Mountains and Molehills

Sermon given to the Midland Seventh-day Adventist Church

July 26, 2008

Pray with me:

Dear God, Thank you so much that we can gather in this place. Thank you for the beliefs we share and the people we are. Be with us as we continue to worship together this day. Amen.

In the past few months I have noticed a renewal; a revitalization within our congregation. I know that many of you have participated in the meetings with Steve and Connie Vail and I sense that you have been blessed. I can see a number of new people worshiping with us on a regular basis. I know that some of you have even been received into the formal fellowship of the Seventh-day Adventist church. I know that some of you have had prayers answered during this time. And I know that some of you are here because you are here. New people are good for all of us.

When I know I am worshipping with people who may be new to the Adventist church or who may not be Seventh-day Adventists, I tend to see my church and Adventist people through a different lens. Plus I am also reminded of my own experiences almost 30 years ago of being new to the Adventist church. As so often happens, the things we notice about Adventists, I certainly did; the more ‘newsworthy’ things about Adventists to those who are not in the church are what I call the molehills: the details of the outward manifestations of our Adventist faith on our persons and behavior.

Here is an example of what I mean: when I was living in southern California and new to the church, a girlfriend and I decided one Sabbath to participate with the Loma Linda University church singles group down at the beach for sundown Vespers and a corn roast. Maxine and I had gone down earlier to the beach and when the appointed hour came to meet the singles group we went looking for them among the many many other folks at the beach also enjoying the southern California Saturday afternoon. Now, we were not very familiar with individual members of the singles group so we found ourselves relying upon what we thought of as Adventist lifestyle choices as we searched for the Adventists among all the people on the beach. Here is how our conversation went as we walked along the beach looking for the Adventist singles group:

· Maybe that’s the group—whoa look at that girl’s skimpy bikini;

o Well, this is the beach, after all

o Yea, but look at that girl’s bikini

o OK maybe that’s not the Adventists—let’s move on

· What about these folks. They look nice, friendly.

o It looks like they are drinking something out of little brown bottles; it’s probably beer, not root beer

o Ok maybe that’s not them—let’s move on

· There’s some more people—

o whoops, that guy has a cigarette and so does that girl.

o OK maybe that’s not them--let’s move on.

· Well, what about these folks, they look like they’re having a big old picnic—

o there’s chips, hotdogs, hamburgers, oh and brownies too

o yea but what do you bet those hotdogs and hamburgers are not veggie

o ok maybe that’s not them—let’s move on

· Here’s another group of people—wearing shorts and tee shirts,

o That one guy doesn’t have on a shirt

o But this is the beach;--lots of guys don’t have shirts on

o looks like they have some watermelon

o Yea, but they are just standing around; some of them don’t even have shoes on

o But this is the beach! Lots of people don’t have on shoes!

o Look, that guy just picked up a guitar

o It sounds like he’s playing something religious

o Well, lets see

§ No cigarettes--check

§ No beer,--check

§ No meat--check

§ No skimpy bikinis--check

§ OK, maybe that’s them--yep we found the Adventists.

You’ll notice we didn’t even try to find the group of people on the beach that “..keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” – those that have no other Gods and keep the Sabbath; those that honor their father and mother, those that don’t steal, kill, or commit adultery, bear false witness, or covet. It might have taken quite a bit longer using those criteria to find them. The molehills as I call them can come in pretty handy in situations like that.

But as we all know our church is not totally made up of molehills or perhaps a better name for them is foothills; our church is made up of majestic towering mountains of faith principles; and people that are awesome Christians. As you travel in the mountains, you’ll notice that we share some of those mountains with lots of other Christians, for example the mountain of the belief in the Trinity is crowded with lots of folks other than Adventists. So is the mountain about justification by faith in Jesus Christ. But some of the mountains are a little less crowded—perhaps the state of the dead; even perhaps the seventh day Sabbath and there may be a mountain or two where we are practically the only folks there—perhaps the remnant church prophetic message.

This distinct collection of mountains and the foothills surrounding them have given rise to Seventh day Adventist people who can be found all over the world; they have created a world class development and relief agency and a network of schools and hospitals everywhere. They have a distinctive mission that goes way beyond what you can see when you look for what makes them stand out from other people on the beach on any given Sabbath afternoon.

And as you know, some of the molehills, I mean foothills, have developed into our own distinctive traditions and culture. But as in any climb, you need to get over the foothills or at least see them for what they are in relation to the mountains so you can get on to the real inspirational peaks.

Sometimes it is really easy to get over these foothills and see them for the trivial but interesting incidentals they are. For example, there was a woman baptized a few years ago that happened to notice the same type of oven mitt/hot pad in the kitchens of a couple of our church members, so she teased us that she thought you need to have a certain potholder/oven mitt to be a Seventh day Adventist. So, I’m here to tell any of you that may be wondering-- you may be a true practicing Seventh-day Adventist and use any type of pot holder you like.

Likewise,in my own experience, as I’ve mentioned to many of you before, when I was just learning about the Adventists, I was in a situation where I was invited to have sun down vespers with a family and after vespers, they fixed popcorn. Then a week or so later I was invited to another family (that as far as I know, did not know the first family, for sun down vespers and they too fixed popcorn. So for a while there I began to think that eating popcorn on Saturday nights was a special unwritten ‘doctrine’ for Adventists. Now obviously these behaviors have nothing to do with being an Adventist.

However, some foothills are much less trivial to us and carry more significance to Seventh day Adventists. As a matter of fact, some of us even disagree on what might be a mountain and what may be a foothill. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is where most of our internal disagreements come from. But then there are some foothills have just seeped unconsciously into our vocabulary and our being as we have become acculturated into the Adventist church. For example almost all Seventh day Adventists who have been in the church for any length of time will agree on the following:

· the term Pathfinders refers to a special group of church youth,

· we know and love ‘Special K loaf’,

· we refer to high school as Academy;

· we understand the abbreviations GC, NAD, PUC, and ADRA.

· I’m sure if you asked anyone of us, we can give you lots more examples of Adventist cultural traditions. For example, sometime ask us who Uncle Arthur, Uncle Dan, and Aunt Sue are.

At any rate, many of our distinct traditions have helped mold us into a solid world wide body with lots of cultural diversity but a certain unity of spirit and mission. Our mountains and foothills have been an impetus for us to spread the message to all types of different people who live all over the world.

But we are not a perfect people. We are sinful human beings and our church denomination, although divinely inspired is a man made organization. Somehow I haven’t heard you new people say “I have finally found a group of perfect people. I have not seen or heard of one sin by anybody in this church since I started coming here. All these people are on the exact same page in terms of everything associated with their church!” I haven’t heard anyone say that and I almost guarantee that no one else has even heard that from anyone ever about Seventh day Adventists.

I have talked about the foothills and mountains of our Seventh-day Adventist faith however I hope you have noticed that I have not positioned God as one of these mountains or even at the peak of one of these mountains. God is not among the soaring majestic peaks of our faith principles. God is not among our foothills. Let me repeat that. God the father, Jesus the son, and above all, the Holy Spirit are neither in our foothills nor in our mountains.

God is with us, the people on the journey. I believe God is our rope tow, our chair lift if you will; God is taking us, is leading us up through the beautiful scenery of the mountain ranges. God is the one that helps us put our molehills/foothills in perspective with the whole mountain range; God is the one that keeps us committed to this body of believers even in the midst of disagreements or just plain human sinful moments.

Because we are not a perfect people, we need the presence of God in our lives just like everyone else. That is why we need revitalization; that is why we feel so thankful for new people among us—however they come whoever they are. That is why we continue to engage in outreach to others—not because we are perfect and we expect others to be, but because we have a blessed hope in the coming of Jesus again and we just want others to climb with us to hold on to the rope of the Savior. The journey is better with others as we saw in the children’s story—when your neighbors have a hold on Jesus, it is easier to grab hold again when your grip slips. No matter where we are in our journey, God is always with us; available for each one of us all the time. God isn’t waiting for us at the top—he is with us for the whole journey—he is our helper, companion, and guide.

When Saul was converted on the road to Damascus, it was a humdinger, wasn’t it? Saul was quite an unlikely candidate for Christianity—He held a position of power as a member of the Sanhedrin. He was a learned man, a Roman citizen by birth. He was a zealous leader of the faith. But after his conversion, there was no doubt that Saul believed Jesus spoke to him. He spent three days blind in seclusion, reflecting upon his life, his situation, and yielding himself completely to the convicting power of Holy Spirit. Shut away from other human sympathy and understanding; the only thing to do was to appeal to merciful God—to repent and accept divine grace, --true conversion. He realized all that the Christians said about this Jesus was true and he had been making a huge mistake by persecuting them. Was it hard to flip flop like that? Perhaps. After all he was a pretty powerful guy.

And yet after conversion, Paul had some difficult items to deal with: he had to convince the Christian leaders; heretofore, sworn enemies to affirm his preaching of the Gospel. He had a major argument with Barnabas; so much so that they parted ways. All through his letters to the churches he mentioned divisions that needed healing, people that needed redirecting and reinforcing. I’m sure it was hard work being Paul, even after that humdinger of a conversion. But because the church is made up of human beings, things in reality get a little messy, things may not appear so black and white. Maybe what we thought of as a mountain is really just a foothill.

The message I want to leave you with today is that the real priority of our message is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The SDA church should only be a vehicle for that relationship. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself Oh, Lord, and our heart is restless untilled it rests in You.”

Amen

Benediction: Ephesians 3:20, 21

Glory be to him whose power, working in us,

Can do infinitely more that we can ask or imagine;

Glory be to him from generation to generation

In the church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.

Amen