Sermon: Look at What Our God Can Do!

Easter Vigil

2007

Genesis 1, Isaiah 55, Romans 6

Luke 24

"Look at What Our God Can Do!"

Look at What Our God Can do! (When I point to my eye you say, "Look at what our God can do!" Are you ready? [point])

Did you hear how great God moved in Creation?

Every 10 years or so science changes how they believe the world was created. In Genesis, it's not that science is refuted (science is the gathering of knowledge, science is a gift from God), it's that science still comes as an understanding of how God worked in creation.

What we believe is that God is the creator of all – not was the creator, is the creator, God creating the world then, is today creating and recreating the world.

A Caterpillar into a Butterfly…how exactly does science explain it?

How does a caterpillar turn into a butterfly?

# This is not easy to explain. One could say that inside the chrysalis the caterpillar changes clothes and turns into a butterfly. Actually, what happens is that the caterpillar structures are broken down chemically and the adult's new structures are formed. To be more blunt, the solids of the caterpillar completely liquify and then form the new solid structures of the butterfly.

Right, a body is broken, transformed, and comes back to life, ascending into the winds?

[point]

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

In Moses God raised up a leader who no organization would have ever hired.

Moses would not have made it through the candidacy process…issues of family of origin…a sense of entitlement, abandonment, and lack of commitment…wondering when he might run away again in avoidance…not to mention his speech impediment, perhaps induced by a childhood lack of confidence along with his lack of identity.

And God used Moses, and those around him, to lead a mass migration of people off the African continent and into (by way of wandering) a land given as a gift of God to God's people.

[point]

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

God did it again in North America a little more than 150 years ago.

When her slave master died in 1849, Harriet Tubman decided to free herself from slavery. With the assistance of the network of the underground railroad Harriet claimed freedom from herself, she became a "conductor" on the underground railroad and freed hundreds through her leadership.

I know in our quick-fix consciences 150 years ago seems like a long time ago…consider the Exodus of North American Slaves, God's beloved, some 15,000 years after the Exodus of Hebrew Slaves, God's beloved.

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

God is still at work in leaders, in freedom marches, in rallies for justice.

Maybe God is working in you, to do justice and love kindness…

Maybe God is working in one of our young people who will become a great leader one day.

We pray that God is at work in Darfur, leading their people to freedom. Maybe God is raising up a young woman, or a young man, who will lead their people forward.

I pray God is working in us, that we too, might be leaders to end the Genocide.

When it comes to Freedom:

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

¹¹ so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

A year ago this week Dina asked me to visit a friend who was sick, and to gather with the family for prayer.

Today, Dina is here to be baptized.

Our mission is to plant seed of God's love through witness, outreach, and the Word! WOW

God's promise is, when we put that Word on the street, with Acts of Witness, and Works of Love, God does not disappoint, God completes the work through us for the sake of the world.

What God begins today in Dina, and in Noel, what God has begun in us, God will continue until it is complete.

In Baptism today

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

And now the story of Jesus is the story of God's Victory over evil, over suffering, over death.

This Jesus,

Gives sight to the Blind

Allows the Deaf to Hear (sometimes with lips, with signs, with love)

Heals the Sick and the Dead are set Free

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

In Jesus God is a

Father to the fatherless

Mother to the Motherless

Hope to the Hopless

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

Our God is a Path in the Wilderness

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

A great Shelter from the Storm

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

On this night, we celebrate the creation, we give thanks for the freedom, we claim our inheritance and we join the resurrection.

LOOK AT WHAT OUR GOD CAN DO!

AMEN