Without Excuse

Without Excuse

Romans 1:20

July 5, 2020 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Anyone else glad (and a little bit amazed) that we have made it halfway through the year? I have to say, as I’ve shared with some of you, 2019 was a challenging year (for a lot of reasons) around our house, and I had such high hopes for 2020. It felt like a brand new start, a clean slate. Maybe because it’s an even number (I don’t know), or maybe because of the association we make with “20/20” and perfect vision. I knew a lot of folks who even spent the first part of the year preaching about having a “new vision” for 2020. Now, here we are, it’s July, and if you’re like me, you’re both grateful we made it this far and also thinking, “What? It’s only July? How soon can 2021 get here?”

If 2020 has taught us anything (and that may be debatable), it’s that there are important things and there are unimportant things. Now, that’s something we should have already known, but it’s easy to get really, really busy and forget that truth. It’s easy to begin to think that everything is important. This year, so far, we’ve had to slow down, cut back, do without some things and put off some activities, and that has sort of forced us to sort out what matters most, what is most important, to focus on those things. And so, I think, it’s exciting that Vacation Bible School comes along at this point in the year with a similar theme. In just a few weeks, we’re going to be launching this year’s VBS called “Focus: See What Matters Most.” To get us ready for that, and to help us all be a part of it, up until VBS, Pastor Rick and I are going to share some of the themes and the stories that will be part of our VBS week, as we did last year, and my prayer in all of this is that we will be reminded of what matters the most, what really matters, as we head into the second half of this year and whatever it may hold.

When I think about “focus,” the first thing that comes to mind is my eyesight, and in particular the regular visits I make to my eye doctor. To me, that’s one of the most stressful things I do all year long, because I’ll go in there, take out my usual contact lenses, and my doctor will put this ginormous thing in front of my face and ask me to look through the two eye holes. Then we play this game called “Tell Me Which One is Better.” You know it, don’t you, and how it’s played? 1 or 2? 3 or 4? A or B? And the whole thing is very stressful because I keep thinking, “What if I get it wrong? What if I choose the wrong one?” Well, then I’ll be stuck with glasses or contacts that I can’t see through! I already ride the struggle bus with my vision, which is why I wear cheaters sometimes in addition to my contacts, and I don’t want to make things worse by giving my eye doctor the wrong answer causing her to write the wrong prescription. I’m stressed out just thinking about it! One test she does that I don’t mind is the one where they have you look in this thing and in the distance there is a house. Stay focused on the house, I’m told. Look at the house until it comes into focus. I like that one because it sort of reminds me of the way we live our faith. (You know preachers, we're always looking for a sermon illustration!) When it comes to faith, of course, we’re not focusing on a house. We look at our savior. We could put it this way: stay focused on Jesus. In fact, the writer to the Hebrews did put it pretty much that way. He wrote this: “Let us keep looking to Jesus. He is the one who started this journey of faith. And he is the one who completes the journey of faith” (Hebrews 12:2a, NIrV). That’s the memory verse for this year’s “Focus” VBS, so I’m going to invite you to say it again and then I’d like us all to work on memorizing it over the next few weeks. (If you have VBS kids in your house, help them get a head start by memorizing it with you!) Let’s read it together off the screen: “Let us keep looking to Jesus. He is the one who started this journey of faith. And he is the one who completes the journey of faith.”

But how do we get a focus on Jesus? That’s part of what we’ll be answering in these next few weeks and during our VBS week. Maybe you already have a list of answers in mind. But one way we often overlook is what Paul was talking about in this verse out of the letter he wrote to the Romans. Jess gave us some background on Romans last week, and there’s lots of things we could say about Rome, but for our purposes this morning, it’s enough to understand it was a city full of gods and goddesses. Even the emperor was considered divine and people across the empire were expected to worship him. In fact, around this time, cities across the empire were competing with each other to see who could build the best temple to the emperor. They wanted monuments to remind people of the presence of the emperor, of the power of the emperor, of the divinity of the emperor, and if they had the best one, that would improve their status in the empire. But Paul, and all of Scripture, says our God, the one true God, doesn’t need such monuments. In fact, in a city similar to Rome, the great Greek city of Athens, Paul had preached these words: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands” (Acts 17:24), unlike those emperors and the Roman gods. God doesn’t need a monument to point people toward him. And why is that? Because creation itself declares the glory of God. Creation itself is a monument to God. The evidence of God is everywhere, and so, to those who try to deny God, Paul says, in today’s language, “You should know better” (cf. Wesley One Volume Commentary, pg. 712).

Have you ever said that? Have you ever been told that? “You should know better.” I’ll admit: I’ve been told that a lot! When I was in seminary, a friend of mine and I decided to save money by changing the oil in our cars. Now, I am not the most mechanically inclined, but I thought how hard can it be to drain the oil from my car? So we did that, and then we realized that we really should have put it up on the ramps first. What were we going to do? You couldn’t start the car and drive it onto the ramps with no oil in it. So Brian and I had a bright idea: we’ll put it in neutral and push it onto the ramps. Trouble was, this was a heavy car and Brian and I neither one had a lot of upper body strength. It’s not generally needed in seminary! But we got behind the car and we got up some steam and we pushed and we pushed and it slowly went up the ramp and then we gave it one more big push and it went—off the end of the ramps, crashing down on the other side and rolling down the hill behind Brian’s house. So what do you do then? Of course! We chased it! Now, I’m not sure how we thought we were going to catch it! Thankfully, it stopped before it ran onto the railroad tracks, but we both knew what the other was thinking: we should have known better. We were and are reasonably intelligent people. But sometimes, because we’re not paying attention, ignorance takes over and we end up in a disastrous place because we should have known better.

So that’s what Paul is saying here, telling the Romans that ignorance is not an excuse. For every person who asks, “What about those who have never heard about God?”, Paul says creation itself declares the presence and the reality of God. “Every created thing bears his signature” (Mohrlang, “Romans,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 14, pg. 46). Today there is a whole discipline of study called “intelligent design” that, without going into WHO the designer is, argues that the world is far too orderly and far too perfectly put together not to have a designer. The details of the creation speak to the presence of a designer, a creator. Intelligent Design talks about how we are the perfect distance from the sun and how the world tilts at just the right angle for life to exist here. Any small amount more or less and life as we know it would be impossible. Or we can talk about how our cells themselves are encoded, somewhat like a computer program is encoded, with a language of its own, a language we call DNA. You don’t use a computer program and assume it just happened on its own; the language built into our cells is the same way. We have an “operating system.” One author put it this way: “The likelihood of specific genetic instructions to build a protein falling into place would be like a bunch of Scrabble letters falling on a table and spelling out a few lines of Hamlet.” It’s not going to happen. Our cells point to a designer. And so does the much larger creation. The skies, the mountains, the waterfalls, the hills and oceans—the beauty and complexity of creation points to a designer. Every created thing bears his signature, and so the ancient poet could write, “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens…When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:1, 3-4). Have you ever had that experience? You’re sitting under the stars or near a babbling brook and you begin to realize just how puny we are? That creation is so much bigger than we imagine, so much more complex than we can comprehend? That’s what Paul is pointing us toward—look at creation and you’ll see God’s work, and because it’s evident in the creation, we have no excuse not to acknowledge him.

But we’ve learned to ignore creation. Especially when we live in or near a city, it’s easy to rarely really encounter creation. We might visit a park from time to time, but even then it’s brief. Maybe we go to “use” a park for some reason, and we bring all our modern conveniences and toys with us. How many people do you see walking in the park with earphones in or typing on their phone and not even looking up? Mostly, we live our lives indoors: “in a man-made world fill of man-made complexities and distractions” (Mohrlang 46). I remember hearing a description of a typical day for many people that went something like this: a man gets out of bed in his air-conditioned house, gets ready and goes to the garage to get into his enclosed, air-conditioned car. He drives to the coffee shop, where he goes through the drive-through and rolls down the window only long enough to order and receive his coffee. Upon arrival at the office, he walks briefly across the concrete parking lot, goes into his air-conditioned office, and interacts with few people in his windowless office. At the end of the day, the process is reversed and all day long, this man has never gotten outside longer than a couple of minutes and never looked up at the sky or the trees or the clouds. I love the way cartoonist Bill Watterson described it in his comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” a few years back. In case you can’t see this, Calvin and his stuffed tiger friend Hobbes are outside under the stars and Calvin says, “Look at all the stars! The universe just goes out forever and ever!” In the next box, Hobbes comments, “It kind of makes you wonder why man considers himself such a screaming big deal.” Which brings us to the final panel, Calvin saying, “That’s why we stay inside with our appliances.” Funny, because it’s true.

And here’s the point: we should know better! We who profess belief in the creator God should know better! Paul says it right there in Romans: God’s “qualities…have been clearly seen.” Clearly—it means you can see the whole thing. There’s no obstruction, nothing blocking you from seeing what you need to see. Anything that blocks us is something we’ve put there. In creation, Paul says, you can learn what you need to learn about God. His presence is everywhere—in “the snowcapped mountains, the shimmering lakes, the beautifully forested hills and grassy valleys, these endless miles of golden grain” (Mohrlang 46-47). Creation speaks of God’s presence, and so we are without excuse. That’s why this week’s “bottom line” is this: FOCUS on what you can see. Look around. Watch for glimpses of God in creation. When you see beauty—there he is. When you simplicity in complexity—there he is. When you see something that makes your heart sing—there he is. God is not the same thing as the creation but his fingerprints are all over it.

So here’s an exercise for the coming week. There is a lot of—let’s just say not encouraging stuff on social media these days. Most of us carry around a camera in our pockets all the time (I understand you can also use it to make phone calls). So, here’s something you can do to spread some joy, spread some worship. When you’re out and about this week and you see something in creation that reminds you of God or inspires your spirit, snap a picture of it and then post it on social media. You can add a verse to it that talks about God in creation, like this verse from Romans we’ve looked at today, or something from Psalm 8 that we read a little bit of earlier. Actually, there’s a whole lot from the psalms in your Scripture readings this week, so maybe you could even match up your picture with something from your reading that day. I want to encourage you to do this at least once each day, something different each day. And the point of this is twofold: one, we begin to become more aware of God’s fingerprints in creation as we look for evidence of his presence (call that “heightened awareness”), and two, we begin to remind the world (or at least the friends we have online) that there is more to life than politics, coronavirus, or things that we’re angry about. We can’t win an argument online. What we can do is begin to speak about another way to see the world, another way to live. Great change comes from small beginning steps. Snap a pic, share it online, and remind the world that they are without excuse. God can be seen all around us, so focus on what you can see.

This morning, to recommit ourselves to the God who is found in creation, we’re going to celebrate communion together. The last time we celebrated communion all together was March 1—127 days ago. And I realize that some of you are still not ready; I get that, and that’s perfectly fine. Whether you participate or not today is your choice and it is no reflection on your commitment to or your love for Christ. We’re living through some extraordinary times. But for those who want to participate, I wanted to offer communion today, perhaps at a slower pace than we’re used to. We’re going to have only one line this morning, here in the center, and only your pastors are going to serve you for the time being. We’re going to ask you to keep some distance between each other, and not to kneel on the steps and pray. Rather, you can return to your seats to pray, and if you choose not to participate this morning, you can enjoy some extra time in prayer as we celebrate the God of creation. Will you pray with me now as we prepare our hearts for holy communion?