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A sermon is a manner of oral communication and therefore words and sentence structure/order would be added, altered, or deleted at the moment of delivery. + In Nomine Jesu + The Rev. Evan Gaerther How many times have you called a customer service number and heard the voice on the other end of the line have a distinctively different accent? I know I have and sometimes it has worked out and other times I have actually said, “Goodbye.” Then I hung up and called again hoping I would get someone that I could understand. The whole notion of outsourcing is most often noticed when it comes to telemarketers or customer service phone calls. Think what you will about these types of jobs now filled by people in the Philippines or Indonesia or India, but also consider with me what time is it when they are talking to you. Wired magazine had an article titled “The Eastern Standard Tribe,” in which they told the story of the Eastern Standard Tribe. Leslie "Sly" Arinto of Manila in the Philippines, is a telemarketer for Immequire, a call center that peddles credit card processing services to merchants in the United States. Arinto is part of the "Eastern Standard Tribe," who live in a world where circadian rhythms are ignored, then forgotten. She lives in a world out of step and out of sync in a rhythm of her own. When the sun rises over the Hudson River, bringing another New York business day, Arinto is dressed, ready and at her Manila desk. She works "the graveyard shift" to sell to "the daylight shift" of American business. Whatever Arinto gains by living this way, whatever she loses, one thing is certain - for her, and those like her, life is never the same. She lives according to a new rhythm. Arinto is part of a new international movement of companies with a global reach made up of executives, bilingual customer services reps and all-night gamers who, in order to earn a living, or have some fun, set their clocks to Eastern Standard Time. So if you live in Kuala Lumpur but do business in N.Y.C., you gotta keep it in real time. N.Y.C. has become the international business default time zone. It gives "the New York minute" a whole new meaning. The computer support person you call on Tuesday using an 800 number doesn't live in Silicon Valley, or North America, or even the Western Hemisphere! He lives in Bombay, India, where it's already Wednesday. To keep time with his work, he sleeps with the sun and rises with the stars. Simultaneously, it's day to you; it's night to him; he lives in your tomorrow; and you in his yesterday - yet you're both at work. (Doctorow, Cory. "Eastern Standard Tribe." Wired, November 2001, 155ff) Eastern Standard Tribe members choose to set their clocks according a different standard. They live out of step with their culture, with an eye on a world out there, valuing what they cannot see. With that in mind look with me at today’s Old Testament story of Abram who is being called by the Lord. He was being called out of what was very clear to him. It was a land he knew. It was a family he knew. It was a rhythm to life that he knew and followed. But now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from you country and from those that bore you and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Abram is asked to leave the standard rhythm of land and family and home that he knew and to go and start living on Divine Standard Time. Steve Stockman, a Chaplain at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has titled his music ministry “The Rhythms of Redemption.” The idea is that you and I and all those that are following Christ are brought to live in a relationship with the Lord. In this relationship the heartbeat of God’s love brings us to live life in a different rhythm. Looking at Abram and I see that the thing about the standard that Abram was used to was that it was known, it could be seen, and touched. But Divine Standard Time is completely different. The Lord said to Abram, “Go to the land that I will show you.” He goes from what is known to what is unknown and steps forward with faith that the Lord will lead him. What for? Why does Abram go forward and start to live his life in this new direction. It wasn’t because he has been the perfect follower of the Lord and was leading others to follow the Lord. In fact Joshua, the leader of the Israelites after Moses, warns the people not to follow the false gods that there ancestors beyond the river worshipped. Joshua was warning them about going back to living in the standard time of this world that was Abram’s life before being called by the Lord. Abram was not called by the Lord to go to a new land because the Lord saw in Abram’s life amazing acts of devotion and pious work. The Lord said to Abram, “I will bless you and make your name great.” It was going to be the Lord doing the work through Abram. At the tower of Babel the people said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.” The rhythm at Babel was a desire for fame, power, and living on their own terms. Abram was called out of that rhythm into the Lord’s heartbeat, where he promises, “I will make your name great.” Abram was called; but what for? The Lord promised to Abram, “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” Abram, who we will later know as Abraham because the Lord promises to make him the father of a great nation, is called into the rhythms of the Lord’s love in order to be a blessing. In order to be a blessing to others. Consider with me the power of this outlook on what God gives to you and me. God does not bless us as a matter of privilege but rather his blessing is a currency, a treasure, a blessing that is to be spent on blessing on others. The Lord’s promises and blessings are not a privilege but a mission. It is a matter of mission that the Lord sent his only Son Jesus Christ to dwell in the flesh and live and die for us. Consider Jesus’ word to Nicodemus when he said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The Lord has instituted Divine Standard Time to bring the world into a relationship with him, when we live according to the rhythm of God’s mercy we are taken to a new place that the Lord is showing us. Through a relationship with the Lord the same vistas that became dark and scary and worrisome become outlook points in which we discover opportunities to share God’s blessing. This is the beauty of the cross, that this dark and terrible place of death, is made holy by our Lord’s love and mercy for you and me and all the world that suffers under the weight of suffering. Jesus looked out from that cross in the midst of his suffering and had faith in the will of the father to not condemn the world but to save the world through him. Consider this story of Roy Comrie and how living in the rhythm of God’s love looked at the world not through an eye of suffering and death but of redemption and forgiveness. When you and I see a hitchhiker with his thumb out, we drive on - and for good reason. But on this day in Rhodesia, Africa, Roy Comrie had the courage to stop. The hitchhiker had an AK-47 rifle in his hand, and it was shortly after the end of the Rhodesian civil war. Most people would've said Comrie was crazy. But Comrie lives on the rhythm of a different heartbeat. Anyway, the fellow climbed in and sat down with his rifle between his legs. He didn't say anything; just looked around the car for clues as to who this madman was who stopped to pick him up. He saw a Bible and said some unfriendly things about Christians and missionaries. Thinking this was the most violent man he had ever met, Comrie decided to take his passenger to the most violent place there had ever been. So Comrie told him, in his own native language, about Calvary. The hitchhiker, in turn, told Roy about all that he had done during the war. He'd done and seen some gruesome and barbaric stuff that had led him to the point where he wasn't even able to sleep. On arriving in Harare the rifleman refused to leave the car until Roy led him to Christ. A week later when they met for Bible study, the man was excitedly shouting at Roy, "Baba Comrie, I'm sleeping now!" The cross of Jesus Christ changes everything in life and eternity. It has power to make the most violent of terrorists sleep. (Stockman, Steve. "The command and the promise about our youth." Rhythms of Redemption. http://stocki.ni.org) Look with me at what Abram saw that day. He didn’t see anything. That’s the thing. He didn’t see anything but the unknown. But by faith in the promise of God’s desire to bless the world, Abram stepped forward. Have faith with me that the Lord’s will is not to condemn the world but to save the world through his son Jesus Christ. With faith do not live according to the palpitations of a frightful heart, but according to the rhythms divine love and mercy. Soli Deo Gloria -->> Home |