Sermon for January 3rd

My family just got back from vacation yesterday morning, at 5:00am, after driving all day and through the night from our New Year’s Eve stay in a hotel in the Midwest. The only thing that amazes me more than the fact that we made it back here at that insane hour is that we made it to Nebraska at all. We drove all night long twice in two weeks and, honestly, that’s enough! But there are TWO ways to talk about our journey. Two stories.

Let’s begin with the first story. This one begins last year, the week before Christmas, where we began our search for, dare I say it, our DESTINY! We’ll title this adventure, ” Mission Impossible”—dun, dun, da-dun-dun dun . . . . Our mission: to drive twenty-four hours in a car with two children, a tired pastor and his pregnant wife across the United States into the heart of the Midwest which had just experienced one of the worst blizzards in recent memory. And all we had to work with was a Subaru (comes standard with All Wheel Drive), a bag chock full of snacks, lots and lots of coloring books and 24-hour Christmas music stations scattered across the nation.

The opening hours of the trip were uneventful, and after hearing Jingle Bell Rock for the fourth or fifth time riding across the long stretches of Pennsylvania and Ohio, the decision was made—there would be no hotel for us this night! The snow was covering the interstate, the wind was whistling across the plains of Indiana and Illinois but echoing through our ears came the wise words of Robert Goulet “There’s no place like home for the holidays” and, in fact, the traffic WAS terrific—at 1:00am on Christmas Night, no one was driving and it seemed good for us to keep going. I was man enough to keep going. I was bold enough AND I was stupid enough. Grrrr. After five grueling hours driving the graveyard shift, with my eyeballs twitching from the intensity of the effort, the Mama-bear took over and drove us across the unplowed stretches of Iowa and Nebraska without hardly breaking a sweat. (Perhaps because she was always turning down the heat) A mere twenty five hours later, we were at our destination. The Christmas cookies were waiting for us like so many adoring fans ready to give their lives in appreciation for our amazing driving skills. Our waiting family stood in adoration of us: the Broers Quartet! Victorious over rain, sleet and snow! We had found our destiny! Mission Impossible? No! Midwest! Possible!

Of course, after braving the wild stretches of the interstate once, the return trip seemed laughable. Ha, ha, ha! Wanting to infuse a little life in the down economy, we did stay for a little while in a hotel on New Year’s Eve, but, just in case that might make us look a little weak to those unfamiliar with our reputations, we slept in, ate breakfast out and left later than we should have (ha!) and drove the perilous mountains of Pennsylvania in the wind and snow, just outracing another blizzard. And then, in the wee hours of the morning, we blazed a trail from Kent to Cornwall so that any early morning travelers might have a path to follow. And so the journey came to the end. Showing off our courage, our stamina, and our unshakeable faith in God and in ourselves! We had arrived at our final destination. We had found our destiny!

There are two stories of our Christmas trip. This first is what you might call “the story of glory”. We came from glory and return to glory. This is the story that some people hear when they read today’s text. Let me read part of it for you again this morning: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.” You see, many of us read this passage like a glory story. We see ourselves as victorious warriors fighting against the battles life throws before us just waiting, with eager anticipation, to be crowned with garlands of glory, to sit with Jesus in heaven: that is our destiny—it says so in scripture! God destined us for glory! And we are only too happy to enjoy the limelight.

But, as I said before, there are two stories. There are two stories about my Christmas trip and two stories for your life as well. A story of glory and a story of the cross.

This second story begins last year as well, the week before Christmas, where we began our search for destiny except, and this is just our little secret alright, but we weren’t completely sure how it was all going to work out. We didn’t start from a position of glory. We’ll title this little adventure: “Livin on a prayer”. We decided at the last minute to go to the Midwest for Christmas after spending most of the fall deciding why we probably shouldn’t. But the week before Christmas, despite our best arguments and intentions, the call to go back home became clearly the right thing to do. The joy of seeing our family was, of course, a great motivation, but the twenty four hour car ride, coupled with a pregnant woman, in the middle of winter were definite drawbacks.

We were thankful for a good-working car and two children with great abilities to entertain themselves, but would God see us through bad weather with two tired parents? We prayed a lot. Because, even though we know we can drive in bad weather, there are many people who can’t. In fact, while we were back home and on our way to a family event, a car slid out of control and hit my wife’s entire family riding along in the car ahead of us. It knocked them into a ditch where they were then smashed into by another SUV. What does this little event tell you? The Broers Quartet didn’t drive home safely thanks to our great driving abilities, but thanks to a great God.

We certainly did keep driving through the night, even though we were both dead tired, but not because we were showing off how amazing we were, but because it seemed like the best of two bad choices: drive in bad weather alone or drive in bad weather with a lot of other people. The looks on our family’s faces were not adoration but relief: they weren’t admiring us, they were admiring God’s great work in getting us therein one piece.

We left a day early because we saw that the weather was going to be bad, we prayed our way through the snow and ice. You see, prayer doesn’t make snow and ice go away, but it reminds you to put your trust in someone other than yourself so that, at the end, you give glory not to yourself, but to God alone. I spent much of the trip just thanking God for the snowplows who seemed to always be spilling out salt before I came barreling through. Thankful that God had spared my family from any worse injuries in the collision. Thankful for sleeping children. Thankful for having a splendid partner to drive with and to trust to drive. We arrived at our final destination, but was this truly our great destiny?

In today’s reading, the apostle Paul says that our destiny was decided before our car trip and even before the foundation of the world! This, of course, ruins our first glory story and makes it seem quite silly to give ourselves the credit, but isn’t that how most of us live our lives? Don’t we all see what we do, with our jobs, our hobbies, our families, as stories of glory? I’m not saying that God is pulling strings in your life, like you were simply a puppet, whether that were true or not, you’d still pretty much do whatever you wanted anyway. But, when it comes to your salvation, God gets the glory for saving you—you aren’t the hero of this story, you are rescued by Jesus. God gets the glory.

Martin Luther once wrote that we know God’s love through suffering and the cross. In other words, it is very nice that God got my family through last week’s trip—it certainly shows us that God loves us. But God’s love is shown most fully in that he showed us our destiny before our car trip, he revealed his destiny to us, just as he is revealing your destiny to all of you right now before you drive home today. I pray that you all make it home safely, but God’s love for you is already known: In Jesus Christ, you are destined for God’s love. You are destined for a great inheritance: the forgiveness of your sins and a heavenly kingdom. Not because of your glory, but because of God’s glory. There are two stories to tell in your life: a story of glory and a story of the cross. The story of the cross, while not as exciting perhaps, is the story of God’s glory and not your own. Jesus is the hero of this story and he has found his destiny: His final destination is you. Amen.