Praise for God’s Wonderful Works
Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, year B – ALC service of farewell and installation
Bible reading: Psalm 111
[The following is a transcript of the sermon preached by Dr Mike Semmler at the 9am worship service at Bethlehem on February 1, 2009.]
Boys and girls, normally in this congregation there’s a children’s address: so stay in your seats and let me start off with a children’s address. (I need to warn you, as they do on television, adults you may listen with your children’s permission.)
What were they to make of it – these zoologists? Zoologists are people who look after animals. They’re people who study animals. They’d never experienced anything like it in their lives, but there was this new colony called Australia and they were a little worried about Australians because it’s a hot country, in case you hadn’t noticed. The sun shines brightly. And sometimes they wondered if, in fact, the mothers taught the children to wear hats in the sun, because what these people saw as zoologists made no sense. It was beyond their experience.
What was it, boy and girls? It was an animal that you and I know so well. But what a funny animal. If you were like those zoologists you knew something about the lovely fur of an otter – you know those little fellas in the Adelaide zoo, they make a lot of fun, they’re good to watch, they play up to the crowd. Lovely fur. They knew what a beaver was. They knew what beavers’ tails looked like. They certainly knew what ducks were, what ducks’ bills looked like and ducks’ feet looked like. And perhaps if they’d been to some farmyard and looked at all the fowls and the roosters, they would have seen little spurs from the roosters feet. There it was in one animal. And the zoologist said: “Uh oh, we don’t trust these Australians. They’re having a joke. They’ve sewn bits together. It doesn’t make sense. We’ve never seen it. And what’s more – it’s a mammal, that lays eggs like a bird! Come on!”
What’s it called? The platypus. We know it’s a platypus. We’ve seen the platypus over and over again. It doesn’t make sense, it is confusing, it is not the normal experience of people in the world.
(Tune in adults.)
Nor is our text this morning in Psalm 111. It’s not a logical progression of what God does. And the theme for this is: power and mercy together in God’s love.
Power and mercy together in God’s love.
It makes no sense to normal experience. When does that happen in your world and mine? Power is usually abused, or can often be abused, mercy is a commodity which is pretty scarce. At least, entire mercy that we’re talking about. But here it is.
The presentation of this Psalm is also interesting and don’t forget it follows on the Gospel (Mark 1:21–28). What did you hear in the gospel? If it wasn’t too hot and you were able to listen, you would have heard Jesus casting out unclean spirits. The power is there. The power to cast that out amazed people. They were just … nonplussed. They’d not experienced this before – such authority; authority over things spiritual.
But in our text, this Psalm, you can’t see it in the English, but if you’re able to read it back in the original somewhere, you would see that it follows, in it’s half lines, the first letter successively of the alphabet. And that’s not a good way to preach something or teach something which has any kind of logic. But since when my friends, as good as it is, is logic ever God.
Power and mercy come together in God’s love.
What a magnificent revelation. What a surprise for God’s people. The psalm talks about our experience as the upright of God in congregations come together to say thank you. What sort of experience are we talking about here? We’re not talking about subjective experience; we’re not talking about how I feel – which is a little warm right now. I did think that wearing wool would be like the sheep but somehow I’m missing out on something – it’s hotter than I thought.
Experience can be very subjective, but this is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about an experience which takes you into the realm of God – it’s God’s action, what God does, what God reveals – and that’s more realistic and that’s more real than anything you can feel or understand logically, or artistically or creatively.
This psalm is a good introduction to what we have in front of us today – a very important day in the life of Australian Lutheran College. We farewell one principal in Dr Hassold and welcome John Henderson as principal of this institution. We also install two more people in Ruth Zimmermann and Pastor Andrew Jaensch who will take up some of the teaching.
And you see in this psalm it talks about that. It talks about people who see God’s Word and hear God’s Word – like the Gospel, like this text – delight in that Word and what do they do? They study it. And when they study it, they are amazed, and all that’s left is to give thanks to God. Just like the zoologists could hardly believe a thing like a platypus existed, it really does, God’s Word exists – it is the substance that we need for our future as a church.
I don’t know what the future of the LCA will look like, you don’t know. We could have some wise guesses, and probably they’re wrong, at least we’ll know what it was that we got wrong if we have a guess. But what we do know is according to this text, because it’s a text about God’s provision. The psalm talks about providing food. It talks about providing justice. It talks about providing promises for us. It talks about God’s agreement with us. It talks about God’s redeeming us. That’s what it’s about.
Is it any different in this generation as it was way back there? The reference is obviously also, in the psalm, to Moses. You want to see power and mercy come together at one point? Then try ‘Generation Moses’. There they were, side of the Red Sea: they got no motorbikes, they got no horses, they got no chariots, but everyone behind them seems to have chariots and horses, they got the sea in front of them – they’re finished. I mean, they are 5 foot 2 these people, at a pinch. They got nothing to offer. Sure they’re fit; they’ve been building for years and they can run, but they got nowhere to run. It’s an impossible situation. What happens? The power of God is both there as is his mercy. When he opens that water for them and they move through and the enemy cannot follow – that’s Generation Moses.
There is provision for Generation Moses out there in the desert, isn’t there. Manna comes from heaven. We’re reminded of that miraculous feeding in the New Testament where Jesus feeds so many with almost nothing.
What about Generation X, Generation Y, or whatever you and I fit into. Is it any different for us today? Do not we join surely that same miraculous provision which the psalm already puts in front of us, for which we say ‘Thank you, Lord’. It’s not logical, we don’t understand it, but we are taking it on board when we are invited to the Lord’s Supper. Surely it is exactly this same.
Sure that miraculous feeding and provision of the Lord is not just for our physical protection but it’s for our eternal protection. It’s not just physical sustenance, but it’s the substance of eternal life. Surely we are part of that in our generation. Nothing has changed. It’s the substance of what is taught at our institution [ALC], and let’s say – we haven’t got it in the psalm but there’s no reason we can’t add in – ‘Thank God for what he’s blessed us with, in men and women with the ability to teach.’ To teach the Word, the doctrine, the understanding we have as God shows himself to us in Word and in Sacrament. That’s the experience we’re drawn into. That’s why our congregations come together.
And this particular institution we now call Australian Lutheran College, plays its part in our church and we ought to give thanks for it. Because our future, no matter what it looks like, cannot do away with the teaching of God’s Word to the people so that pastors can lead congregations.
Now just like the zoologists who couldn’t understand the platypus, we look around and say ‘It’s not working.’ Our congregations are getting older, some will have to close. Do we see the influence of Australian Lutheran College in our schools? Are the schools feeding into pews of the congregations? Are churches flourishing and growing all over the place? And suddenly our eyes do not see.
But then we have these wonderful preachers and wonderful presenters, and Pastor Henderson’s a great presenter let me tell you and he will tell you of the good things that are happening. And some of you who’ve been to far too many motivational seminars are saying, ‘Yeah, depends how you look at it, Hendo. Is the glass half full or the glass half empty? You are putting a spin on it.’
But he won’t be putting a spin on it, because what we have is the covenant of God, the promise that his praise will continue forever where his Word is studied, where we delight in that Word. That’s the substance of the future. We don’t know what it looks like. We don’t have to know what it looks like. But our experience will be something other than we expect as we are lifted up into that God’s realm where he has his say. That’s what’s in front of us.
I don’t like that saying: ‘Is the glass half full or the glass half empty?’ To me the glass isn’t big enough. It’s the reality of what God has done, God’s actions, what he is providing for us every day. In this society: our protection – our free road to the Gospel – we may not always have but it’s there today.
We can come together as the upright to say thanks with a whole lot of people who are affected by Australian Lutheran College, by the grace of God, as we in this church are called upon to serve them. And I’m talking Papua New Guinea; I’m talking south-east Asia; I’m talking Malaysia; I’m talking Thailand; I am talking China; I am talking Madagascar. You say ‘we’re not there’. Oh yes, we are. Because we work in partnership through this College, which brings in leaders from our partner churches in this part of the world, who then go back and lead their churches and they are in those places.
As the Chinese people, for example, move to Madagascar, one step away from Zimbabwe, guess what … the Lutheran Church Singapore, where we have had people come with scholarships to Australian Lutheran College, are already making sure they are in Madagascar so that the Gospel will go on to the ends of the earth, including Zimbabwe. That’s your church. That’s your institution.
We have every reason, as the congregation of the upright, to come together not because we are so good but because of what he does. What is that redemption that’s talked about in this text?
A week or two ago, in Foodland, I lined up and I was really relaxed – some of you won’t believe – really relaxed, and there was a whole queue in front of me. A little old lady was there and she was short of just about a dollar or two dollars. And the girl at the checkout said, ‘Well, I don’t know what to do.” But alongside of her was her supervisor. And the supervisor said “Look, it’s only a couple of dollars. Why don’t you come back later on and pay. I don’t want to see you go home with leaving one bit out of your items there. You go home…”
I felt like paying that two dollars right there and then. And the lady was taken aback, because that supervisor had the power to say, “No, you cannot take all of that out [of the shop], you must take something out of your bag.” But mercy – power and mercy came together there, didn’t they … “You go.”
She said, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
And then the supervisor said, “No, you don’t have to. A man has just given you …” – and it wasn’t me – “… a man has given you two dollars and doesn’t want it back.”
Isn’t that a picture of what God is doing in this redemption in this psalm. He knows – he knows over and over again – that while he comes to us with that redemption, that forgiveness, that new hope, that new life … we’re going to muck it up. We’re going to make the same mistakes tomorrow probably we made yesterday and today. In spite of that, he is still going to go – and that’s not logical – and say, ‘you are mine, part of the upright, you are forgiven for eternity.’
Can you understand that? I cannot. But I live in it. And that’s my experience. Not my feelings. But it’s what God has done.
And that’s why … across the world, across the Finke River mission (which has also got a connection to Australian Lutheran College) that’s why in our schools, where Ruth Zimmermann’s going to teach and Andrew Jaensch is going to teach teachers … to teach others, to bring them to the foot of the cross, where they themselves stand – that’s what’s going on.
I don’t know what the results are and that’s not for me to be concerned about. What is the concern, for all of us, is that we have access and we are exposed to that Word of God which brings provision, which brings protection, which brings direction, which brings promise. Just like that little incident at the Foodland gave a rhyme and reason to this person’s predicament, so too it’s a rhyme and reason for each one of us as we go through our lives. We don’t know that what we see is not necessarily what is happening. We’ve got to listen to God to find that out.
And that’s why there’s a thanksgiving. That’s why today, in the middle of the desert, there’ll be thousands of aboriginal people, many of whom have been blessed to be taught by some our seminary teaching staff – out there in the scrub, under the trees, in the heat, wherever, among the dogs – to bring that which doesn’t make sense but which has the rhyme and reason of eternal life to those people … and they live in forgiveness like you and I and they are saying “Thank you” today … as they are right across Thailand and all those places we have access to, though our College.
That’s what it is. And we have that wonderful maxim at the end of this psalm, which says “The fear of the Lord’s the beginning of wisdom.” Well, this is where it’s at. That we stand in awe and can thank God in the face of what seems to be an impossible situation; where people in our country don’t care about God, where some are antagonistic toward God and, perhaps worse still, some are just impassive. Try getting through to them.
But we do know that his praise will go on forever. That’s the promise. And he keeps his promises – like he did to Moses, like he’s done for you in baptism and for me, like he does in his Holy supper: “This is my body. This is my blood.” – because what we’re pointing to is Christ himself. It is Christ who is the redeemer. It is Christ whom God has sent. It is Christ who gives us himself.
It is Christ who doesn’t fit logically to everything that’s happening by taking on our problems, by taking on our sin, by taking on our shortcomings, our doubts, our fears, our disillusionment … and getting rid of it so that you and I walk, whatever it presents us tomorrow and the next day, through to eternal life. No matter how we feel in our experiences, we are lifted into a whole another experience. Because in the end, what and who is the wisdom of God, but the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, our hope and our life.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and mind in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.