Sermon of November 9, 2008

                                     COMMIT YOUR WAY TO THE LORD – II

Acts 2:43-47

      Sermon presented on November 9, 2008

 

When I was kid, and I’d say or do something that my father found strange or stupid (in his opinion), he’d say to my mom:  “The kid ought to be committed.”  “Committed to Greystone,” he’d say; Greystone being a nearby state psychiatric hospital.  You see, my Dad came along before parents were sensitized to the importance of a child’s “self-esteem.”  He loved me, but in the old-fashioned way, not in the “let’s share and be friends” way of fathers these days.  You know what I mean?  And I can still hear him say about me:  “He ought to be committed.  That kid should be committed.”

 

            Well, he was right, though not in quite the way he had in mind.  Everyone needs to be committed!  This is what separates humans from other forms of life:  that humans alone can decide what attitude to bring to life, aspire to meaning and purpose, and commit their lives to a cause that will outlast it.  Viktor Frankl, whose book Man’s Search for Meaning is one of the most important and influential works of the 20^th Century, wrote:  “What a person needs is not a life without tension, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthy goal.”  Medieval Christian writer Thomas a Kempis taught :  “Life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing.  Everyday we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves, ‘This day let me make a sound beginning’.”  Contemporary Christian essayist Annie Dillard put it more succinctly, writing simply:  “The dedicated life is the life worth living.”

 

            I read an article recently about Robert Spano.  Spano is a world-renown conductor.  He’s currently resident conductor with the Atlanta Symphony, but travels constantly as guest conductor all over Europe and the United States.  He’s also highly esteemed as a teacher of young conductors.  About this, he says: 

I keep focused on the things that can be taught – how to

make a clean gesture, where to place a downbeat, how to

study the music . . . What I can’t teach people, however,

is intention.  This can’t be taught.  If you have a clear intention,

if the stereo inside your head is clicking along and giving you

something that’s exactly what you want, then it almost doesn’t

matter what you do with your hands.

(New Yorker, August 21, 2006, pgs, 64, 65)

 

            Intention.   Purpose.  Dedication.  A worthy goal.  Commitment.  These are the things that matter most in life, for of such is the character of our lives shaped and the story of our lives told.  Yet it can’t be taught.  Life is worth living when a grand purpose claims us, and we commit ourselves to it with whole-hearted devotion and single-minded obedience.

 

            Those of us in the Christian faith know that there is a God who calls us to commit our lives to Him.  This core value is declared in Psalm 37, verse 5:  “Commit your way to the Lord/trust in him and he will do this.”  This is the theme of Stewardship season this year:  Commit Your Way to the Lord.

 

            This is not to say, of course, that the most defining and decisive act of commitment is to give money to Forest Hills Presbyterian Church.  In truth, there are many worthy ways of demonstrating commitment other than financial – volunteer service, for example, the gifts of talent and temperament, goods and services, and so forth.   As well:  there are many worthy causes other than religious ones – educational institutions, arts organizations, community service projects.  And what’s more:  there are many worthy spiritual and faith-related ventures beyond the local congregation.  It dishonors the grand Biblical call to “commit your way to the Lord” to reduce this soaring, comprehensive mandate to supporting any one fund drive.

 

            It’s perfectly honorable, however, as well as good and necessary, to ask oneself:  how on earth is my life committed to the way of the Lord?   How we spend money is a fair measure, I think; suggesting, anyway, if not demonstrating perfectly, the depth and direction of commitment.  On the average, church members give just a little above 1% of their after-tax income to the church.  There are as many allowances and variations as there are givers, I suppose.  Overall percentages can’t begin to explain individual situations.  And yet, conceding all that, it’s still sobering to note how low that number actually is. 

 

            Churches increasingly sustain their ministries by means of three strategies:  by spending-down reserves, by burdening smaller staffs with more work, and by cutting mission.  A case can be made that each of these strategies is fundamentally flawed and unwise, both in terms of the church’s fundamental purposes and as a practical matter of financial management.  But you do what you have to do to cope.  These ways of coping, though, all reflect discouragement and cynicism about the church’s present and future, and indifference toward church’s place in the world.

 

What’s needed is renewed energy and enthusiasm for rising up-and-out of this present malaise and committing one’s way to the Lord.   We get a quick look that commitment in today’s New Testament passage, Acts chapter 2, verses 42-47, a glimpse of the early church in Jerusalem.  This small community of believers resonated with passion and promise.  Each phrase declares and demonstrates commitment. 

“The believers devoted themselves to teaching and fellowship.”

“Everyone was filled with awe.”

“All were together in everything . . . with glad and sincere hearts . . . praising God and enjoying the favor of people.”

Wow!

 

Their ways were so fervently committed to the Lord that they simply lost interest in the ordinary things of this world.  Self-interest disappeared.  They held everything in common, selling property and possessions, and distributing resources among themselves as any had need.  This may strike us as foolish and unworkable, which of course it is.  This kind of economic collectivism has failed everywhere it’s been imposed.  But it’s no imposition when a group of committed people choose among themselves to order and arrange their lives this way.  The impetus for this kind of life-together came from the commitment of men and women who’d been transformed by the power of God in Jesus Christ.

 

So what can we say or do in response to this Word of God?  We cannot, by sheer force of will, pretend to be aroused as they were.  What’s routine, weary, take-it-for-granted news for us – that Jesus Christ is risen! – was wholly fresh and new for them.  Inevitably the passion and power of first faith fades.  This ideal community of Christ-centered gladness and generosity didn’t last long, truth be known.  But still, we can learn a few things from it.

 

First:  we can learn that everything we are and have belongs to God.  “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,” declares Psalm 24.  It’s clichéd to say “you can’t take it with you,” but clichés endure because they contain an element of truth.  We are here for a brief while, by the grace of God; in order to glorify him, and to bring truth and goodness into the world, as God give us strength to do.  Then our days here are ended, and we are lifted into the light and peace of God’s presence.  Seen from the perspective of eternity, our much grasping and gaining, caution and stinginess, self-interest and self-indulgence, all are exposed as foolish and futile.

 

Second:  we can learn that stewardship is a celebration, not a burden.  The members of the earliest church weren’t grudgingly, broodingly, reluctantly placing their coins in the common cup.  Rather, the atmosphere crackled with joy and gladness.  I won’t be so daring as to say that the church doesn’t want your money unless it’s given cheerfully.   You know the old saying:  God loveth a cheerful giver, but accepteth also from a grouch.  So we’ll receive all pledges, even those gloomily submitted.  But what’s the point of being gloomy?  Mark Twain said, famously: “I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”  God is good, all the time.  All the time, God is good.  Let us celebrate and be glad.

 

And, third:  we can learn that faithfulness calls us to respond to the experience of grace in our lives, not to the demands of a church budget.  Budgets are important, of course.  And in the modern context, transparency in regard to financial affairs is especially important.  The session here at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church is committed to fiscal responsibility, having adopted a prudent budget for 2008 which we are on-track to meet, and projecting continued caution and good sense for 2009. 

 

The big price-tag item for next year is air conditioning, which we can replace in 2009 for about $40,000, but which, if we were to delay just another year, will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace, due to government-mandated changes in the industry that take effect in 2010.  Session members could have said:  let’s put it off, and hope that it’ll last at least until my term on session is over, then it’ll be somebody else’s problem.  Instead, and to their credit, session has said:  it’s on our watch, so let’s take care of it now rather than hand it off to future generations.  We’ve saved about $20,000 toward this project.  We’ll need to squeeze another $20,000 or so out of next year’s budget. 

 

And, of course, we’re also committed to enhancing and expanding our ministries of education, fellowship, music, mission and service, the heart and soul of the church’s life and work.  All these things are being carefully calculated and calibrated for budget purposes, as befits the financial accountability procedures of a non-profit organization in the modern world.

 

But notice how utterly absent these procedures are from those of the earliest church.  For them, generosity of substance and spirit didn’t arise from the need to meet a budget, but in response to their experience of God’s grace in their lives.  This is what produces commitment.  Anyone can be involved in some worthy cause, but commitment is aroused and sustained by passion and joy, and the beauty of holiness.

 

There’s the old saying about bacon and eggs, and how the meal signifies the difference between involvement and commitment.  The chicken is involved.  But the pig is committed.

 

“The kid ought to be committed,” my dad used to say.  Well, the kid is, after all.  And I hope you are, too.

 

 

 

Sermon of Octover 19, 2008

                                  DON’T LET THE ECONOMY KILL YOU        

                                                       Matthew 20:1-16

                                       Sermon presented on October 19, 2008

 

 

The title for this sermon, “Don’t Let the Economy Kill You,” was borrowed – well, stolen, actually (since I don’t plan to return it) – from an article in last Monday’s USA Today (10/13/08, p.11A).   In that column, Dr. Marc Siegel, a public health specialist who teaches at NYU School of Medicine, reviewed some of the research concerning the effects of stress on health and well-being.   Although tales of traders throwing themselves out of windows on Wall Street at the time of the 1929 crash are largely myths, yet public health records do show that millions at that time turned to excessive drinking, smoking and other self-damaging behaviors.  In the 1980s concerns about the failing economy after the 1987 crash led to so much stress that urgent care centers sprang up around centers of financial activity.  With the economic rebound of the 1990s many of these centers closed, but there’s talk now of re-opening them.  A recent study by the American Psychological Association revealed that financial concerns “topped the list of stressors for at least 80% of those surveyed,” with more than half reporting heightened feelings of anger and fatigue, along with an inability to sleep and overeating.  Calls to suicide hotlines are reported to be up by as much as 75% this year in many cities, and nationwide hospital admissions for psychiatric services are up 10% this year over last year.  Siegel observes:  “Our collective national health could just follow our economy into the depths.”   He summarizes his diagnosis this way:  that due to economic stresses, people are living “increasingly unstable lives.” 

 

Now, it seems to me that although this new reality clearly has implications for public health, yet at the root it does not represent a medical malaise, but a spiritual one.  The founder of modern stress research, Dr. Hans Selye, wrote, many decades ago:  “It’s not stress that kills you.  It is our reaction to it.”

 

I’m not immune to the stress of money-worry myself, by the way.  Like many of you, I suppose, I’ve watched my savings, so called, fade away.  I too am inclined to feel demoralized by the daily barrage of gloomy reports about the financial calamity engulfing the planet.  I know I can (and should) just turn the TV off, but it’s like a toothache, I keep putting my tongue on it even though it hurts.  I feel disheartened by bad news about matters I don’t even understand, no less have any power to change.  And I find myself wondering if my Grandpa Raum may have been right, after all: that the primary instruments of the devil are alcohol, the New York Yankees, and easy credit. 

 

            Even in terms of the church, there’s cause for concern, if we choose to be concerned.  This has been a pretty good year for Forest Hills Presbyterian Church, financially.  Giving has been steady, and up from last year, modestly, anyway.  On behalf of session, thank you for that!  And we’ve implemented a number of expenditure control strategies, which have helped, as well.  But it’s worrisome looking toward 2009.  Although it’s not quite stewardship time, and this is not quite a stewardship sermon – all that will be rolled-out in a couple weeks – yet looking ahead, I see it as a great challenge to put before you the wants and needs of the church, in a way that doesn’t add to the stress and anxiety you may already be feeling, because I know it’s a tough time right now money-wise for some of you, many of you. 

 

So, as I said, this is “not quite a stewardship sermon.”  That starts on November 2, officially.  But unofficially, this sermon is about stewardship, kinda’.  For I invite you to join me today in looking at some aspects of the spiritual side of money, and its role and place in our lives. 

 

French Christian philosopher Jacques Ellul – (and few Christians surpass Ellul in wisdom about the relationship between faith and money) – Ellul wrote:

            The power of money is always actively tempting us.  This

temptation involves a decision to love either God or money . . .

This always involves the whole person and binds the whole

person without distinction . . . Ultimately we follow what we

have loved most intensely, either into eternity or hell . . .

Our attachment to money pushes us headlong into nothingness.

 

 From time-to-time I want to say in a sermon, “if you remember little else of what I say today, please remember this.”  Now is one of those times.  For Ellul’s comment is breathtaking, I think, in its powerfully simple statement of a basic Biblical truth:  “Our attachment to money pushes us headlong into nothingness.”

 

The Gospel Reading before us today is the passage commonly known as the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.  You know the story.  A landowner hires day-laborers to work the harvest.  The first group, who signed-on first thing in the morning, negotiated with him a day’s wage satisfactory to all.  As the day unfolded more labor was required.  The landowner signed-on additional workers — at mid-morning, midday, mid-afternoon, and then again in late afternoon.  He didn’t negotiate terms with any of these later hires.  Apparently they were pleased just be working, and don’t figure again in the story.  But those who were hired first thing in the morning do re-appear, when at the end of the day the landowner paid those hired last the same wage as those hired first.  The early hires “grumbled against the landlord” – I’ll return shortly to this detail of them “grumbling” – and protested forcefully this violation of all that’s fair.

 

This parable is not meant to be a practical guide for how to run a vineyard, or any business, and it’s not a model for effective management-labor relations.  The first thing we have to do in studying any parable is to resist the temptation to make it say more than Jesus intended it to say.  The Parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, is not meant as godly counsel concerning estate planning, nor the Parable of the Good Samaritan as godly counsel concerning the appropriate public provision of first-responder emergency services.  Generally speaking a parable has one simple point, or perhaps two.  Narrative details provide context and color for the purpose of making that point (or two), but are not important in themselves.

 

So, where might we locate the key point in this parable?  Dr. Karen LeBacqz, who teaches Biblical ethics at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California, insists that what’s most important to think about in this passage is the grumbling of those who were hired first.  She writes:

            As [the story] is told, the focus is not on the generous

            act of the landowner, but on the grumbling of those who

            were hired first.  All interpretations that ignore the

            grumbling of those who were hired first ignore the

            focus of the story as it emerges out of the narrative structure.

 

Here’s the thing:  these grumblers are letting the economy kill them.  They’ve decided to let financial decisions over which they have no control take-over their thoughts and master their moods.   Their specific grievances may strike us as legitimate, of course.  Naturally work and wages must be kept in just and fair relationship.  But this parable isn’t about corporate practice or public policy.  It’s about the dismal effects on the soul of grumbling and grouching about money, of comparing your situation-in-life  with that of someone else and re-inventing yourself as a victim, and of permitting excessive concerns about wealth and possessions to drive a wedge between you and other people, between you and God, and between you and your own well-being.  It’ll just kill you.

 

Rather than letting the economy dominate and control us, let’s consider a better way.   I’d like to lift-up three Biblical ways of thinking about faith and wealth, each way suggested by a word:  idolatry, simplicity and solidarity.

 

“Idolatry” is what happens when we ascribe to something in creation ultimacy that’s rightly ascribed only to the Creator.  Idolatry is an exchange.  We worship an idol instead of worshiping God.  We may make an idol of anything.  Pleasure.  Success.  Power.  Prestige.  Beauty.  Popularity.  Intelligence.  Another person.  Nation.  In a strange sort of ironic way, even religion can become an idol that gets in the way of our worshiping and honoring God.  Any one of a whole range of cultural activities can become idolatrous, if something other than God gains our ultimate allegiance.  But perhaps the most tantalizing and dangerous idol of all is the love of money.  In the verse from Colossians read today (Chapter 3, verse 5), it is written:  “Put to death whatever in you is earthly:  fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).”   In this list of evil attitudes, notice the one that’s specifically designated as idolatrous:  greed.  Love of money is the single greatest threat to love of God.  John Calvin states the reason, simply; he wrote:  “The person who sets heart and mind on material things forgets God.”  The moment money and possessions really begin to attract or demand more of our attention and affection than warranted, it’s time for radical spiritual scrutiny and transformation.  So, idolatry’s the first word to keep in mind in the interest of not letting the economy kill you.

 

The second word is “simplicity.”    Over-concern with money always complicates life.   Think of the workers in the parable, the ones hired first.  Their situation was simple, or ought to have been.  They agreed to work for certain terms.  At day’s end the landowner paid them the agreed-upon wages.  What’s simpler than that?  But these workers change their minds. It’s not enough for them to receive what they’d agreed-upon and expected.  They start comparing themselves with others.  Jealousy and bitterness overtake their thinking.   They now want an adjustable rate, instead, based on changing economic circumstances.  Even though we may appreciate their situation, yet we may also see in their example how money complicates life and entangles the soul.    

 

Here are some of the complications we may see in our time.   There are couples desiring, and actually achieving, a lifestyle that’s then so demanding and exhausting to maintain that what’s required erodes their relationship and undermines the well-being of the family.   There are people who aspire to an increase in wealth, and attain it, yet are never satisfied, but keep craving more, so that even those now prosperous beyond anything they ever hoped-for or imagined, yet remain strangely unfulfilled by it.  There are people who spend lavishly in good times, then when times change are too embarrassed to downscale, so live a lie, instead.  There are people who, facing constant choices, choose to buy extravagances for self rather than choose to see money as a tool to advance God’s kingdom.  And so on. 

 

How easily money can complicate life and entangle the soul . . . easily, and slyly, too, so we don’t even know it’s happening, until one day we look at our lives with the light of scripture, and think:  “my God, what have I become?”  “It began with me spending money, but now money is spending me.”  Nothing is simpler than scripture’s call to simplicity.

 

The final word to keep in mind as we think about these things is “solidarity.”  Idolatry.  Simplicity.  And, solidarity.  By which I mean:  the workers who grumbled saw the other workers as adversaries, or at least as those whose good fortune is a thing to be resented rather than celebrated.

 

In the capitalist system by which we are privileged to live, competition is a key component.  Competition arouses innovation, creates wealth and drives civilization forward.  At the same time, though, it also has a dark side, in that it may give rise to classism, prejudice and mistrust.  And from the spiritual side of things, it may also contribute to a sense of entitlement, the idea that we deserve success or prosperity or good fortune.  The grumbling workers weren’t grumbling because something bad happened to them.  They grumbled because something good happened for someone else.  What kind of way is this to be?   It’s not God’s way, that’s for sure.  The parable declares that God’s generous wisdom and loving-kindness know no boundaries, and surpass all human logic and understanding.   All we enjoy in this world comes from God’s grace.  The parable’s pitting of one group against another, for silly and unwarranted reasons, suggests the inevitable sad result which a sense of entitlement brings.  Tough economic times may provoke this kind of rivalry and ill-will.  What’s needed is a renewed awareness of solidarity, that we all stand together beneath the wondrous grace of God in Jesus Christ.

 

Patrick Rooney, director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, spoke recently about how difficult it will be for churches and charities to raise money this season.  A significant decline already has taken place in the first half of 2008.  Rooney offered an explanation.  He said:  “Uncertainty is the enemy of philanthropy.”  That makes sense.  No one wants to make a financial commitment that he/she’s uncertain about fulfilling.  And these are uncertain days, financially.  But in the larger spiritual terms by which we ought to entrust our lives, there is no uncertainty.  God is faithful and just.  His promises are reliable and sure.  Our days are in his hands.  These things are certain.  So let no reversal of circumstance, no worry or fear, nor anything else the world metes-out, kill our joy in living, damage our spirit, or darken the hope that is in us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sermon from October 12, 2008

THINGS CHANGE.  I FEEL VERY BAD.

                        Psalm 98                      2Timothy 1:8-14                   Luke 9:57-62

     Sermon presented on October 12, 2008

 

It’s an interesting story.  Most of us can relate to it, I think.  A businessman owns a building in the heart of a great American city.  Even in these days of declining real estate values, this property is worth a lot.  Rents in the neighborhood go for over $100 a square foot.  A dance company has been renting the second floor for many years.   The company not only provides instruction to young dancers, but also offers community outreach programs for inner city children and youth.   The businessman hasn’t charged the dance company anything close to the market value.   In fact, he hasn’t raised the rent in five years.   But recently he’s been receiving offers that are, well, too good to turn down.  He’d decided to raise the rent to what the market will bear.  The dance company can’t possibly afford it, so must leave.  The businessman is not a bad guy.  This is not a story about an unscrupulous landlord.  The owner of the dance company admits that the owner of the building has been exceedingly generous over the years.  He regrets but understands the situation.  As for the businessman/owner, he says simply this:  “Things change.  I feel very bad.”  (New York Times, 10/7/08, p. C1)

 

            I suggested that most of us can relate to this story, and here’s why:  we know that things change, and we know that sometimes we feel very bad about it.

 

            Things change all the time.  The world changes.  Circumstances change.  Other people change.  We change.  We do things for a while, perhaps for a long while, so people come to depend on us, but the day comes when we cannot or will not do it anymore.  We agree to something, but circumstances evolve or new realities impose themselves, and we change our minds.  New occasions bring forth new duties.  We learn new things.  We acquire new interests.  We respond to new experiences and expectations.  Things that once engaged us no longer do.  People we once partnered with prove unreliable.  Promises, though earnestly pledged, are broken.  Emerson said:  “All promise outruns performance.”  We know the truth of what the businessman said.  Things change.

 

            But we also know the truth of what he said next.  We feel bad about it.  Sometimes we feel very bad.   We feel bad when we make changes that we know will force other people to make changes, as well, because though change may be necessary and good for us, it may come as something unwelcome to the others.

 

            I drove up to church one morning in early September, around 9 o’clock, and there were several young women outside, one in her car, others standing on the sidewalk, crying.  I panicked at first.  “What on earth happened?  Was there an explosion?  A fire?  What?”  I clicked into crisis management mode.  But there was no crisis, not for me, anyway.  These were Moms seeing their children off to school for the first time, our church pre-school.  Now, that’s an important change, and a worthy one.  No one would want to prevent that from happening.  But one can still feel bad.

 

            Our feeling bad, or at least having mixed feelings, about change is natural.   We know the truth of the old saying, that “change is the only constant in life”; or, as Benjamin Franklin put it, “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.”  But we also know that change can be difficult and complicated, and so we may resist more than embrace it.  Bible characters come to mind.  Think of the exodus-people, enthused at first about following Moses out of Egypt, but who, as soon as problems arose in the wilderness, began complaining and recollecting the “good old days” in slavery.  Or think of the rich young man, prepared to turn his life over wholly to Christ, but who, when he realizes the cost of discipleship, turns and walks away sad rather than take-on the changes required. 

 

            Now, there’s one thing to be said about all this that’s very, very good; and a couple things to be said that are good, as well, but also cautionary and challenging.

 

            Here’s the thing that’s very, very good:  God promises to be with us through all the changes of life.   The Word of God declares it.  “The Lord will watch over your life/the Lord will watch your coming and going/both now and forevermore,” pledges Psalm 121 (vs. 7b,8).  Scripture also presents instance-after-instance of God’s promise fulfilled.  The Apostle Paul proclaims:  “I know what it is to be in need/and I know what it is to have plenty/I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation/I can do all things through him who gives me strength” (Phil 4:12,13).  The Word of God declares it.

 

            And experience confirms it.  In this very room are people who have known and gone through extraordinary changes.  Think back for a moment on what your life was like, once-upon-a-time, and what it’s like now; what you were like, once-upon-a-time, and what you’re like now.  There’s been continuity, for sure.  And just as surely, there’s been change.  Through it all, God has been present.  That doesn’t mean all the ways we’ve changed have been God-honoring and good, of course.  We may choose to change for the worse.  Sometimes, if we feel bad about changes, that’s a totally appropriate way to feel.  You should feel bad!  It’s a constant challenge, day-by-day — moment-to-moment even — to decide to change our lives for Christ or against him.  But in Christ there is mercy that outdistances our sin.  And of such ordinary decisions the story of one’s life is told.  By grace you may look back and exclaim:  what an incredible ride this life has been!  And who knows, or can even imagine, what wonders still lie ahead?  All thanks be to God, “who makes known to me the path of life,” declares Psalm 16, v. 11. 

 

            That’s the good news Scripture declares, exceedingly good news.  Having been privileged to put this exceedingly good news before you, perhaps I should sit down now.  But what I’ve said thus far, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t represent the full counsel of God’s Word.  For with this good news come words of caution, as well, pointing to responsibilities we have to live-up to God’s sovereign love.  We need to know what to hold onto, and when to let go of.

 

            We need to know what to hold on to; that is, in a world of constant change, and where one’s willingness to embrace change is lifted-up as the key to happiness and success, we must be clear about what does not change, and hold fast to that, no matter what.   Here is an all-important constant in this world of constant change:  that the grace of God was “revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).  These are words of the Apostle Paul, writing to young Timothy, giving him counsel concerning his work as leader of the early church. 

 

The First Century, in which Paul and Timothy lived, was very much like our own.  It was a time of ferment and change.  The old order was collapsing.  Traditional convictions were dying; replaced by an assortment of new spiritual notions and practices cobbled together from the remnants of the old.  People no longer felt tied to established religions, but free to innovate, and to make-up new beliefs that suited them.  Historian Scott Sunquist characterizes First Century culture with three words:  pagan (meaning people rejected religious authority and tradition), hedonistic (meaning that pleasure was considered the highest good and the source of moral values), and pluralistic (meaning that all ideas were considered equally valid, and it was counted as rude to propose that any one idea is more valid than another).   In all these important ways, Sunquist asserts, the First Century was very much like our own, for this present culture in which we live may also be characterized as pagan, hedonistic and pluralistic.  So the word of counsel to Timothy back then comes with relevance and power to us today:  “Hold to the standard of sound teaching . . . in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus,” it is written.  Whatever other changes you make in faith and life, don’t change that!  “Hold to the standard.”  And, the passage goes on:  “Guard the good treasure entrusted to you.”  The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not merely one set of ideas among many, spread on the buffet of religions.  It is a treasure entrusted to the church.  “Guard this good treasure entrusted to you.”  And do not be ashamed of it.

 

That’s the first cautionary note.  We need to know what to hold on to

 

And here’s a second:  we need to know what to let-go-of.

 

Betty and I once were at a performance by jazz saxophonist Stan Getz.  It was a small, informal venue.  He was playing new music, innovative and edgy, and in some ways inaccessible, as jazz can be.  Now, years earlier Getz had enjoyed a burst of widespread popularity, backing Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto, on the song, “Girl from Ipanema.”  But by time we saw him, Getz had long since moved out of his bossa nova phase, and was doing other intricate things.  At a break between numbers, someone shouted from the audience:  “Play ‘Girl from Ipanema’.”  “Yeah,” someone else yelled, “play the old stuff, Stan.”  Stan Getz looked-up, sighed, and said:  “Life goes on, man.  Life goes on.”  Now, I think you can make the case that a musician owes it to those who helped made him/her rich and famous to play, if only briefly and reluctantly, some of the old stuff.  But at the same time, his response rings true, doesn’t it?  Life goes on, man.  Life goes on.  Things change.  And we need to change with it.

 

The Bible declares over-and-over again, “sing to the Lord a new song!”  The metaphor of new songs represents our joyful openness to growth and change, and to imagining new ways of experiencing and serving Christ in the world.

 

I’d like to suggest that you consider making three resolves at the start of each day.  

 

First:  resolve to recognize the presence of God in some new way today, a way that has never occurred to you before.  It may come in or through another person or a relationship, an opportunity, a joy or concern, a moment of unexpected insight, strength or beauty, something in creation that catches your eye, or in some other form.  But make a promise to yourself to recognize and celebrate the presence of God in some new way, everyday.

 

Second:  resolve to know God in some new way today, by way of scripture.  This doesn’t necessarily require more, or more comprehensive, Bible study (although that’s always a good thing!).  It may mean simply reflecting all day on one verse, keeping that verse before you, thinking and praying about it, until the Spirit discloses new truths, or helps you to grasp old truths in new ways.  But make a promise to yourself to be renewed by scripture daily.

 

Third:  resolve to act for God in some new way today.  Everyday do something in Jesus’ name and for his glory that you’ve never done before.   This may be the toughest of the three suggestions to put into practice.  We recognize our resistance in today’s Gospel lesson.  Here we see three people, each of whom says he wants to follow Jesus. But before they take a step in that new direction, fear of change overtakes them.  They hesitate.  Each comes-up with a reason to put it off.  Their reasons sound pretty good to us.  They usually do, our excuses for avoiding the change Christ wants to work in us.  But if you make a promise to yourself to act for God in some new way, everyday, and keep that promise, then your life itself will sing to the Lord a new song!

 

Things change.  But the very centerpiece of Christian faith is the confidence that God is in the rapids as well as on the rocks, that God doesn’t provide protection from the world but transmits wisdom and courage for faithful living in the world.  I encourage you, when you feel bad about change, or sad, or scared, to take hold of the first principles of faith, for these are unchanged and unchanging, but then to take a chance on the new, the unfamiliar and the uncertain.  For “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (I Cor. 2:9).

 

 

 

 

Sermon from September 28, 2008

WHAT ALL NOBLE SOULS KNOW

Exodus 17:1-7            Philippians 2:1-13       

           Sermon presented on September 21, 2008

 

My sermon today is about humility.  That’s what the Bible texts for the day teach;  and not just these particular texts, but many others, as well.  The words “humble” and “humility” appear nearly 100 times in the Bible.  Add to these references, other words like “modesty,” “gentleness,” “patience,” and “kindness,” which in many instances are talking about pretty much the same thing, and you can see that humility is a major theme of Scripture and a central teaching of the church.  Augustine, in the 5^th Century, wrote that humility is not merely one of the virtues, but “the foundation of all the other virtues.”  Bonaventure, 900 years later, wrote in the same vein, that humility does not stand alone, but “adorns and accompanies the other virtues.”  Erasmus, writing at the about the same time as Bonaventure, said simply, “Humility is truth,” meaning I think that truth can be apprehended only by those who approach it humbly and are prepared to receive it as an infinite gift.   And Benjamin Franklin wrote:  “Humility makes great people twice honored.”  But my favorite “take” on humility is from John A. Wheeler.  Wheeler was one of the great physicists of the last century.  He taught for many years at Princeton, where he died recently at the age of 96.  In an essay he authored titled “Science, Religion and Meaning,” Wheeler wrote:  “All the noble souls – poets, prophets, physicists, and philosophers – know what it means to be humble.”  Yes, this is what all noble souls know:  the importance of humility.

 

            But you don’t have to be any of these things; you don’t have to be a poet or a prophet, nor a physicist or philosopher, to know the importance of humility.  It’s commonsense.  Why, you see it all around you, everyday.  You see the hurt and harm that’s caused by a lack of humility.  It’s the person who regards self as superior, and so is demeaning and insulting of others.  It’s the fellow who’s dismissive and rude to a waitress, the woman so taken with the importance of her own story that she doesn’t listen to anyone else, the parent who brags about a child pointedly in the presence of those who are having a tough time of it with their children.  It’s the smart-guy who’s condescending toward those who are struggling to understand, the pushy driver who acts as if she’s the only one on the road, the person who keeps another waiting as if that person’s time isn’t valuable and whose inconvenience doesn’t matter.  It’s the arrogance of the one who has all the answers, who lifts him-(her-)self up by putting others down, or who states the obvious with the breathless conceit of one who is saying it for the first time.  It’s Alan Shore.  Do you watch the show Boston Legal?  Alan Shore, played by James Spader, for which he twice has won Emmy Awards, is possibly the most smug, pompous, self-important character in television history.  But even Alan Shore, in an episode last year, turned to his colleague Denny Crane, played by William Shatner, and said:  “Maybe we all need to be a little more humble.”

 

Yes, maybe we all do.  Easier said than done, though; which is why we need God’s good counsel and strengthening spirit, as declared in the Book of Philippians, Chapter 2, verses 1-13.  This passage is divided into three sections:  first, verses 1-4  defines the character of humility, stating its key features; next, verse 5-11 puts forth a poem, the words of a hymn, actually, paying tribute to the humility of Christ himself, after whose example we are to model our lives; and finally, verses 12-13 declare God’s promise to help us become humble, and “to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

 

This passage, which we’ll explore further in a moment, calls to mind a story about a man who asked his rabbi why people couldn’t see the face of God.  With Rosh Hashanah coming tomorrow, Jewish New Year, it’s a good occasion for an ancient Jewish story. 

“Why can’t people see the face of God?” a man asked his rabbi.  “What happened that that they could no longer reach high enough to see God?”

“My son,” the rabbi said, “that’s not the way it is at all.  People cannot see the face of God because there are few who are willing to stoop that low.  Learn to bend, to kneel, to serve rather than be served, and you will be able to see God face-to-face.”

 

That’s the point the Apostle Paul is striving to make in this passage from Philippians, Chapter Two, as we shall discover working our way through its three sections.

 

First:  verses 1-4.  The key may be found in verses 3 and 4:  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,” it is written, “but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

 

This is what all noble souls know:  that life’s greatest fulfillment comes from meeting the needs of others.  Now, we may know of people who put “others first” to a fault, that is, they neglect their own well-being to “help” others, supposedly.  I say “supposedly” because this may not be genuine or healthy discipleship, but a form of insecurity or self-loathing, and insofar as it’s pitched to attract the notice and gain the praise of others, not humble at all.   Recall that Jesus said that when you do good works, don’t draw attention to yourself, but do them quietly, inconspicuously, such that not even your right hand knows what the left hand is doing.  In this way, then, we may realize our highest joy in lowly service.

 

I read a delightful “Letter to the Editor” recently, written in response to an earlier article, about how difficult it is these days to find the “right” person to marry.  How do you know if he or she’s the one for you, for a lifetime?  The letter writer offers words of advice, addressed to women, and it’s interesting how much of this, all of it, really, is about the grace of humility.  She writes:

            Never marry a man who yells at you in front of his friends.

            Never marry a man who notices all of your faults but never notices

                        his own.

            Never marry a man who corrects you in public.

            Never marry man who doesn’t treat his dog nicely.

            Never marry a man who is rude to waiters.

            Never marry a man whose plants are all dead

                        [Wait a minute!  That would eliminate a lot of us!

                         How did that get in there?  Let’s skip that one!]

            Never marry a man who doesn’t give you lovely and romantic

                        gifts for your birthday and Valentine’s Day.

(New York Times, 7/9/2008)

 

These words of advice may sound folksy more than profound, but in truth they point in the most practical way to the truth of this Word of God:  “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” 

 

Here’s another instance, an essay that goes like this:

            After lunch one recent weekend, four of us stopped for lunch

            at a neighborhood restaurant.  It was busy and bustling, but the

            staff knows us, so we found a good table right in the middle.

            As we were enjoying ourselves, the friend on my right and I

            noticed a man who had taken great care to make his tattered

            clothes look spiffy.  He had finished his meal and was searching

            one pocket after another for enough dollar bills to pay for his

            lunch.  He was becoming increasingly frantic as he seemed to

            realize that he did not have enough money to cover the check.

            My friend got up quietly, as if going to the restroom, and in

            passing the man’s table, leaned down, pretending to find a

            $10 bill on the floor.  It was done so naturally that when my

            friend offered the bill to the distracted man, the man’s whole

            body language changed.  He said:  “Thank you, thank you.

            I was sure I had that bill.”  He was beaming.  My friend smiled

            warmly and walked away.  I’ve been thinking of this ever

            since.  My friend did a great kindness, not because of the $10

            gift, but because the man was treated with gentleness, caring

            and respect, and not given charity. (New York Times, 12/30/02, p. A17)

 

This essay puts forth the key elements of humility:  being attentive to the needs of another, putting the other person’s interests before one’s own, responding to the needs without drawing attention to self, and respecting the integrity of the other.

 

            The question is:  how do we nurture such a humble heart?  Let’s turn to the next section of Philippians, Chapter Two, verses 5-11, which teaches that the way to a humble heart is look to Jesus.  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” it is written, verse 5. 

 

There follows then words of an early Christian hymn.  (It’s true [isn’t it?] that our beliefs are often shaped more by the hymns we sing in church than by the sermons we hear.)   These verses are a sublime lyric witnessing to Christ’s humility:  that “though he was in the form of God . . . he emptied himself . . . taking the form of a servant . . . in human likeness . . . He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”

 

Without looking closely at any particular passage, just begin calling to mind all the stories from the Bible which highlight the humility of Jesus, from his humble birth in Bethlehem’s manger, to his post-resurrection appearance to his disciples on the shore,  barbequing fish over a charcoal fire to serve them.  Between this humble beginning and humble end, we catch glimpses of Jesus noticing and honoring the least and lowliest of others, washing the feet of disciples, and replying to critics and enemies in simple terms rather than engaging them in battles of wits that he would surely win.  We may call to mind the Last Supper, when he told the disciples that of all the various ways they might choose to remember him after he’s gone, the way he most wanted to be remembered is as one who serves.  He humbled himself to the point of death for the sake of all.

 

I saw a brochure recently for a management training event where participants will be taught how to be more humble, because humility is in many ways good for business.  “Humility is not taught in most management courses,” blares the promotional piece, but “for people at the top . . . it is the essence of leadership.”  Come to the workshop and learn how to do it.  Well, this may be a good and useful workshop.  And I don’t think anyone would dispute that a healthy dose of humility in high places might have spared America a lot of the turmoil we’re going-through at the moment.  And yet, I was thinking as I read the brochure:  learn how to do it (?), how to do humility (?).  Here’s the surest way to nurture and sustain humility:  “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

 

Finally, then, there comes this promise of God’s help in acquiring and sustaining  the humility that pleases him.  Verse 13:  “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

 

We heard today, from the Old Testament, the story of Moses, leading the exodus- people across the desert.  They’re bitter, impatient, feeling angry, blaming him.  He’s frustrated, fatigued, feeling put-upon and doomed.  He cries out to God for help.  And God helps.  Not only does God help in this present moment, but promises to be present and to lead the way into the future.

 

Moses was a noble soul.  And what all noble souls know is this:  that humility is that most important and exquisite of virtues, for it alone equips the soul to seek knowledge and truth, to receive help and support, to cherish and respect other people and to look after their interests.  And it is humility that enables us, when this earthly life is over, to let go of our cares, our desires and our imaginings, and to pass out of this world to the Father, and to the comfort of his Word that “those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matt. 23:12). 

 

Sermon from September 21, 2008

                                                             MAKING EACH DAY COUNT

              Exodus 16:1-18                       Matthew 6:25-34

                   Sermon presented on September 21, 2008

 

We’re burdened with many frustrations in life, and so we keep trying to change our lives in various ways, hoping to capture greater joy, purpose and fulfillment.  But we know in our hearts that a key to the victorious life is making each day count, embracing the moment without undue concern either for the regrets of the past or the uncertainties of the future.  Emerson wrote:  “A day is a sound and solid good . . . I should relish every hour and what it brings me.”  This is true for me.  How about for you?  If you think about your own life, imagine how simpler and more satisfying it would be – and, as we shall see, more faithful it would be, as well – if you were able to be free of yesterday,  untroubled about tomorrow, and engaged in today.

 

            Patti Greenwood, who reflects wisely about spiritual things, offers this insight.  She writes:

                        When we were babies no one had to teach us how to live

                        in the moment.  There were toes to discover and sunbeams

                        to play with.  Only the present existed.  Then we grew-up

                        and many of us forgot to stay fully present.

 

            It’s true, isn’t it?  Many of us forget how to stay fully present in the present.  Obviously, the past is important.  It’s important for understanding ourselves and others, and the world we live in.  And, of course, the future matters, too, for we need to know where we’re going in life, in order to anticipate and plan for it.  Thank God for the gifts of memory and hope.  But it’s also of first importance that we not forget to “stay fully present,” and to “relish every hour and what it brings.”

 

            I like the poem “Welcome Morning, by Anne Sexton.  It goes like this:

                        There is joy

                        in all.

                        in the hair I brush each morning,

                        in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

                        that I rub my body with each morning,

                        in the chapel of eggs I cook

                        each morning,

                        in the outcry from my kettle

                        that heats my coffee

                        each morning,

                        in the spoon and the chair

                        that cry “hello there, Anne:

                        each morning,

                        in the godhead of the table

                        that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

                        each morning . . .

                        and I mean,

                        though often forget,

                        to give thanks,

                        to faint down by the kitchen table

                        in a prayer of rejoicing

                        as the holy birds at the kitchen window

                        peck into their marriage of seeds.

                        So while I think of it,

                        let me paint a thank-you on my palm

                        for this God, this laughter of the morning

                        lest it go unspoken.

                        The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,

                        dies young.        (in The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975)

 

            Perhaps it’s a little “much” to be expected to wake-up each morning joyfully praising God for His wondrous love disguised in the daily commonplaces of household routine.  People are wired differently.  There are “morning people,” and then there are “not-morning people.”  I’m not a “morning” person.  My philosophy is that the early bird may get the worm, but it’s the second mouse who gets the cheese.  If you’re not a “morning person” then you’re probably not inclined to rise and shine with praise on your mind. 

 

            On the other hand, the ability to embrace each day with gratitude and gladness is at the heart of Christianity, and ought to transcend mere temperament.  It’s inscribed in the Lord’s Prayer.  “Give us this day our daily bread,” we’re taught to pray.   The follower of Jesus Christ doesn’t ask for advance supplies.  Each day is itself a blessing, and God infuses each day with blessings that reflect his steadfast love.  Behind the petition for “daily bread” lie profound Biblical ideas about making each day count.   For “bread” here includes everything we really need to sustain a life of daily discipleship.  In praying for “daily bread” we’re also asking God for other kinds of nourishment and strength which daily life requires:  for faith to believe, when to doubt or disbelieve would be the easier way; for a forgiving spirit; for wisdom to deal creatively with differences; for courage and perseverance in doing good; for patience, kindness and peace at the center of our being.  All these are forms of heavenly nourishment which we pray to receive, not once, to carry us through a lifetime, but day-by-day, in measure adequate for that day.

 

            This theme is declared, as well, in Jesus’ teachings about worry.  “Do not worry about your life,” he counsels.  He illustrates this central teaching by discussing the basic provisions of food and clothing.  Birds of the air and flowers in the field (“lilies of the field,” he says) live far more precarious existences than humans do, yet God lavishes loving concern on them.  How much more can we trust God to provide for us.  Jesus brings this teaching to a climax with the line:  “So do not worry about tomorrow.”  Live for today, trusting God day-by-day.

 

            Critiques of this teaching that may be raised, of course, if we fail to interpret it rightly.  For example:  this current economic crisis that has convulsed the country in recent days, is this not the result of people acting too much in the present, living for the moment, making short-term decisions without adequate regard for the long-term consequences?  Maybe we’d have been better off if people had worried about tomorrow.  And when we see reports of people being rescued by heroic police and military teams after a hurricane, because they’d refused to evacuate, we might think again that planning for tomorrow is a good thing, after all.  And, of course, it is.  There are Jesus’ own parables about the fellow who began to build a tower without reckoning the cost, and of the foolish man who built his house upon the sand.  Scripture teaches that the self is related to its past and co-creator of its future, so the person of good faith must be engaged constantly in making sense of yesterday and in anticipating tomorrow.  “Making each day count” doesn’t mean discounting any of that, which is common sense.  It does mean counting on the extraordinary promise of God to be present day-by-day.  Let neither unresolved issues from yesterday, nor uncertain prospects for tomorrow, rob us of the grace and gladness we know from experiencing God-with-us today.

 

            It’s been said:  “Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift.  That’s why it’s called the present.”

 

            With this excellent idea in mind, let’s take a look at the Old Testament passage before us, from the Book of Exodus, chapter 16.   Verses 1-18 relate the story of God’s great gift of daily bread, manna from heaven. 

 

Having escaped Egypt, the Israelites found themselves in the desert.  This whole exodus experience was turning-out to be more difficult and less exciting than they’d imagined.  The journey was long and tedious.  It was hot by day and cold at night.  Supplies were short.  Tempers were flaring.  As Clark Griswold complains in the movie Vacation, while trudging through blistering heat in search of gas:  “We passed a gas station every 10 yards for 1000 miles, but you really need one, you end up walking.  Is this any way to run a desert?”  People turned their anger on these leaders, Moses and Aaron, blaming them.     

 

But then the promise of God came to them and was fulfilled through them.  God provided the peoples’ needs, one day at a time.  Each day God provided food adequate for the day. 

 

In the evening quails came up.  This species of quail was a small, mottled brown game bird, about seven inches long.  They were migratory birds, crossing the Sinai Peninsula, so the appearance of quails wasn’t anything special.   But the provision each day of precisely the right number of quails, at precisely the right location, was a miraculous witness to God’s gracious provision. 

 

And each morning there was “a layer of dew around the camp.”  When the dew lifted a fine, flaky substance was left behind, manna from heaven, “the bread that the Lord gave them to eat.”  When the Israelites gathered it each day, there was provision enough for each day.  As each gathered as much as each needed there was neither excess nor shortage.

 

Dr. Bernhard Anderson, the renown Old Testament scholar with whom I was privileged to study at Princeton, wrote of this passage, that “some modern readers might say that these occurrences [of the quails and the manna] showed how ‘lucky’ the Hebrews were.  In Israel’s faith, however, these were signs of the Lord’s daily guidance.”  In our faith, as well, God’s providential goodness is cause to “relish every hour and what it brings.”

 

I’d like to close by offering a few practical suggestions for making each day count.

 

First:  pray constantly for the Spirit’s help in staying focused on the present.  Because we’re by nature a brooding people, our minds, left on their own, keep mulling-over the past.  And because we’re by nature an anxious people, our minds, left on their  own, keep worrying about the future.  We need God’s help to keep our minds in the present.  Gregory of Nyssa, a 4^th-Century Church Father, wrote:  “The life in which we ought to be interested is daily life . . . Our Lord tells us to pray for today, and so he prevents us from tormenting ourselves about [yesterday and] tomorrow.” 

 

Second:  focus on what’s right in front of you – the person, the problem, the possibility, the passion, the pleasure, the pain, the program, the purpose, the present.   16^th-Century French essayist Montaigne wrote:  “Rejoice in the things that are present.  All else is beyond thee.”

 

Third:  pretend to see things as though you’re seeing them for the first time.  This is a defining feature of the faithful life, how we see things.  “From now on we regard no one from a human point of view,” it is written, 2 Corinthians 5:16.  The human point of view is a cynical and weary one.  We become indifferent to the very things that at first seemed to us astonishing.  We shrug where we once rejoiced.  We take the beautiful, the good and the true for granted.  The sense of wonder gets squeezed out of us.  But it’s utterly miraculous that God gives us the gift of each day, and fills each day with excellent purposes, amazing people, startling loveliness, healing for our hurts, comfort for our sorrows, and grace that refreshes like spring rain when the burden of our sin is more than we can bear.  And then there’s the most mind-boggling thing of all:  the assurance that when our earthly days are ended, there remains the promise of God in Jesus Christ, from which nothing can separate us, in life or in death.  If only we would embrace these truths each day, and be embraced by them, as though for the first time, then our lives would be no mere succession of countless days, but each day would count as worthy and wonderful, pleasing to God and helpful to others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon from September 14, 2008

                     A GENEROUS AND FORGIVING HEART

                      Exodus 14:19-31                 Matthew 18:21-35

                          Sermon presented on September 14, 2008

 

The passage before us today is the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.   The theme of the sermon is suggested by Arland J. Hultgren, of Luther Seminary.  In his book on the parables, Hultgren writes that the central teaching of this parable, The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, is this: “to live well means to live with a generous and forgiving heart.”  What do you think of that?  It’s true, isn’t it?  To hold-on to grudges and grievances, to nurse old hurts and wounds, to plan and imagine revenge (sweet revenge) . . . these things meet some needs we have, frankly, and may even provide satisfaction of a sort.  But not really.  Not really, and not long term.  Even apart from the teaching of scripture, experience and intuition teach us that “to live well” – really well, untroubled, purposeful, and at peace – “to live well means to live with a generous and forgiving heart.”

 

            But, as happens so many times in with the teachings of Jesus, there’s a disconnect between theory and practice.  We know what the Lord requires of us.  But to do it, to put it into practice, to live the life of discipleship . . . well, that’s harder, isn’t it?

 

            Poet Charles Smoot writes:

                        Jesus said to turn the other cheek

                        He also said to forgive 7 times 70

                        Easy for Him to say

                        He was God

                        Or at least the son of God

                        How do I get to the place

                        Where I forgive those

                        Who disrespect me and malign me

                        Those who could care less about my feelings

                        Yet I still care about theirs

                        Why is forgiveness so hard

                        Why does it take so much out of you

                        Why is it easier to hold a grudge

                        Rather than to let it go

                        Am I doing something wrong

 

            With these verses the poet frames the text, the tension and the trouble of Jesus’ teaching here. 

 

The text is Jesus’ counsel to forgive lavishly, inexhaustibly, without limits.   Jesus makes this point initially in his command to forgive “seventy seven times,” or “seven times seventy,” as some translations have it, in either case, beyond the ability to keep track.  Jesus then illustrated this point by telling the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. 

 

The tension this text arouses is caused by our honest awareness that we’re not living-up to this holy counsel.  Whether we’re unable or unwilling, or some combination of these, isn’t the point.  The point is that scripture puts the standard high, and we’re not achieving it.

 

And this leads to what’s most troubling:  our feelings of failure and frustration, expressed in the poem’s plaintive cry, “Am I doing something wrong?”

 

That’s neither a holy nor a healthy way to feel or to be, however.  How can we rise up-and-out of failure and frustration, to the joy and peace which Christ promises? 

 

 Before turning our attention to the distinctive Biblical teaching on forgiveness, let’s begin by acknowledging that forgiveness is neither a novel nor a uniquely Christian concept.  Everyone seems to agree that forgiveness is a good idea.  It’s a kind of common wisdom, universally shared.  All the world’s great religions teach it.  And worldviews that aren’t particularly “religious” in any traditional sense value forgiveness, as well.  Dr. Fahri Karakas, a researcher and teacher at the Management School at McGill University in Montreal, has identified a few core ideas which all the world’s cultures seem to have in-common.  Among them is forgiveness.  He writes that “forgiveness” is among the “time-honored, life-affirming and unifying values . . . [which form the] inner governance systems which allow individual and their organizations to stay virtuous and right in turbulent times.”  Good enough.

 

But why, then, is forgiveness more honored theory than practiced in reality?    Well, it’s more complicated that mere lack of will.   We humans actually are hard-wired for revenge more than mercy.   Anthropologists have long argued that retaliatory acts do have the effect of keeping people in line, and reflect a deeply-rooted sense of justice.  It’s said “revenge is sweet.”  Well, it is sweet, literally.  Using brain wave technology, neuroscientists have found that the part of the brain activated by thoughts of revenge is the same that controls hunger.  “People express it for the same reason they eat chocolate,” says Dr.Brad Bushmann, at the University of Michigan, who has conducted studies on this subject (New York Times, July 27, 2004, p. F1).   Yes, revenge is sweet!

 

So, it takes more than merely putting it “out there” as a good idea to nurture the actual practice of forgiveness.  It requires the strongest possible motivation to arouse and sustain mercy.  And this is precisely what the Word of God provides – the strongest possible motivation — by linking a generous and forgiving human heart with the generous and forgiving heart of God.  That’s the great teaching of scripture:  that forgiveness received is the basis for forgiveness given.   In the sublime opening statement of the Heidelberg Catechism – and for those of you raised in the CRC, these words are in the DNA (right?) – it’s because we are assured of God’s mercy toward us, that we are motivated and made “wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”  Forgiveness received is the basis for forgiveness given.

 

The Old Testament text, from the Book of Exodus, Chapter 14, is the story of God’s miraculous deliverance of Israel at the Red Sea, or the so-called Sea of Reeds.  This story is filled with so many stirring and important narrative details that it seems unjust to talk about it only briefly today.  It certainly warrants a sermon of its own, or a month of sermons.  But for our purposes today, it’s enough to say that this story demonstrates with dramatic power the amazing experience of God’s deliverance.  The people escaping Egypt were hardly “a people” at all, in any traditional sense of the word.  They were a ragtag group of refugees — disordered, terrified.   As they approached the sea, Egyptian chariots closing-in from behind, panic must have set in.  There was no turning back. That was the way of certain death.  The only way was forward.  But ahead of them loomed the sea.  Hopelessness behind them, helplessness in front of them, there was nothing they could do by their own strength or wits to save the day.  The time for organizational skill and strategic planning was gone.  All was lost.

 

But then the miraculous happened.  God saved them.  Who could have imagined such a thing?

 

Nine year old Joey was asked by his mother what he’d learned in Sunday School.

“Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  When he got to the Red Sea, he had his engineers build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely.  Then he used his walkie-talkie to radio headquarters for reinforcements.  They sent bombers to blow-up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved.”

“Now, Joey, is that really what your teacher taught you?” his mother asked.

“Well, no, Mom.  But if I told it they way the teacher did, you’d never believe it!”

 

Who’d ever believe it?  Who’d a “thunk” it, that when all human resources are exhausted and hope is gone, God saves?  And those who walked through the waters that day, on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left, emerged from the experience wholly transformed by it.  Their understanding of who God is, and who they are, was redefined forever.  Those to whom mercy has been shown must in turn be merciful.

 

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant tells very much the same story (doesn’t it?).  You know how it goes.  It’s a play in three acts. 

 

Act One features a king and a servant.  The servant owes the king an enormous amount of money.  Estimates in modern currency range from several million to one trillion dollars; the point being that the servant’s debt is so incalculably large that there’s no way the servant could ever repay the debt or “work it off.”  Acceding to the servant’s pleas for mercy, the king cancels the debt.  That’s the first act of the parable.

 

Act Two features the servant whose debt has been forgiven, and a servant of his.  The second servant owes him a small amount of money.  Again, estimates in modern currency vary, from a few dollars to about three months’ wages; the point here being that this is a debt that could be worked-off and repaid, given the slightest accommodation.  But the first servant, the one whose enormous debt has been canceled by the king, chokes his fellow servant and demands repayment.  Onlookers are outraged, and report the matter to the king.

 

            In Act Three the two original characters appear back on stage.  The king is furious that his extravagant mercy hasn’t caused the servant to be merciful.  “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” he asks.  Whether the servant has no answer to this question, or any answer he might come-up-with isn’t of interest to the king, isn’t clear.  The king condemns him to prison until the original debt can be paid; and since, as we have seen, that’s an impossibility, the king in effect condemns the ungrateful servant to eternal punishment.

 

            What’s needed is a generous and forgiving heart.  That question, which the king puts to his servant in the final act of the parable – “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” – is a question that comes to us still, or ought to, everyday.  We forgive, not because such is the wisdom of the ages, though it is.  We forgive, not because it seems like an especially good and useful idea, though it does.  We forgive because God has placed us on dry land when the storms of life have threatened to engulf us.  We forgive because God has canceled our wrongs, which are many, and given us – and each day gives us anew – all good graces and tender mercies. 

 

            In the rules he wrote for monastic life-together in the early 17^th Century, St. Vincent DePaul counseled members of the community “to be extra careful to avoid retaliation” when slander or harm is inflicted; and, more than that, to “even praise and bless God, and joyfully thank him for the opportunity” this situation presents to show toward others some small measure of the great mercy each has received from God through Jesus Christ.  It may be a stretch to see things quite this way.  But then again, the spirit of God has power to stretch us, and to renew, and to transform these stone-cold old hearts of ours’ into generous and forgiving hearts that beat as one with God’s own heart at the center of the universe.

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon – September 7, 2008

  A COMMUNITY OF THOSE WHO TRULY LIVE

           UNDER GOD’S FORGIVING MERCY

   Matthew 18:15-20

          Sermon presented on September 7, 2008

 

A preacher may be tempted, on this first Sunday people are back in church after summer, to strive to say something impressive and profound – to set a theme or tone for the new year, say, or to call the congregation’s attention to some new vision or venture.  I’ll resist that temptation to overreach.  Billy Graham tells of a time, during the early years of his ministry, when he was preparing to lead a crusade in a town in South Carolina.  He needed to mail a letter.  He asked a little boy on the main street the way to the post office.  After the boy had given him directions, the irrepressible evangelist said:  “Thank you, young man, and if you come to Central Baptist Church tonight, I’ll tell you how to get to heaven.”  The boy replied:  “No thanks.  You don’t even know how to get to the post office.  How can you know the way to heaven?”  Humility’s a useful thing for a preacher! 

 

And so I invite you to join me in looking humbly together at the Lectionary text for today — Matthew, Chapter 18, verses 15-20.  This text concerns sin in the church, and how the church ought to deal with someone living in unrepentant disobedience to God’s Word. 

 

These verses may be troubling to us, when we hear them for the first time.   They’re so troubling that when the Lectionary brings them our way we may be inclined to skip-over them, as though they’re not even there.  Our resistance to this passage is understandable.   We don’t want to interfere in other peoples’ lives, especially not in any fault-finding or disapproving way.  No one wants to be known as a buttinsky, that great Yiddish word for a meddler who butts-in and gives unwanted advice.   Some of you may even have painful personal experiences, or unhappy memories, of people in church acting self-righteous and un-Christ-like in their treatment of others.  Isn’t it wiser to just mind one’s own business?  Well, yes, it’s certainly wiser to mind one’s own business than it is to be smug or sanctimonious.  But that’s not the aim of this teaching.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that the sole aim here, in these verses, Matthew 18:15-20, “the sole aim . . .is to build a community of those who truly live under God’s forgiving mercy.”

 

As we think together about these verses, let’s keep our focus on this overall and most excellent aim, “to build a community of those who truly live under God’s forgiving mercy.”  Let’s not get bogged down in the specific strategies and actions commended here, some of which are not appropriate or useful in the modern church setting.  What is appropriate and useful, and of first importance, is the assumption of forgiving mercy which suffuses the entire passage.

 

There are several aspects of forgiving mercy mentioned in this passage.

 

First of all:  when a member of the Christian community chooses to persist in a life of egregious sin, such that it undermines the integrity of the church’s witness and invites public ridicule, efforts shall be made to “win the person over,” it is written.  Isn’t this a wonderful phrase?  To “win over” denotes a process of persuasion rather than coercion, encouragement rather than compulsion, grace rather than guilt.  It suggests appealing to the angels in a person’s nature, not the demons, building-up, not tearing-down, working toward rehabilitation, not retribution.  These are the Christ-like practices that ought to characterize all relationships in the church.

 

Let’s consider another kind of forgiving mercy that’s commended here:  there must be careful and caring self-control in all matters pertaining to questioning or challenging a person’s wrong-doing.  Confidentiality is to be honored rigorously.  Ideally, it’s one-on-one.  If that fails, two or three trusted others may be invited to join the conversation, for “where two or three come together in” Christ’s name, there he is, with them.  Perhaps more faithful souls will need to be involved later, as well.  But notice the all-too-common practices that are explicitly forbidden by this teaching.  There’s no back-biting allowed, no one person talking to another about a third, no idle chitchat or passing-along rumors, none of that.   

 

The website TheologyWebCampus has a forum devoted exclusively to gossip in the church.  You’d like to think there’s not enough of it to warrant a forum, but sadly it’s a place of lively discussion.  One person recently wrote:

            Anyone else get the feeling that church is becoming as

            much a place to go to and talk trash about other people

            behind their backs as it is a place of worship?   I see it

            in virtually every church I’ve been to.  Even my very

            pious grandmother does it and doesn’t even realize it.

 

Contrast this person’s experience with the Biblical counsel before us today, concerning the disciplined, orderly ways that grievances ought to be managed.   And what excellent counsel it is, not only because it’s Christ-like, but because such qualities of respect, decency and sensitivity fortify any institutional life.  This ought to be natural for a community whose life is lived beneath God’s forgiving mercy.

 

These cautionary notes, urging exceptional care in regard attitude and approach, as important as they are, yet should not be read as an excuse for the church to do nothing at all about those whose actions undermine the integrity of the Gospel.  “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,” Jesus said.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that God takes his cues from the church.  God’s eternal decrees are not affected by what we say or do here.  It does mean, though, that our God in heaven is already honored or disgraced by the life of the church, whether it is honorable or disgraceful.  Theologian Karl Barth wrote:  “By [the church’s] work God Himself is either glorified or compromised and shamed.  [And, Barth continues] God Himself rejoices or weeps over what [the church] does or fails to do.”  In these ways, then, there’s an important connection between heaven and earth, and the church on earth is charged to be as heavenly as any flawed institution can be.

 

What shall we say, then, about the person who may be compelled to leave the church?  “Treat them as you would a pagan or tax collector,” Jesus said.  This may sound hard and harsh, as though to say:  “Go away!  Get lost!  Be done with you!”  But this cannot be the correct reading.  How could Jesus possibly have meant that, since he himself spent so much time showing forgiving mercy to pagans and tax-collectors?  New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg, of Denver Seminary, writes:  “In light of Jesus’ consistent compassion for pagans and tax collectors, surely he must also want Christians individually to continue to reach out to these people and call them to repentance.”  Those who have rejected the faith of the church must not be given leadership roles in the church, of course, and in this sense they are excluded from full participation.  But we must never disregard any soul for whom Christ suffered and died.  The church is at its finest when reaching-out, finding the lost, restoring the wayward, and winning back those whose lives have fallen out of harmony with the Gospel.  Heaven’s greatest joy is over one sinner who repents, Jesus said.

 

Some years ago I was at a Presbyterian mission hospital in East Africa.  The chaplain asked me to see some patients for him that morning, because he’d been summoned to a special meeting involving a few members of the hospital’s ethics committee.  Now, I’m interested in these things.  I studied at, and earned a certificate from, the Kennedy Institute of Biomedical Ethics at Georgetown, and I’ve done some other things in the field, including serving on hospital ethics committees.  These committees deal mostly with beginning and end-of-life decisions, treatment plans, research protocols, and sometimes with conflict-of-interest issues related to the hospital and health care providers.   So I asked the chaplain at the mission hospital, what’s the purpose of this special meeting?   I was wholly unprepared for the answer.  He said:  “Well, one of our doctors was seen having dinner at a restaurant with a woman other than his wife, and they were drinking wine.”  That was the ethical crisis they were meeting to address.   Now, I do not hold-up this model as an ideal.  There are important cultural differences.  In our culture there are many reasons why adults of different genders might have dinner together.   And there is no prohibition against alcohol use among Presbyterians here as there is in African churches.  So, I tell this story, not with the charge, “go and do likewise.”  For us, that would come under the category of being a buttinsky.  I tell the story because it does speak powerfully (I think) to the idea underlying it:  that how we conduct ourselves in daily life makes all the difference to the community of faith, or ought to.  To that hospital and the churches that support it, the doctor’s actions were scandalous, bringing insult and injury to the Gospel.  So a small group of faithful souls were meeting with him, privately, quietly, with the purpose of winning him over, encouraging and praying him back to holiness.  That his particular actions in his cultural context would not be considered scandalous to us doesn’t mean we’re without our own means of disgracing Christ in our time and place.  Nor does it release us from the central teaching of scripture underlying it: that the faithful church includes networks of accountability, by which people call, encourage, challenge and support one another in their Christian lives. 

 

            This is what the passage before us today is all about.  How do we build and sustain a faith-community that’s free of rancor, self-righteousness, pettiness and pride, but is shaped instead around God’s steadfast love, and lived beneath God’s forgiving mercy?  

 

            There’s a grand old prayer of the Church of Scotland, which goes:  “Enlighten our minds, rectify our desires, and correct our wanderings, so that, guided by your grace, we may be preserved from making shipwreck of faith, and at length be landed safe in the haven of eternal rest.”  Let this be our prayer today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon from August 31, 2008

                                 CAN YOU REALLY TEACH GRACE AND HUMILITY?

            I Corinthians 10:31-11:1

             Sermon presented August 31, 2008

 

 

The text for this morning’s sermon is I Corinthians, Chapter 11, verse 1:  “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”  And the theme of the sermon is this question:  “Can You Really Teach Grace and Humility?”

 

            Well, what do you think?  Can you?  This question was posed by a reporter to the new CEO of a major hotel chain, in the Business section of last Saturday’s New York Times (8/23/2008, p. B2).    The executive was saying that his strategy to turn-around his sluggish company is to provide more gracious and humble “emotional connections” between guests and staff.  But “can you really teach grace and humility?” the reporter asked.  Good question, that.   And the CEO answered this way; he said:  “The teaching starts with modeling.  We show staff the kind of kindness, support and respect we hope they [will] show guests.”  In other words:  yes, grace and humility can be taught, but not from a book or lecture.  These virtues are transmitted and re-enforced by example.

 

            This is not a new or novel insight, of course, but ancient and time-tested.   The Greek story-teller Aesop, who lived 600 years before Jesus, wrote:  “Example is the best precept.”  Epictetus, from the First Century AD, proposed that the key to a worthy and purposeful life is to “imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private and in public.”  And Albert Einstein, who was smart in complicated subjects many of us cannot understand, was also wise in simple things.  He said:  “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another.  It is the only means.”  So, it’s common wisdom that human models are more compelling and convincing than human instructions or commands.

 

            But this common wisdom takes particular shape and strength in Biblical faith.   Our God is a god “who shows steadfast love,” declares Psalm 59, verse 17.  And Scripture teaches that God shows his love most fully in Jesus Christ.  It is written:  “This is how God showed his love among us:  he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (I John 4:9).  Jesus Christ is a most perfect representation of God, so that in him, we see what God is like.  And Jesus Christ is a most perfect model of the God-shaped life, so that in him we see God’s pattern for living.  The Christian is gracious and humble, not because such is the wisdom of the ages (though it is), nor because it may seem like a good idea (though it may), nor even because the Bible commends it (though it does), but because in Jesus Christ we actually see grace and humility in human flesh and form. 

 

            These ideas are succinctly expressed in the verse before us today:  “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”  The first purpose of the Christian life is to imitate Christ.  The second purpose, then, is to so shine with such Christ-likeness that others will imitate us.  “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

 

            To imitate Christ is an awesome project, impossible even.  Because Christ is perfect, and we are imperfect, the correspondence between our lives and his must be flawed.  Among the classics of spirituality is a 15^th-Century work titled The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis.  In just over 100 brief chapters this work proposes various ways to imitate “the life and habits” of Christ.  It’s a masterpiece of spiritual discernment and direction.  Toward the end of the book, however, the writer confesses that no one will be able to pattern their lives after the perfect example of Christ.  One cannot help but feel  “depressed, tempted, defiled and troubled,” he writes, to consider how far short we fall of the grace and humility of Christ.  But God’s mercy is greater than our human weakness.  And the model of Christ is ever before us, to imitate more-and-more faithfully as we grow more-and-more into the likeness of the Master.

 

When we’re feeling tempted and tested, and unable to withstand the pull of sin, we look to the model of Jesus, in the wilderness for 40 days, resisting the enticements of the devil.  When we’re feeling impatient and irritable, stressed and distressed, we look to the model of Jesus, patiently attending to each person who came his way.  When we’re feeling proud and self-important, we look to the model of Jesus, kneeling to wash his disciples’ feet.  When we’re feeling overwhelmed by the world’s sufferings, and withdrawing more-and-more into ourselves and our own concerns, we look to the model of Jesus, reaching-out to the poor, the sick, the outcast and others on the edges and margins.   When we’re feeling put-upon and sorry for ourselves, we look to the model of Jesus, who endured betrayal, pain and death on the cross. 

 

Those who follow, love and serve Jesus Christ, however imperfectly, are used by Christ, then, to model his grace and humility to others.  “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”   Jesus said:  “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”  And it is also written:  “In everything set an example by doing what is good” (Titus 2:7).

 

            Hall of Fame baseball player Cal Ripken Jr. tells the story of a time, early in his career, when he was angry about a called third strike.  He threw down the bat, kicked the dirt, and yelled at the umpire, who immediately ejected him from the game.  A few days later he received a letter from a father who said he’d saved money to the take his family to Baltimore, just to see Ripken play, because he was his son’s favorite player.   After Ripken got thrown-out in the first inning, “my little boy cried the whole game,” the man wrote.  Ripken says that he vowed then to act better, knowing that people are watching.  He wasn’t perfect, but close.  He was thrown-out only one other time in his 3000-game career  (USA Today, 7/30/2007, p. C6).

 

We set examples, for better or worse, and whether we want to or not.  In a culture where fewer-and-fewer people relate to church, those of us who continue in the faith are becoming exceptions rather than the norm.  When people look at us, what do they see?  Do they merely see weary souls who can’t seem to break old habits and get with modern times?  Or do they see instead a vital and vibrant quality of life, shaped by humility and grace, suffused with hope, and devoted to worthy purposes that will outlast it?    When

we act no differently than those without faith, then we become examples of faith’s irrelevance and uselessness.   But when we are humble and gracious, generous in substance and spirit, patient, kind, and accepting of others, then we model the love of God in Jesus Christ, and transmit power to become more Christ-like.

 

Julia Kasdoef is an excellent young poet.  One of my favorites of Kasdoef’s poems is titled “What I Learned from My Mother.”  Here she lifts-up the idea that grace and humility are taught and learned, by example.           

                        I learned from my mother how to love

                        the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

                        in case you have to rush to the hospital

                        with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

                        still stuck to the buds.  I learned to save jars

                        large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

                        grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

                        and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

                        and flick out the seeds with a knife point.

                        I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know

                        the deceased, to press the moist hands

                        of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
                        sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

                        I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

                        what anyone will remember is that we came.

                        I learned to believe I had the power to ease

                        awful pains materially like an angel.

                        Like a doctor, I learned to create

                        from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

                        you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

                        To every house you enter, you must offer

                        healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

                        the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

(Good Poems, ed. by Garrison Keillor.  Penguin Books, 2002, p. 156)

           

            “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” scripture teaches.  Christianity ceases being a mere abstract religion, becoming instead the source of limitless power and irrepressible joy, when we discover this truth for ourselves, and act upon it.

 

 

 

 

Sermon of August 24

ECHOES OF LIGHT THAT SHINES LIKE STARS    

      AFTER THEY’RE GONE

      John 1:1-5

          Sermon presented on August 24, 2008

 

 

Rocker Robert Plant, of Led Zeppelin fame, and blue-grasser Allison Krauss, might seem an improbable singing duo.  But they collaborated last year, and the resulting CD Raising Sand was the remarkable result.  Rolling Stone rated it among the best CDs of the year.  In one of their more haunting and evocative selections, they sing about people who come into our lives, touch us in important ways, and then go-away; but who leave behind beauty and strength that remain with us always; what the song calls, “echoes of light/that shines like stars/after they’re gone.”  So that even when “strange things are happening everyday,” the lyric goes; even when darkness holds me “like a friend,” and hope has left; yet there remains, “echoes of light/that shines like stars/after they’re gone.”  And these echoes of light are what keep a person going.

 

            This metaphor of light that keeps shining even after the source of light is gone, occurs many times in scripture, most importantly in reference to Jesus Christ.

 

            The Book of John opens with words that are at once both familiar and puzzling.  It’s familiar because this passage is usually read on Christmas Eve, and people usually go to church on Christmas Eve.  But Christmas Eve worship isn’t really a good time for careful analysis of Bible texts.  For most people there are a lot of other things going-on.  So, we may hear these familiar words Christmas-after-Christmas – “ . . . in him was life/ and the life was the light of all people/the light shines in the darkness/and the darkness did not overcome it” – yet still be puzzled by them.  Bible scholar Francis Maloney calls the “first page of the Fourth Gospel one of the most dense passages in the New Testament . . . [and] the source of many scholarly problems.”  Yes, the fourth Sunday in August is a much better time than Christmas to delve into the intricacies of these things.

 

            It’s not all that complicated, really.  Three things may be said, by way of interpreting this passage.

 

            First:  in Jesus Christ, God broke into the world.  The purpose of Christ’s appearance – that is, the meaning of his life, death and resurrection — exceeds the range of ordinary human language and ordinary human understanding.  So Bible writers employ metaphors to try to get “at” the truth of it.  Jesus is described variously as the Word, as servant, as Bread of Life, Lamb of God, Son of Man, the Good Shepherd who calls the sheep by name, the Father who runs to welcome the prodigal home.  These are all poetic ways of describing the indescribable.  And chief among Biblical metaphors is that of light.  Jesus Christ “was the light of all people,” it is declared here in John, chapter 1, verse 4. 

 

            Here’s a second thing to be said about this passage:  “the darkness did not overcome [this light].”  That is:  although Jesus’ life aroused a hostile reception overall, and he was killed, so that it appeared that darkness had extinguished the light, and this sorry old world of ours’ would forever be a Good Friday world.  But that’s not the end of the story.   He arose.  The darkness did not overcome the light.  Our God is a God who is an expert at dealing with darkness.  Out of darkness God brought into being Light.

 

            And this moves us to the third declaration, in verse 5:  “The light shines in the darkness.”  Note the change in verb tense.  In verse 4, it is written:  Christ “was the light,” past tense.  Now in verse 5 there’s a change in the tense of the verb; it reads, “the light shines,” present tense.  In other words:  Jesus of Nazareth is gone, no longer present human form, he’s past tense.  But Jesus the Christ is here, in truth and in power.  He is present, his continuing love and mercy expressed in the present tense.  The light of Christ continues to shine; one might say, as “echoes of light/that shines like stars/after they’re gone.”

 

            There’s an old joke.  “How many Calvinists does it take the change a light bulb?”  The answer is:  “When God is pleased to change the light bulb God will do it, without your help or mine, and there’s no reason for us to worry about it.”  The joke pokes fun at our Calvinist high regard for the providence of God.  But it slyly lifts-up a great truth, as well:  that the light of God is in the world, and shines, by virtue of His holy will.  All thanks be to God, “in whose Light we see light,” as the ancient prayer puts it; and by whose light we discriminate between truth and falsehood.

 

            Scripture also teaches two other principles in regard to “light that shines like stars after they’re gone” – the illuminating influence of others on us, and the illuminating influence of our own faith and life on others.  In relation to the former, please ask yourself:  who once was in your life, touched you in important ways, and now is gone, but who left behind beauty and strength that remain with you always?  And in relation to the latter, please ask yourself:  to whom is God calling me to be as light now, such that after I’m gone, this little light of mine may continue to shine for good in the lives of others?

 

            Let’s consider these principles in reference on God’s Word.

 

            In the Book of Proverbs, chapter 4, we read of the illuminating influence of virtuous living, that the upright person lights-up this dark world, and inspires others.  “The path of righteousness is like the light of dawn/which shines brighter and brighter,” it is written, verse 18.   And in the Book of Philippians, chapter 2, it is promised that those who conduct their lives in holy, humble and kindly reliance on Jesus Christ, “without murmuring and arguing,” will “shine like stars in the world” (vs. 14-15). 

 

            The book Remembering C.S. Lewis:  Recollections of Those Who Knew Him contains several dozen essays, sketching peoples’ remembrances of the well-known scholar, author and defender of the faith.   Owen Barfield, a renowned philosopher and poet who taught with Lewis at Oxford, offers this glimpse of C.S. Lewis, which he thinks is the most remarkable character trait of all, especially in light of Lewis’ worldwide fame.  Barfield writes:

                        I never recall a single remark, a single word or silence,

                        a single look, the slightest flicker of an eyelid or . . .

                        alteration in the pitch of his voice, which would suggest

                        that he felt his opinion entitled to more respect than that

                        of [anyone else].

 

            For all of us who didn’t know C.S. Lewis, his light shines through his writings.  But for those blessed to have known him in-person, it’s this, his Christian character more than his books about Christ, that shines like stars after he’s gone.

 

            Albert Schweitzer said:  “Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown into flame by another human being.  Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.”

 

            These are the challenges put forth by these texts:  first, to express our gratitude for those who have kindled and re-kindled the light of God’s love for us; and second, to renew our resolve to kindle and rekindle the light of God’s love for others.

 

            Peter Milne was a missionary to the people in the New Hebrides Islands, in the south Pacific.  Although originally from Scotland, Milne ministered under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand.  Beginning in 1870 Milne spent 55 years in the New Hebrides.  He was a pious and patient servant of Christ, not seeking to set records for conversions nor to build large mission enterprises, but rather to witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ in caring, authentic ways that island-people might find winsome, and so be drawn to Christ and decide to devote their lives to Christ.  Milne painstakingly learned the Nguna language, so that he was not dependent on translators but was able to speak with people one-on-one, heart-to-heart.  There is a portrait of Peter Milne in one of the churches there, and beneath the portrait there is this simple tribute:  “When he came there was no light.  When he died there was no darkness.”

 

             There stands the witness of one whose life reflects the light of God’s light, and whose light continues to “shine like stars in the world” after they’re gone.  Are we prepared for such a life?  For Christ asks nothing less.  “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” Jesus taught (Matt. 5:16).  Truly we are called to be people of the light.  This little light of mine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

           

 

           

 

Sermon from August 17, 2008

                            THE IMMEDIACY, THE SPONTANEITY, THE EXUBERANCE

                 OF THE RESURRECTION LIFE

                                Nehemiah 7:73b-8:12     I Thessalonians 2:17-20     Luke 24:50-53

                                                     Sermon presented August 17, 2008

 

 

One of my favorite places is Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving, overlooking the Hudson River, in Tarrytown, New York, 50 miles or so north of New York City.  Washington Irving wasn’t America’s greatest writer, but he was America’s first great writer.  In The Sketch Book, which includes “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” he invented a distinctively American literary style and consciousness.  An interesting, and perhaps troubling, characteristic of Washington Irving was that he had little use for Presbyterians.  In fact, he was instrumental in creating a new cemetery in Tarrytown, because the only cemetery at the time was adjacent to the Presbyterian Church, and he didn’t even want to be buried among Presbyterians.  This sentiment was shaped in response to a dark, brooding, unhappy childhood, with a stern Scottish-immigrant Presbyterian father.  His father was so religious that he was known to all by the nickname Deacon Irving, but he possessed none of the warmth, kindness and compassion which sets-apart the office of Deacon in scripture, and with which we associate the wonderful care-giving Deacons in our own church.  In regard to his religious upbringing, Washington Irving wrote:  “I was tasked with it, thwarted with it, wearied with it, until I was disgusted with it . . . I was led to think that somehow or other everything that was pleasant was wicked” (quoted by Brian Jones, Washington Irving: An American Original, p. 3).  Perhaps nothing better reveals Washington Irving’s rejection of the austere religion of his childhood than his choosing to call his lovely home on the Hudson, Sunnyside.

                                      

            Washington Irving’s childhood experience of Christianity as joyless and harsh is so unlike my own childhood experience that it’s difficult for me to quite understand or appreciate it.  But I know this isn’t just something from 200 years ago.  There are people still who have been taught, and raised in, a kind of Christianity so solemn and severe that it tears-down and discourages rather than builds-up and encourages, transmits fear rather than hope, and is almost unrecognizable from what we see in scripture.

 

            And this pattern of joylessness may afflict all of us, if we’re not on-guard.  Eugene Peterson writes:

                        It’s a curious thing but not uncommon for Christians to begin

well and gradually get worse.  Instead of progressing like a

pilgrim from strength to strength, we regress.  Just think of the

Christians you really admire [he invites].  Aren’t most of them

recent converts?  Isn’t it exciting?  Then think of the Christians

that you’re just bored to death with.  Aren’t they people who

have been Christians for . . . years?  They are wearing

out . . . There are exceptions of course [he allows].  [But he

continues:] We lose our vitality. We become dull.  We continue

to go through these life-affirming, Christ-honoring motions, but our

hearts are no longer in it.  The regression is rarely dramatic.  It’s not

sudden . . . It is so casual at first that we hardly notice . . . Before

we know it, we are regressing . . . [And he concludes]  We lose the immediacy, spontaneity, and exuberance of resurrection life.

                                    (Living the Resurrection, pgs, 57-58)

           

We have before us today three passages from scripture, each of which puts-forth a different source of joy, a reason why Biblical faith, rightly understood, keeps one on the sunny side of life.

 

First: there’s the Old Testament reading, from the Book of Nehemiah, which teaches that one sure source of joy’s immediacy, spontaneity and exuberance is the Word of God itself.  “Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength,” Ezra declares.  This word of joy was declared to the people of God returning to Jerusalem after decades of exile in Babylon.  In exile they’d been separated from their homeland, of course, but more than that, their confidence in God and reliance on His Word had eroded, as well.  Now, gathered together in the city square, in one of the most emotionally-charged scenes in all of scripture, Ezra stepped on a wooden platform, and held-up the scroll of the Book of Moses – that is, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament – so that it could be seen by all.  He opened it.  Then he read from it, read from the Word of God.  Others then took turns, reading and interpreting God’s Word so that all could understand it, because without regular worship and study the peoples’ knowledge had lessened.  According to the passage, many in the crowd that day wept.  There were tears of elation, tears of nostalgia, tears of sadness for what they’d lost, tears of delight for what’s now being regained, tears that arose from places of the heart which the people themselves may not have known.  To this crowd, suffused with deep feeling, Ezra declared:  “Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

 

The Bible may seem to us more burden than blessing, in some ways, anyway.  It’s long.  It’s obscure and complicated in places, and hard to understand.  We may feel like we ought to read it more, or ought to know it better, and so then we may then feel guilty or inadequate as Christians.  But the resounding truth is this:  that the Word of God not only counsels and commends joy, but is itself, by its very existence, cause for joy.  God chooses not to be hidden.  God chooses not to be an impenetrable force beyond human knowing or telling.  God chooses not to be a speculative concept, idea or abstraction.  God chooses instead to disclose Himself in a book, accessible to all.  What finer reason can there be for a joyful heart!

 

Peter Gomes, Dean of the Chapel of Harvard, writes:  “The Bible lets us know that we are neither alone in our despair or our anxiety, nor are we alone in our search, and we certainly are not alone in the joys and the hopes that await us and that are ours’ already.”  All thanks be to God for this inexpressibly joy-transmitting gift, the gift of His Word.

 

            So, that’s one cause for a life that’s suffused with immediacy, spontaneity and exuberance – the gift of scripture. 

 

Here’s another cause:  the gift of one another, in the church. 

Let’s turn our attention to the second reading of the day, from the New Testament book of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 17-20.  This letter was written by the Apostle Paul to new Christians in the city of Thessalonica, where he had visited previously.  He’s striving here to explain how fervently he’s been trying to get-back to visit them.  His language exudes love.  “We were made orphans by being separated from you,” he writes.  I’ve longed “with great eagerness” to see you “in person, not [just] in heart.”  I’ve tried “again and again” to come to you.  Only “Satan blocked our way,” he tells them.  No mere human obstacle or inconvenience could keep them apart, only the work of the devil himself.  Paul concludes with the stirring declaration:  “Yes, you are our glory and joy!”

 

            The church is easily criticized,  both from within and without:  that it’s too worldly or not worldly enough, too modern or not modern enough,  too demanding or not demanding enough, too rich or not rich enough,  too entertaining or not entertaining enough, too friendly (so that it feels like a mere social club) or not friendly enough (exclusive and off-putting).  In her excellent book Dear Church:  Letters from a Disillusioned Generation, Sarah Cunningham writes:

                        It’s frighteningly easy to criticize everything about the church.

                        It’s admittedly even a bit fun . . . But eventually [she adds], if

                        we are to mature we must move beyond disillusionment and

                        engage the mission of the church.

           

            This mature faith is what we hear in I Thessalonians.  The Apostle Paul certainly wasn’t naïve about the shortcomings of the church.  Always in scripture he calls the community of faith to greater faithfulness, integrity, holiness and service.  But he never permits his thoughtful critique of particular faults to diminish his larger conviction that God uses the church to demonstrate the immensity of His goodness.  That’s the way St. Bonaventure put it, 800 years ago, and it holds true today.  The immensity of God’s goodness becomes particular in the church, as people model and mentor faithfulness, come together to understand God’s Word, bear each others’ burdens, and partner-up for acts of service in the world.  Thus, the Apostle Paul could say to the Thessalonians, that whatever day-to-day faults and flaws they may have, nonetheless, “you are my glory and joy.”  Yes, you are my glory and joy.

 

            So we have noted two sources of irrepressible gratitude, wonder and gladness:  the Word of God, and the character of the church.  There are many others, as well.  But in the interest of time I’ll put-forth just one more today.  

 

Another reason for a life of immediacy, spontaneity and exuberance is the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

 

            In the Gospel of Luke, the final verses of chapter 24, there’s a brief account of the Ascension of Christ.  It is written that the disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”  And their joy wasn’t a mere momentary or passing thing.  The passage goes to report that, “they were continually in the temple, blessing God.”  Their lives had been transformed.  They would never be the same again.  That Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, exposes the world’s powerlessness to defeat or destroy us, or to extinguish the joy that is in us.

           

In the new Woody Allen film, Vicky Christina Barcelona the characters Juan Antonio and Christina are walking around an art museum.  They stop before a sculpture of the crucifixion.  She notices that he’s moved by it. 

“Are you a religious person?” she asks. 

“No,” he says.  “I think the point is to love life.”

 

This attitude is typical, I think:  that to love life requires one nto reject a religious

point-of-view.  Perhaps the church historically has no one to blame but itself for this attitude, with its sometimes brooding character, the suggestion that “everything that’s pleasant is wicked,” the message young Washington Irving picked-up.  But this isn’t true Christianity.  To know the power of the resurrection is to infuse life with immediacy, spontaneity and exuberance; with passion and commitment, with abiding hope and abounding joy.

 

            Olympic marathon runner Ryan Hall, whose event comes-up next Saturday, reports that for most of his life, his sense of worth and joy “was totally dependent on how I ran.”  He found joy in running, but not joy in living.  “The result was frustration, worry, depression and discontentment with life,” he confesses.  Hall decided to follow Jesus Christ.  Now, he says:  “There’s a contentment and satisfaction that my life is far greater and longer-enduring than any good race ever run.”  What will he do when he finishes at Stanford next year?  “I plan to hold the future with open hands,” Ryan Hall says, “so God can use me however he desires.  I just want to do whatever the Lord has for my life.”

 

            At a young age Ryan Hall has come to know what many never come to know:  that though the world can award its medals and shower its praise for one thing or another, (and genuine achievement is always a thing to be valued, of course), yet in the end true joy comes to those whose lives are given-over wholly to God, from whose love in Jesus Christ nothing can separate us in life or in death.