with desire, we are quite adept at forgetting that our true desire rests in the perfect love of God. We forget that we were created to hunger and thirst for God. This human lack of focus is so strong within us that if our eyes are not turned to God who holds every provision of grace for us, our hunger and thirst will lead us astray. Having abandoned our focus on God, we seek to satisfy ourselves in an endless list of other stuff. We turn our lives into storehouses for things and acquaintances, activities and feelings.

We see this in a poem by Gerhard E. Frost, entitled, “We Have” (Seasons of A Lifetime).

Little sisters, four and six;
today the mail brought
what they liked and looked for,
a catalogue, replete with
many colored pictures. 

The first to it
was the six-year old;
she turned each page possessively,
saying whenever she found what pleased her,
“I want this! And I want this . . . and this!”

The litany of selfishness ended,
came the moment of the four-year-old.
She, who didn’t know the why of catalogues,
turned pages, pointing too,
but now the words were new:
“We got this! And we got this . . . and this!”

“I want!” “We have!” What difference
it would make in this, our global village,
if four-year-old love and wisdom ruled the day!

How then, can we learn to rest content at the breast of a loving God who will not let us go? How can we learn to cease our constant fussing, fretting, and squirming to get down in order to wander off to our own hurt (where oftentimes our hurting leads us to hurt others)? How can we learn to focus on God’s loving kindness, and through it focus solely on God and the great pleasure God takes in supplying our needs? How can we come to embrace one another, to bear with one another, to forgive one another as Christ has forgiven us?

The most astonishing claim of the Christian faith is that there is nothing we can do in and of ourselves to gain God’s favor. It doesn’t matter how many barns we build, how much stuff we collect, how many people we bring into our sphere of influence, how many people we have in our contacts app. All we can do is surrender to God’s holy embrace and receive God’s perfect love as children at a mother’s breast. If there is one thing we need to understand as children of God, it is that we are children of God. In other words, there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. The only thing we as children can do to grow closer to God is to yield more and more to God’s embrace—to still ourselves, to cease our squirming, to drink deeply of God’s love.

We are busy, driven people in a busy, driven culture. We have great difficulty understanding this simple truth: only God can work God’s works in us, and only by focusing on God can the works of God’s love can be expressed through us to the glory of the God who is for us.

It is a humbling moment to realize that every sense of devotion we feel is an act of God working within us to the glory of the God who is for us. In other words, when I want to pray, it is God the Holy Spirit within me, desiring to pray through me, to the God who is for me. When I want to worship, it is God within me, desiring to worship through me, to the God who is for me. When I read scripture, it is the Word of God, Jesus the Son, who is present to me that I may know the God who is for me.

What does it mean, then, when we don’t feel like praying, or when we don’t feel like worshiping, or when we don’t feel like engaging with Scripture? Very simply, it means that we are focusing on people, things, activities which are not God. More pointedly, if we can’t pray, worship, or busy ourselves with the Word of God, we are filled with ourselves rather than filled with God. If we are not loving and forgiving with the same love and forgiveness with which we have been loved and forgiven by God. We are filled with ourselves rather than filled with God.

According to the parable Jesus told about the successful farmer, we are always in danger of being full of ourselves rather than filled with God. The story is not about bank accounts, balance sheets, or credit ratings. The parable is given as a warning about our souls and where they are focused. The farmer wasn’t a bad man, but he lost his focus. He became Me-centered. He said, “I will do this,” “I will do that,” all the while forgetting God. As he tended to his temporal assets the farmer forgot to tend to his spiritual asset, his soul.

Once there was a young widow whose husband had left her sufficiently well off that she could afford to hire a housekeeper to do all the housework. That left the woman free to enjoy the things she had always wanted to do—travel, play golf, socialize, go to concerts, and be active at church. She never really got to know her housekeeper whom she hardly saw. The housekeeper came in the mornings, left in the evenings, and received her pay every month.

After some years the housekeeper died and the woman was annoyed that she had to find a new one. More time passed and one day the widow died. She went to heaven, as she had expected, believing what Jesus had said about there being many dwelling places in the Father’s house.

The gatekeeper met and welcomed her, “I will show you to your new home.” They walked down lovely streets of great trees and homes and one house particularly caught her eye. It was simple but elegant, landscaped with wonderful gardens and fountains. What a beautiful house she thought. I would like that one. But they walked on by.

Finally they turned up a more narrow lane and came to a tiny but neat cottage at the side of the road. It was so small it almost looking like a child’s playhouse. “Here is your home,” the gatekeeper said. “Wait a moment,” the woman said, obviously disappointed. “We passed so many large, beautiful houses, especially that one with the fountains. I wonder who it belongs to.” “Oh,” said the gatekeeper, “you know that woman. She was your housekeeper.” “Really,” she said, shocked. “But that is such a grand house and mine is so small. Why is that?” “You must understand,” the guide said. “We can only build heavenly houses with the materials you send up.”

Every day we are sending up building materials. The materials consist of all the things that we have focused on in our lives. We know we don’t buy our way into heaven with good deeds and generosity. We depend on the grace of Jesus Christ. But while we are going about our daily tasks we are building—building our soul. The sharper our focus on God’s love and God’s will for us, the finer the building materials that are being prepared for our soul’s eternal home.

After the farmer had reached his goal to wine, dine, and recline, the New Revised Standard Version reads, “This night your soul is demanded of you.” Clarence Jordan, in The Cotton Patch Gospels, paraphrased scripture in a southern, often very colorful, idiom. He says the Greek actually says, “This night THEY demand of you your soul.” THEY demand. THEY—the things which had become the rich farmer’s obsession, the things which had become the focus of his living—THEY now demand his very soul. Presbyterian pastor, teacher, and author Eugene Peterson, in his Message paraphrase, has the conversation ending with these words: “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”

What do you love? What do you fill your life with? What building materials are you sending to heaven? What do you focus on? Here’s what Jesus’ said a few verses after today’s reading, again from The Message paraphrase:

“What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way [God] works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how [God] works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.”

So focus, focus, focus on God. Amen.