Pastor Brown’s sermon begins at about 17:20. The text is below.
“Your Own Adventure”
Rev. Beau Brown
My wife Amber and I had our first real argument in Los Angeles, California. We had been dating for about a year when my mother and stepfather invited us out west for my sister’s beauty pageant. I had never been to a city as massive and sprawling as LA, so using public transportation (especially the subway) was completely new to me. But that didn’t stop me from taking up the mantle of self-appointed navigator, because, you know, men always know how to get there from here.
On about the third night we were in LA, we needed to get from where we were staying downtown to the pageant location in Hollywood. Well, as the great helmsman I thought I was, I began to lead the pack. First, I led everyone in formation through the halls of the hotel, down the elevator, through the busy streets, and down to the subway station. As we went through the turnstile and approached the train, I was just certain we needed to take the southbound to Hollywood. But there was only one problem. Amber had other, more accurate, ideas. And of course, I can be just about as stubborn as a mule, so instead of doing what I should have done, I decide to get all huffy that she would dare to contradict me. Finally, though, I came to my senses, got on the northbound train, and we reached our destination on time. Amber was right, and I was wrong.
Thankfully, she forgave me for my bullheadedness, and I began to realize something that day: Sometimes, you have to trust other people to get you where
you need to go.
Now, this is a lesson I’ll forever be learning, and in that way, I think I’m a lot like every other person in this world. The issue isn’t always navigating the big city, but in one way or another, we all have trouble accepting directions from a source outside of ourselves. I can even see this already in my twins. When they decide to do something, and it gets locked into their brains, good luck redirecting them. And based on what I’ve heard from parents of older children and teenagers, it doesn’t get any easier. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing because we need to trust our instincts in many situations, but there are definitely times when it’s better to stop and get directions.
This is what God seems to be doing in giving the Ten Commandments. It’s like he’s saying, Hey, on the road of life, there are some big potholes and some dead ends, there are even places you can get completely turned around and headed in a different direction. And because I love you, I want to help you avoid these traps. So as my people, called to share my love with the world, here are some foolproof directions to follow. And a lot of these seem pretty obvious, don’t they? Don’t kill people. Check. Don’t take things that don’t belong to you. Check. Don’t build statues out of gold and worship them. Double check.
But then there are the more challenging directions. Place nothing before God in your life. Take a full day of rest every week. Don’t covet (aka “Don’t Try to Keep Up With the Joneses”). Ouch…I think I ignore these particular directions pretty consistently, maybe even every day. And the outcome is always the same. I get lost and disoriented. I get off course. I lose my sense of purpose and happiness in life. Maybe you can relate. For me, the reason is typically stubbornness. Just like at that subway station, I get locked into what I think is best for my life. Even when I know God is telling me to go north, I often think south is the better way to go.
Yet, even though stubbornness is my personal hang-up, it may be different for others. By way of example, some of us just don’t have people in our lives that will help guide us and support us along the way. Others of us simply have weaknesses in one particular area that constantly tempt us to take a different path. And then there are those of us who have gotten so off course that it seems impossible to find our way back. There are a variety of ways we can get turned around, but the blessing in this is that, at some point, we realize it. We look around and recognize that we are going the wrong way, that we are on what John Calvin called “the slippery path of transgression.”
Recently, my kids have become obsessed with a Netflix show called You vs. Wild. It’s based on the popular series Man vs. Wild with the survivalist named Bear Grylls. You vs. Wild is more geared toward children in that it’s a choose-your-own adventure style show, where at various points throughout, the viewer gets to choose what Bear Grylls does to survive. For example, in one scene, as Bear attempts to swim across a small pond, a Boa constrictor wraps itself around his upper body. At that point, the twins got to choose whether he tries to swim toward the shore and fight the snake off on dry ground or go underwater to see if he can disorient the snake and escape. (What would you do?)
Well, after some argument and negotiating, the twins chose “swim toward dry land.” Unfortunately, this didn’t work out too well for Bear. Once a constrictor has got you in his grips, there’s no fighting him off. Needless to say, the better option was to go underwater and disorient the snake. At any rate, Asher and Avery love being part of the action. The more treacherous, the better.
Now, thankfully, the choices we have to make aren’t often this serious, at least I hope that’s the case. In our day-to-day lives, we may even do most of our activities in a sort of “auto-pilot mode.” Yet, when we find ourselves at those clear decision points in which we recognize that, “Oh, I took a wrong turn somewhere,” the Ten Commandments can remind us to put God back into the driver’s seat.
There’s a reason these are called commandments and not suggestions. They remind us that we aren’t supposed to run our lives by ourselves. God, the one who knows us and loves us so much more than we know or love ourselves, is intended to be the navigator of our lives. That’s where real happiness and peace and success come from.
That’s one of the things I love most about our Presbyterian tradition. At our best, we are people who know how to let God lead. We spend time in prayer and Scriptures, we form committees and task forces, we don’t put too much power in any one person’s hands…because, at the end of the day, we understand that we can’t do this on our own. God has called us into being as a community of faith, and God promises to direct our steps. Therefore, we don’t need to be the commander; that’s God’s job.
So, when choosing our own adventure leaves us broken and exhausted and frustrated, what are we to do? Well, this is exactly where grace comes in. St. Augustine wrote that when we finally become tired of failing to follow God’s directions, we learn “how to ask the help of grace.” (J.I. Packer, Concise Theology (1993), p. 94.) As I can admit that I’m
stubborn and become conscious of the fact that I’m basically powerless to help myself, I am able to stop, take a deep breath, and say, I am a human being, which means I’m subject to all the limitations of my humanity. I’ve messed up and I’ll continue to mess up. But God refuses to give up on me. I’m never too far away, never too lost. God will always find me and clear a path back to who He called me to be. And if God will do it for me, he’ll certainly do it for you.