A sermon by Rev. Dr. Hugh Smith III   
   

     God loves us, every one of us, and God keeps sending us outward confirming signs of the presence of this saving love, but we never seem to be able to get enough confirmations of that love.  For some reason people can't tell us enough or show us enough.  We can't see enough rainbows, get enough encouragement, be given enough security to outweigh our fears.  God keeps offering a guiding hand, but we continually refuse to take hold; speaks a voice to us in our hearts, but we don't listen; shows a way, but we dig in our heels and refuse to follow through the door that swings open.  And our personal unwillingness to acknowledge, accept and receive this Savior who has come to us is at the root of so much of our personal pain, and the cause of God's deep grief.  "How I have longed to gather you, but you have refused."

      Christ calls all of us to awaken from the bad dream.  It is a call to come alive to life itself, to listen to the signs God sends us that confirm that God is with and for us, the signs that say that God does in fact love us.  The signs of that God is present in love come in a thousand forms.  Kindness given, healing that happens, people who stand by us, those who take us back into their lives through the door of forgiveness, people who appear at the right time and say the right things, a whole new direction gets discovered, an opportunity never expected comes, a strange coincidence occurs, rainbows appear.   "Tell that old fox to look at the signs you see.  I am casting out the demons and sending the cures...".  But with all the signs and messages and messengers God sends, we are still unwilling to completely entrust our lives to God's care and keep. 

     The truth we proclaim is that the Savior is here in the center of our lives and in the city of this world.  The Force, the Presence, the Saving God we keep dismissing and betraying and rejecting and crucifying keeps coming back even when we think He has been sealed out of the events.  We continually find ways to keep God distant, we make God so inaccessible to us, we place God on the outside of the walls of the city and there he is crucified.  Then we wash our hands rationalizing somewhere in our minds, "If that was from God, if God is here at work, why doesn't God say so, why isn't the presence of the Savior more obvious?"  It was Pilate who said to Jesus, "If you are the Son Of God say so."  And there was after those words a deep penetrating silence.  Jesus turned to the Pharisees and said, "Tell that old fox I'm still here.  Look around.  Tell him I'm not leaving."

     "Get out of the city," the Pharisees told Jesus, "Herod will kill you."  We all have this "old fox" somewhere in us that can't handle the fact that a Savior is here.  It was fear that made Herod refuse to allow Christ to live.  He was afraid of losing control.  He was afraid that he would have to give up his script he was following, change his role that he was playing.  He was afraid to submit to any higher power.  He learned somewhere long ago that he could not trust any higher power than himself, and he was not about to dismiss or dismantle that fear. 
 We have the same "old fox" in us.  All of us.  It is so often our own fear of letting God be God in us, in the world, our fear of letting God be God in the events of our lives that causes us to dismiss God in our lives.  We have our bad learnings that we won't give up.  We have our loyalties to faulty thinking we inherited that we won't get rid of.  We keep these fears alive and we keep feeding them, reinforcing them, and letting them control us because we are afraid to trust in a Spiritual Force, a Savior, a God who comes within the walls of every occasion to free us.  We cannot give over our fears to God, will not receive a new role or a new part in the play from God that promises a new and different ending. 

     There was a fellow once who kept a dog in a small pen in his back yard.  It was an truly ugly dog that barked all the time.  It had to be kept in the pen because it would bite people.  The man who dutifully took care of that ugly dog never liked the dog.  When asked why he didn't just get rid of the dog and get another dog he said, "Oh, I couldn't do that.  That dog belonged to my grandfather."  I'd like to know how many ugly dogs we keep penned up inside us that we really want to get rid of but we can't because we inherited from some other place and time what we believe we have to care for and keep alive.  It was our role in life.  We keep alive so many old and ugly, self-defeating, people biting attitudes and about ourselves and life that we have inherited from some one or some place.  We keep feeding it out of fear of what will happen if we give it up.  We think we have the ugly dog under control, but our need to control it, controls us.  When the Savior asks "Why don't you get rid of that and accept what I can give you?", we join Herod and one way or another again tell the Savior to go.

      But the Herod wasn't the only one in the struggle to dismiss the Divine intentions .  Pilate also did his share.  They both live in us.  Herod wanted to keep his control role, and Pilate gave up all control to the wrong power.  Pilate let the crowd and the opinions and need of others control him.  "Crucify him" they yelled.  And Pilate helplessly said, "What can I do?  They are the one's who are doing it to me"  And then Pilate tried to wash his hands of the guilt that never gets clean when we let what others think control how we live. 

     I think there are two forces in us.  Sometimes more one than the other.  For some of us more one side than another.  But somewhere in the Jerusalem of our lives we struggle with either trying to control it all, the people, the events, keeping the ugly dogs in their pens, or else we abdicate and feel the victim, we give up to the crowd.  Whatever they want, or he wants or she wants, whatever they say, whatever life does.  What can I do?  Either the old fox or the hand washing victim, Herod or Pilate.  The two of them live in us, and Christ is in the city of our lives and the story of the crucifixion gets written and played out again and again. 

     Either we try to control every event and every person in our lives like the "old fox" Herod, or else we let everyone and every event control us, do what they want for fear of losing love.  We try to control love and keep from losing love, but we never seem to be able to accept love and trust the One who gives it.  "How long have I desired to gather you to myself as a hen gathers her brood beneath her wings?". 

     In the end it is not to be victor or victim, to be in control or to be controlled, it is rather discovering the grace and freedom that comes from accepting God's love and trusting that God's power is here at work for our good.  Jesus comes offering opportunity to be liberated from the inner and outer wars of our lives, to be free of the winner or loser syndrome that we live under. Jesus invites us to accept and trust love, to believe that God is with us in every place and goes before us opening the walls when they limit us, rolling back the stones when they stop us, staying with us when life forsakes us. 

     We will always have those Herod compulsions for control and those Pilate abdications out of fear of losing the love of others, but we also will always have Jesus Christ the center of the city sending messages to the old fox and the hand washer in us to give it up.  Christ is at the center of your life, in the middle of every event.  The Savior has declared that he will not leave even if we do run, betray, or crucify His attempts to love us. 

 God's Love awaits in silence within.  Whenever we accept that the Savior is with us and has not left, and willingly give over all our fears of abandonment and fears of losing control, when we truly trust the power of God's love to be there, then whole new dance of life begins, we will find ourselves surprisingly ready to take the new and different steps in life that we have never been able to take before, steps we have been afraid to take.  When we trust God's love, we begin to trust life and are no longer afraid.  We trust a larger rhythm, and we begin to see the signs that our lives and all the events of our lives have been gathered into the arms of God.