Sermon for
January 23, 2005
3rd Sunday after the Epiphany
“If You Had Just One Wish… ”
Psalm 27:1, 4-9; Mt. 4:12-23
One wish…just one wish… If you had
just one wish, what would you wish for? Now think carefully…you only have
one. If you had just one wish, what would you wish for?
One wish—that’s just
about right, isn’t it? I don’t know anyone who has found the magic lamp
with the Genie—the Genie who must grant three wishes to the one who holds
the lamp. I don’t know anyone who has found that, do you? So one wish I
guess is all most of us ever get. Like on your birthday, lights are
turned down and your family and friends sing that familiar song in your
honor as your birthday cake is brought in full of the brightness of
burning candles. As you prepare to blow them out hoping again hope that
your aging lung capacity can somehow manage to extinguish yet one more
candle in one breath, what do you do? You make a wish! You only get
one. And isn’t it amazing how the magic of that moment seems to capture
the essence of all the well-wishing that day brings? You close your eyes,
clench your hands, pause in the light of glowing candles just long enough,
and you see the face of a long held dream. Every one of you really do
make a wish just then, don’t you? I do. So do you.
The Psalmist speaks
of God this morning. The Psalmist makes no mention of genies or wishes
but he does say with boldness:
One thing I asked the Lord, that will I seek after.
Psalm 27:4a
One thing. Here is a single-minded Psalmist who knows God to be his light
and his salvation so much so that he fears nothing. He knows God to be
the stronghold of his life so much so that he is afraid of no one. Of
this God the Psalmist asks but one thing.
Just imagine all the
things he could ask for, yet somehow the Psalmist knows that with God you
only really have to ask for one thing and everything else is taken care
of.
This text, this idea,
this notion of just one thing being sufficient is totally alien to us in
our culture today. You see, if you’ve lived in this culture very long at
all you really have no idea what it is to choose just one thing because in
this culture you don’t have to do that. The world in which you live has
taught you well that life is really just a matter of an endless variety of
choices. First you try something out and if you don’t like it you try
something else. You have learned well that food is not so much a matter
of the basic need for nutrition but more a matter of taste, variety, and
preference. Shelter is not so much about a safe and secure roof over your
head but more a matter of comfort, convenience, and design.
Transportation is not so much a matter of simply getting from here to
there but more about speed or comfort or style. Everywhere you go you
have an endless variety of options before you—from 100 TV channels to a
mall full of stores or your own personal online retail outlet you can
access without even leaving your house you can try out, reject, accept
anything and you have no trouble with it at all for you expect to have
choices. We have learned this so well in this culture that we just as
easily exercise our freedom of choice even in the most intimate aspects of
life on the very same basis—we are free to reject or accept friends,
spouses, churches, yes, even God, anytime you feel like it. It is often
not until a crisis hits you deeply and you are faced with one of life’s
inevitable hard questions that you come to know, really know, that this is
really not what life is all about. It is often at a moment like that to
which you come so unprepared that you finally fall on your knees before
God and begin to learn the faithful truth in your heart that it really is
only one thing you need.
It probably was such
a moment just like that that brought the Psalmist to this moment in his
life. God had seen him through it and by that experience as he received
his graduate degree from the “school of hard knocks” he came to call upon
God for just one thing.
One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: to
live in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his
temple…Your face, LORD,
do I seek.
Psalm 27:4, 8b
One thing. And the Psalmist names
it. What is it like to live in the house of the Lord all the days of your
life? What is the Psalmist talking about? At the very least it must mean
that you live all the time where God does. It must mean that wherever you
go you are never anywhere where God does not already live. It must mean
that in God’s house you are not just a guest—you live there—that’s where
you belong; you a part of the family. In God’s house God already gives
you everything you need. In God’s house you are forever secure, provided
for, and loved. To live in God’s house, to see the face of God, is to
experience the presence of God every minute of every day in such intimate
relationship that never a moment passes when you are unaware of how much
God loves you.
You see, when you
live in God’s house you don’t go running around looking for choices and
options. No, the Psalmist says that when you live in God’s house and you
see the face of God there, you only see God and it is only of God that you
inquire. As you heard the Psalmist affirm last Sunday if you live in
God’s house you know your name is already written in God’s scroll of the
book. You know that what is written of you there is God’s fondest dream
for your life. When you live in God’s house God is never very far away
and God just loves to read to you from that book that you might live the
life and fulfill the mission God has uniquely planned for you and you
alone.
Just one thing—that’s
all you need to ask; that’s all you need to know. If you ever experience
the love of God in your life as one who lives in God’s house you won’t
ever want for anything else.
Just one thing—maybe
not unlike that one wish you get to make on your birthday. Is there any
moment in your life when you feel more loved and affirmed than that moment
once a year when the lights are turned down and your family and friends
sing to you with their faces and your heart aglow by the candlelight?
Wouldn’t it be great to experience that sense of love, affirmation, and
joy all the time? Come and live in God’s house and let God love you just
like that every minute of every day. How would you behave if you had that
deep sense of God’s love for you in your heart all the time? I tell you
what:
Your deepest desires will not be so easily for yourself but for
others;
You will be carried by a sure confidence that no matter what
happens
in life, it’ll be all right;
You will no longer be twisted and turned by the fleeting choices
of the
culture but you will be led to the true fulfillment of your life;
You will live no longer by the fear of scarcity but by the very
promise
of
God’s abundance.
When you live in God’s house you close your eyes, clench your hands, pause
in the glowing holy light just long enough, and see the face of God.
