Have you ever felt forgotten?  Have you ever been left behind?  
   It's an awful feeling. – To be totally abandoned.  
      You feel like you don't count for anything.  
         Someone has failed to consider you worth remembering 
            and you feel like you count for nothing. 
We might feel like that here with the priest in charge leaving 
   and the senior warden gone.

But know too, that Israel felt forgotten.  
   They had been carried off into captivity.  
      Because they had put their faith in alliances and military power 
         and other gods, God Almighty allowed them to be conquered 
            and carried off to a foreign land.  They felt abandoned by God.  
               They felt utterly alone and hopeless.

The Psalmist put their feelings into words.  
   "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept 
      when we remembered Zion.  
         There on the willows we hung our lyres, 
            for there our captors asked us for songs, 
               our tormentors demanded songs of joy; 
                  they said, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!'  
How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?"
   (Ps. 137:1-4)  How could they be God's people
      when they felt that God Himself had forgotten them?

Have you ever felt like God had forgotten you?  
   Sometimes it happens. 
      People sometimes enter into periods of spiritual darkness in their lives.  
         Like the Israelites in exile they feel utterly abandoned by God.  
            They feel alone and forgotten by their own Heavenly Father. 

But God spoke to these people who felt forgotten.  
   Through the prophet Isaiah, 
      the same one who had foretold their defeat and exile, 
         God spoke to them.  God said, 
            "In a time of favor I have answered you, 
               on a day of salvation I have helped you."  
Another word for "favor" is grace.  
   At an appointed time of grace, God will answer Israel.  
      When the time is right!

You know sometimes God does not work 
   on the same timetable as we humans.  God knows when the time is right.  
      God has a plan and most of the time we don't know the details.  
         So we have to trust God.

When we are in the dark spiritually and feel forgotten 
   we have to know that God has a plan for us.  
      At the right time on a day of salvation God will answer.  
         We are not forgotten.  St. Christopher’s will not be forgotten!

Isaiah goes on "I have kept you and given you 
   as a covenant to the people, … saying to the prisoners, 'Come out,' 
      to those who are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.'"  

On one level God is talking to the Israelites in captivity and saying 
   "I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people."  
      In other words, God has not forgotten them 
         but God is the one who has been preserving them.  
Sometimes God lets our world fall apart around us 
   but he holds us up through it.

If the Children of Israel could still mourn and struggle to sing 
   the "songs of Zion" in captivity, then they were not completely lost.  
      If they were lost they would have just given up on God 
         and worshipped the gods of the people who captured them.  
But God was sustaining them through the crisis.

At the same time God was giving them as a "covenant to the people."  
   A covenant is a promise.  
      Their very existence was a sign and promise 
         that God would not abandon his people.  
Who was it a promise to?  
   Well, first to Israel; all the believers in God that lived back 
      then scattered throughout the world, 
         but, maybe also, to the nations or Gentiles.  
            God had not forgotten them either!

That brings us to another level on which, we can understand this prophesy. 
   Who has God given as a promise, a covenant, a testament, 
      to the people of the world?  As a Christian I have to say, "Jesus."  
         In a moment of grace, at the right time God gave his only begotten Son to be a New Testament to the world.  
   A living, dying, and living again sign of God's promise, 
      that we are not forgotten!  
         And through Jesus God has said 
            to all who are prisoners of sin, "'Come out,' 
               to those who are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.'"

Isaiah describes how God would provide for them 
   and bring them home again.  Then he says, "Sing for joy, O heavens, 
      and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!  
         For the Lord has comforted his people, 
            and will have compassion on his suffering ones."  
God did show compassion.  
   God did bring the people out of Exile.  
      A new king arose who allowed the Israelites to return to their homes.  
         They returned and rebuilt the temple and the walls of the city.

When we read in the New Testament about the temple and Jerusalem 
   we are reading about a place and structures 
      that were begun by the people who returned to Israel 
         in fulfillment of this promise.  
And when we read about the people of Israel in Jesus' day 
   we are reading about their descendants.  
      God did sustain them and care for them 
         and bring them back to the Promised Land 
            and enable them to rebuilding the culture and lives.

To us, all that is history.  
   But to those people, it was just a dream.  
      It was a promise made by God through his prophet.  
Yet Isaiah tells them, to "Sing for Joy" because God has comforted them.

There is a lesson in this.  
   Sometimes things seem so dark.  Light seems only a dream.  
      But God promises to bring us through the dark and into the light.  
         God promises us that we are not forgotten.  
In those times we have to act on faith and praise God for not forgetting us 
   even though we feel forgotten.  
      Not just think positive, but act on the assurance of an unseen truth 
         that God will deliver us, at the right time!

Sure God had promised the exiles that he would deliver them 
   and make them a sign to the nations.  
Isaiah had even told them that they could start celebrating that deliverance 
   before the fact.  
      But they still felt forgotten: "Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, 
         my Lord has forgotten me.'"  God replied to them, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion 
   for the child of her womb?  Even these may forget, 
      yet I will not forget you." 
 It seems inconceivable that a mother can forget her child 
   but I have seen it happen.  
      Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia 
         can make a mother forget even her children.  
A mother might conceivably forget her children, but, God cannot forget us.

As a hospital Chaplin I once accompanied someone in an ambulance 
   and the EMTs were writing the patient's vitals on their palms and wrists.  
      Later I asked one of them about that.  He said, 
         "In the heat of the moment I could forget something 
            from the time I get the information from the patient 
               to the time I have the chart to write it on."  
He also said that if he wrote it on a piece of paper he could lose the paper, 
   but he would never misplace his arm.  
      God says, "I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands."

Have you ever felt forgotten by God?  Know that you are not forgotten.  
   Oh sure, the priest is high and mighty up here in the pulpit 
      with his nice white robes on says “I am not forgotten”, 
         but that doesn't change the fact that “I feel forgotten.  
How can you know God has not forgotten me?”

God gave his only begotten Son as a sign 
   that he has not forgotten any of us.  Jesus is a covenant to the people.  
      God could no more forget you than a mother could forget her child.  

In fact , Jesus went as far as to allow God's love for you 
   to be inscribed on his hands.  
      And those nail prints are there to this day!  
         No matter how you feel, know that you are not forgotten – 
            that truth is written on our Lord's hands!  
May we all remember that, this day!  Amen.

Consider the case of David Vitter, a father of four and a senator from Louisiana, who gets himself involved with a sleazy escort service.
Or Michael Vick, a talented quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, arrested for running a dog-fighting operation in rural Virginia.
Or Lisa Nowak, the married NASA astronaut who makes a marathon drive from Houston to Orlando to confront her romantic rival.
Or Bill Clinton — Rhodes scholar, six-time governor of Arkansas, and president of the United States — who has an affair with an intern in the Oval Office.

What were they thinking?
Were they out of their minds?
Taking crazy pills?
Well, yes — in fact, they probably were temporarily insane.
They went nuts because they were hot.

According to The Washington Post (August 6, 2007), an enormous mental gulf separates "cold" emotional states from "hot" emotional states.
When we’re in cold emotional states — cool, calm and collected — we find it difficult to empathize with people who are taking actions based on hot emotional states.

If we’re not hungry or thirsty or jealous or sexually tempted, we find it very hard to understand the power of these feelings. "Those people are nuts," we say to ourselves. "I’d never go crazy like that." But watch out — when your emotions get hot, you can go a little loco.

　"We tend to exaggerate the importance of willpower," says George Loewenstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who has studied the power of cold and hot emotional states.

Example: Most health resolutions are made when people are in a cold emotional state. Avoiding junk food and shedding a few pounds seem like reasonable and responsible things to do.

But then, you know what happens — you get stressed or hungry, and suddenly a bag of potato chips becomes completely irresistible. You go temporarily insane and eat the whole thing.

Many diets have been blown by people in a hot emotional state.

The Jewish leaders on the council in Jerusalem are burning hot in today’s Scripture lesson from Acts.

A Christian named Stephen has been brought before them on a charge of blasphemy, and he proceeds to lay out for them the history of God and his chosen people — emphasizing, in particular, the sad and sordid story of human disobedience.

Stephen concludes by accusing the council of being "stiff-necked people" who are "forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do" (Acts 7:51).

Through it all, Stephen’s cool, he’s calm and he’s coherent. He’s like an attorney with an airtight case; no need to go ballistic.
The council has been getting hotter and hotter throughout his speech, but now they reach the boiling point.

Acts tells us that, "When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen" (v. 54).

Then Stephen gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he says, "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" (vv. 55-56).
Suddenly the pot boils over — the members of the council cover their ears and with a loud shout all rush together against him. They drag him out of the city and begin to stone him (vv. 57-58).
Stephen prays, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and kneeling down he cries out,
"Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (vv. 59-60).

He shows the cool faith of someone who can see God face to face, and then he prays that the Lord will show mercy toward the people who are killing him.

The members of the council are hot.
The witnesses are hot.
Even a young man named Saul, who will eventually convert to Christianity and become a champion of the church, is hot.
And the result is the brutal murder of a cool Christian named Stephen, "a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit" (6:5).

　Hot faith.

You often hear people praising it, saying that it is good to be passionate about what you believe in.
No one respects a person who is simply lukewarm about her faith. And it wouldn’t be a compliment to say, "That guy is ice-cold for Jesus!"
But watch out: Hot faith can be a violent and deadly force in the world.

Look around: Sunnis are fighting with Shiites in Iraq.
Hindus are battling Muslims in India.
And here in the United States, pastor Fred Phelps and his followers
picket high-profile political events with signs saying,
"God hates fags" and "Thank God for 9/11."
Call them extremists, or call them crazy,
but one thing is certain — their faith is hot.

A number of outspoken atheists have gone so far as to say that religion is the cause of most of the world’s troubles.
Christopher Hitchens, author of the book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, blames faith for genocide, sexism, suicide bombings, genital mutilation, totalitarianism and every other problem in the history of the world.

He scores some points — no one would argue that a great deal of evil has been done in the name of God. It’s hard to defend the hot faith of the members of the council in Jerusalem, who let their emotions take control of them as they stone Stephen to death.

It’s difficult to make a case for suicide bombings and genital mutilation.

But the alternative to hot faith is not no faith. It’s cool faith.

Yes, faith that is way cool.

So what does this kind of faith feel like?

Cool faith is trust in God. It’s trust in a God who "does not dwell in houses made with human hands" (v. 48).
So often we worship a god of our own making, instead of the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. If we’re Sunnis in Iraq, we assume that God despises the Shiites. If we’re Hindus in India, we believe that God opposes the Muslims. If we’re Fred Phelps, we are convinced that God hates homosexuals. But God is above all and in all, working through all that God has made.

Stephen is right to say that "the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands." God does not live in the moral-theological-social houses that we’ve built for ourselves.

Instead, God’s throne is God’s, not ours. It’s heaven, and God’s footstool is the earth (v. 49).
A cool faith realizes that nothing in our finite world can contain an infinite Lord — not our nations, not our political parties, not our religions, not our churches, not our personal agendas. God’s a perfect God, and we’ll always be flawed and imperfect compared to God’s flawlessness and perfection.

It’s a really cool vision when Stephen gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God (v. 56).

This vision tells us that God and Jesus are in the coolness of heaven — not in the wrath of the hot Jerusalem crowd.

　Cool faith is also a sacrificial faith.

Stephen’s determined to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, so he doesn’t fight back when the crowd attacks him. As the rocks begin to fly, Stephen simply prays, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (v. 59) — he wants to be in complete and eternal relationship with the One who is his Savior.

　Sacrifice is a tough one for us, because we’re taught to fight for what we want. But:
• to be a good parent, you have to sacrifice time at work to be with your children;

• to be a good spouse, you have to give up some of your own desires to satisfy the needs of your partner;

• to be a good Christian at school, you have to sacrifice some of your popularity to live the life that God desires for you;

• to be a good church member, you have to offer time and talent and money to advance the mission of the congregation.

None of this is easy, and some of it can be painful, but it is part of what it means to be a follower of the One who gave his life on the cross.

The benefit of sacrifice is that it leads to significant and surprising outcomes.

Acts tells us that the witnesses to Stephen’s trial and stoning "laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul …

And Saul approved of their killing him" (7:58; 8:1).

This is the very same Saul who would convert, become a follower of Christ, and eventually spread the gospel as an apostle named Paul.

The sacrifice of Stephen made a powerful impression on him, one that stayed with him throughout his ministry (Acts 22:20).

Finally, cool faith is a forgiving faith.

Stephen’s very last words are, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (v. 60).  Like Jesus himself, Stephen forgives his killers, knowing that they’re acting out of hot faith — overcome by rage and passion.

His final words echo the prayer Jesus said on the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).

This may be the biggest challenge of cool faith, but it’s at the heart of being a follower of Christ.

As Christians, we’re forgiven people, so our job is to forgive — forgive our friends, our family members, our boyfriends and girlfriends, our brothers and sisters. Our job is to forgive our bosses, our coworkers, our opponents, our enemies … and even ourselves.

When we offer true forgiveness, we let go of the anger that we feel toward those who have hurt us so badly. We also ask for God to show them mercy, for in so many cases they did not know what they were doing.

In a world being ripped apart by anger and violence, it’s hard to believe that a hotter faith is going to bring us all closer together.

A call for more passion is not going to lead to peace.

Instead, let’s be cool. May it be so for us this day. Amen.

Source:

Vedantam, Shankar. "Hot and cold emotions make us poor judges."

The Washington Post, August 6, 2007, A3.