Proper 13A God's Safety

"Nurses protest unsafe working conditions"

"Teachers worried about feeling unsafe in returning to schools."

"Businesses cited for unsafe regulations"

Feelings of being not safe these days are prevalent.

Across the country, many people feel unsafe on a daily basis, 

especially in the crisis of the moment. 

For those of us who are used to feeling safe, 

it can be a strange experience to feel unsafe, 

and it changes how we feel about what is going on in the world. 

Yet, even in our own country, millions of people feel unsafe on a daily basis. 

Either because of their race or their gender or their sexual orientation or their disabilities or because of the threats of the people around them, they feel unsafe on a normal basis.

Feeling unsafe is in many ways a eye-opening experience. 

From what I know about our congregation, 

most of us have not had to live most of our lives this way. 

We have places and normal times of feeling safe. 

One of the things the pandemic has brought up is how that feeling is elusive for many people in this country. Safety is not something the majority of people can count on.

What I have also found interesting though, 

is how feeling unsafe can provoke lots of creativity and new ideas, 

and us trying new things and working out and living out more sustainable ways of being. 

Staying within our safety zones though never helps us grow. 

It is only when we take the risk of moving out beyond our safety zones do we encounter those who are different, learn new things, change our thoughts, behaviors, and actions. 

We see this first hand in the gospel passages so often. 

Jesus takes the disciples and his followers and puts them in situations

where they feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

He speaks out at the temple. He teaches in large crowds. He visits with sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors. He eats with lepers. 

(This would be the equivalent of having dinner with positive coronavirus patients.)

Jesus put a couple of fisherman in charge of feeding more than five thousand people.

An uncomfortable place for them to be. 

If only he had had some church ladies... 

But this is part of the way Jesus taught his followers.

Being exposed to new things and different situations help promote new learning.

We also, like the disciples, have been put in an exposed place. 

As students of Jesus, we know there is something to learn in this place.

Our thoughts and actions and motivations and ways of thinking are now all too apparent, they are on the table. And we need to grapple with the ways in which we make our decisions.

In watching the political and social media these days, it seems like people are trying to find certainty, clarity, and safety in all the wrong places. We are looking to political leaders for healthcare advice. We are looking to celebrities for what to do to survive. While the true leaders are elsewhere, and we don't feel any more safe or certain about what is going to happen then we did before.

The only true place we can look for clarity and safety is God.

God's gift of safety is not necessarily the same feeling as the feeling of being snuggled in bed on cold night with warm blankets and knowing you safe and warm. That is a lovely feeling, but God's safety is a much different experience. God's safety is one of knowing that God is with you no matter where you are and what you are doing. It means knowing that even if you get hurt or are hated, God will help you through it. God will be with you. But it is a much more raw and exposed safety. It is not something from the environment, it is within your heart. 

It can be hard to trust the safety of God when it doesn't feel like human safety.

Similarly, God gives us clarity about who we are and what we are to do, instead of certainty about what will happen.

It can be hard to trust in God's clarity when it doesn't give you certainty.

However, knowing who we are and what our mission is, gives us more assurance in God than any certainty about the future will.

Resting in God, we can then start to truly grow. 

God's safety is a fertile place for us to grow. 

With all the garden parables the last couple of weeks, and as any gardener knows, 

you have to expose the soil in order to let something new grow.

As we continue through the months of this pandemic,

we know that Christians have lived through pandemics before. God walked with many through the plagues and diseases of the past and will continue to do so now.

We know that God loves us, we are beloved children of God, and we have been given a mission in this world. To share the light of God, to make God's love known. We won't ever know the full outcome of the world we do. We won't ever know how all of it will affect us or others. But we know with clarity who we are and what we are called to do.

This may not make us feel any safer in human terms, but it will give you God's safety in your heart. Once you rest in God's safety, you can grow in all the ways God's is showing you.

Amen.