Transcript
The Spirit Calls
First Baptist Richmond, August 3, 2025
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Hosea 11:1-11
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
G’day, G’day, G’day!
I’m back from a month-long visit to Australia and a 25,000-mile trip around the world, and in both cases it was love that made me do it. Love that made me go to Sydney to see my daughter, my son-in-law, and those two adorable grandchildren, and also love that got me on a plane to come back to you. Australia was amazing (Aussie accent), but there’s no place like home.
I want to pick up the sermon series I left in the hands of our very capable staff and thank Allison Collier, Lynn Turner, Steve Blanchard, and Matthew Hensley for the ways they helped you search for the Spirit in my absence. I’ve gotten so much good feedback on this series from people who seem eager to find the Spirit present, not only in the weekly lectionary readings, but also in their own lives. Today I want to affirm the truth that the Spirit calls—all of us—and waits to see if we will answer that call, and I want to begin with a memory that came to me while I was attending the Baptist World Alliance meeting in Brisbane last month. Waking up in a hotel room in that faraway city I began to think about my childhood friend Bobby, and his ant farm.
Do you know what that is? An ant farm? It’s basically two panes of glass in a frame with about a half inch of space between them. You fill that space about two thirds of the way up with sand, and then drop some live ants into it. The fun part is watching what the ants do next, how they tunnel down to the bottom of the frame, and build rooms, and lay eggs, and do all the other things ants do while you get to watch through the glass. That’s an ant farm, and my friend Bobby had one, which meant that when I was at his house I got to look at it.
What I learned about ants is that they seem to be busy all the time, working. They dig tunnels and bring down food. They take out whatever trash they have and respectfully remove the bodies of their dead. They lay eggs, watch over them till they hatch, and then take care of their young. It’s fascinating. When I read the Book of Ecclesiastes I sometimes feel that its author was looking at the world the way Bobby and I looked at that ant farm. But instead of looking at ants he was looking at people. He was watching them, observing them, noticing all the things that they did. In today’s reading from that book he says, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.” In the end, he says, it’s all “vanity,” it doesn’t amount to much of anything. The best thing you can do with your life is to eat, and drink, and enjoy your work.
It’s not a very optimistic view of things, but it’s real, isn’t it? There are plenty of people who would tell me that their lives are like that—full of pain and vexing work and sleepless nights. It’s one of the things people appreciate about the Book of Ecclesiastes: it tells the truth about the way things are. But here’s another truth: we are not alone. When Bobby and I were looking at his ant farm our faces hovered inches away from the glass. If those ants had looked up they would have seen us. But they didn’t. They just kept working. Sometimes Bobby would tap on the glass and that would get their attention. They would stop for a minute and look around, but then they would go right back what they were doing. I think the author of Ecclesiastes would say that God is there, watching over us the way Bobby and I watched over those ants, caring for us, giving us what we need to live, and yet some of us are just as oblivious to his presence as those ants were to ours.
Which brings us to our reading from Hosea, chapter 11, where God says, “When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” He’s talking about the people of Israel, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who ended up as slaves in the land of Egypt. God brought them out of their slavery, through the waters of the Red Sea, and into a covenantal relationship. At Mount Sinai he promised: “If you will be my people, then I will be your God.” And yet, in the second verse of today’s reading he says, “The more I called them the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and offering incense to idols,” as if God wasn’t even there. But God was there, and God is here. Just as surely as my friend Bobby and I were watching over that ant farm God is watching over us, and yet some people seem to have a hard time believing it.
In a book called The Heart of Christianity Marcus Borg claims that the central religious issue of our time is the reality of God. Not the Bible. Not baptism. Not women in ministry. Not the LGBTQ community. No, according to Borg, the central religious issue of our time is the question of whether or not God is real. He believes the entire world can be divided into those who have a religious worldview and those who have a nonreligious worldview. To use the ant farm analogy, in a religious worldview there is more to life than what happens between those two planes of glass. In a nonreligious worldview there is not.
In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus tells a story about a rich man who seemed to have a nonreligious worldview. He wasn’t trusting God for his well-being; he was trusting himself. But one year the rains fell, the crops grew, and he had more than he knew what to do with. In a flash of inspiration he decided to tear down his old barns and build bigger ones where he could store all his grain and his goods. And then, feeling secure about the future, he could pour himself a glass of wine and say to his soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But that very night he heard a tapping sound, and was reminded that there is more to life than what happens between these two panes of glass.
I meet people like this from time to time, people who seem to believe that this world is all there is and the thing to do is to study hard so you can get a good job so you can make a lot of money so you can buy a lot of things so you can live happily ever after. There you are, like an ant inside an ant farm, digging away at the sand without ever looking up, without ever noticing the face that is hovering over you, looking on with love. From time to time you might hear a voice calling to you, you might hear someone tap on the glass. Something might happen that makes you wonder if there is a God. But then, after looking around for a bit, you go right back to work.
I was thinking about that at that meeting in Brisbane. Inside the convention center were all these people who believed in God, who sang his praises and preached his word, but out on the streets of the city there were people who did not, or if they did you couldn’t tell just by looking at them. I began to wonder how I could find out, what they would say if I just went up to one of them and asked, “Do you believe in God?” For some reason I kept waking up with that question in my head, and maybe it was because of the meeting itself.
In his opening address Elijah Brown, the General Secretary of the BWA, had reminded us that the year 2033 will be the 2,000th anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the birthday of the church. He was challenging us to meet some very specific goals between now and then, including the goal of witnessing to 450 million people. That sounds like a lot. I began to think about how we would actually do that. And maybe that’s why I kept waking up with that question in my head, and wondering what people would say if I stopped them on the street and asked, “Do you believe in God?”
At one point I imagined writing on the palms of my hands with a Sharpie marker, “There is a God,” and “There is no God,” and then holding out my fists to perfect strangers and asking them to choose one. If they chose the hand that said, “There is a God,” I could ask: “Do you believe that?” And if they chose the one that said, “There is no God,” I could ask the same question. But the next question would be what kind of God they did or didn’t believe in.
Marcus Borg says that when he was teaching religion to university students someone would often stop by his desk after class and say, “This is all very interesting, but I have a problem every time you use the word ‘God,’ because, you see”—and here there was usually a pause and a deep breath—“I really don’t believe in God.” Borg says that he would always respond the same way: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in, because chances are, I don’t believe in that God either.” Think about it: our understanding of God depends on what we have been taught or what we have experienced. When Muslims look at God they look at him through the lens of the prophet Muhammad; when Jews look at God they look at him through the lens of the prophet Moses; but when Christians look at God they often look at him through the lens of Jesus Christ, or at least they should. Let’s be honest: some of them look at God through the lens of the Apostle Paul, or that pastor from their childhood church, or the music they hear on Christian radio. And people who don’t believe in God may not believe because somewhere along the way their image of God has become badly distorted.
At breakfast one morning in Brisbane I wrote in my journal: “Is there a God? If yes, what kind of God? There’s a verse in John’s Gospel that says, ‘No one has ever seen God. The only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, has made him known.’ I want to live my life in relationship to the God revealed in Jesus Christ, the One who made me, loves me, and wants the best for me. I will do that by reading and studying his word, listening for his voice, talking to him, worshiping him, and sharing his love with others.” You see? That’s how you might respond if you believed there really was a God, and if you believed that God really loved you. That’s why it’s so important that we get to know God through Jesus. He’s the only one who really knows him. And what he knows is that the heart of the Heavenly Father beats with love.
That’s always been true.
In today’s reading from Hosea God is calling to his people, begging them to come to him, but they insist on doing their own thing and going their own way. “Yet it was I who taught them to walk,” God says, like a mother, remembering her children’s earliest years. “I took them up in my arms but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” And then, just for a moment, God considers giving them the punishment they deserve, turning them over to their old enemies, the Egyptians and the Assyrians. But he can’t do it; he loves them too much. In verse 8 he says, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.” And by the way, the word used here for compassion comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for womb. God feels for his people like a mother feels for the child of her womb. He says, “I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”
What if you knew it was that God who was calling to you, inviting you to be his, and not a God of judgment and condemnation? Would you come? What if I had said to someone on the streets of Brisbane, “Yes, there is a God, but it is a God who made you and loves you and wants you for his own. Do you think you could believe in a God like that? Do you think you could answer him when he calls? Do you think you could live your life in relationship to him?”
On my last morning in Brisbane I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and sat where I could look across the street at the city’s botanical garden. It was beautiful; lush, green and overflowing with abundance. I wrote in my journal: “I’m looking out the window on the same world everyone else sees, but I see it as the creation of a good and loving God. It affects the way I live my life. I live it in relationship to the One who made me, loves me, and wants the best for me.”
Listen: through the words of Scripture, through the words of this sermon, God is tapping on the glass, calling to you, and reminding you,
“I’m real. I’m here. And I love you.”
—Jim Somerville © 2025
