Odyssey Week 3

Message for Sunday, September 22, 2024

The Revs. Megan and David Collins

Note: For this sermon, the pastors preached together. The speaking pastor is noted as needed for clarity.

We are in week three of our sermon series Odyssey, where we are looking at our past, our present, and our future, all through the lens of faith. We are thinking about our lives like an odyssey, an adventure, and how every part of it impacts who we are.

The two of us started taking adventures and traveling together when we were pretty young. We were still in that early stage of our relationship where you are beginning to move from knowing the facts about the other person to learning about the deeper things that make them who they are.

On one of our earliest trips, we went camping in the woods up in North Carolina. I (Dave) grew up loving the woods. My family went camping all the time. We’d canoe down the Wekiva River or trek up north to float down the Suwannee. Before I was a scout, my dad and I were in Indian Guides together, which was a lot like scouts, except there were no badges or rules against the grown-ups drinking, or a minimum age for the kids. I think I was three when we started! It was just a bunch of dads and their sons out in the woods, having fun and misappropriating tribal culture. So because of that, as an adult, I believe that the woods are a safe and comforting place. 

(Megan) One night this guy came back from walking the dog in the woods near our campsite late at night and was telling me about what he was walking in the dark, no flashlight, and listening to his noise canceling  headphones while he did. Like one headphone in each ear. Headphones? In the woods?”

To be fair I (Dave) had a dog too. But that was definitely some male privilege right there. 

Absolutely! I (Megan) actually love the woods too, but there is a necessary vigilance on a walk in the woods at night. I grew up like a lot of other women here, with stories about women disappearing in the woods, or about coming across a creepy man on the trail. There was a whole thing on the internet just recently asking women, “Would you rather meet a bear or a man in the woods?” Do you know what the majority said? A bear. So if I’m hiking through the woods at night, I’m on alert. I’m checking the shadows with my flashlight, holding my keys to be parlayed into a weapon, listening carefully for any suspicious noises.

We walk in the same woods, but we do not feel the same way about it—because we have not had the same experiences.

You have had your own experiences, and your own past. There are things you have lived through or seen. There are stories you have heard, people you have observed, a whole life you have lived. And from these experiences, you have developed certain beliefs.

These are the things you believe about yourself, and the things you believe about the world. Some of these you developed when you were really young—and these beliefs often run the deepest. Others are newer, things you have come to believe over the past year or two based on what you have seen. And sometimes we also develop our beliefs from a lack of experience. We don’t have the information we need, so we just start filling in the blanks with the limited data we have.

I (Megan) didn’t travel much as a kid, so all of my knowledge about the world came from two sources: black-and-white pictures in the encyclopedia (and we only had the "A" encyclopedia, so my knowledge was pretty limited to Alaska and alligators) and cartoons. So I filled in my own blanks about things and developed some strange beliefs. For example, I grew up in Florida, so I had never seen a mountain in person. All I knew was in the cartoons they looked like this (image). So I believed that when you “went up to the mountains,” you drove straight up to the top, stayed there, then drove straight back down when you left. It turns out that’s not true.

And my (Dave) travel experiences when I was young were mostly limited to my grandfather’s farm and… Tallahassee. We had season tickets for the Seminole games and would go up every other weekend in the fall. Because it was the most exotic location I had been to, it made Tallahassee the benchmark for everything else. Beautiful oak tree? That’s like Tallahassee. A hill in the road? Tallahassee. I could divide the whole world into two categories: places that were like Tallahassee and things that were not like Tallahassee. Which is technically true, I guess. But not very helpful.

Maybe you have done this too, with some more important things than Tallahassee or mountains.

Maybe like us, you’ve said and meant that famous phrase spoken from ignorance all over the world: “How hard could it be?” And signed up for a marathon that’s a month or two away, or brought home a cold-blooded pet, or ordered the spiciest thing on the menu, because you really had no idea.

Maybe you’ve said things like, “That’s just how it is.” And it seems like you accept a situation without questioning it —not because you don’t care, but because you haven’t seen an alternative, so you settle for the way things are.

Or maybe you’ve caught yourself saying, “I’ve never had a problem with that,” as if your own experience is the standard for everyone. You hear someone complain about an issue, and because it hasn’t been a struggle for you, you dismiss it. You think, “If I don’t struggle with it, maybe it’s not as big of a deal as they’re making it out to be.”

How many times have you thought, “It’s really not that expensive”? Because you assume that if something seems affordable to you, it must be the same for everyone. But maybe you don’t realize the different financial situations others face—the costs they deal with that you’ve never had to worry about.

That’s not to mention all the biases and “isms” we develop because of the experiences we had, or didn’t have, growing up: racism, sexism, elitism, ableism, and attitudes toward people who are different, or have a different religion, or no religion.

So you and I, we develop these lists of beliefs based on what we have seen, and sometimes the things we haven’t experienced so we fill in our own gaps. These beliefs are really important.
 Our beliefs shape our sense of self. 
Our beliefs shape how we see the world. Our beliefs impact our decisions, and once the beliefs are set, we don’t tend to evaluate them. We notice evidence that supports them. (See! I knew it!) But how many times have you stopped to ask yourself: Are they true? 
Are the things you believe about yourself and the world true? For the beliefs that aren’t true, how are they holding you back?

We are going to take a look at the Israelites this morning. The Israelites are God’s people in the Old Testament. Their backstory is that they cried out to be saved from slavery in Egypt. They suffered greatly, and their lives were hard. They were beaten down and desperate. God is working on doing what they asked for, freeing them from Egypt. They are fleeing for their lives. The text says:

Exodus 14:10 As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

The Israelites take one look at the danger of the Egyptians, and say, “You know, it was better in Egypt.” But was this a belief, or just their reaction in the face of fear? Let’s look at the Israelites again, just two chapters later in Exodus. This time they aren’t afraid, but they are hungry:

Exodus 16:2–3 The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

You know, it was better in Egypt. At least there we had bread.

Then we see this again in Numbers 11:

Numbers 11:4–6 The rabble among them had a strong craving; and the Israelites also wept again, and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

You know, it was better in Egypt. We had all those cucumbers.

The Israelites look at their experience over the past few months and develop a new belief: It was better in Egypt. They seem to forget about the hardships of slavery, of how they had asked God to deliver them. All they could remember was the cucumbers . . . the delicious cucumbers.
 It was better in Egypt. This was the conclusion they had come to.
 It was what they believed. But was it true?

You have a conclusion you have come to.
 It is what you believe.
 But is it true?

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes you look at your experience and develop a belief, and it’s true. But how do you know? For us, if we are looking at our past experiences through the lens of faith, we know if it’s true based on what we know about God.
 This is not what we think we know, but what the Scriptures teach, what really smart scholars tell us about the Bible, what the church has taught through the ages.
We put our beliefs up against these things, and it helps us know if they’re true. The first time the Israelites said, “It was better in Egypt,” as they ran from the Egyptians, Moses challenges their belief.

Exodus 14:13–14 But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

Their belief was "It was better in Egypt. " 
The underlying belief, the one they don’t say here is "We can’t trust God in this uncertainty. At least in Egypt we knew what to expect." What is the truth about God that Moses counters with? The Lord will fight for you. The Lord will take care of you, if you will just keep still.

Some of the Isrealites got it and they let their new experience shape their beliefs. They started to trust God and let go of their past in slavery, but most of them didn’t. They couldn’t let go of what happened to them. They clung to their identity as slaves and the beliefs that came along with that. The new experience just couldn’t get in and change their beliefs. So you know what God did? He just waited them out.  That’s why Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. God waited for the people who couldn’t change their beliefs to die out so only those who could live in the present and follow God into a different and better future, would enter the Promised Land.  That’s a real risk when you follow an immortal God!  And it makes us ask ourselves some important questions about what we believe because of our past. 

Some of your beliefs are true., and some of them are not.
 The only way to know is to examine them.

Maybe you believe you are intelligent because you have had success in your life.

Or maybe you struggled and believe, “I’m just not good at this.”

Maybe you went through hard things before, so you believe you can get through anything.

Or maybe those experiences made you feel overwhelmed, and you believe you can’t handle difficult times.

Maybe your family was really stable, so you believe that people are generally trustworthy.

Or maybe you’ve been hurt, so you believe that people are selfish and can’t be trusted.

Maybe you grew up with a lot of resources, so you believe, “The world is just full of opportunity for everyone.”

Or maybe you didn’t have enough growing up, so you believe, “It’s hard to get a break.”

Maybe people have not been kind to you, and so you believe that you’re worthless.

Or maybe you were loved a little too much, told you were just absolutely wonderful all the time no matter what you did, and so now you believe that you’re perfect.

All of these experiences are valid, and some of these beliefs you developed from them are true. Many of them are not. The only way to know is to examine them against the witness we have in the Bible.

Some of your beliefs won’t be just one or the other—true or untrue. They’ll be somewhere in between. They might be true, but also need to grow and mature. This is often the case with something you believed when you were young and even though you grew up, your belief did not. This is important for what we believe about our faith.

You went to Sunday School, and at 8 years old, they told you that every word in the Bible is true. Is that true? Well, yes, absolutely, but… a mature belief in the truth of the Bible makes room for scholarship, the history and context of the passage, and takes into account the type of writing—whether it’s history or poetry or a letter—and listens to scholars and the continuing wisdom of the church. 

Maybe you read in Romans that all things work together for good for those who love God.

Is that true? Of course, it is.
 But what we think it means for things to work together for good, and what God thinks it means for things to work together for good, are not always the same.

Beliefs not only need to be true. 
They need to grow and mature with you.

Let’s talk about what all of this really matters.  Your beliefs aren’t just the way you reconcile with your past experiences.
They impact the decisions you are making in your present. They help determine who you will be in the future. For that first generation of Israelites, the belief that “It was better in Egypt” kept them from entering the Promised Land. They were so stuck in their belief about the past that they couldn’t move into the future God had promised to them. They couldn’t imagine what God had in store for them because they were holding on too tightly to their past beliefs. Even though those beliefs weren’t serving them anymore, they were stuck.

We can find ourselves doing the same thing. Sometimes, even when we know intellectually that something from our past is holding us back, we cling to it because it feels familiar, or because it’s how we’ve always seen the world. But if we’re going to grow into the people God is calling us to be, we have to do the hard work of examining those beliefs, those things we think are true about ourselves and the world, and hold them up to the light.Some of those beliefs are going to need to be let go. Some of them will need to be reshaped by the Scriptures. Some of them will need to be strengthened and refined as we grow deeper in faith.

This process of refining our beliefs isn’t always easy. Just like the Israelites had to journey through the wilderness, sometimes we have to go through seasons of discomfort and uncertainty before we can fully embrace the new things God has for us. It can feel like you’re wandering, to let go of beliefs from your past.  It can feel like you’re lost. But just like God was with the Israelites, God is with you. God is leading you forward, even when you’re not sure where you’re going. The Israelites' story is a reminder that God is faithful. Even when they doubted, even when they complained, God provided for them—whether it was manna from heaven or a path through the Red Sea.

God will provide for you, too. When you really face, head on, those beliefs. When you have the courage to challenge them, and question them. God will be with you. God will help you see what’s true. And - as you do that work - God will be preparing you for the future. 

So this week, we want to challenge all of us to spend some time reflecting on the beliefs we’ve been carrying.

What are the things you believe about yourself? About others? About the world? About God?

Are those beliefs true?
 Are they helping you become the person God is calling you to be? 
Or are they holding you back?

It’s not always easy to look at these things. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. But remember, God is with us in this process. We don’t do it alone. If you can trust God with all of it - the truth about who you are, the truth about what the world is - it can change the direction of your life.  The Israelites may have been stuck in the wilderness for a while, but God never left them. Eventually, they did enter the Promised Land. So will we, as we continue to trust God, examine our beliefs, and allow God to transform us.

We’re not meant to stay stuck in the past. God is always calling us forward. God is calling you to a new life, to a deeper faith, to a calling, to your future that He has already prepared for you.

So let’s take the first step. Let’s open ourselves up to what God is doing in our hearts and minds. Let’s examine our beliefs and allow God to lead us into the Promised Land of the future

But first we have to learn how to live in the present, which is what we will be looking at next week.