Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

What makes Clover Hill, Clover Hill?

This is the third of my four attempts to answer that question and I am afraid that it is the one that may seem less relevant than any of the others.

We know of our love for children, we spoke of that two weeks ago and demonstrated it again today, and that three way love, between us and the children and God is what allows us to live with hope for the future.

And last week I pointed out how often we have seen the impossible happen here. Time after time, when logic and mathematics suggested that we would be broke within a year, God has showered us with unexpected blessings and most, if not all, of us can tell a story or two about how prayer gave us an extra chapter of life that would have otherwise seemed impossible, and so we are able to continue to live with faith in God’s leadership.

And next week, well I’ll let next week take care of itself.

But this week the scriptures call us to celebrate a gift that God has given us and a way of life that God has called us to, but it is a gift that we aren’t as sure that we like, it is a way of life that our modern American culture not only doesn’t celebrate very often, but doesn’t seem to value or understand.

It is the gift and the life of humility.

Now I’m not talking about false humility, we know how to use that, we’ve got it down to an art form. Whenever we hear the challenges and demands that God makes upon our time (you expect us to worship every Sunday?) our talents (Oh, I couldn’t possibly serve on Consistory or help with the youth or sing in the choir) or our treasure (God wants 10% of our income? I can’t do that!), whenever we hear those things we kick in a false humility that protects our calendars, abilities and wealth, keeping them under our control, not God’s.

But real humility, that’s a rare commodity.

Benjamin Franklin once set out to make himself perfect. He proposed to intentionally himself in 13 areas of life. And he did pretty well, by his measure, except for humility.

Of that he wrote: In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it . . . , it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; . . . for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

And two hundred years later Mac Davis nailed it when he sang “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way.” You see we live in a culture that worships celebrities, celebrates braggarts and rewards self-promoters. But for the Church in general, and Clover Hill in particular, humility remains not only possible but achievable.

I know because I began to learn humility from the beginning here.

First I looked at the names of the ministers who served here and I realized that I was stepping into something very special! You will here a little more about this next week, but I already knew, or knew of, many of my predecessors.

Lester Bossard was a minister here, his father was a tinsmith who put up these walls, and Lester Bossard would die a decade or so later and his widow would return to her home Church teach Sunday School lessons and tell stories about her husband the minister to a bunch of kids in Pompton Lakes, including me.

Lester Kuyper was a minister here and he would serve as President of both Western and New Brunswick Seminaries when I was a college student and was trying to decide between teaching and ministry.

Vernon Kooy was a minister here and he was the seminary professor who would teach NT to Mrs. Bossard’s ex-Sunday School Student.

Arnie Van Lummel was a minister here and I knew him as the Stated Clerk of the Particular Synod of NJ who combined a deep of love of people with an unflinching honesty in his proclamation of the gospel.

Lyle Vander Werff was a minister here who would help define the world mission work of the Reformed Church.

Sam Priestly was a minister here who would serve as a counselor at Warwick and help guide Mrs. Bossard’s ex-Sunday School Student through those awkward teen years.

Al Poppen was a minister here who committed his post-Clover Hill carreer to the nurturing of ministers, he was the pastor’s pastor in our denomination.

And they are just the ones who I had met before I even got here and that doesn’t include the students who served here over the years! I realized that I was coming to a Church that had never had a bad minister, it was like becoming – and I hate to use this illustration, but it fits - the Centerfielder for the NY Yankees. I have always been conscious of those who came before me and I knew that whatever I did right it would only be expected. I learned humility.

A few of you may remember Pete Petite who was a member here, and a member of the search committee that called me here, in 1977.

On my first Sunday as Pastor, Pete came into the church office – which at that time was the pastor’s study – and he said, or to be more accurate, he growled, “I’m not one of those guys who will tell you ‘great sermon’ every week. If you have one that really is great, I’ll tell you and if you have one that is really bad, I’ll tell you. The rest of the time I will say ‘Good Morning’”.

When Pete died, a half dozen years or so later, I think the score was 3 good, 2 bad, 265 good mornings.

It has never been hard to stay humble in Clover Hill.

But it is hard in our world to appreciate the humble, to see the holy in the humble, to hear the echoes of heaven in the humble. Some of the music in December has already started to play in our home as I outline worship themes and once again, as I do every year, I can see the overlapping of Bethlehem and Clover Hill; I can see the bias that God has for the poor and the weak and the marginalized and those who look insignificant to the world; I can see the blessings that God has for those who simply go about their jobs in the world as shepherds, carpenters, parents, spouses, children, friends, Christians; I can see the love that God has for those who seek to be faithful rather than successful and dependable rather than popular.

As December approaches I again remember that there is no other way to approach God but with a humble heart.

That was what Jesus was trying to teach the proud and fiery James and John who sought places at the right and left hand of Christ in his glory, “You don’t understand what you are asking.”

That was what God was trying to teach the proud and honorable Job, “Who are you to question me?”

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

God spoke out of the whirlwind and God goes on to spend a whole chapter establishing the one great truth of our faith, the one thing that has carried me through crisis after crisis, the one foundational fact that I return to, time and time again, the one lesson that I have tried to teach you and myself week after week, year after year: God is God, and we’re not.

Once we have understood and accepted that, humility comes easy, or at least easier.

Once we have understood and accepted that, we understand that we are not the center of the universe. There is a great moment in the book The Hobbit, which is the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, when Bilbo Bagins and Gandalf the Wizard have returned to the Shire from their great adventure, and Bilbo wonders about his role in the great plans of life, to which the Wizard replies: “You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

So it is with Job, with James and John and so it has been and must remain for us as a church and as individuals. All that happens to us and around us is part of something far larger, something beyond our understanding, something that reveals itself in the whirlwinds of life.

We need to nurture our humility with a sense of awe.

And we don’t even know what awe is, I have a friend, a colleague who uses the word as most people do, frequently and cheaply: “That donut was awesome” he might say and I always bite my tongue when I hear it, because he is not the only one who has lost sight that awe comes when we are deeply and profoundly overwhelmed by something. I don’t ever want to forget that Awe and Awful are from the same root and when God meets us in the whirlwind, when all of the false values of our lives are revealed and shattered, when we are filled with the clear and frightening realization that there is a huge gap between us and God, between the creator and the creature then we know how much we depend upon Christ as the bridge between our humanity and God’s awesome and awful holiness.

We talk about “awesome experiences” as if they are pleasant and cheery encounters, they are not! Again go to the December stories and notice how everyone who gets to meet an angel is afraid, terrified, filled with awe, driven to a humble realization of just how small my life is compared to God. I don’t want to have an awesome experience and I don’t wish it for anyone else.

In my life I have had a few, but fortunately only a few, awesome experiences and I would be delighted if I can get through these last couple of decades of my life without any more. But if a day comes again when I do need them, if like Job, I find myself shattered and devastated, filled with grief and an undeserved sense of failure, then let the whirlwind blow around me, let it remind me that God is God and I am not.

We don’t get to choose when the awesome moments will come, but they probably won’t come in a donut shop, they will come when we have nowhere else to turn, they will come when we fully understand the opening of our Heidelberg Catechism:

Q. What is your only comfort? in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, ?but belong - body and soul,? in life and in death - ?to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. I belong, we belong, to God and therefore to each other.

That is the foundation for all of the rest, it is why we need to hear and re-hear all of the old stories, it is why we need to make and re-make all of the old promises.

We belong.

And so we can live, fully abundantly, joyfully in the beauty of our day-to-day world of relationships and experiences.

We belong.

It is not our task to understand and explain all that happens, but to believe, unshakably, that God understands.

We belong.

It is not our task to seek glory, as James and John did, but to follow.

We belong.

It is not our task to take care of ourselves but to take care of each other.

And when we do that, humility and holiness come to us.

And when we do that, we are the Church of Christ that we are created and called to be, when we do that we belong to each other and to God.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Clover Hill Reformed Church 1834-2009 A 175 Day Scriptural Companion Dear Friends, As we progress through our Anniversary Year, I invite you to join together in a shared reading of scripture. I have selected 175 passages, from Genesis through Revelation, that have had special meaning in our Congregational life. Go Here