UCC Church of Charlotte

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Sermon for June 7, Trinity Sunday and Graduation Recognition
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Sunday, June 7, 2009 8:49:58 AM
From:
Phil Hobson   
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To:
Phil Hobson 


The Next Step
Isaiah 6:1-8
John 3:1-17

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.
    
This morning we have celebrated those who have graduated from high
school, from college, from grad school.  We celebrate their families
getting them to this point.  And as I look at the list of high school
graduates, I see families where everyone is about to take the next
step.  Kids going off to college, leaving home for the first time.
And in all four cases of church members graduating, these are the
youngest children of these parents.  So the parents are also taking
the next step of having an empty nest (more or less, depending....).
    
Next steps are important.  Sometimes they feel like the end.  The end
of children living at home, a bittersweet triumph.  The end of high
school days, again a bittersweet triumph.  Sometimes next steps feel
like the beginning.  Setting foot into territory you have never walked
before.
    
As much as this morning is for the graduates and their parents and
families, it is also for the rest of us.  How many of us are looking
with both joy and terror at next steps?
    
Retirement.  Job change.  Health transitions.
    
There are next steps to be taken.
    
Changing roles in the lives of our families: whether starting a
family, or starting a new family, or divorce or remarriage.  Or being
the sandwich generation, taking care of the generation before as well
as the generation after us.
    
For some, next steps are more concrete.  Finishing step two of twelve
and starting to work on step three.
    
It is the nature of life that we are brought to so many next steps at
different times and different ways.  It is simply the way it is.  We
have to discern when our next steps are and how best to take them.
    
And it seems to me that there are three ways of arriving at our next
steps.  One is to be prepared for the step and have it turn out pretty
much like we planned.  Another is to arrive at the next step, feeling
oh so unprepared for whatever is coming next.  Another is to get to
our next step, think we are prepared, and find out it is completely
different than we expected.
    
If you are prepared for the next step and it all works out as
expected, well, you probably won’t need much help.
    
Today’s stories are for the rest of us.
    
Isaiah does not begin his work writing the words that would become so
familiar, so ingrained in our faith vocabulary, so often borrowed for
our hymns and devotions.  Isaiah begins by saying, “How can it be me?”
Isaiah is unprepared for what is coming next.  How can he go and
speak the word of the Lord for he is a man of unclean lips, from a
people of unclean lips.  He is like the first generation in his family
to got to college.  He can’t turn to anyone and ask what will this be
like.  He is heading into uncharted waters for him and for his people.
    
If Isaiah is unprepared for his particular next step, then Nicodemus
has our other problem.  He is prepared for what God is calling him to
do, he is learned in the Torah, but when he comes to Jesus, he finds
out it isn’t what he expected.  He is prepared for an answer that fits
in the box he has built for his faith.  And then Jesus tells him to go
and get a new box!
    
Unless you are born again?  How can a grown man be born a second time?
    
So here we have Isaiah, the one who is unprepared for his next steps,
and Nicodemus, the one who is prepared, but discovers that the next
step is nothing like what he had envisioned.
    
And in both stories, the answer is the same.  God makes it possible
take the next step.
    
Isaiah’s lips are touched by the burning ember in the hands of the
angel, and he is made ready.  Nicodemus is told who makes all of this
stuff possible - that God so loved the world.
    
Isaiah’s answer is more immediate.  After God opens the way and asks
whom shall I send, Isaiah answers, “Here I am, Lord.  Send me.”
    
It is tougher to recover from disappointed expectations.  Nicodemus
will take quite a few chapters before he starts to take some baby
steps of faith.  But by the end of the Gospel of John, he is right
there with Joseph of Arimathea, caring for the body of Jesus.
    
So sometimes it happens all at once, that God gets us ready.
Sometimes it takes a long time.  Let’s face it, God has been working
on us our whole lives, and we’re only to here!
    
But whatever your next step, whether it is one you feel unprepared
for, or one where you thought you were perfectly prepared, but it
turns out so much different than you expected (or, more likely, some
combination of the two!), this is not a sign of God’s abandonment.
This is not a moral failing on your part.
    
This is a time to pray.  Okay God, I know I’m not the only one.  I
need your help with the next step.  And I hope you are listening,
because I’m gonna be asking for help with a whole lot of steps after
that.
    
And then see how God makes possible whatever the next step needs to be.
    
Thanks be to God.
Amen.