It’s Time to Let God Take Over
Jeremiah 18: 1-11
LUKE 14: 25-33
SEPTEMBER 7, 2025
Ah, September has arrived … this month’s Men’s Saturday Breakfast, which we hold on the first Saturday of every month is over and done with. The Eagles have won the kick-off game of the season and whether we like it or not the summer season that in New Jersey runs from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend is over and school is back in session. Here we are in church or watching church online on a rainy Sunday morning.
If you are like me, once again you might be wondering where does time go … later today I will be leading a service to remember a gentleman who lived 96 years on this earth. His family is wondering where time went … as they treasure his memories. His daughter Robyn said, “be sure to talk about Pop’s faith … share how he volunteered at his church and that he knew Jesus Christ.”
As I thought about that message for Albert DeCamillis, I thought about all of us here today. Many of you I have known now for ten years and some of you for only a short time. I began to wonder how many of our friends or our family members would tell a pastor … be sure to talk about their faith … how they volunteered at church … how they knew Jesus Christ at the last gathering that will remember our journeys here on earth.
I wondered how many of those we treasure think about our relationship with God and our faith in Jesus Christ when they think about us. How many list our achievements volunteering for our faith connection either in church or on the streets or with non-profits amongst our life’s achievements? How many of those closest to us even know … even have the slightest inkling that we are in church today.
The end of the classic summer vacation season is perhaps a good time for assessment or reassessment as to who we are and what we represent. As I talked with Dax, my grandson, on Friday about his new adventures as a first grader he redirected our conversation to Pokémon because after three days he is just adjusting … and it is easier to hold onto the familiar and the comfortable. He has no idea of the possibilities that lie ahead … his potential … and what he is about to learn that may mold him into the man he will become one day. For now … it’s “Babu, how many shiny’s have you captured?”
And, friends I ask you … how many shiny’s from this world have you captured? How focused are you on the world’s shiny elements that glitter and vanish away just like the images of a cell phone’s game.
I often think that we humans are a lot like Dax and the other six-year-olds as a new school year begins because we seek the comfortable and become complacent in our habits … dulled away from any sensation of adventurous change and unwilling or perhaps afraid to step outside of the box of community expectations. We most definitely want to be in full control of the box walls that we build around ourselves.
I am not sure if teachers really asked this question or if it is just my reflective thoughts on what might have happened back in the day but I still believe that kids especially in the lower grades are asked every September, “what did you do on summer vacation?,” as a tool of getting a conversation going.
But, as we sit before the Table of the Lord … as we come together on the first Sunday of September in the year 2025 … I wonder if our teacher … our Savior … our God … Jesus Christ … wants to be asking what we have been doing on our vacation away from faith and God? What energetic and personally enriching and self-focused activities have we emphasized during this past summer … during this year 2025 … during the last 5 or even the last 10 years … and how have our activities demonstrated to our family and friends or even to total strangers that just like Albert DeCamillis whom no one here knew … is being remembered for his faith … do we too have a resume establishing to the world that yes we believe. And, that God is the controller of our lives.
As I prepared today’s message it certainly seemed that God was in control of my I-pad because every time I attempted to review and reflect on the two Scripture readings for today my computer opened up last Sunday’s readings. I went to open up the file labeled 09072025SCR but instead 08312025SCR appeared and so I reread the Scripture lessons that Molly chose for her powerful message last Sunday.
It never hurts to reread God’s Word … to establish in our minds God’s expectations for us … in this exceedingly fast-paced world I do believe that God constantly is screaming from heaven … FOR MY SAKE SLOW DOWN and LISTEN … SLOW DOWN and CHANGE … SLOW DOWN and BELIEVE. Go to the still waters and the green meadows and restore your souls … take the bread and the cup and focus in on me your God … push the world out of your focus and hold onto Jesus Christ.
So, here’s a recap of last Sunday’s Scripture readings because I think God wanted me to read them to you again … you can also go to our FACEBOOK page to hear Molly’s lesson again. It’s worth pausing and doing because that girl can preach!
“You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.”
After you heard that Don asked all of you who were able to stand for the Good News of Jesus Christ because sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone to recognize that Jesus … that God … that the Holy Spirit are not just religious names that are nice to mention in church … but that God’s love provides for us if we get out of our VACATION MODE and into a life engaged for God as we were created to be engaged … God’s love offers us God who can give us peace that goes beyond human understanding when we have faith … God’s love gave us Jesus Christ to be our rabbi and our Savior … and God’s love gives us the Holy Spirit to direct us into engagements in life for our faith rather than the world … if we leave our vacation mode … our world connections behind.
I really am not sure why God wanted me to reread that Scripture from James but I think I was meant to share it with all of you again … YOU MUST BE DOERS of the word! Not only hearers. Yes, there is a truth in that Scripture and every time I opened my I-pad to retrieve today’s Scripture lesson there was JAMES. There is an essential lesson and it begins with the concept that for all of us it’s past the time to let God control our lives … our daily journey … our destiny so that yes, when those who know us think about us they can see God in action … rather than our inaction related to God’s teaching.
Those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.”
And then you heard the Gospel of Jesus just like you did this morning … does your heart warm up whenever you hear lessons from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Do you listen intently hoping to glean something you missed before so that you can adapt the teaching into your life knowing that it comes from your Savior … God’s Son … something valuable to hold onto more than the WILD ABRA you captured in Pokémon or knowing how many home runs Kyle Schwarber has right now (It’s 49 by the way.).
“While Jesus and his disciples were traveling, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his message. By contrast, Martha was preoccupied with getting everything ready for their meal. So Martha came to him and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to prepare the table all by myself? Tell her to help me.” The Lord answered, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part. It won’t be taken away from her.””
In her book, ‘Even If He Doesn’t,’ Kristen LaValley writes, “[1]The key difference between religion and faith is that while religion stands still and quiet, faith chases, pursues, and seeks. Faith moves us. We run after God with limps. We praise with no words. We sing with no song. We search for God in the dark, we reach out our hands to make contact, and we turn our heads toward Him and whisper “Are you still there?” God we still somehow inexplicably believe is there in the dark with us.”
As we come to the Lord’s table it is always a choice whether we come because of our religion or our faith. As we live out our days we can choose to live in a way that one day someone when our name is mentioned will declare that we knew Jesus Christ and actively were doers of our faith not merely hearers who were too preoccupied with the world to remember what we heard.
God loves us … God in fact loves all of humanity … the question always remains whether we are willing to entrust our lives and our souls to God and to allow God to take over. Vacation time is over … it’s time to learn the lessons of life that God offers clearly to us and then put them into action so that others can come to discover that what we have is faith and that our faith has made us better people living for God each day. AMEN