JAS91CS01 ~ THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A PERFECT "10" - 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 JAS91CS02 ~ GOD'S PLAN FOR HIS WORLD - Ephesians 1:3-10 JAS91CS03 ~ BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS - Ephesians 2:13-22 JAS91CS04 ~ LORD, WHAT A BOUNTEOUS GOD! - John 6:24-35 JAS91CS05 ~ WHAT ARE YOU WORKING FOR? - John 6:24-35 JAS91CS06 ~ EAT AND LIVE - John 6:35, 41-51 JAS91CS07 ~ BE CAREFUL HOW YOU WALK - Ephesians 5:15-20 JAS91CS08 ~ IN FOR THE LONG TERM - John 6:55-69 JAS91CS09 ~ READ MY HEART AS WELL AS MY LIPS - Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 JAS91CS10 ~ A NEW WAY TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON - James 1:17-27 JAS91CS11 ~ WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES YOU BLUSH? - Mark 8:27-38 JAS91CS12 ~ SAVE THE CHILDREN - Mark 9:30-37 JAS91CS13 ~ IF IT'S THE LORD'S WILL - James 4:13-17
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A PERFECT "10"
A college recruiter interviewed a high school basketball star. The recruiter said, "I hear you're pretty good." "The best there is," the player replied. "I averaged 45 points per game. I was the best rebounder in my high school. And I led our team to three undefeated seasons and three state championships."
"That's incredible," said the recruiter. "Tell me," he said, "Do you have any weaknesses?"
"Well," said the youngster sheepishly, "I do have a tendency to exaggerate." We all have weaknesses. There are no perfect "10s" in this world. That may be a difficult thing for some of us to admit. For example, 90% of men rank themselves above average in athletic ability. Men sometimes exaggerate. Some of us are legends in our own minds. We all have our weaknesses.
Some of our weaknesses are physical, some are mental, some are moral. Some of those weaknesses have to do with our work, some with our family life, some with our relationship with Christ. Some of us, for example, have short tempers, others of us lack diplomacy. Some of us are too proud, others of us lack back-bone. There are no perfect "10s." Maybe that is just as well.
Saint Paul had his weaknesses. One in particular caused him much heartache. We don't know for certain what it was. He called it his "thorn in the flesh." Some have suggested that St. Paul suffered from epileptic seizures. If so, he was in good company. Two of the most powerful men who ever lived--Julius Caesar and Napoleon--were epileptics, as have been many other great individuals. In St. Paul's day there was no Dilantin or Phenobarbital to control seizures. If that was his thorn, he was stuck with it.
St. Paul prayed that God would deliver him from his affliction. Three times he beseeched God about this matter, but God's answer to him was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." In other words, God seemed to be saying to Paul, "Trust me, Paul. I will take care of you. But I can use your weakness to demonstrate my power."
We can learn from Paul's experience. Paul not only learned to accept his thorn, he even began to boast about his weakness in order to show the power of Christ. Our weakness can become our strength as well. Some of us may even learn to rejoice that we are not a perfect "10."
OUR WEAKNESSES CAN BECOME STRENGTHS, FIRST OF ALL, IF THEY CAUSE US TO GROW.
George Reedy was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary. It was Reedy who convinced Johnson he should never have assistants who were under forty years of age and who hadn't suffered any major disappointment in life. Without that maturity and without that disappointment, Reedy felt such people thrust into these positions of power would come to think of themselves as little tin gods. That is true. Too much early success in life has a tendency to spoil us. We begin to think of ourselves as clever. We begin to rely on our ability rather than our hard work. Worse yet, we begin to rely on ourselves rather than on God. Everyone who makes a major contribution to life knows what it is to have failures.
Woody Allen, that witty man who has produced so many classic films, flunked Motion Picture Production at the City College of New York. Leon Uris, writer of one of the most popular novels of this century, EXODUS, failed English three times in high school. Everyone who makes a major contribution to life knows what it is to have failures. Indeed, those early failures can be a major contributor to later successes.
The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said she realized that she was not beautiful, but that her lack of beauty was a blessing in disguise, since it forced her to develop her inner resources. As someone has said, our disappointments are "His appointments." By God's grace painful experiences or situations can help us grow.
John Killinger once told a moving story about a couple whose newborn son was mentally retarded. They were crushed, of course. Still, they loved him as they would any child of theirs. They built a bedroom with glass walls so that wherever they were in the house they would be able to keep an eye on him. For seventeen years, the mother slept next to the boy with her hand next to his heart. If he ever started having trouble breathing, she would be able to wake up and give him artificial respiration. For seventeen years, they lived this way.
One sad day, however, a neighbor's girl fell from a tree and hurt her arm. The mother left her son to rush the girl to a hospital. As she was standing in the emergency room of the hospital with the little girl, her husband came in carrying the body of their son. He had died while she was at the hospital. His father had tried vainly to revive him.
As the boy lay before them in peace, the parents wept. But then they gave thanks to God for the gift of their son. "For," his mother said, "he taught us how to love." (1) Our weaknesses can become strengths if they help us grow.
THEY CAN ALSO BECOME STRENGTHS IF THEY MAKE US MORE DETERMINED.
Newspaper columnist George Plagenz once told the story of a young doctor who delivered a baby into a poverty-stricken family in Montana. The child had one cruelly deformed leg. He also had difficulty breathing. "The other children will call him `Limpy'," the doctor thought. "His life will be miserable. If I don't do anything for his breathing, he will die. Wouldn't that be better?" he asked himself. Then he remembered his Hippocratic oath and began blowing into the baby's mouth. Soon the child's lungs were acting normally and he gave his first cry.
Several years later the doctor's daughter and son-in-law were killed in an auto accident. The doctor's ten-year-old granddaughter was left an orphan. He took her in. One day the child was stricken with a crippling and incurable condition. The doctor learned there was a young doctor in the Midwest who had been getting excellent results in the treatment of this particular disease. He took his granddaughter to see the doctor.
The young physician was lame. He was the deformed baby into whose mouth the older doctor had breathed 35 years before. Because of his own infirmity, the young doctor had specialized in this crippling disease. The treatment on the older doctor's grandchild was successful and the little girl was returned to normal health. (2)
It is not rare at all that a doctor with a deformed leg should specialize in crippling diseases and even become a star in his field. Such things happen all the time. When a person has an area of weakness, they will often work so hard to overcome their weakness that it becomes a tremendous asset.
Some of the most eloquent orators and actors who have ever lived started out with severe speech defects.
We are told, for example, that Winston Churchill, had such a congenital lisp and stutter that doctors advised him against entering any occupation in which speaking was an important part. Yet he became the most influential speaker of our century.
One of the most beautiful speaking voices on stage and screen today is that of James Earl Jones. Did you know that Jones has long battled a severe stuttering problem? From age 9 until his mid-teens he had to communicate with teachers and classmates by handwritten notes. A high school English teacher gave him the help he needed, but he still struggles with his problem to this day. Yet there is no finer speaking voice than his. He was listed recently among the ten actors with the most beautiful speaking voice. We can do that, too. We can allow our weakness to increase our determination to succeed.
OUR WEAKNESS CAN ALSO BECOME A STRENGTH IF IT HELPS US INNOVATE.
Sometimes what seems a weakness is only a signal that we are pursuing the wrong trail.
One of the most revealing lines in literature appears in the opening paragraph of A. A. Milne's WINNIE-THE-POOH: "Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way...if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it!"
If you keep bumping your head coming down the stairs, maybe it is time you stop for a moment and think if there is another way it might be done. Sometimes our so-called weaknesses are simply warning signs to us that we are on the wrong road.
Elie Wiesel once noted that according to Jewish tradition, creation did not end with man. It began with him. When He created man, God gave him a secret--and that secret was not how to begin, but how to BEGIN AGAIN. In other words, "it is not given to man to begin; that privilege is God's alone. But it is given to man to begin again...." (3) Some of us need to begin again.
That was true of that noble patriot and orator Patrick Henry. For years of his life he was a miserable failure. He and his brother opened a store, but it failed. Next Patrick's father-in-law set him up in farming. Patrick was given 300-acres, a house, and 6 slaves. Even with that start, though, Patrick couldn't make it as a farmer.
Finally, on the advice of friends, Patrick turned to law. He was a natural persuader and a captivating orator. As a lawyer, Patrick was an instant success. Further, his was exactly the voice that was needed to launch the colonies toward a break with England. (4) Patrick Henry was not a failure. He was simply in the wrong field for much of his life. What may seem to be weakness under certain circumstances may be just warning signs that we need to make a new start.
FINALLY, OUR WEAKNESSES MAY BECOME STRENGTHS IF THEY REMIND US OF OUR DEPENDENCE ON GOD.
I can just hear St. Paul boasting, can't you? "Look at me," he would say, "I once persecuted the church. Look at me, a man who has to battle this humiliating affliction--this thorn in the flesh. Yet Christ has used me to plant churches all over the known world." Paul was a man of tremendous intellect. He was also a man of unquestionable persuasive powers. Perhaps if it had not been for his thorn in the flesh, he would have leaned upon his own ability rather than the power of God working through him. And you and I would never had heard the name of Paul. His weakness became his strength. His scar became a star. His hurt became a halo. And the same thing can happen to us--if our weakness helps us to grow, if our weakness makes us more determined to succeed, if our weakness causes us to try new things, and if our weakness causes us to rely on God.
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1. John Killinger, "There Is Still God," The Twentieth Century Pulpit, James Cox, ed., (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978), pp. 112-113. Cited in Hugh Litchfield, PREACHING THE EASTER STORY, (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press).
2. David Redding, THE GOLDEN STRING, (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1988).
3. MESSENGERS OF GOD (Random House, 1976)
4. Jones, V.C. "Patrick Henry: A Personality Profile," AMERICAN HISTORY ILLUSTRATED: (January, 1969), pp. 12-24.
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JUL291GOD'S PLAN FOR HIS WORLD
On the platform of a railroad station there was a large crate with a big dog inside. He was the saddest dog you can imagine. A lady asked about him. "You would be sad, too," she was told, "if you were in his plight. He's chewed the tag off the crate, and doesn't know where he's going."
Sounds like many churches I know. The church today has resources untold. We have a skilled, well-educated, talented work force. We claim the allegiance of the best people in our community. We serve a Master who for 2,000 years has inspired people's hearts and changed their lives. And yet we are only a shadow of what we might be. What is the problem with us? My guess is that we don't know where we are going. We're not certain what we are supposed to be doing. We've chewed the tag off our crate and we're bogged down in a certain melancholia.
Thus we come to St. Paul's words in the first chapter of Ephesians: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will...." (RSV)
It would be impossible to explore in depth the complete meaning of Paul's words this morning. There are some clear spiritual principles, however, that we can discern in our text for the day.
THE FIRST IS THAT GOD HAS CHOSEN A SPECIAL PEOPLE. God has always performed His work through a chosen people. Since He is the divine Other--since He transcends time and space--since His nature is Spirit and not flesh and blood--the only way He can communicate with us effectively is to incarnate Himself, to work through flesh and blood to accomplish His purposes. He began with the people of Israel. Then He worked through Jesus of Nazareth. Today He works through followers of that same Jesus. Because of who He is and what He is about, God always works through a special people.
Unfortunately, you and I do not always act like a special people.
Once a man attended a fair and saw another man leading a fine, well- groomed horse. He asked, "Is that a saddle horse?" The other replied, "No, sir. This horse will buck off a saddle. Nothing can stay on his back."
"Is he a driving horse, then?" the man asked. "No, he was hitched up once to a cart, but he made kindling wood of it," was the reply.
"Well, what is he good for? Why is he here?" the man asked. The answer was, "Style, man, style. Just look at the picture he makes."
The man went on to say, "Once I was in a church building and saw people clad in fine clothes coming into the morning service. I asked the preacher, `Are those people workers in the church?' `No,' he answered sadly. `Do they visit the sick and minister to the poor? Do they attend other services of the church?' `Never,' he answered.
"`There's that horse,' I said to myself. `Nothing but style.'" (1)
Sometimes you and I don't act like a very special people. And because we don't always act like a special people, the work of Christ is delayed.
Ernest Gordon found God in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. He wrote of his experience in a book called THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE KWAI. How did he find God? He found him through the witness of loving Christians--fellow prisoners, who were willing to give up even their lives for him. Unfortunately, when Ernest Gordon returned home to Scotland, convinced that he should become a minister, he found something else. He said, "As soon as I returned from the jungle I took up the study of theology at Edinburgh. My first impressions almost caused me to return immediately to the jungle!" What happened was that he attended services in a sparsely-filled Church one Sunday evening. He was in full uniform. Before the service began he was asked to move because he was sitting in somebody else's pew! Fortunately, though he was taken aback by this experience, he wasn't turned off from the Church entirely. He finished seminary and went on to become chaplain at Princeton University. (2)
I wonder, though, how many people are turned off by Christians who have forgotten who they are. This may be particularly true of a church with a rich tradition--like the church at Edinburgh. It is always tempting to congratulate ourselves on what we've already accomplished. There is danger for churches that are always looking back and reliving a noble past. Such a church has been compared to the fabled "floogee bird," which is said to fly backwards instead of forward, singing one monotonous refrain: "I don't know where I'm going, but just look where I've been!" (3) We need to be reminded from time to time who we are. God has chosen a special people.
WHAT IS MORE, GOD HAS REVEALED TO THIS SPECIAL PEOPLE HIS ETERNAL PLAN.
When each of us leaves this room this morning, I want us to have a clear picture of what God has called us to be and to do. Having that clear, mental picture or vision is the first step in seeing God's plan realized. Any great work begins with a vision.
As you go up the Hudson River in New York, you can see the imposing George Washington Bridge. This impressive structure towers 600 feet high. It has a main span of 3,500 feet. Each of the four supporting cables is a yard thick and consists of nearly 27,000 wires. This is enough wire to circle the earth four times at the Equator. This bridge, used by nearly 24 million vehicles annually, cost $62 million to build. The imposing George Washington Bridge was first a dream in the minds of those who had vision. Then it was put on paper and every detail marked down before actual work was begun. (4)
Every great accomplishment begins with a vision, a dream, then a plan. Some of you may remember one of the more absurd shows that ever graced our television screens--the infamous "A-Team." The black van careening around the corner on two wheels. B.A. is at the steering wheel. Face and Murdock sit back and relax as "The A-Team" streaks away from the bad guys once again. In the co-pilot's seat, Hannibal reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulls out a cigar, leans comfortably against the door of the van and with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, says, "I love it when a plan comes together!" (5)
Every great accomplishment begins with a vision, a dream, and then a plan. So it is with God's purpose for the world. God has a plan and He has revealed it to His chosen people! He has revealed it to us!
Sometime back a group of fortune tellers and seers had their crystal balls and tarot cards stolen at a gathering in Dublin, Ireland. One of them afterwards claimed, "We were aware something was about to happen, but we did not know what." The followers of Jesus know that something is about to happen and they know what. Even more importantly, they are a part of its occurrence. What, then, is this great dream, this great vision, this great plan?
GOD'S PLAN--REVEALED TO HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE AND REALIZED THROUGH THEM AS WELL--IS TO BRING INTO UNITY EVERYTHING IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH.
That's it. That is who we are and what we are about. Our task is to bring every man, woman and child on this earth into the family of God. Our president speaks of a new world order. God has in mind a new world order, as well, but it goes far beyond anything dreamed of by Mr. Bush. God's new world order means that every person in this world will live in dignity and harmony as children of God under the Lordship of Christ. That is God's new world order. And you and I are the agents of that revealed dream, vision, plan. Paul put it like this in 2 Corinthians 5:18, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, and giving to us the ministry of reconciliation...." And where do we begin? We begin right here, right now--reaching out in love to everyone with whom we come into contact. When we as a church fulfill that one simple mission, the gates of hell cannot long endure.
Dr. Fred Craddock, professor of New Testament and Homiletics at Emory University in Atlanta, tells about his growing up years in Middle Tennessee. Craddock's father did not go to church. In fact he was very critical of the church.
Once in a while the minister would come by to try to talk to Mr. Craddock. It did no good. He would say: "I know what you fellows down there at the church want. You want another name and another pledge. Right? Isn't that the business you're in? Another name and another pledge."
This always embarrassed Craddock's mother, who would retreat to the kitchen to cry. Occasionally an evangelist would come with the minister. Even the two of them could not get through to Craddock's father. He would always say: "You don't care about me! You want another name and another pledge. That's how the churches operate. You don't care about me."
He must have said that a thousand times, but there was one time he did not say it. The last time Fred Craddock saw his father was in a Veteran's Hospital. He was down to seventy-four pounds. They had taken out his throat. Radiation therapy had burned him badly. They had put in a tube so he could breathe, but he couldn't speak.
Around the room flowers were everywhere--on the table, in the windows and even on the floor. There were potted plants, cut flowers, and every sort of arrangement. They even had flowers on the table that you swing out over your bed to put food on. That was just as well since he couldn't eat anyway. Little cards were sprinkled in all the flowers and every one of them read something like this--Men's Bible Class, Women's Fellowship, Children's Division, Youth Fellowship. Every organization you could imagine in the church had sent flowers along with stacks of cards from persons in the church.
Craddock's father saw him looking at the cards. Unable to speak, he picked up a pencil and wrote on the side of a Kleenex box a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet:
"In this harsh world, draw your breath
in pain to tell my story."Fred Craddock read it and asked his father: "Dad, what is your story?" The speechless old man took the Kleenex box back and wrote a confession: "I was wrong! I was wrong!" (6)
Where do we begin to be a part of God's new world order? Right here, right now, with people this church can bring into His family. God has chosen a special people, and revealed to them an eternal plan, to bring into unity everything in heaven and on earth.
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2. MEET ME AT THE DOOR, New York: Harper and Row, 1969, pp. 323-324. From a sermon by Dr. Donald Strobe.
3. Charles W. Koller, EXPOSITORY PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1962).
4. Edward L. Friedman, The Speaker's Handy Reference, New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1967.)
5. Ken Abraham, DESIGNER GENES, (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1986).
6. From a sermon by Eric Ritz
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JUL391BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS
Lucy and Linus have a chicken wishbone. They are going to pull it to make a wish. As Lucy explains to Linus how the wishbone works, Linus asks, "Do I have to say the wish out loud?"
Lucy says, "Of course, if you don't say it out loud it won't come true." Then she makes her wish first. She says, "I wish for four new sweaters, a new bike, a new pair of skates, a new dress and one hundred dollars."
Linus goes next. "I wish for a long life for all of my friends," he says. "I wish for world peace, I wish for great advancements in medical research."
At this, Lucy takes the wishbone and throws it away. "Linus," she says, "that's the trouble with you, you're always spoiling everything."
It does spoil things, does it not, when into our self-centered, materialistic, divided world comes one who is able to forget his or her own needs and look to the needs of us all? Such a man has come and he came with a mission.
Did you know that at the turn of the century, folks were calling this century the Christian Century? They believed that by the final years of this millennium people would learn to live in unity and harmony together. Regretfully, they were wrong. With only nine years remaining until the year 2000, there are a multitude of people who still hate each other.
WE LIVE IN A DIVIDED WORLD.
Nations are divided. We see it in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland and South Africa, within the Soviet Union. All over the world nations not only are striving against one another, but they are torn by strife within. It is a problem as old as humanity itself.
I was interested to read somewhere about the origin of the custom of handshaking. In ancient times, men always carried daggers. When a traveler met a man he didn't recognize, he automatically reached for his weapon, as did the stranger. The two would then circle each other until they knew what the situation called for. If the stranger was not a threat, both men would sheath their daggers. Then they would extend their right hands, their weapon hands, as a token of goodwill. This explains why women never developed the custom of handshaking. They did not carry weapons.
It appears to me that in today's world we are still circling each other as we always have, still checking each other out. The nations of the world are not ready to shake hands. They are divided.
And communities are divided. America's melting pot has never quite realized it potential. We are not a solitary family but an amalgamation of peoples and traditions and even languages. Will we ever transcend our various ethnic, cultural and racial boundaries and truly become one people? I don't know. If we do, it will be because men and women of good will are determined to have it so. Let me tell you about one such man--former baseball great, Joe Gordon.
In 1947, Gordon was in his prime with the Cleveland Indians. That same year, a young black athlete named Larry Doby came to play for Cleveland. Doby was the first black rookie to join an American League team. Doby was tense and nervous when he stepped up for his first time at bat. He swung at three pitches and missed each of them--by at least a foot. He walked back to the dugout with his head down. He walked past all the other players on the bench and slouched in the corner alone with his head in his hands.
Joe Gordon, a power hitter, was the next man up. The opposing pitcher that day was one that Gordon usually blasted out of the park. This time, however, Joe Gordon went up to the plate and missed three pitches in a row- -each of them by at least two feet. He returned to the dugout, walked past all the other players on the bench, sat down in the corner next to Larry Doby and put his head in his hands.
No one ever asked Joe Gordon if he struck out deliberately. As long as they played together after that, however, every time Larry Doby went out on the field, he first picked up Joe Gordon's glove and tossed it to him. Doby went on to become one of the strongest hitters in major league history. (1)
I don't know anything about Joe Gordon's religious commitment. I would like to think he did what he did because Jesus had touched his heart. I do know that as we finish this century America is still struggling with ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity. Communities are divided.
Even churches are divided. We are still fighting battles that should have been over long ago--battles between literalists and liberals, evangelicals and social activists, traditionalists and modernists.
A LEADERSHIP magazine cartoon a few months ago pictured a pastor sitting with two obviously exasperated parishioners at a table in his office. The caption read like this: "With our current hard feelings," the pastor was saying, "would anyone object to my praying with my eyes open?" How sad. How very sad to see churches divided. (2)
And, of course, families are divided. Once a young man had all kinds of promise to be successful as an actor. But every time he was offered a great part, he would blow it. When time came to sign contracts, he would become upset about the way the producer or his agent handled the negotiations. Or he would blow up about some other insignificant detail. Eventually, the whole opportunity would fizzle.
It was obvious he was sabotaging his own career. A therapist was brought in. The therapist told him, "Imagine that you're in your hometown. There is the theatre, there is the marquee, there is your name in lights." At that point this young man jumped out of his chair. His face was red with anger and hatred. "No! No!" he shouted. "They don't deserve it! They don't deserve to see me as a success!"
The therapist now knew that there was a reason the young man was sabotaging his own success. He was angry at his mother and father. Something so terrible had happened somewhere in his growing up that he wanted to fail in order to punish them.
Nations are divided. Communities are divided. Churches are divided. Families are divided. Into such a world came our Lord, Jesus Christ. Why did he come? St. Paul tells us in our lesson for the day. He came to tear down walls. St. Paul writes, "For he is our peace, who made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility." Is there a dividing wall of hostility in your life? How about in your family? In your community? How about in your heart?
Robert Frost's words haunt us: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." (3)
Jesus saw the walls of his day and he wanted them down. Walls between Jews and Samaritans. Walls between the super-righteous and sinners. Walls between fallen humanity and his Father. And Jesus gave his life to tear them every one down.
When former senator and vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, died several years ago there was a memorial service in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Washington's elite gathered to say good-bye to their much-beloved friend. Richard Nixon was there that day. He sat off by himself, as if he were quarantined. Howard Baker, remembering that day, said, "Nobody would talk to him. Everybody was afraid of him." The awkward ostracizing of the former president ended only when President Jimmy Carter walked over to Mr. Nixon, shook his hand, and welcomed him back to Washington. NEWSWEEK magazine concluded that this simple act of humanity and compassion changed Nixon's future. "If there was a turning point in Nixon's long ordeal in the wilderness, that was it." (4)
There comes a time when someone must take that walk of compassion, someone must scale that wall of hostility, someone must go out on that limb of love. Jesus did.
There is no more graphic illustration of that truth than the event that occurred the moment he died. What does St. Luke tell us happened when Christ breathed his last? "It was now about the sixth hour and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sunlight failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two." (Luke 23:44-45)
The curtain that separated the believer from the holy of holies was torn in two. The final wall separating humanity from its Creator was ripped apart. That is what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about. That is what our faith is all about. He tears down walls. Especially the walls we build around our own hearts.
Judson Swihart once put it like this: "Some people are like medieval castles. Their high walls keep them safe from being hurt. They protect themselves emotionally by permitting no exchange of feelings with others. No one can enter. They are secure from attack. However, inspection of the occupant finds him or her lonely, rattling around his castle alone. The castle dweller is a self-made prisoner. He or she needs to feel loved by someone, but the walls are so high that it is difficult to reach out or for anyone else to reach in." (5)
Perhaps you know what it is to live behind such walls. The good news is that Christ has come to destroy all the walls that separate us from one another and from God no matter where or what those walls may be.
Two years ago in Israel the family of a Jewish man with a fatal heart disease were desperate for a donor for a heart transplant. They pleaded with the family of a brain-dead Arab man, shot in the head by Israeli soldiers, to donate the dying Palestinian's heart for the transplant. The Palestinian's family refused. Both men died.
A year later, another Arab and another Jew lay dying in hospital wards. This time the brain-dead man was an Israeli soldier shot by Arabs in an ambush in the Gaza strip. The man who needed the heart was a Palestinian.
The Israeli family, unaware of the identity of the recipient gave consent, and the transplant took place in a Jerusalem hospital.
When the news broke there was a storm of protest.
Israelis were in a rage that the heart of a solider of theirs should be in the body of a Palestinian. Ironically, the man who actually received the heart went into hiding to escape Arab rage. The widow of the dead Israeli soldier, however, knew the Shema. She knew also the words of Jesus. She was satisfied. She said, "If a person can be saved, I feel it is a blessing." (6)
It is a blessing. One more wall came tumbling down.
The western world cheered a couple years back to see the despised Berlin Wall come tumbling down. But there are other walls still to go. Can I give you an axe? A hammer? A bull-dozer?
Or perhaps you are one of those who has built a wall around your own heart. If Christ has never broken through that wall, why not let him today?
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1. Don Maddox, Corona, CA. in PARABLES, ETC. Sept/1989
2. Robert Frost, "Mending Wall," THE COMPLETE POEMS OF ROBERT FROST (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1947).
3. David W. Smith, MEN WITHOUT FRIENDS, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990).
4. Judson Swihart, HOW DO YOU SAY "I LOVE YOU"? (Downers Grove, IL,: Inter-Varsity Press, 1977), 46-47
5. The Washington Post, Dec. 24, 1991. From a sermon by Norm Lawson, Central United Protestant Church, Richland, Washington.
6. The Washington Post
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JUL491LORD, WHAT A BOUNTIFUL GOD!
An old prospector came into a saloon in frontier California and ordered a glass of milk with a shot of whiskey in it. While the bartender was fixing his drink, the old prospector wandered over to speak to some of his friends.
Before he came back, a man came in wearing a black threadbare coat. He walked up to the bartender and timidly said, "Sir, I'm a poor traveling Methodist circuit rider. I've just made it across the desert. I'm bone dry. Could you let me have that foamy glass of milk I see you've just poured?"
"Take the milk," said the bartender with a twinkle in his eye. "We're glad to have you in our town. Take that glass of milk and drink it up."
The preacher drank that milk real slow savoring every drop. Then he looked up towards the ceiling and with a smile on his face he declared, "Lord, what a cow!"
I hope nobody's offended by that little piece of humor, but this morning we want to talk for a few moments about the bounteous goodness of God. And we want to say, "Lord, what a bounteous God!"
Our text tells the story of the feeding of the five thousand. It is a marvelous story of God's provision for human need. The focus is on bread, but the lesson is about all of life.
You know the story well. A multitude of people had come out to hear Jesus teach. Many had probably come hoping for a miracle of healing. Some came, doubtless, out of curiosity. "How shall we buy bread for all these people?" Jesus asked his disciples. For he knew that though we cannot live by bread alone, we cannot live without bread either. The disciples were able to scrounge up only 200 denarii--not enough to even begin to feed this mob.
Andrew came to the rescue. "There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish," he said, "but what are they among so many?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down."
WE EXPERIENCE THE BOUNTY OF GOD, FIRST OF ALL, WHEN WE TAKE TIME TO SIT DOWN.
Mother Theresa has said that the biggest problem facing the world today is not people dying in the streets of Calcutta. She says the biggest problem is what she calls "spiritual deprivation." She describes this as a feeling of emptiness associated with feeling separate from God and from all our brothers and sisters on planet Earth. There are people within the shadow of this church who know about that kind of emptiness.
Nels Ferre once wrote of a Christian missionary convert from Hawaii. This convert spoke on prayer to a seminary audience here on the mainland. "Before the missionaries came to Hawaii," she said, "my people used to sit outside their temples for a long time meditating and preparing themselves before entering. Then they would virtually creep to the altar to offer their petition and afterward would again sit a long time outside, this time to `breathe life' into their prayers. The Christians, when they came, just went up, uttered a few sentences, said Amen, and were done. For that reason my people called them haolis, `without breath,' or those who failed to breathe life into their prayers."
It may be that the reason many of us live such barren lives is that we rarely set aside time any more to breathe life into our prayers. We are so busy doing, so caught up in the rat race, so pressed for time, that we have cut out that which gives us the strength, the courage and the vitality we need to strive successfully.
You may know the famous story of Jean Henri Fabre, the French naturalist, and his processional caterpillars. He encountered some of these interesting creatures one day while walking in the woods. They were marching in a long unbroken line front to back, front to back. What fun it would be, Fabre thought, to make a complete ring with these worms and let them march in a circle.
So, Fabre captured enough caterpillars to encircle the rim of a flowerpot. He linked them nose to posterior and started them walking in the closed circle. For days they turned like a perpetual merry-go-round. Although food was near at hand and accessible, the caterpillars starved to death on an endless march to nowhere.
That seems to be the story of many people today. They are on a march that leads to nowhere. We need to stop for a moment, and sit down in the presence of Jesus.
THEN WE NEED TO RECEIVE WHAT CHRIST HAS TO OFFER US, JUST AS THE MULTITUDE RECEIVED THE LOAVES AND FISH.
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan went to visit a member of his church. He was saddened to learn that she was to be evicted from her house because she couldn't pay the rent. That was on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday Campbell Morgan told his congregation that he wanted enough money from them to pay the woman's rent. They gave it to him. First thing Monday morning he went to the woman's house with the money. He could hardly wait to tell her the good news. He hammered on the door, but there was no answer. What a disappointment! He knocked again, but still no answer. He went away feeling dejected.
Some time later he discovered that the woman had been at home all the time. She had been afraid to answer the door, for she thought it was the landlord who had come for the rent. All the time she cowered in fear, it was her minister bringing her the money she needed. (1)
When we shut God out of our lives, we, too, shut out the very One who can meet our deepest needs. For you see, His greatest wish is to provide. His very nature is to give. He is love. Love is always giving. If we are not receiving from Him, the problem may be on our end, for He is a giving God.
Sometimes we are simply blind to His wondrous bounty. We are like the tragic residents of one of America's first villages. During the winter of 1610, the population of Jamestown went from about 500 people to about 60. While disease and Indians took some, most of the settlers simply starved. There were plentiful supplies of fish, oysters, frogs, fowl, and deer; but these settlers from the city were not accustomed to obtaining food from the land. Hence, they starved! (2)
We sometimes act the same way. God comes to us continually in the person of the Holy Spirit to guide us. As a loving Father He awaits the opportunity to meet our needs, but we are not accustomed to receiving from His loving hand. Nor does it occur to us to pray. So we wander blindly from problem to problem, a sort of picture of those early settlers who starved in a land of plenty.
"Make the people sit down," Jesus commanded his disciples. Then he took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed these loaves and these fish to all who were seated, as much as they wanted. So also do we receive God's blessings when we sit and wait and when we receive what he has to offer.
Notice, finally, how John concludes this story: "So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, `This is indeed the prophet who is come into the world!'"
WHEN WE SIT AND WAIT UPON THE LORD AND WHEN WE RECEIVE WHAT HE HAS TO OFFER US, WE DISCOVER THAT GOD IS INDEED A BOUNTEOUS PROVIDER FOR HIS CHILDREN'S NEEDS.
One of the lessons Christ tried to teach us was the extravagance of God. He is the God who provides in abundance--who sets before us a table in the midst of our enemies--who fills our cup to overflowing. Who when wine is needed for the wedding feast tells us to fill the water pots, and fill them to the brim--who when the Prodigal returns home kills the fatted calf and throws a big party. Most of the worries that beset us would disappear in a moment if we could lean back and rest ourselves on the extravagance of God's provisions for His children's needs. All of nature testifies to God's bounty.
Consider our universe. Did you know that if you could bore a hole in the sun and somehow put in 1.2 million earths, you would still have space left over for 4.3 million moons. The sun is 865,000 miles in diameter and 93 million miles away from earth. Pluto, still in our solar system but in the opposite direction, is 2.7 billion miles away. And there are billions of such solar systems. What are they there for? As best we can determine, they have no other purpose than our enjoyment and perhaps to serve as a challenge to humanity to keep moving ever outward and upward.
Galileo once put it this way, "The sun which has all those planets revolving about it and depending on it for their orderly functions can ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the world to do." And it doesn't! God has brought into being a magnificent creation with the sole purpose of providing for His children's needs. Isn't that mind-boggling? But why such extravagance, why such bounty, why such seeming waste?
Generations ago John Spencer offered an interesting theory on this matter. He noted that the Jewish rabbis taught that when Joseph, in the times of plenty, had gathered much corn in Egypt, he threw the chaff into the river Nile. His purpose was to convey by means of the flowing river to cities and nations more remote the good news of the abundance laid up, not for themselves alone, but for others also.
"So God," writes Spencer, "in his abundant goodness, to make us know what glory there is in heaven, hath thrown some husks to us here in this world, that so, tasting the sweetness thereof, we might aspire to his bounty that is above, and draw out this happy conclusion to the great comfort of our precious souls--that if a little earthly glory do so much amaze us, what will the heavenly do? If there be such glory in God's footstool, what is there in his throne? If he give us so much in the land of our pilgrimage, what will he not give us in our own country? If He bestoweth so much on his enemies, what will he not give to his friends?" Perhaps this is the reason for God's extravagance. He wants to prepare us for the greater extravagance of Heaven.
It reminds me of two fellows who died recently and were walking the golden streets of God's celestial realm. There was more beauty and more splendor and more joy there than they had ever dreamed imaginable.
One of them turned to the other and said, "Isn't this wonderful?"
The other replied, "Yes, and to think we could have gotten here ten years sooner if we hadn't eaten all that oat bran."
God has so many blessings to pour out on all of us. He asks us to sit down and receive what He has to give. What He has to give, He gives with extravagance. As St. Paul once wrote, "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him." (2 Corinthians 2:9)
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1. R. Maurice Boyd, A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD, (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Westminster Press, 1985)
2. Cullen, Joseph P. "James' Towne," AMERICAN HISTORY ILLUSTRATED: (October, 1972), p. 35.
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AUG191WHAT ARE YOU WORKING FOR?
One of the questions men often ask men when they first meet is, "What do you do?" A smart aleck might answer by saying, "Oh, I snore," or "I mow my lawn once a week. Then I take a shower. Then I usually watch television an hour or so...." By then the other party is likely to intercede asking, "I mean, what do you do for a living?"
This usually is a good ice breaker. Most of us are comfortable talking about our work. If things are going well it gives us a chance to boast a bit, tastefully, of course. If things are going poorly, perhaps we'll get some sympathy.
There is a far more important question, however, than what do you do? It is a question drawn from the teachings of Jesus. The question is: For what are you working? There is a second question like unto it--for whom are you working?
I assume you are working at something. Most of us are. Very few of us escape. I did hear about one fellow who was an expert at what we might term "work avoidance."
His wife woke up one morning with a severe case of laryngitis. For days she couldn't even whisper. To help her communicate, her husband set up a clever arrangement. She would tap on the table when she wanted to say something. One tap meant "Yes," two taps meant "No," three taps meant, "What would you like for supper?" and so on. "Ninety-three taps," he said, "meant `Take out the garbage.'"
Some of us may resemble that rascal. We've found our own system for getting out of work. Most of us, however, have some kind of meaningful activity.
Years ago, a woman was committed to a mental hospital. About three months after she was admitted, she made an unusual request. She asked for a larger room, a large canvas, and lots of paint. Every request was fulfilled.
Six months later, she invited the administrative and nursing staff into her room for the unveiling of her "life's work." After everyone was seated, she dramatically pulled back the sheet that covered her masterpiece. What a shock! The canvas was all white--not one paint stroke on it. Everyone politely sat there "admiring" the painting until finally the chief administrator spoke up. He asked, "What is it? Tell us about your painting."
The woman responded enthusiastically, "It's the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea."
Someone asked, "Where is the sea?"
She quickly replied, "It has parted. Half is on one side of the canvas and half is on the other side."
"Well, where are the children of Israel?" someone else asked.
The woman said, "Oh, they have already gone through."
"So where is the Egyptian Army?" another asked.
"Oh, they haven't arrived yet," she said. (1)
Some people live their lives like that--never making a mark on their canvas. It's hard to respect someone who is not even trying to make life count somehow.
A few of you may remember a ball player whose nickname was Old Scrap Iron! His real name was Clint Courtney. He was a journeyman catcher for the Baltimore Orioles many years ago. Courtney was never a star. You won't find his name in the record books.
What Courtney lacked in power, speed, and innate talent, he made up for with courage. The runner trying to beat the throw home could bare his spikes if he wanted. Or he could simply try to bowl Courtney over. The result would be the same. Old Scrap Iron held his ground. He may be cut and bruised. A foul tip might miss his protective padding and sting his elbow, but he hung in there. (2) He was a fighter, a worker, a blue-collar player, as we would say today. He would not quit. Who does not admire someone like that?
I assume that you are working at something. It need not be for profit. Many retired people are giving their time to others. Some plant gardens. Some find ways to help around the church or in the community. Few of us who are able-bodied would be content to sit inside watching television all the time. Most of us are working at something. The question is, For what are we working?
Some people don't even know. Money, power, recognition? Some of us would answer simply, survival. Columnist Herb Caen wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle sometime back: "Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle; when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."
Some of us can identify with that. We've got bills to pay, college to prepare for, old age to think about. Some of us are overwhelmed with the cost of just getting by. But there are other reasons for working that have nothing to do with survival.
FOR EXAMPLE, THERE IS THE PRIDE OF EXCELLING, GIVING OUR BEST.
Coach Gene Stallings tells of an incident when he was defensive backfield coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Two All-Pro players, Charlie Waters and Cliff Harris, were sitting in front of their lockers after playing a tough game against the Washington Redskins. They were still in their uniforms, and their heads were bowed in exhaustion. Waters turned to Harris and asked, "By the way, Cliff, what was the final score?" (3) For these two professionals, what mattered was not winning or losing as much as the game itself.
Knute Rockne was a motivator. At the halftime of one game, his Notre Dame Fighting Irish were playing poorly. The team walked dejectedly to the locker room where they braced themselves. They knew Rockne would tear into them. They sat and sat, but Rockne did not appear. Finally as the team began to head toward the door for the beginning of the second half, Rockne came walking in. He looked around and started to walk back out again. Then he said simply, "Oh, sorry, I was looking for the Notre Dame football team." Notre Dame won the game.
Pride in what you do and how you do it are powerful motivators. There are people in this world who work just for the pride of doing what they can do as well as they are able. They are often given increases in salary, but it is not money that motivates them. They receive appreciation and recognition, but again, that is not what pushes their button. Something internal pushes them to give their best. The world would be a much poorer world without such folks. I know our church would be poorer without them. Every conscientious teacher, choir member, and church officer is made of such stuff. They give their best regardless of what they are engaged in.
THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE MOTIVATED BY SIMPLY BEING PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER THAN THEMSELVES.
Thus we come to that second question, For whom are you working?
There was an article in the newspapers recently about a man named Elmer Booze. Booze is a professional page-turner for concert pianists. His job is to follow the score that the performer is playing and turn pages at the proper times. He is supposed to be as unobtrusive as possible, working quickly and without obscuring the performer's vision. Booze does this well enough to be referred to as "the ghost."
A good page-turner should help make the performer successful. The page-turner doesn't share the bows; nor is he listed in the program. He has done his job if he has enabled the performer to perform uninterrupted and if he himself has remained unnoticed. Elmer Booze is content to make his anonymous contribution to something bigger than himself.
Again, that is the motivation that drives many people in our church. Think how many tasks, from teaching Sunday School to preparing the flowers on the altar, are done by people who ask no recognition for themselves. They are content knowing that this is God's work and they are thankful to be part of it.
There are all kinds of motivations for working. Still, they all fall short of Jesus' standards. "Do not labor for the food which perishes," he says, "but for the food which endures for eternal life...." There are people who are sweating blood, working their hearts out, driving themselves to early graves, who will one day have nothing to show for their labors. They will leave this world just as empty handed as they came into it. There will be not a single mark on their canvas, because everything they work for is perishable. They have missed the whole point of living. And what is the whole point?
Perhaps we can learn the whole point from a nineteen-year-old who works very, very hard. His name is Michael Chang. Two years ago at age seventeen he stunned the tennis world by becoming the youngest player ever to win the French Open. His endorsements alone exceed one million dollars annually. He looks forward to career winnings that will run into many millions more. But Chang is driven by something much bigger than fame or fortune. Michael Chang is driven by his faith in and commitment to Jesus Christ. (4)
For what are you working? For whom are you working? We are all working for something--for survival, for glory, for the pride of a job done well, to be part of something bigger than ourselves. The reason we are working is really of little consequence from an eternal perspective. We may work ourselves to death and have nothing to show for it--even if we are doing good works.
THERE IS ONLY ONE THING IN THIS WORLD OF REAL CONSEQUENCE: ARE WE CONNECTED TO CHRIST? HAVE WE RECEIVED HIS FREE GIFT OF ETERNAL LIFE?
Charlotte Elliott was forty-five years old, and an invalid. She was living at Westfield Lodge, in Brighton, England. Her brother, the Rev. H.V. Elliott was arranging a bazaar to raise money to aid in the building of a college where the daughters of poor clergy might be educated at low expense. Miss Elliott, being ill and unable to assist in the final preparations, lay on her bed, feeling sorry for herself. She felt so useless.
On the following day, when all of the other members of the family were at the opening of the bazaar, a feeling of peace and contentment suddenly came over her. She realized that God had accepted her just as she was. She didn't have to DO anything...except be open to God's unconditional love for her. In gratitude, she wrote a hymn, "Just as I Am Without One Plea...." (5)
There are some of you who are working very hard. That's good. Make your life count for something. But have you received that which hard work cannot obtain? Have you received the gift of God's grace through Jesus Christ? "Do not labor for the food which perishes," he says, "but for the food which endures for eternal life...."
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1. Tim Timmons and Stephen Arterburn, HOOKED ON LIFE, (Nashville: Oliver Nelson, 1985).
2. Diane Cole, "Old Scrap Iron" Psychology Today, May, 1988.
3. Penny F. Nichols, Van Nuys, California, Leadership.
4. Fritz Ridenour, LIFE AT WARP SPEED, (Ventura, Ca.: Regal Books, 1990.
5. Robert Guy McCutchan, OUR HYMNODY, (New York: Abingdon Press, 1937), p. 246.
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AUG291EAT AND LIVE
(Holy Communion)
This morning we want to talk about food. That's a relevant subject for most of us.
The two biggest sellers in any bookstore, according to Andy Rooney, are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it.
Orson Welles once said, "My doctor has advised me to give up those intimate little dinners for four, unless, of course, there are three other people eating with me."
Champion archer Rick McKinney confesses that he regularly eats chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. He refers to "the basic four food groups" as a Big Mac, fries, a shake and a lemon tart.
A California scientist has computed that the average human being eats 16 times his or her own weight in an average year, while a horse eats only eight times its weight. This all seems to prove that if you want to lose weight, you should eat like a horse. (1)
A young fellow watched as his dad finished a heavy meal and then loosened his belt.
"Look, Mom," he said. "Pop's just moved his decimal point over two places."
My favorite piece of diet humor comes from a member of Weight Watchers. At one of their meetings, near Easter, she said proudly that this was the first year her children realized that chocolate Easter bunnies came with ears.
Our subject for the morning is food. That's a subject most of us know too much about. A recent survey found that 41% of men and 55% of women consider themselves overweight.
People who mourn over their excess weight have been known to go to ridiculous lengths to shed pounds. For example, THE GREAT AMERICAN WAISTLINE tells of a mail-order outfit that advertised Slim-Skins, plastic pants with a hose sticking out. Simply connect the hose to a vacuum cleaner, start the vacuum, and (according to claims) it will remove two-and-one-half inches from your waist, four inches from your stomach, two inches from your hips, and three inches from each thigh in just twenty-five minutes.
Or try Obesity Ointment, which allegedly removes fat when you apply it to your body. If that doesn't work, there is the Diet Conscience--a recording that lambasts you every time you open the refrigerator with such statements as, "Are you eating again? Shame on you! No wonder you look the way you do! Ha! Ha! Ha! You'll be sorry, fatty!" (2)
In one way or another, many of us are obsessed with food--earthly food. Think what a difference it would make in our lives if we were equally obssessed with heavenly food--the food that Christ gives us.
Jesus said to those who followed him, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger; and he who believes in me shall never thirst." And again he said, "I am the living bread which comes down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."
What shall we say to this bold claim that the Savior makes? How is he bread for our lives? Could it have something to do with the sacrament of the Lord's Supper?
A poll was taken of the national membership of one Presbyterian group. They were asked questions about their devotional practices. One of the questions asked was this: "When do you feel most a sense of being at worship with God?" More than 80 percent of those surveyed said they most felt a sense of worship during the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Many other Christians would concur. There is something about taking the bread and the cup that lifts many of us to a higher plane. What is it?
PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE THE BREAD AND THE CUP TOUCH US WHERE WE REALLY LIVE.
George Herbert once described an imaginary dialogue between himself and Christ.
Christ is welcoming him at the door of his own house. Naturally he hangs back, aware of how sinful he is. Christ is quick to notice his reluctance and gently asks him if there is something he wants. Herbert replies that only one thing is lacking and that is a guest who is worthy to be welcomed here.
"But you shall be the guest," Christ says.
"Me, with all my sins of unkindness and ingratitude? I can't even look you in the face," Herbert replies.
At this Christ takes his hand with a smile and asks, "And was it not I who made those eyes and gave you them?"
"Of course, Lord," he says, "but I have misused them. I'm ashamed to be here. Let me go elsewhere."
"But don't you know," Christ says, "who it is who bore the guilt?"
This so convinces him that he yields. "I will come in then, but I insist on serving at tables." Even that is not permitted. This is how the argument ends:
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste My meat."
So, says George Herbert, I did sit and eat. (3)
There is a part of each of us that knows we are unworthy to take the bread and the cup. Perhaps it is that very knowledge that stirs us. We may not understand what Jesus really meant when he said that we could not share in his kingdom if his body were not broken and his blood shed, but we know that whatever it means we are not worthy of it. And thus when we take the bread and the cup, we sense grace: God's unmerited love for sinners. We are conscious in a way that we may not be any other time, that we are those sinners and God really does love us. That touches us deep down where we really live.
PERHAPS, ALSO, IT IS BECAUSE WHEN WE TAKE THE BREAD AND THE CUP WE DO IT AS HIS FAMILY. HE ALLOWS US TO REACH OUT AND TOUCH ONE ANOTHER.
A few years back there was a powerful film called Places In The Heart. Set in the South during the depression, it told about a father of three small children who was accidentally shot in a tragic accident. The young black man who shot the father during a drunken spree was lynched for it.
The widow of the young father is left virtually penniless. She is about to lose her home through foreclosure. Valiantly she struggles to keep her home and the crop of cotton on which everything depended. A drifter, an unemployed black man named Moses, helps her harvest her cotton and salvage her farm.
Eventually, though, Moses is run out of town by the Klan. This was instigated by the gin operator who didn't appreciate the shrewd business advice Moses had given the widow. There are other characters in the movie including a couple who are tragically torn apart by infidelity.
In the closing moments of the film the congregation is gathered for worship. The pastor has just finished reading 1 Corinthians 13. The elements of the Holy Communion are being passed through the congregation. As the people take the bread and the cup, suddenly you become aware of the fact that this is no ordinary congregation. The camera zooms in. There is the widow and there is Moses, who has been run out of town. The widow's dead husband is there, as well as the young man who shot him. Even the banker who is about to foreclose on the mortgage and the cotton gin operator are there. Members of the Klan are there. Also, black tenant farmers. The couple whose marriage had been torn are there, reconciled. It is as if to say, here is the one place where there is healing. Here is the one place where there is room for all. Here is the one place where there is food. Here is the one place where there is life! Here is where we are a family. Here is where we can reach out and touch one another. Maybe that is why the Lord's Supper moves us like it does.
PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE IN THE ACT OF THE LORD'S SUPPER WE ARE ABLE TO REACH OUT AND TOUCH CHRIST.
There is something about the Lord's Supper that is akin to the touching of his garments.
William Barclay tells us that when Admiral Nelson was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, a party of his sailors carried his body high into the cathedral. His coffin was draped with a magnificent Union Jack. Later they carried his body to the graveside. One who saw the scene writes, "With reverence and with efficiency they lowered the body of the world's greatest admiral into its tomb. Then as though answering to a sharp order from the quarter deck, they all seized the Union Jack with which the coffin had been covered and tore it to fragments, and each took his souvenir of the illustrious dead." All their lives that little bit of coloured cloth would speak to them of the admiral they had loved. "I've got a piece of him," they said, "and I'll never forget him." In a sense, when we leave here this morning, each of us will take with us a part of Christ. We have reached out and touched him.
Of course, theologically we realize that it is not we who are able to reach out to him. Rather, it is he who reaches down to us. As F. Dale Bruner reminds us, the "Eu" in Eucharist, as the Lord's Supper is often called, means "good," and "charis" is the root of our English word "caress." The Lord's Supper is the "good caress." In this sacrament God comes to us spiritually and physically and touches us and says, "I love you." No wonder the sacred meal moves us like it does. Truly he is the bread of life. He alone touches and satisfies our deepest needs. He alone allows us to reach out and touch one another. And at no other time do we come closer to touching him than when we eat of the bread and drink from the cup.
In a world obsessed with food, he gives us the bread that is eternal. Take and eat and live!
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2. Doug Peterson, I NEVER PROMISED YOU A HOT TUB, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Daybreak Books, 1987)
AUG391BE CAREFUL HOW YOU WALK
A prosperous executive whose work required frequent travel decided to buy his own plane. He took flying lessons and was soon quite comfortable with his more convenient transportation. After a few years he decided to purchase a pontoon plane so he could fly back and forth from his beautiful summer home on the lake.
On his first flight in his new plane, he forgetfully started to head for the airport landing strip, just as he had always done. Luckily, his wife was with him and when she saw what he was doing, she chirped, "Pull up, George, pull up! You can't land on a runway. You have pontoons! You don't have wheels!"
Looking flushed and humbled, the businessman quickly hit the throttle and veered off toward the lake. Landing safely in the still blue water, he shook his head ruefully and said, "I don't know where my mind was. I just wasn't thinking. That's one of the dumbest things I've ever done."
Then he opened the door and stepped out into the lake.
My mind operates like that sometimes, does yours? Some people have it so altogether. They never commit a faux pas. They always know the right thing to do. Then there are the rest of us. Those of us who step absentmindedly into the lake.
Actually if you are a bit absent-minded, pat yourself on the back. It simply means that you are preoccupied with great thoughts--at least I trust they are great.
Albert Einstein was so absentminded that he once used a $1,500 Rockefeller Foundation check as a bookmark--and then lost the book. Just tell people you are another Einstein if they wonder why you have misplaced your glasses for the thousandth time.
Actually, being absent-minded is not all that bad--as long as you watch where you walk.
St. Paul wasn't addressing his remarks only to the absent-minded, though, when he writes in our text for the day, "Look carefully how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil...."
What does St. Paul mean when he says, "Be careful how you walk...?" Fortunately, he tells us.
FIRST OF ALL, HE SAYS TO USE OUR HEADS.
He writes, "Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery...." In other words, use your head! Don't do anything stupid! Don't foul up your life! I sound like a nagging parent, don't I? I hope I sound like a loving parent.
You see, there are all kinds of foolishness. Some kinds can be avoided, some can't.
A colonel frowned impatiently as he watched a young lieutenant drill his platoon. Sweat was beginning to bead on the young lieutenant's forehead. His voice showed the strain of his superior's scrutiny. He attempted to direct his men through an intricate maneuver. Eventually, the poor lieutenant had his troops marching eight abreast toward the edge of a cliff. Completely unnerved, he froze--unable to speak.
Finally the colonel barked, "Good heavens, man, at least tell them good-bye."
That is an example, perhaps, of unavoidable foolishness. Any of us might panic in such a situation. There is another kind of foolishness, though, a kind that is avoidable. It consists of those little, stupid things in our lives--little things that so often bring us down. Those things that we know need changing but somehow we never get around to. And all the time those "little" things are keeping us from being all God created us to be.
We ought to learn a lesson from the Goodyear blimp Columbia. The giant 192-foot-long helium blimp was recently punctured by a small radio-controlled model airplane. The damage was too slight to cause the blimp to crash, but the hole in the blimp was big enough to cause a constant loss of helium. Hence, the blimp couldn't function the way it was supposed to and could only limp along until the hole was repaired.
Some of us are limping along. We have holes in our lives that we try to ignore. We need to face our problems and get them fixed. (1)
It is interesting to watch the slowly changing attitude in our society toward alcohol. This new attitude isn't coming from the churches or the schools, but from society itself. Even Budweiser is telling us to "know when to say when." Society is starting to wake up.
Don Imus, once one of New York City's leading radio personalities, spoke at Queens College (NY) sometime back at the school's Drug Awareness Day. Imus was simple and pointed. "I'm an alcoholic and drug addict," he said.
Imus had lost his job in New York in 1977 "for drinking Scotch and doing coke." Imus related how his father drank away a fortune before dying in 1954 "with $13 in the bank." "I swore that I'd never be like my father," Imus said. But he was wrong. He became, by his own admission, a "violent, awful drunk...." He was spending $3,000-$4,000 a week on cocaine. Imus said that while he was lying in a stupor in his office, a friend suggested that he might have a drinking problem and should attend Alcohol Anonymous. He did and was able to get his life back together. (2)
Not everybody who abuses alcohol or drugs is that fortunate. Some don't get smart until it's too late. "Do not be foolish...." Paul says. Be careful how you walk. Use your head.
THEN HE SAYS THAT WE ARE TO OPEN OUR HEARTS.
We read, "...be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and making melody to the Lord with all your heart...."
That sounds like a description of the early church at its best. Gathering in each other's homes, rejoicing in their faith, sharing all things in common--the early church experienced God's Spirit in power and in fellowship. That is when God is most real in our lives--when we open our hearts to His Spirit and to each other.
John R. Westerhoff tells a story about the three little pigs. Years had passed since the crisis with the wolf. The family of the three little pigs had settled down comfortably in their brick house in the suburbs. Gradually boredom set in. Something was missing in their lives. The three pigs decided that what they were missing had to do with love. They determined to go out and seek love's meaning.
The first little pig went to the university library and read all she could on the subject of love. When she had finished she had learned a great deal about love, but her life was still empty.
The second little pig read in the newspaper that a famous pig was coming to town to deliver a series of sermons on the subject of love. The second little pig attended all the sermons and was filled with enthusiasm and emotions. His emotional high lasted four days, and then his life became pretty much as empty as it had been before.
The third little pig invited two other pig families over to their house one evening and all the little pigs began to share their life stories, continuing until late in the night. They found this so interesting that they decided to meet together regularly to share experiences and life together. In time they came to care about each other very deeply. One evening, after the other families had left, the third little pig said to her siblings "Now I know what love is, for I have experienced it." (3)
That's the kind of love that happened in the New Testament church. That is the kind of love St. Paul yearns for each of us to experience. When the church really is the church, we are visiting in one another's homes. We are breaking bread together. We are worshipping and studying and singing with one accord. Life cannot beat us down when we are joined like that. Sin cannot mar our lives. Despair cannot take up residence in the open heart. Be careful how you walk. Use your head. Have an open heart--open to God and open to one another.
FINALLY, ST. PAUL SAYS WE ARE TO LIFT OUR HANDS IN THANKSGIVING,
"...always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father." That's a great secret of life--to develop the gratitude attitude.
John Killinger tells about one of his parishioners--a man by the name of Ralph Kelly. Killinger describes him as a tall, handsome, white-headed man--a Purdue graduate, an engineer, a businessman, a counselor, a friend bubbling with energy all the time. Killinger's description of Ralph is a winning one. Do you know the first thing Ralph does when he drops a lead pencil? Pick it up? No. The first thing he does is look up and say, "Thank you. Sir!"
Then he tries to figure out what he's thankful for. In the case of the lead pencil, he says, "The first thing I think of is that I'm thankful for gravity. If it hadn't been for gravity, my pencil wouldn't have fallen down there where I could get it. It would have gone off up there somewhere, and I would never see it again." Then he says, "Thank you for graphite. If it weren't for graphite, we wouldn't have lead pencils." Then he's thankful for trees from which we get the wood that makes pencils. And he's thankful for the engineering that makes pencils. And he's thankful for chemical engineering that made possible the eraser that crowns the lead pencils and takes care of the mistakes he makes.
Ralph does that for everything. If he has a flat tire he pulls off to the side of the road and after he says, "Thank you, Sir," he thinks of the things he's thankful for. Maybe it's because he found a wide place in the road where he had his flat tire and he could pull off without any threat on the highway. Maybe he's thankful that he got only one flat tire and not two or three. Maybe he's thankful that when he gets out of the car he gives his back a rest and can get a little exercise.
Whatever it is, he looks up and he says, "Thank you, Sir!" And then he thinks about all the things he's thankful for. He says, "If you can think of one or two, you're going to feel better. If you can think of four or five, you're doing well." (4)
Now, some of you are going to dismiss Ralph Kelly as an unrealistic Pollyanna. But what is the alternative when things foul up as they sometimes do? Raise your blood pressure a few degrees as you curse your luck? Shout and scream and give everyone around you ulcers? Bottle it all up until you have a cardiac arrest? Wouldn't it be better to do as Ralph Kelly does and, as St. Paul suggests in I Thessalonians 5:18: "...give thanks in all things"? You and I would live longer if we did. And we would enjoy life more.
Be careful how you walk. Good advice. Use your head. Open your heart. Lift up your hands in thanksgiving and praise. In other words, walk like Christ. Follow his example. Watch how he walks. Walk the same way.
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1. "Blimp Deflated by Toy, Might Miss A.L. Series," The Knoxville News-Sentinel (Oct. 2, 1990) Section C, p. 3.
2. NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 10/25/84, p. 3.
3. A PILGRIM PEOPLE, Harper & Row, 1984. Cited in TARBELL'S TEACHER'S GUIDE--91, William P. Barker, editor, (Elgin, Ill: David C. Cook Co., 1990).
FAITH FOR THE LONG TERM
Hector Berlioz was conducting a concert at the Theatre Italien. The rules of the music hall permitted musicians to stop work at midnight. As the magic hour approached, a considerable part of the program remained to be performed. Berlioz turned to the orchestra just after midnight. He was prepared to conduct his own Symphonie Fantastique. Unfortunately, he found his orchestra was down to twelve musicians. Explaining to the audience that his work couldn't be performed by so small a group, the embarrassed composer had to stop the concert.
Something like that was beginning to happen among those who followed Jesus. As he began to fill in the details of the kingdom life, fewer were willing to follow him. One by one they drifted away.
It reminds me of the reaction of a late night television personality several years ago when the great missionary Albert Schweitzer was receiving international attention. He told his television audience, "I'd like to be an Albert Schweitzer, if I could commute!"
There were some who were following Jesus who discovered to their amazement they could not commute! The number of followers was dwindling rather dramatically. Finally, Jesus turned to the twelve and asked, "Do you also wish to go away?"
Who could have answered except Simon Peter? "Lord, to whom shall we go?" he asked. "You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God."
Good old Simon Peter. Impetuous. Excitable. Sometimes speaking before his mind was fully in gear. But Simon Peter was in for the long term. His commitment was no momentary, fleeting experience good only when things were going his way.
Certainly, he got discouraged. After the crucifixion, he was ready to go back to his fishing nets. We can understand that. After all, he felt terribly let down. Still, his commitment to Christ never failed.
As a pastor, I can appreciate that. I watch boys and girls go through our Sunday School and never become part of our youth program. I see members of our youth program who graduate from high school and disappear until they have children of their own. I watch people bring their children to Sunday School and church, but then drift away as the children become grown. I have seen people who have spent twenty or thirty years in the church, who have a disagreement with another member or with the pastor, and are never seen again. What a treasure, what a blessing, what an encouragement are those of you who are in for the long term. You have a very special kind of faith--a faith that will be rewarded. Indeed, it is really the only kind of faith that counts.
FOR YOU SEE, LIFE IS A MARATHON. Life is hard.
The obstacles are many, and just because we are Christians does not mean that the way will be made smooth for us. We get cancer, have heart attacks, strokes, diabetes. We watch family members suffer. We lose our jobs. We grieve the loss of loved ones. At such times we need faith for the long term.
Toward the end of World War I, a battalion, the 308th, was ordered to push an attack against the German army. The troops were battle-weary, low on supplies, and understrength from high casualties. As they advanced under orders, however, they hit an undefended hole and broke through the German lines. When the Germans closed the gap, the battalion found themselves surrounded inside German territory.
To make matters worse, they fell under what the military dubs, "friendly fire." The first two attacks by the Germans on the pinned-down American battalion failed. American support artillery, however, having been given the wrong grid coordinates, now threatened to finish the battalion. The only method of getting a message back to the artillery unit that they were shelling the wrong target was by carrier pigeon, and the pigeon handler lost one of his two birds. A desperate message was attached to the last bird, and the bird flew up into a tree and sat. Nothing seemed able to move the bird, so finally one soldier braved enemy fire to climb the tree and shoo her away. As the bird took off, all the German riflemen fired at her. The pigeon lost a leg, lost an eye, and survived a smashed breast--but delivered the message to stop the shelling. (1)
The apparent hopelessness of that WW I battalion's position is not terribly different from the "impossible" circumstances that most of us encounter at one time or another. While our Father promises to care for us and not abandon us, He has never promised to remove us from trials. Indeed, God sometimes delivers us from a situation only when the circumstances of the situation seem to us to be beyond hope. We are down to one pigeon who won't fly...but, God knows and He never forgets us. Life is a marathon.
To know this is a great advantage in life. Take actor Paul Newman, for example. Most of us would consider Newman to be a gifted man! He has enjoyed a superb career as an actor, and when he took up auto racing as a hobby, he proved to be extremely capable at that. Some people are just born with a lot of ability. Right? Not according to Newman.
When he talks about his successes, he describes early failures and lots of hard work. He says of himself, "I don't have a gift for anything. I've only had a gift of pursuit." That is a gift I would recommend to us all: the gift of pursuit.
One of the worst things that can happen to many of us is to have too many successes early in life. We think all of life will be that way. But it will not. Life is hard. It is a marathon.
AND THE GREAT SECRET IN LIFE IS NOT HOW WE BEGIN, BUT HOW WE FINISH.
In the 1990 Tour de Trump, an eleven-day bike race, a little-known Soviet amateur held the lead for seven days. He took the lead on day three and did not relinquish it to any of the more experienced professional riders until the next-to-last day. At one point, he had a 12-minute advantage over the next closest rider.
However, this young rider found himself over half-an-hour behind by the end of the day on which he lost the lead. Likewise, he finished the race far down in the pack. (2)
A few things in life are like a sprint, but most things are more like a marathon. The issue, then, is not how you start but how you finish!
Many of us are good starters. We have talent, we have enthusiasm, we start off with a burst of well-doing. But sustaining that beginning--that is the problem. That's true in our commitment to Christ, to our marriage partner, in our work and in a host of other endeavors. How are we at finishing?
Theatrical producer Arthur Hopkins used to receive dozens of manuscripts for plays. Before he would read any script, he always asked, "How is your second act?" He realized that many new playwrights had a wonderful first act, but allowed the drama to fade and the plot to drift in the later parts of the play. There is always a second act, though, and it must be just as impressive as the first.
How is your second act? That is the test of any commitment in life. When the enthusiasm fades, when the passion cools, when the numbers drop off, can you maintain your intensity? That is the mark of a champion.
Olympic champion Jesse Owens once put it like this: "There is something that can happen to every athlete, every human being- -it's the instinct to slack off, to give in to the pain, to give less than your best...the instinct to hope to win through luck or your opponents not doing their best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit, where victory is always to be found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us is the difference between winning and losing, and we face that battle every day of our lives." Life is a marathon. Finishing is what it is all about.
FINISHING IS WHAT FAITH IS ALL ABOUT.
That is the critical thing to see. Faith becomes real when we are down to that one- eyed, one-legged pigeon. Let's use an analogy from the legal profession.
There were once twelve men sitting on a jury to try a case. Eleven of these men were active farmers. The twelfth was a retired farmer. The eleven working farmers were for a verdict of guilty. The retired farmer was for a verdict of not guilty. It was necessary that the verdict be unanimous.
The eleven jurors worked diligently trying to convince their retired colleague to switch to a guilty verdict. They were concerned about getting in their hay before a storm that had been forecast for later in the day. The retired juror, however, just sat looking out of the window at the dark rain clouds as they slowly approached. As precious time dragged on the eleven active farmers showed increasing signs of nervousness. Finally, at the first clap of thunder, they panicked and all changed their votes to not guilty. (3)
Faith is hanging in there when the day looks dark and the options are limited, because you know that somehow out there is coming the victory of God. You may not experience it for yourself--at least not this side of the grave--but you know it is coming. Thus you place yourself in His hands and you say with Simon Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life...we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God."
Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch woman who spent months in prison and in the Ravensbrueck concentration camp for hiding Jews during the Second World War, had that kind of faith. Those awful days in prison were a strain on her faith. Once she was in solitary confinement. She prayed, "God, how much longer do I have to take this? If you're alive, if you really care, will you please show me a sign that you are alive and that you hear my prayers?"
That night Corrie laid down on her cot feeling totally abandoned and alone. She fell asleep crying and wondering why God wouldn't answer her prayers. The next morning when Corrie woke up a beam of light was shining down through a crack in the ceiling on a few blades of green grass. A miracle in the middle of that concrete cell!
"I knew without any doubt," Corrie told us, "that God was alive and that his light would shine again in my life in a beautiful and wonderful way, even though the possibility seemed impossible."
That morning Corrie's faith in God and her commitment to allow him to control her life were renewed. (4) Friends, that is faith. Life is a marathon. It's not how you start, but where you finish. Faith has to do with both having a great race and an even greater finish. The writer of the Revelation put God's promise to us about finishing the race like this: "Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." (Rev. 2:10) Faith for the long term. The only kind of faith that really counts.
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1. Maddox, Robert. "Ordeal of the `Lost Battalion,'" American History Illustrated, December 1975, pp. 22-29.)
2. Alexander Wolff. "Lesson from a Pro," Sports Illustrated (May 21, 1990), pp. 42-47.
3. Brian L. Harbour, LIVING EXPECTANTLY, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990).
4. Robert A. Schuller, GETTING THROUGH THE GOING-THROUGH STAGE, (New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1986).
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READ MY HEART AS WELL AS MY LIPS
A young coed being interviewed on television about her religious beliefs said, "Oh yes, I believe in God, but I'm not nuts about Him." According to the Gallup Poll that is a good description of how most Americans feel about God. Ninety-four percent of us believe in God. When it comes to translating that belief into action, however, most of us are clearly not nuts about Him.
We have something in common with the Pharisees. Jesus once summed up the Pharisees' chief problem like this: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."
For the Pharisees religion was primarily external. It was a badge of accomplishment, not a gift of grace. It was a means of dividing society into layers, not uniting it in love. It was a means of putting other people down, rather than a motivation for lifting them up. God on their lips but not in their hearts. Are there people today who have such a faith? Yes, there are.
First, there are the traditionalists. These are people who have substituted tradition for authentic faith. This was the sin of the Pharisees. They no longer needed God. They had a tradition, a law, a ceremony for every situation. As long as they could hold on to their traditions they felt secure, virtuous.
Years ago Harry Emerson Fosdick told about a church in Denmark where the worshippers bowed regularly before a certain spot on the wall. They had been doing that for three centuries- -bowing at that one spot in the sanctuary. Nobody could remember why. One day in renovating the church, they removed some of the whitewash on the walls. At the exact spot where the people bowed they found the image of the Madonna under the whitewash. People had become so accustomed to bowing before that image that even after it was covered up for three centuries, people still bowed.
Tradition is a powerful thing. The Pharisees had learned to substitute tradition, custom, habit for the presence of the living God. Traditionalism rears its head in many ways, in many times and in many places.
There was a bill introduced in one of our State Legislatures many years ago to buy an electric chair. One traditionalist was irate. He stood to the floor of the House and eloquently spoke against buying an electric chair. He said to that august body, "Hanging was good enough for my daddy and hanging's good enough for me!" Well, he may have been right.
Jaroslav Pelikan once said, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." There is a sense in which we can keep God in abeyance through the use of tradition. We can keep other people at a distance as well. And when that happens, when we get comfortable with our rituals and procedures and schemes of doing things, we're no longer open to God's moving and liberating spirit. God then remains on our lips, but not in our hearts. The traditionalists.
There is a group kin to the traditionalists that we might call Christian Secularists. This group is made up of that host of nominally committed people who fill the rolls of most churches. They bring their children to Sunday School. They use the church to marry and bury. They visit us at Christmas and at Easter. They are not atheists or agnostics. They, like that young coed, believe in God, but they're not nuts about him. They give to the church, but not so much that it really hurts--not so much that it causes any inconvenience to them or to their lifestyle. They want to be identified with the church when their obituary is printed, but they don't really want to buy into what the church is trying to do in the world. You know who I'm talking about.
Back in the 40's, right after the creation of the state of Israel, there was a Quaker meeting, the International Friends Group. There was a great need during that turbulent time to find a top-caliber person to be mayor of Jerusalem. They needed someone who was respected and who had a reputation as a peacemaker. They needed someone who could bring reconciliation and a sense of fairness to all the parties. Clarence Pickett, Executive Secretary of the American Friends Committee, was just such a man--well known, well thought of. Still the question was asked in that meeting, "Whom shall we send? Who will go for us? Who will face the dangers of acting as mayor of Jerusalem?" Finally, after those questions had been asked many times, one attendee rose to his feet and turned to that great body. He spoke in an impressive, booming voice, "Here am I," he said, "send Clarence."
Well, we have a lot of people on the rolls of the church who are ready to answer, "Here am I, send Clarence." Christian secularists, people who want to stick their toe in, but who will never be ready to plunge in all the way in Christian commitment. God on their lips but not in their hearts.
There's a third group we ought to acknowledge. We might call them the walking wounded--people within the fellowship of the church who have a deep hurt in their lives. Even though in their best moments they would go all the way with Christ, this hurt stands as a barrier. Perhaps deep within the recesses of their soul they blame God for some real tragedy they have experienced. Maybe somebody in the church, a pastor or a Sunday School teacher or some other member, disappointed them. But they've stuck it out, they're still here. Sometimes, though, they feel like they are just going through the paces. There is some hesitation brought on by their hurt.
In 1985 there was a celebration in New Orleans. New Orleans is a town known for celebrating, but this was a special kind of celebration. Sponsored by the city, it was a celebration at the municipal pool in New Orleans. The city's life guards and support personnel were commemorating the first summer in memory with no drownings in the pools of that city. Two hundred people showed up for that party; one hundred of them were certified life guards. They had a great time, but as the party broke up, and the four life guards on duty for the occasion cleared the water, they found a fully dressed body in the deep end of the pool. Jerome Moody, age 31, had drowned right in the midst of the celebration. They tried in vain to revive him. (1)
When I read that, I wondered to myself if it might be possible, right here in the body of Christ, right here with all the certified life guards, Sunday School teachers, officers of the church, choir members, pastors and all, could it be possible that there is someone who is drowning? Someone who is hurting so inside that there has come a barrier between them and God. The walking wounded.
Well, what do you do if you belong to one of those three groups? What do you do to get God into your heart? There are three things that are almost essential:
FIRST OF ALL, YOU NEED TO FACE THE NEED THAT THE WORLD HAS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE ON FIRE FOR CHRIST.
In Revelation the angel said, "I see by your works that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth." Why so harsh? It is because change in this world is only made by people who are on fire.
William Lloyd Garrison was the greatest abolitionist this country has ever known. He was a publisher of a newspaper called the Liberator, an anti-slavery publication. Garrison was an angry man, angry with indignation caused by the unbelievably inhumane treatment many of the slaves experienced. He hated slavery with everything that was in him. One day one of his best friends, Samuel May, tried to calm him down. He said to Garrison, "Oh, my friend, try to moderate your indignation and keep more cool. Why, you are all on fire." Garrison replied, "Brother May, I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice around me to melt." Well, the only way any of us can melt mountains of ice is to be on fire.
The only way Christ can use any of us is when we are driven by a great passion, when we feel or hear his voice within our heart showing us a great cause that needs to be championed. Nothing is accomplished in this world by people who have no passion. That's one reason we need God in our hearts as well as on our lips.
SECONDLY, WE NEED TO ADMIT THE FUTILITY OF LIVING HALF- HEARTEDLY.
Do you ever get bored? Some of you have remote control and cable for your television. I've noticed that there are a lot of people--I think particularly men--who sit in front of the television each night with their remotes and punch 25 to 30 channels an hour. Are you in this group? The discouraging thing is to hit all those channels and still not find anything worth watching. Aren't you bored? Don't you sometimes wish there was something more to life? Well, there is something more.
In 1974, the top college basketball player in the country was a young man by the name of Bill Walton. At six foot eleven, he dominated college basketball. He took his team, UCLA, to their third consecutive NCAA championship, and in his senior year went on to the NBA. Bill had some adjustments to make in the NBA, and he didn't make them very well. Then abruptly he left the game. He said his heart was no longer in his playing.
After some time went by, Bill Walton came back. This time his heart was in his game, and he played like it. He led the Portland Trailblazers to their first NBA championship. Then he moved on to the Boston Celtics. Now he's a television basketball announcer.
It makes all the difference in the world if your heart is in what your doing! A lot of us are trying to live our lives with our hearts in nothing or, we should say, with nothing in our hearts. We have Christ on our lips, but he's never made that journey further down. That's why we are bored. How do we move Christ from our lips to our hearts? One, by facing the world's great need for people on fire. Two, by confronting the futility, the boredom, the feeling of emptiness that half-hearted living brings.
FINALLY, WE DO IT BY SIMPLY RESPONDING TO CHRIST'S INVITATION.
For 30 years Mother Teresa has worked in the slums of Calcutta, India. She has worked among the most forsaken people on earth. You and I would recoil from most of the people that she touches every day. The dispossessed, the downtrodden, the diseased, the desperate. And yet, everybody who meets Mother Teresa remarks on her warm smile. How, after 30 years of working in conditions like that does she keep a warm smile on her face? Well, it's interesting. She says that at age 18 she left Yugoslavia to become a Christian servant. She said, "When I was leaving home, my mother told me something beautiful and very strange. She said, `You go put your hand in Jesus' hand and walk along with him.'" And that's been the secret of Mother Teresa's life ever since. (2)
Most of us here have good jobs. And we live in nice homes, and we have easy situations. But we don't have the warm smile on our faces that that little nun working in the most desperate situation imaginable has on her face. What's the difference? It may be that we've never put our hand in Jesus' hand. It may be that we have Him only on our lips.
The world desperately needs people who are on fire for Christ. Half-hearted living means emptiness and futility and despair. Why don't you make a new start and accept Christ's invitation? Put your hand in Jesus' hand and begin anew.
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2. Jon Tal Murphree, MADE TO BE MASTERED, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1984).
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A NEW WAY TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON
According to II Timothy 3:16, all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Paul might have added, "and for jimmying locks on jail cells." That's what happened in Dorchester County, Maryland according to a recent news story. Two inmates in the Dorchester county jail discovered that a stiff cover on a Bible left in their cell was just the tool they needed for prying back the defective lock on their jail cell door. That door led to the fire escape, and that fire escape led to freedom.
That's certainly a new use for the Bible! That's what we want to talk about this morning--the proper use of the Bible. Our text is James 1:22 -- "But be doers of the word, not hearers only." All of us know that verse, "But be doers of the word, not hearers only." The problem is that few of us are hearers anymore. We spend very little time, most of us, with this sacred book. And because we do not first hear the Word, our doing is anemic, half- hearted, inadequate.
My purpose this morning is to challenge you, if you are not already doing so, to set aside a time each day to hear what this book has to say. I believe that spending time each day with this book is as essential to our lives as having good food and proper exercise. Many of us are jogging or playing tennis or walking to improve our bodies. Some of us are taking night classes to improve our minds. But we are neglecting that most critical part of our lives, our spiritual life. Thus, I want to challenge you to begin a regimen of spending a short time, at least 15 minutes a day--a coffee break--delving into the word of life that you may become a hearer of the Word.
Before we get into why this is important, though, I want to clear up some misconceptions about what the Bible is and is not. The Bible is not a book of magic. If you start reading the Bible, all your problems won't mysteriously disappear. If you start carrying it in your car it won't protect you from having a wreck. If you carry it close to your heart it won't necessarily stop a stray bullet. There's nothing magical about the Bible. I make that point because there are those who would use the Bible like a fortune teller uses her tarot cards, or as a good luck charm, or for some other bizarre purpose.
There was once a great statesman who, when he was sick, would eat pages out of the Bible for a cure. Now these were pre-scientific days. Eating the pages didn't seem to harm him, but it's doubtful that they did him much good either. He had a stroke, and as he recovered from that stroke he tried to eat the entire book of Kings. He died before he finished.
The Bible is not a book of magic. I believe it was Woody Allen who said that a friend of his carried a bullet with him. One time it saved his life. It miraculously stopped a Bible that someone threw at him. The Bible is not a book of magic. Neither is it a book to be used to clobber people over the head.
The Bible is rarely a good instrument to pull into an argument. If you are determined, you can prove almost anything from the Bible--particularly if you lift things out of context.
Back in the days when Joe McCarthy was terrorizing people by accusing them of being Communists, one of his favorite ploys was to take things that people had said out of context. Sam Irvin, that wonderful old Senator from North Carolina, told a story as a way of exposing McCarthy's tactics.
He told of a fire and brimstone preacher in North Carolina who didn't think women should wear topknots. Now many of you are too young to know about topknots--those spiraling hairstyles that were very popular earlier in our century. This preacher didn't think women ought to wear topknots. There are always people who cannot separate style from morals or religion. This preacher scoured the scripture to back his bias and finally preached a sermon entitled, "Topknot, Come Down."
An angry woman in his congregation confronted him afterwards and said, "There is no place in the Bible that says I should not wear a topknot!" The preacher said, "It's right here in Matthew 24:17, `Let him which is on the house top not come down...." (1)
If you are determined to argue a point using the Bible, you can usually find some obscure text to support your position, but this is not the intended purpose for this sacred book.
Now that we have determined the improper uses for the Bible, let us examine it's real purposes. Why should we be hearers of the word? Why should each of us set up a regimen, a daily regimen, of spending some time taking in God's word?
FIRST OF ALL, THE BIBLE IS THE SOURCE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT IDEAS.
Even people who do not realize that their values have been affected are under its influence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was once visited in his home by a local farmer. The farmer saw a book by Plato in Emerson's library. He asked to borrow it. When he returned it, Emerson asked how he liked it. The farmer replied, "I liked it. This Plato has a lot of my ideas." The farmer had no understanding that one reason he had those ideas is that Plato has so influenced the thought of Western culture. In the same way, Shakespearean thought and language has enriched our culture. Many of the phrases we use in everyday life can be traced back to the immortal bard. Compared to the influence of the Bible, however, the influence of Shakespeare and Plato both pale drastically.
It's impossible to separate Western thought and civilization from this book. Thus, no person is truly educated unless he or she knows the Bible. That's why it's so sad that so many of us even in the church are Biblically illiterate. A pastor of a large suburban mainline Protestant church did a survey on his congregation's knowledge of the Scriptures. Here is what he found: a third could not identify Calvary as the place of the crucifixion; 43% did not know the significance of Gethsemane; 75% did not know the significance of Pentecost. He asked them, "How many people did Jesus baptize?" The answers varied from 0 to 5000. The number, of course, is 0. Only 58% in that mainline church could identify the four gospels. (2) How sad when you consider that the Bible is the source of the world's great ideas.
IN THE SECOND PLACE, THE BIBLE IS GOD'S TRUTH FOR OUR LIVES TODAY.
Soren Kirkegaard says that the proper attitude for reading the scriptures is to ask, "What is this saying about my life, now?" Does that mean that all parts of the scripture have equal relevance? No. There are some passages in the scripture that are primarily historical, some liturgical or ceremonial. Still, when you're reading about Abraham and his faith or David and his adultery or Saul and his envy or Jeremiah and his despair, ask, "What is this word from God saying about my life here and now?"
This is a good reason for reading the Bible in modern translations. King James' English, as beautiful as it is, can be a terrible barrier to understanding.
A little girl lost her front teeth and it caused her to talk with a lisp. One day her grandmother was reading to her from her King James version of the Bible. She read such words as `sayeth' and `hath' and `doth' and so on. After a while, the little girl exclaimed, "So God had his teeth out, too!" There's nothing like reading the word in a modern translation to put the teeth back into the Word. Sometimes that word can bring us great comfort.
Jacob DeShazer was a volunteer gunner on one of the planes that struck Japan in April, 1942. His plane dropped it's bombs, then ran into difficulty and crashed. Jacob Deshazer parachuted into Japanese-held country where he was held captive for 40 horrible months. He was brutalized, he was deprived, he was terrified in every possible way. However, as the war started turning against the Japanese, the prison camps became somewhat more humane. Some of the guards were more sympathetic. They started giving the prisoners vitamins and medical treatment, better food and books, including the Bible. DeShazer was one of those fortunate enough to have a Bible. As he read and reread and memorized, he experienced a profound change in his life. He found both his thinking and his behavior altered as the word became a part of him. He no longer hated his guards, even though some of them still brutalized him. His fear of torture fled. He experienced God's presence in his life. His Bible became a source of meaning and hope and comfort and truth. (3) This is the proper use of the Bible. It is the source of the world's great ideas. It is God's truth for our lives here and now.
FINALLY, READING THE BIBLE HELPS US LIFT OUR GAZE FROM OUR CIRCUMSTANCES TO CHRIST.
We all go through difficult times. This is when the Bible becomes our best friend.
Charles Stanley tells a grand story about a time in his ministry when he was really struggling--lots of opposition, lots of conflict of all sorts. In the midst of this turmoil, an elderly member of his church invited him to her apartment for lunch. Stanley hesitated. It was a busy time and he was reluctant to go. He didn't know if she was going to preach him a sermon or what. She could tell he was hesitant and said, "Son, you need to come." Finally, he agreed. He met her downstairs at the retirement community where she lived. They had lunch there, and then rode the elevator to her apartment. Entering the apartment she said, "Now son, I don't want you to sit down. I want to show you something." She took him to a place in her living room. There she had a picture of Daniel in the lion's den hanging up on the wall. She said, "Son, I just want you to look at this picture and tell me what you see." Stanley looked at the picture and saw that all the lions had their mouths closed and some of them were lying down there. Daniel was standing with his hands behind him looking up at this red light coming into the prison. Stanley told the older lady everything he knew to tell her. He told her all about Daniel and the lions and the bones. She asked, "Anything else, son?" He said, "No, ma'am." She put her arm around him and said, "Son, what I want you to see is, Daniel doesn't have his eyes on the lions, but on Christ."
Charles Stanley goes on to say that was the greatest message he could receive at that time in his life. Daniel wasn't looking at the lions, Daniel was looking at Christ. God's Word helps us do that. That's why each of us, if we're not doing it already, need to start a new regimen beginning today or first thing tomorrow morning, of spending a little time each day with a modern translation of the Word. It only takes about 15 minutes to read a couple of chapters a day. You'll be amazed at how much you'll learn. The Bible is the source of all the world's great ideas. It is God's truth for our lives here and now. It helps us lift our focus from our circumstances to Christ. James said, "But be doers of the word, not hearers only." I want to suggest to you to be hearers that you might be doers.
Two inmates broke out of a county jail in Maryland using a Bible. Well, that's a new use of the Bible to me. But I know there have been people who have escaped from prisons, prisons of ignorance, fear, and despair and grief because of this book. Won't you begin reading it today?
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1. SPEAKER'S TREASURY OF POLITICAL STORIES, ANECDOTES, AND HUMOR (Englewood Cliff, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1990).
2. Steve Allen, DUMBTH AND 81 WAYS TO MAKE AMERICA SMARTER, (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989).
WHAT MAKES YOU BLUSH?
An ad once appeared in the personals column of a newsletter. It read like this: "Married, professional man, 47, with problems in home, seeks dalliance with a married/unmarried, intelligent woman." The ad had been written by some researchers. They were curious about who would respond to such an ad. Much to their astonishment, they were deluged by responses.
For example, here's one: "I am a 34-year-old female, pretty, rubenesque, brown hair, dark blue eyes. I work as a nurse in large urban hospital. My friends consider me bright, honest, interesting, conservatively bohemian and sensual. I have the usual vices."
Here is another: "I am interested in the same things you are. I am 36, married. Discretion is very important to me. Please call only between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m."
Or this one: "Welcome to the club. I am 36, married, a professional in the advertising business. Home is not exactly a nest I look forward to at night. We might share a few things. Write me."
And this one, "I'm intelligent and married. I live in a deeply wooded area along the river where deer are an everyday occurrence. I could see you during the week, but never on weekends. I am tall, slim and decent looking. You could be seen with me without shame." (1) That's an interesting way to put it. "You could be seen with me without shame." Let's talk about that for a minute.
What is it that makes you blush? That's the question for the morning. The answer for many of us is, "Not very much anymore." We've seen it all. Nothing shocks us. Nothing seems to be hidden or forbidden or even looked down upon anymore.
When Elvis first appeared on television on the Ed Sullivan show, the cameras would only show him from the shoulders up. Compare that with MTV, where little is left to the imagination. When Clark Gable uttered a mild oath in Gone With the Wind, it was a nationwide sensation. Today obscenities spew forth from our televisions. Little children use words that would make sailors blush. When film star Ingrid Bergman abandoned her husband to live with Roberto Rossalini, her film career in this country plummeted. Today, such behavior would not cause a ripple. What is it that makes you blush?
Part of the problem is that we no longer have models of morality to inspire us. The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once summed up morals and ethics in the question "Who are your heros?" There aren't very many heros of morality around anymore. As Mark Twain said, "It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
"That's the media's fault," you say. "They take our heros apart. They show them, warts and all. We no longer have fantasies about the existence of nearly perfect people. If our fathers and mothers had known everything there was to know about their heroes, they would have been disillusioned, too. Well, yes and no.
Once there was a man by the name of Will Rogers. Rogers, at one time, was the most popular and the highest paid entertainer in this country, perhaps in all the world. He was Bob Hope and Garrison Keeler and Steve Martin all rolled into one. He was so popular that when George M. Cohen produced a Broadway version of Ah Wilderness, a part was written just for Rogers--to take advantage of his popularity. The play was a smashing success. Mysteriously, though, in about the 5th week, the play suddenly closed down. Some faint excuse was given that Rogers was too busy with his burgeoning film career and other responsibilities. Friends knew better. Rogers still had time for many other things that he wanted to do. Sometime later the truth came out about why Ah Wilderness closed that 5th week.
Will's longtime friend Eddie Canter explained what happened. He writes, "Will received a letter from a clergyman. Here is what the clergyman said: (Now remember this is a different generation.) The letter said, `Relying on you to give the public nothing that could bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of a Christian. I attended your performance with my 14-year-old daughter, but was deeply embarrassed when you did the scene in which the father lectures the son on the subject of his relations with an immoral woman. I took my daughter by the hand and we left the theater. I have not been able to look her in the eye since.'" (2)
Let me hasten to say that Rogers saw nothing wrong with the part he was playing in Ah Wilderness. He never would have done the play if he'd seen something objectionable about it. But it bothered him deeply that a family could not sit through a performance of that play without embarrassment. And so Will Rogers closed down his very successful play rather than cause offense.
Whether you agree with Rogers or not is not the point. The point is that he was a genuine American hero who kept his principles. And such things are possible today. I was glad to see that Amy Grant had the number one song on the Rock charts not too long ago, and I'm gratified to read about the strong faith that Whitney Houston is. I hope they're able to hold on to their principles. We need models of moral courage. Without such models, society will continue its journey downward into a moral quagmire.
Some tourists were visiting a West Virginia Coal Mine and were preparing to go down into the mine. One of the ladies was wearing a very dainty, pure white dress. The other people in the party said, "You're surely not going to wear that white dress down into the mine." So she asked the coal miner who was leading the excursion if it was alright for her to wear her white dress down there. His answer was, "There's nothing to keep you from wearing your white dress down into this mine. There is a considerable amount to keep it from being white when you come back up." In a society without moral heroes, it's very, very difficult to maintain your moral bearings.
Certainly we live in a time in great moral confusion. You've probably read about that new book, THE DAY AMERICA TOLD THE TRUTH-- WHAT PEOPLE BELIEVE ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT REALLY MATTERS. The authors did a survey in which they asked people about their real views on life. They discovered that in this time of moral uncertainty, people are fashioning their own moral codes. For example, according to this survey only 13 percent of people today believe in all Ten Commandments. Nine out of ten people in this country lie regularly. One-third of all married Americans have been unfaithful to their spouses. One-fifth of American children have lost their virginity by the age of thirteen. Seven percent of Americans would kill a stranger, if enough money were offered--seven percent! What are we to say about such a land?
Steven Brown says a friend of his saw a bumper sticker on a car that said, "If it feels good, do it." He said he started to ram the car with his car. If the driver dared ask why he did it, he'd answer, "It felt good. I did it." What are we to say about such a society?
There was an article in the newspaper recently about a stock broker, a very affluent stockbroker may I add, who was arrested in New York City for putting slugs in parking meters rather than coins. Perhaps this was his pitiful little rebellion against the straight life. Maybe it was a statement of arrogance. Maybe it was the conviction that he was above the law, that he had gotten so used to making his own rules that even when it didn't matter, he cheated. What are we to say or do about such a society?
A group of mothers in Kenosha, Wisconsin wrote an alternative health curriculum for their school stressing biblical morals. The plan calls marriage a real commitment. It urges youngsters to prepare to forgive daily and always to speak proudly and lovingly of their mate in public when they are married. The school board voted the curriculum down. What are we to say about such a society in which there are no longer any fixed and accepted rules? One thing we can say is that such a society will experience great heartache.
John Killinger once used the example of Sarah Orne Jewett's novel, THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS. In that novel, a woman notices a number of painted wooden stakes around the property of a retired sea captain, Elijah Tilley. She asks the captain why those wooden stakes are driven in the ground. Tilley tells her that when he first bought the farm and plowed the ground, every once in a while his plow would snag on a large rock underneath the surface of the ground. These snags not only slowed his progress, but dulled his plow. So he put up stakes to show where the underground rocks were located, so he could avoid them. Killinger says that's what the Ten Commandments are all about. God has said these are the trouble spots in life. Avoid these and you won't snag your plow. Young people, if you wonder why your parents put so many restrictions on you sometimes, remember that they are trying to help you avoid some snags, some trouble spots, some heartache-bringers. In some cases they don't want to see you make the same tragic mistakes they have made or someone they love has made.
What is it that makes you blush? Let's return to that original question. Let me ask you a very pointed question. Would it make you blush if people found out you were a Christian? The people you work with, the people you party with, the people you go to school with. Would it embarrass you if people found out you were a follower of Jesus? For you see, our text for the day is the last verse of our scripture lesson. "For whoever is ashamed of me and my works in this adulterous generation, of him will the Son also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." Are you ashamed to be associated with Jesus?
There are some people with their names on church rolls who would find it easier to utter a string of obscenities than to share with a co-worker their faith in Jesus Christ. Does that sound unbelievable? No, some of you know I'm telling the truth. Some of us, when it comes to sharing our faith are like the St. Lawrence waterway in the wintertime, we're frozen at the mouth. What is it that makes you blush? Some of us in this perverted time find it impossible to blush at anything anymore except our faith. How about you?
Walter Harrelson once put it like this, referring to the commandment that Israel was not to make any graven images. He said, "Israel is to make no image of Yahweh, but Israel is to be an image of Yahweh in the world. When the people of Israel are faithful to the God of the Covenant, then God has the right kind of representative in the world of humankind." (3) You and I are not to make images of God, we're to be images of God! We are to have in us the same mind which was in Christ Jesus. And we are to live out the mind of Christ in all that we do. In such a time as this, that influence will be felt.
There is an old Finnish proverb that even a small star shines in the darkness. Well, morally and spiritually we are living in a dark time. We need to let our little lights shine. What is it that makes you blush? I hope it's sin that makes you blush. I hope it's transgressing God's law that makes you blush. I hope that when you come to your faith in Jesus Christ it doesn't make you blush. I hope it makes you glow.
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1. Joel A. Freeman, LIVING WITH YOUR CONSCIENCE, (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishing, 1989)
2. Bryan B. Sterling & Frances N. Sterling, WILL ROGERS' WORLD, (New York, M. Evans and Co., 1989)
3. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980).
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SAVE THE CHILDREN
This morning we want to celebrate children. What would life be without them?
The parents of one rowdy little fellow were trying to decide what to give him for his birthday. Dad suggested a bike.
"Do you think that perhaps that will improve his behavior?" Mom asked hopefully.
"I doubt it," Dad said realistically. "But at least it will spread it over a wider area." Children can be a pain, but they are also a pleasure. They look at life in such a different way.
Expecting her third child, one mother tells how her two children were suggesting names for the baby.
"Well, if it's a boy," said the oldest child, "can we name him John?"
"Maybe," said the mother.
"Well, if it's a girl," she went on, "can we name her Mary?"
"Maybe."
Finally, the youngest child, anxious to prove her intelligence, piped up, "Well, if it is a dog, Mom, can we name it Lassie?" (1)
A grandmother took her grandson to St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. She showed him various parts of that magnificent structure. Finally, they arrived at the altar. "Under here," she said, "is where all the cardinals are buried."
He looked in amazement and asked, "You mean the whole team?"
Thirty-five years ago a movie was made, "The Night of the Hunter." It's about two children fleeing their murderous stepfather, a self-ordained preacher who has "Love" tattooed on one of his fingers and "Hate" tattooed on another. The children unwittingly have with them $10,000 hidden in the little girl's doll.
Down a river the brother and sister float in a skiff. They are safer under the sky than under the roof that was supposed to shelter them. Eventually they arrive at the home of an old woman who has taken in other orphans of the storm. She describes herself as a tree with many branches. In the end, she defeats the preacher. Her gun is the immediate reason; her goodness is the ultimate one.
"My soul is humble when I see the way little ones accept their lot," the old woman says as all the orphans of the storm gather round her Christmas tree. "Lord save little children," she says. "The winds blow and the rains are cold, yet they abide." (2)
Lord, save the children. That's a prayer we could pray today.
IT'S A DANGEROUS WORLD OUT THERE FOR CHILDREN.
It is estimated that 2.4 million children are physically abused every year. They are kicked, punched, beaten, stabbed, and at times, even shot. One estimate suggests that in Boston alone there are 40,000 kids who have been sexually assaulted before they reach their sixteenth birthdays. Lord, save the children. (3)
UNESCO estimates that there are about 40 million street kids around the world. Forty million. That's about the combined population of California and New York. These kids are working at such jobs as selling papers or shining shoes to escape the poverty and hunger. They live in doorways and under bridges and even in junk cars.
Then there are those displaced by war and famine. How our hearts ache for the children of Bangladesh, and Ethiopia and the Kurdish children in Iraq. It's a dangerous world out there for children.
Of course, not all hurts are physical. Every year, 2 million kids in this country discover that their parents are getting divorced. And that hurts as well. It's a dangerous world out there for children. That's a hard truth that we must confront.
FOR, AFTER OUR COMMITMENT TO CHRIST, OUR NUMBER ONE RESPONSIBILITY IS TO OUR CHILDREN.
This is a spiritual principle we need to understand. Jesus raised children to an exalted level of importance when he said, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me." Our number one responsibility is to our children! That responsibility even supersedes our responsibility to our parents.
In the movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" there is a great exchange between Dr. John Wade Prentice (played by Sidney Poitier) and Dr. Prentice's father. The father is trying to convince his son to see things his way and resorts to reminding his son what the son owes him. Mr. Prentice points out that he carried a mailbag 75,000 miles and mowed yards in the dark to earn the money to support him. He reminds his son that his wife did without many necessities too so that the money could go to get her son an education.
Dr. Prentice replies, "You tell me...what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing; if you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you were supposed to do--because you brought me into this world and from that day, you owed me everything you could ever do for me--like I will owe my son if I ever have another."
We may not like his tone of voice, but essentially Dr. Prentice is correct. The apostle Paul put it like this, "For children are not responsible to save up for their parents, but parents for their children."
Robert Raines tells a beautiful story about a young man named David who left home for the first time. From the age of seven he had lived with his uncle and aunt, who sold fruit at a peddler's stand. They had loved and cared for him. He stood on the train platform getting ready to leave. He grabbed the rough hands of his peddler-uncle and said, "How can I ever begin to repay you for what you've done for me!"
His uncle spoke: "David, there's a saying, `The love of parents goes to their children, but the love of these children goes to their children.'"
"But," David protested: "That's not so. I'll always be trying to...."
And then the aunt interrupted, "David, what your Uncle Asher means is that a parent's love isn't to be paid back; it can only be passed on." (4) Our first responsibility is to our children. This does not mean that we do not have responsibility for our parents. We do. But our children come first.
A mother comes to her pastor with a familiar problem. "Dad needs someone to look after him," she says. "He has become very difficult to deal with. If I bring him into our home, the effect on my children and upon my marriage could be devastating. What should I do?" The pastor's answer was this: Your first responsibility is to your children, then your spouse, then to your parents. Whenever we forget that rule, there are problems. Our first responsibility is for our children!
Well, WHAT ARE OUR RESPONSIBILITIES TO OUR CHILDREN?
They are two-fold. First of all, it is to provide them with a safe world. That's basic, isn't it? They deserve a safe, secure world. Unfortunately, we are not doing so well with this responsibility.
Suppose, for example, the so-called Green House Effect is real? We know the rain forests are disappearing at an annual rate equal to the size of Pennsylvania. The loss of the rain forests results in an increase of carbon dioxide. This supposedly is causing average temperatures to rise. The four hottest years in recorded history have occurred since 1979. Will the polar ice caps begin melting before long and the oceans begin rising? Will there be extensive droughts as the experts are saying? Each year the world's deserts grow by as much as 16,000 square miles. We don't know what the future holds, but we are talking about things that could occur in the lifetimes of our children. We better be serious about finding answers.
Richard Johnson tells of an event that occurred in his wife's home village in the South of France. She remembers when several motorists were killed after a bridge collapsed near her village. A man had been dredging and selling sand from the riverbed. He had removed too much sand near the pillars holding up the bridge. This was thought to be a contributing factor in the bridge's collapse. Among those killed was a motorcyclist. He was the sand dredger's own son! (5)
Is this a parable of the fate of our children? Will we so despoil the planet with our greed that they will be unintended victims? I don't have the answers, but it is an issue we must address. There is a Kenyan proverb that goes like this: "Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children." Lord, save the children.
A safe and secure world. Do we think that our children will be spared the problems of the growing crime rate or the despair of the inner cities? Do we think that the continuing threat of political unrest throughout the world will not affect them? Think how many Americans were affected by the Gulf War. Do we really believe that every trouble spot will be as easily dealt with as Iraq? What about our deteriorating schools? There is a short-sightedness on the part of many people today, a stinginess, even a mean-spiritedness that says, as long as I get mine, who cares about the future? But what about the children? We owe to them a safe and secure world.
We also owe to them a safe and secure home. They need to know that Mom and Dad are committed to one another and to them. They need to know that someone will always be there for them. They need to know that they are recognized and special. If that means that we delay or even discard some of our own dreams, if that means we make some extra sacrifices, if that means we sometimes grin and bear a difficult situation, so be it! Their welfare comes first!
We can't keep them from making tragic mistakes, and we can't keep them from making wrong decisions. All we can do is give them the proper environment. The rest is up to them.
Someone once compared it to what often happens at a small town airport as small planes set out on their journey at night. As the plane heads its nose down the runway, an attendant turns the switch and a pencil of light is thrown along the path of the plane. The plane makes its way along that thread of light until it rises gracefully from the ground. The attendant then switches off this beam of light. He has done all he can do--he has helped the pilot off to a good start. And this is about all that parents can do for their youth--get them off to a good start, and trust to a kindly Providence to give them a safe landing at the end. (6)
Lord, save the children. It's a dangerous world out there. But we can make it safer. That is our first responsibility in life--to provide every child with a safe world and a secure home. "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me." Thank God for children. May we always do right by them.
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1. A CELEBRATION OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, (New York: Panteon Books, 1982).
2. NEW YORK TIMES, 12-22-88, p. C2, "Close to Home" by Mary Cantwell.
3. Fred Hartley, DARE TO BE DIFFERENT, (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1980).
4. Robert Raines, CREATIVE BROODING, (New York: MacMillan, 1966), pp. 102-103.
5. LIFE AS IT AIN'T YET: MEDITATIONS FOR LIVING NOW, (St Louis, Missouri: CBP Press, 1988).
6. Cited by Dr. Eugene Brice
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CHILDREN'S SERMONS
JAS91CS01Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A PERFECT "10"
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Object: A pair of crutches or some other prop to suggest a handicapping condition
Boys and girls:
In this morning's lesson from the Bible St. Paul talks about his "thorn in the flesh." It seems that St. Paul had some kind of problem that bothered him terribly--perhaps some physical handicap. He prayed to God about it, but his problem never left him. St. Paul believed that God could use everything in life to His glory, so St. Paul even bragged about his handicap, because he knew it was in God's hands.
Some of the most inspiring people who have ever lived have had some kind of handicapping condition. Do you know the name Franklin Roosevelt? Roosevelt was one of the greatest presidents our country has ever had. Yet Franklin Roosevelt was confined by a wheelchair because of a disease called polio. A young man named Napoleon was teased by his school mates because he came from a very poor family. That was his handicap. But he devoted himself entirely to his books and became one of history's greatest generals. Singer Ray Charles was not only poor, but also the only blind kid in his town. Yet he became one of our greatest musicians. You can see him on Pepsi commercials on television.
Sometimes bad things happen to us and we end up on crutches, or in a wheel chair, or needing special glasses, or maybe kids tease us about our size. All kinds of "thorns" come into our lives. But that doesn't have to be the end of the world, does it? With the help of God and good friends, we can still be a great person. And when we see somebody who has had something bad come into his or her life, then it is time for us to be the kind of friend that helps someone else fulfill their dreams.
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JAS91CS02Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
GOD'S PLAN FOR HIS WORLD
Scripture: Eph. 1:3-10
Object: A set of blueprints and a Bible
Boys and girls:
Most of you know what these are. These are the set of blueprints the contractor went by to build our church. These are very intricate and detailed. If you were to look very carefully, you would find the location of every closet, every drinking fountain, every air-conditioning duct, etc.
God also has a blueprint for what He would like our world to be like. It doesn't look like this blueprint, though. It looks more like a book. In fact, it's this book. What book? That's right, the Bible. The Bible tells us that God wants a world of righteousness, justice, peace and love. He wants everyone in this world to know that they are His children. He wants us to live in harmony together. So He has given us this blueprint to go by.
One of the reasons we read the Bible is to discover the kind of world God wants us to live in. Then we are to go out and make this that kind of world by spreading His love, His peace, and His joy. That's our job as Christians. It's the greatest job in the world--to tell everybody in the world that he or she belongs to the family of God.
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JAS91CS03Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS
Scripture: Eph. 2:13-22
Object: A tray with candy on it
Boys and girls:
I'm going to be very popular this morning. I want to give somebody a piece of candy. Any volunteers? I thought so. O.K., _____. In just a moment, I am going to let you have all the candy you can pick up. First of all, though, I need for you to make a fist. See just how tight and how angry you can make that fist. Now, you can have all the candy that you can pick up with your fist just as tight as it is now. What? That's a problem? Of course it is. It's very difficult to receive a gift when your fist is clenched, isn't it?
That is the problem God has with some people. They are so angry, and so bitter, and even so mean that He can't give them the joy of Christ. He can't give them faith and hope and love until they let go of they own hostile feelings.
It's also hard for other people to give us anything when we are like that, isn't it? Let's open our fists and open our hearts and let the love of Jesus flow through us to others. Then the world will be a better place for us and for others.
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JAS91CS04Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
LORD, WHAT A BOUNTEOUS GOD!
Scripture: John 6:1-15
Object: A grain of sand or a blade of grass
Boys and girls:
I didn't have to go very far this morning to bring the object for today's lesson. Just outside the front door. What do I have in my hand? That's right. A simple blade of grass. Suppose I were to ask you to count the blades of grass on the lawn of our church, would you look forward to doing that? How about if I asked you to count every blade in town? How about if I offered to take you to the beach? Suppose I made one condition--you have to count every grain of sand on the beach? How many billions to you think that would be?
Suppose I were to ask you to count the stars in the sky-- using a telescope? Why a telescope? Because there are billions of stars that the naked eye cannot see. You would be counting forever, wouln't you?
We live in a universe that is so big and so bountiful that we cannot even imagine it. It is so big that our fastest rockets could never in a single lifetime take us very far in it. It's one big wonderful playground and God has provided it for us. Billions and billions of stars to look at and dream about. And billions and billions of blades of grass to roll in and play games on. And with every star and with every blade of grass, God says, "I love you." Isn't it wonderful to be one of God's kids?
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JAS91CS05Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING FOR?
Scripture: John 6:24-35
Object: A broom
Boys and girls:
How many of you have ever had to work? What did you do? Help with the dishes? Pick up your room? Run the vaccuum? Do you enjoy working? Some people do; some people don't. What are some reasons we don't like to work? (Let the children suggest reasons.) It may interfere with something else we would rather do is probably the main reason we may not like to work.
What are some reasons we might enjoy working? (Let the children suggest reasons.) We help others when we work. The house is cleaner. It gives us exercize. Any others? One of the most wonderful things that can happen to people is to be able to do work they enjoy. Most of us have to work most of our lives so we ought to be doing something we enjoy.
One thing that can make our work enjoyable is to believe that our work really matters--to believe we are making the world a better place to live. Some of you may already be thinking about what you would like to do with your life. Some of you may dream of being doctors, or jet pilots, or movie stars. It's not too early to start asking the question, what can I do with my life to make the world a better place to live? Better yet, ask, What does God want me to do with my life? If you ask questions like that, you will have a happier life and the world will be a happier world.
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JAS91CS06Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
EAT AND LIVE
Scripture: John 6:35, 41-51
Object: A loaf of bread
Boys and girls:
Suppose I were to give you a couple of loaves of bread every day for the next fifty years. Do you think you could survive on that? You could for a while--as long you also had something to drink. You also would need air to breathe, of course. In order to really be healthy you would need some vitamin supplements. Bread doesn't have that much nutritional value. Of course, you would need sunshine or you would get very cold. And you would need friends or you would get very lonely. When Jesus said that we do not live by bread alone, he was right, wasn't he? We need lots of things to live.
And we need one more thing if we are going to have the kind of life the Bible talks about--Life abundant, life eternal. We need faith in Jesus. Even if we have everything else--food, water, air, sunshine, etc--if we miss out one that one thing, believing in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are the saddest of all people. He is our life, He is our joy, he is our hope. Everybody needs bread. Everybody also needs Jesus.
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JAS91CS07Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
BE CAREFUL HOW YOU WALK
Scripture: Ephesians 5:15-20
Object: A piece of string (about 12 feet long) laid on the floor
Boys and girls:
Let me stretch this piece of string out here on the floor. I could use this for lots of things. I could divide you up and have a tug of war. I could use the string and a piece of chalk to make a straight line on the floor, although I might get in trouble for that. What I would like for each of you to do is to begin at one end of the string and pretend you are on a high wire and walk on the string to the other end. Pretend you are an acrobat high in the top of the circus bigtop and walk down the wire.
That's the way. You do that very well. Now, that wasn't difficult, was it? But what if this string had been as high off the ground, say, as the top of our church. Would it have been that easy? It would have been a little different, wouldn't it? Even though it was the same string, it would have been different. Why? The floor wouldn't be there to keep us from falling, would it?
Some things in life are a little bit scary--like walking on a tightrope. Meeting new people is sometimes scary for some of us, going to school for the first time, having a broken bone. Family problems can sometimes be scary. At times like those, we are afraid we are going to fall. But there is Someone who watches over us. He can't protect us from every bad thing in the world that might happen to us, but he can give us the courage and confidence to forget about how high the tightrope is off the ground so we can walk more steadily. I'm glad God is always watching us and watching over us. That gives me the courage and the confidence to do the scary things in life I must do, too.
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JAS91CS08Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
IN FOR THE LONG TERM
Scripture: John 6:55-69
Object: A baton such as runners carry
Boys and girls:
Have any of you have been to a track meet? Have any of you ever run in a relay race? I couldn't find the kind of baton runners in a real relay race carry, so you will have to use your imagination and pretend this stick is a baton.
In a relay a runner begins running, carrying a baton, and he runs to a point in the race where one of his teammates is waiting and he hands the baton to his teammate and his teammate carries it to another teammate, etc. The first team to get the baton to the finish line wins the race. Each runner runs only part of the race, but the baton goes the entire distance. Suppose one of the runners on the relay team gets the baton and decides, "Hey, I don't feel like running my part of the race today!" What happens? The whole team loses, doesn't it?
I want you to imagine that the Gospel--the story of Jesus and his love for the world--is a baton. Two thousand years ago his followers started running. Before they died, they passed to the baton to others. Then those others passed it to others. For 2,000 years the baton has been passed on from one people to another, from one generation to another. Now we have the baton--the Good News of Jesus and his love. But what if we decide we don't feel like telling the story anymore. What happens? The whole world loses, doesn't it? Not only our generation, but every generation that will ever live on this earth.
We are running a very important race and each of us must do our part. We don't want to let Jesus down. We don't want to let the world down. We want to carry the Good News about Jesus and his love to every person in the world.
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JAS91CS09Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
READ MY HEART AS WELL AS MY LIPS
Scripture: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Object: Some cosmetics--especially a tube of lipstick
Boys and girls:
There is an old saying that you can't judge a book by its cover. What do you think that means? That's right. A book cover may not tell you what's really inside. We could say the same thing about people, couldn't we?
A person may really look great on the outside. They may have their lipstick just right. (Pretend you are using the cosmetics). How many of you girls wear lipstick? You're a little young, aren't you? How about you fellows? You don't wear lipstick either?
A person might have their lipstick on just right. Their eyeliner may be just so and they may have on beautiful earrings. (Male Pastor) What would you think if I came to church some Sunday with all those things on? I would look a little strange, wouldn't I?
A person can have all their make-up just right and have on beautiful clothes and accessories--and guess what? They can be rotten to the core on the inside, can't they? They can be mean to other people and stingy. They can use foul language and abuse their bodies and just be generally no good.
The Bible tells us Jesus doesn't worry about how we look on the outside. Jesus cares about how we are on the inside. Jesus doesn't care how religious we look on Sunday mornings. All He cares about is what He sees in our hearts.
Let's pray that when Jesus looks beyond what we are on the outside--when he looks into our hearts--he will see love for him and love for every person. That's what he values most--a heart full of love for God and for others.
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JAS91CS10Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
A NEW WAY TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON
Scripture: James 1:17-27
Object: A collar or some item associated with a dog, and a Bible
Boys and girls:
Did you know that dogs in the wild seldom, if ever, bark? Wolves, foxes and other wild relatives of our pet dogs howl, growl, snarl, yelp or whine--but they do not bark. Only dogs that have come into contact with humans bark. There are some people who have studied dogs' barks and they believe dogs are trying to imitate human speech when they bark.* Isn't that fascinating? When your dog barks, it is because he or she wants to talk with you. But dogs are not people. Try as hard as they might, they live in a different world.
Dogs live in a different world from us. And we live in a different world from God. God is so high above us, He is so much greater than we are--like we are greater than dogs--that we can't even imagine what He is like. But He, too, would like to talk with us. His problem is to make what He has to say simple enough for us to understand. So He revealed Himself through people just like you and me through the centuries. Then in order to get through even better He revealed Himself through His Son. And the things God said through these people and through His Son were written down in this book. A great Bible scholar once called this book, "God's baby talk." He meant that God has tried to bring His truth down to a level where we can understand. That is why reading the Bible is so important. This is where we find out what God's will is for our world.
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*J. Allen Varasdi, MYTH INFORMATION, New York: Ballantine Books, 1989
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JAS91CS11Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES YOU BLUSH?
Scripture: Mark 8:27-38
Object: Two noticeably different colors of socks and a baseball
Boys and girls:
What is it that makes you blush? Do any of you blush? Some people, when they get embarrassed, get bright red in the face.
Suppose I told you that you had on two socks that did not match. (Hold up socks.) Umm, I have a pair exactly like these at home. Would wearing socks that don't match embarrass you?
How about if you knock a ball through your neighbor's front window? Boy, that would be embarrassing, wouldn't it? Suppose you said something mean about your best friend and they found out about it? That would be embarrassing.
Very few people like to get embarrassed. That's why we try to wear matching socks and just the right kind of shirt and pants and shoes. The opinion of other people really matters to us. That's perfectly natural. But deep in our hearts we know that the only opinion that really matters is God's opinion of us, isn't it? If God approves of us, it doesn't really matter if other people aren't impressed. We are God's children. We certainly don't want to do anything as His children that would embarrass Him or ourselves. That's why the Bible talks about sin. Sin is anything that would embarrass God.
Let's try to avoid being embarrassed. Let's not only try to wear matching socks and try to watch out about our neighbor's window, but let's also always try to do what God wants us to do. That way we will never be embarrassed in His presence.
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JAS91CS12Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
SAVE THE CHILDREN
Scripture: Mark 9:30-37
Object: A picture of a missing child on a milk carton
Boys and girls:
One of the things that makes me very sad is to see a picture of a missing child. Anyone who loves children like I do hates to think of a child missing from a home. I can just imagine the pain and heartache that parents and grandparents and friends and other relatives are going through when a child is missing.
God feels that pain not only about children who are missing, but also about children who go to bed hungry each night, and those who are sick and those who don't have a warm, safe place to sleep at night. God also hurts for children who are very shy and those who feel like outsiders and those whom other children laugh at and are cruel to. You see, you can still be at home with your family and still be a very sad child, can't you?
Maybe you know someone in your neighborhood or at school like that. You may never be able to help find a missing child, but you could be kind to someone you know who feels left out and alone. You may never have much money to feed hungry children, but you could be a friend to someone who needs a friend. Even someone your age and size can do a wonderful work for God by finding someone who needs someone to care.
God cares about children. If you care too and you show the love of God to someone who is hungry for it, it's like finding a missing child. People can be lost on the inside, can't they, just as easily as they can be lost on the outside. Their picture may never be on a milk carton, but they are hurting just as much, and you and I can help.
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JAS91CS13Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
IF IT'S THE LORD'S WILL
Scripture: James 4:13-17
Object: An apple
Boys and girls:
Sometimes it is difficult for us to separate stories that are make believe from those that are real. There is one story in history that sounds like a legend--like a story that someone made up--but it is real. There really was a man called Johnny Appleseed. His real name was John Chapman. He was born in Massachusetts in 1774. He spent forty years of his life traveling the frontier of our country spreading apple seeds. He was responsible for many of the apple orchards throughout our land.
He spread these apple seeds because he believed that was God's will for His life. In fact, there is a famous Johnny Appleseed song or prayer. Do you know the words to it? (Pastor, if you know the tune, lead the children in singing. If not, say it.) "The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need--the sun and the rain and the apple seed--the Lord is good to me."
Johnny Appleseed must have been a happy man because He believed He was doing what the Lord wanted Him to do. Wouldn't that be a great feeling--to do with your life what the God who created this beautiful world wanted you to do? Let's pray that each of us will be fortunate enough to find out God's will for our lives so that we can be thankful like Johnny Appleseed.
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