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Real-Life Proverbs: See Yourself from Outside Yourself
Colossians 3:5-17
July 10, 2011
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.
But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
I don’t know if you were at all like me, but growing up I loved mythology. I loved Greek mythology, Norse mythology, and any other mythology I could find. And of the mythologies out there, I especially loved Greek mythology. I’m not sure what it was about the Greeks. They had a special ability to create stories explaining the human condition. They were Shakespeare before Shakespeare. While most of their myths did give explanations for natural phenomenon, I don’t think that’s what their main purpose was. Greek myths often were more interested in explaining human nature rather than nature and creation in general. That’s what I loved about Greek myths. In fact, many of our current psychological terms originated in Greek mythology.
Among my favorite Greek myths is the story of Narcissus and Echo. Do you know that myth? It’s wonderful in terms of helping us understand the human tendency toward selfishness and self-obsession. There once was a water nymph named Echo. Nymphs were minor deities who inhabited trees, lakes, streams, and all of nature. Like all other nature nymphs, Echo was beautiful. And she was popular. Her one fault was that she loved to talk, gossip, and get in the last word.
One day, Zeus was out cavorting with all the other water nymphs when his wife, Hera (the head of all the goddesses), showed up looking for him. She knew that he was having dalliances with the nymphs, and she wanted to catch him in the act. Zeus asked Echo to distract Hera so he could get away. She complied. Afterwards, Hera was furious with Echo. So she cursed her, telling her that from that moment forward her tongue would only be able to imitate others. She would not be able to speak for herself.
From that time forth Echo was unable to form relationships with others. She retreated to the valleys and canyons, imitating the sounds that drifted her way. Over time, a young man started visiting her particular valley, and he was the most beautiful man ever created. His name was Narcissus. She fell in love with him and wondered how to get him to love her.
One day, she decided to give it her all. As Narcissus walked through the valley, Echo followed. Narcissus wheeled around and said, “Who’s there?” Echo echoed back, “there.” Narcissus said, “Show yourself and come to me.” Echo said, “Come to me.” Narcissus, growing more frustrated, yelled out, “Come and join me.” With that, Echo rushed out of the woods and embraced him, crying, “Join me.” Narcissus recoiled in revulsion, saying, “I can’t join you. Who are you? I have nothing to do with you.” And with that, he walked away. Echo was crushed. The other nymphs, who had been rejected also by Narcissus, prayed that Narcissus could feel the pain of his rejection. A goddess heard this prayer and put a curse on Narcissus that he would fall in love with the next face he saw, longing forever for that person, but being unable to receive love in return.
Walking through the woods he came across a magnificent pond. It was completely still. No animals drank from it, no leaves or branches spoiled its surface. Gazing down into the pool of water as he prepared for a drink, he glimpsed his own face and fell in love with his own reflection. He was mesmerized. He called out in longing for the face in the pool, and reached for it, but the ripples from his hand caused the figure to disappear. Narcissus was devastated. He waited, and as the waters calmed, the face returned. Narcissus tried again to reach out to his love, and the ripples caused the figure to disappear. He sat back, and in tears awaited his love’s return.
From that moment onward, Narcissus never left the pond. Day and night he sat by its side, staring at his own reflection. Eventually he wasted away and died of exposure and from his unrequited love for himself.
The myth of Narcissus is the basis of a psychological disorder called Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a condition in which people become obsessed with themselves and their own power. But those with the personality disorder aren’t the only ones affected by self-obsession. We live in a self-obsessed culture. We live in a narcissistic culture. And our collective narcissism makes it hard for us to also be Christians.
It doesn’t take much to prove my case. For example, look at what magazines are the most popular. People and Us magazines are more popular than Time or Newsweek. That’s different from 30 years ago when newsmagazines were among the most popular. These are magazines popular today because they’re narcissistic. And websites like People, TMZ, and others are also among the most popular. We’re obsessed with celebrities—that is to say we’re obsessed with the self-obsessed. And a relatively new phenomenon is celebrities who are celebrities for being celebrities—people like Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, and others. Consistently among the top television shows are those that celebrate narcissistic endeavors. I realize that “Survivor” isn’t necessarily a top show anymore, but it is a show that emphasizes who can get to the top, as does “The Apprentice,” “The Great Race,” “The Bachelorette,” and others. Also, there are many reality shows, such as “American Idol,” “The Voice,” “America’s Got Talent,” and others that are focused on finding that new celebrity that we can idolize. The only thing we like more than celebrating narcissists is seeing narcissists fall. Aren’t we fickle?
We love narcissists because they often are beautiful, charismatic, and gifted, and we want to be like that. The fact is that narcissists permeate every part of our culture, including among churches, and including clergy. Even among clergy, especially among televangelists, there is competition for who is the most popular, the most charismatic, oversees the biggest church, and so forth.
The real problem of narcissism is that the more self-absorbed we become, the harder it is so see ourselves as we really are. And a big part of the Christian life is seeing ourselves with humility, not as we puff ourselves up to be in our imaginations. Too many of us create a mythological self-image, seeing ourselves as we believe we are, and when we do so we live out of our false selves. When I use this term, I’m using a term that is traditional in a field of theology called “mystical theology.” The idea of the false self is that God created us with a “true self,” with an ability to become the person we most truly are, a person created in the image of God. Unfortunately, too many of us cultivate a false self, a person based on a desire for popularity, acceptance, influence, and power. We recognize easily those who deviate the most from their true selves. We call them “fake” people, recognizing that there is something about them that isn’t authentic. But all of us have a falseness in us to some extent. The Christian spiritual life is about letting go of that falseness so that we can become who we truly are. And narcissism leads us away from who we truly are, and into falseness.
One of the keys to growing spiritually in faith is to develop the ability to see ourselves from outside of ourselves; to see ourselves not only as others see us, but (as best we can) to see ourselves as God sees us. To really get out of our narcissistic ways requires us to look more objectively at ourselves from perspectives other than our own. This is not the same as looking at ourselves from others’ points of view so that they’ll accept us. When we pursue popularity, we are look at ourselves from outside of ourselves in order to cover over our fears and insecurities. That’s being false. Seeing ourselves from outside of ourselves in a spiritual, mature way means seeing the faults in us that others may see in us, but also recognizing the good and beauty others may see—and especially that God sees.
So much of Scripture is devoted toward nurturing our true selves. For example, when Jesus says that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, he is telling us to step outside of ourselves. Look at what we’re doing from the other person’s perspective and experience. Would we want them to do to us what we are doing to them?
Scripture’s teachings about sin are also a counter to narcissism. And there’s nothing that shows more how narcissistic we are in our modern culture than our aversion to acknowledging sin. Many people who have left the Christian faith have complained about the church’s emphatic belief that we do sin and that we need to be forgiven for our sin. Narcissists don’t want to hear about what’s wrong with them, only about what’s right. Many of the evangelical megachurches have tapped into our culture’s aversion to sin by getting rid of confession during worship. You’ll notice that in most contemporary worship services there is no confession. Why? Because Americans don’t like to think about sin. So they’ve gotten rid of the emphasis on sin in worship. Don’t want to bum people out. The irony is that many of these churches have strong theologies that emphasize how sin is everywhere, but they deemphasize sin in worship. They do so because they are trying to attract non-Christians, whom they know don’t want to think about sin. So publicly they put on a non-sin-emphasizing face, while being sin-emphasizing in private.
Our Scripture for today is also an example of the need to look at ourselves from outside of ourselves. It starts with an honest assessment of the way we often are by telling us to “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).” It then goes on to tell us to adopt ways of being that require us to be sensitive to how others perceive us: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.”
So let’s say you wanted to start looking at yourself more from outside of yourself. How would you go about it? It starts with just listening to yourself, and I don’t mean listening to your voice. I mean that we should pay attention to our inner monologues and what we tell ourselves deep within. For example, if we find ourselves consistently being critical of others, getting angry or frustrated with them, irritated and disgusted, it means we aren’t very self-aware. The reason is that we’re not very aware of our motivations.
This gets into psychology 101. For a long time psychologists have recognized that while our emotions emerge from our bodies and our biology, many of our emotions are responses to cognitive thoughts. The famous psychologist, Albert Ellis, developed a whole therapy based on the idea that emotions are responses to thoughts. He worked with clients to get them to make choices about their emotions, and about what emotions to act upon. To clients who would say to him, “My father made me mad,” or “My wife made me mad,” he would respond, “Nobody can make you mad. You choose to be angry in response to what they’ve done.” He points out that we have emotional choices. You’ve experienced this. For instance, have you noticed (if you’re married) that the behaviors your spouse does now that drive you nuts had much less impact on you when you were dating? Back then you chose to have a different emotion in response to that behavior. Now, you choose to be angry or irritated.
The Christian life is about becoming aware and honest about our motivations. Why do we get angry with others? Why do we choose to be unkind? To understand why, we have to look at ourselves from outside of ourselves, even as we are looking at the deepest part of ourselves.
To become self-aware also means to spend time reflecting on how others see us, and paying attention to others when we’re with them. When we are talking with others, do we pay attention to the clues they give us about how they’re experiencing us? If they lean back, look away, act disinterested, are we picking up on that, or do we keep on going with whatever we’ve been doing?
Finally, there’s also a spiritual part. Part of seeing ourselves from outside ourselves means trying to see ourselves as God sees us. To do this means more than just recognizing our sin and recognizing God’s love, both of which are crucially important. To see ourselves as God sees us means becoming humble. This takes us right back to Genesis. To be humble means to recognize that everything that’s special about us comes from God, not from us. The Genesis story tells us that God created us from dust, and then breathed God’s Spirit into us. Without that Spirit, we are no different from every animal, every plant, every rock, and dirt. We are a collection of carbon molecules constructed in an interesting way. It’s the breath of Spirit that makes us special, that gives us human insight and abilities. Being humble means recognizing our own earthiness, and God’s greatness as expressed in the gift of life we’ve all been given.
Ultimately a key to living a healthy life has to do with learning to look from outside of ourselves to discover who we really are. The question I’d like you to reflect on is simple: Do you have the guts to look?
Amen.
July 10, 2011
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.
But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
I don’t know if you were at all like me, but growing up I loved mythology. I loved Greek mythology, Norse mythology, and any other mythology I could find. And of the mythologies out there, I especially loved Greek mythology. I’m not sure what it was about the Greeks. They had a special ability to create stories explaining the human condition. They were Shakespeare before Shakespeare. While most of their myths did give explanations for natural phenomenon, I don’t think that’s what their main purpose was. Greek myths often were more interested in explaining human nature rather than nature and creation in general. That’s what I loved about Greek myths. In fact, many of our current psychological terms originated in Greek mythology.
Among my favorite Greek myths is the story of Narcissus and Echo. Do you know that myth? It’s wonderful in terms of helping us understand the human tendency toward selfishness and self-obsession. There once was a water nymph named Echo. Nymphs were minor deities who inhabited trees, lakes, streams, and all of nature. Like all other nature nymphs, Echo was beautiful. And she was popular. Her one fault was that she loved to talk, gossip, and get in the last word.
One day, Zeus was out cavorting with all the other water nymphs when his wife, Hera (the head of all the goddesses), showed up looking for him. She knew that he was having dalliances with the nymphs, and she wanted to catch him in the act. Zeus asked Echo to distract Hera so he could get away. She complied. Afterwards, Hera was furious with Echo. So she cursed her, telling her that from that moment forward her tongue would only be able to imitate others. She would not be able to speak for herself.
From that time forth Echo was unable to form relationships with others. She retreated to the valleys and canyons, imitating the sounds that drifted her way. Over time, a young man started visiting her particular valley, and he was the most beautiful man ever created. His name was Narcissus. She fell in love with him and wondered how to get him to love her.
One day, she decided to give it her all. As Narcissus walked through the valley, Echo followed. Narcissus wheeled around and said, “Who’s there?” Echo echoed back, “there.” Narcissus said, “Show yourself and come to me.” Echo said, “Come to me.” Narcissus, growing more frustrated, yelled out, “Come and join me.” With that, Echo rushed out of the woods and embraced him, crying, “Join me.” Narcissus recoiled in revulsion, saying, “I can’t join you. Who are you? I have nothing to do with you.” And with that, he walked away. Echo was crushed. The other nymphs, who had been rejected also by Narcissus, prayed that Narcissus could feel the pain of his rejection. A goddess heard this prayer and put a curse on Narcissus that he would fall in love with the next face he saw, longing forever for that person, but being unable to receive love in return.
Walking through the woods he came across a magnificent pond. It was completely still. No animals drank from it, no leaves or branches spoiled its surface. Gazing down into the pool of water as he prepared for a drink, he glimpsed his own face and fell in love with his own reflection. He was mesmerized. He called out in longing for the face in the pool, and reached for it, but the ripples from his hand caused the figure to disappear. Narcissus was devastated. He waited, and as the waters calmed, the face returned. Narcissus tried again to reach out to his love, and the ripples caused the figure to disappear. He sat back, and in tears awaited his love’s return.
From that moment onward, Narcissus never left the pond. Day and night he sat by its side, staring at his own reflection. Eventually he wasted away and died of exposure and from his unrequited love for himself.
The myth of Narcissus is the basis of a psychological disorder called Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a condition in which people become obsessed with themselves and their own power. But those with the personality disorder aren’t the only ones affected by self-obsession. We live in a self-obsessed culture. We live in a narcissistic culture. And our collective narcissism makes it hard for us to also be Christians.
It doesn’t take much to prove my case. For example, look at what magazines are the most popular. People and Us magazines are more popular than Time or Newsweek. That’s different from 30 years ago when newsmagazines were among the most popular. These are magazines popular today because they’re narcissistic. And websites like People, TMZ, and others are also among the most popular. We’re obsessed with celebrities—that is to say we’re obsessed with the self-obsessed. And a relatively new phenomenon is celebrities who are celebrities for being celebrities—people like Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, and others. Consistently among the top television shows are those that celebrate narcissistic endeavors. I realize that “Survivor” isn’t necessarily a top show anymore, but it is a show that emphasizes who can get to the top, as does “The Apprentice,” “The Great Race,” “The Bachelorette,” and others. Also, there are many reality shows, such as “American Idol,” “The Voice,” “America’s Got Talent,” and others that are focused on finding that new celebrity that we can idolize. The only thing we like more than celebrating narcissists is seeing narcissists fall. Aren’t we fickle?
We love narcissists because they often are beautiful, charismatic, and gifted, and we want to be like that. The fact is that narcissists permeate every part of our culture, including among churches, and including clergy. Even among clergy, especially among televangelists, there is competition for who is the most popular, the most charismatic, oversees the biggest church, and so forth.
The real problem of narcissism is that the more self-absorbed we become, the harder it is so see ourselves as we really are. And a big part of the Christian life is seeing ourselves with humility, not as we puff ourselves up to be in our imaginations. Too many of us create a mythological self-image, seeing ourselves as we believe we are, and when we do so we live out of our false selves. When I use this term, I’m using a term that is traditional in a field of theology called “mystical theology.” The idea of the false self is that God created us with a “true self,” with an ability to become the person we most truly are, a person created in the image of God. Unfortunately, too many of us cultivate a false self, a person based on a desire for popularity, acceptance, influence, and power. We recognize easily those who deviate the most from their true selves. We call them “fake” people, recognizing that there is something about them that isn’t authentic. But all of us have a falseness in us to some extent. The Christian spiritual life is about letting go of that falseness so that we can become who we truly are. And narcissism leads us away from who we truly are, and into falseness.
One of the keys to growing spiritually in faith is to develop the ability to see ourselves from outside of ourselves; to see ourselves not only as others see us, but (as best we can) to see ourselves as God sees us. To really get out of our narcissistic ways requires us to look more objectively at ourselves from perspectives other than our own. This is not the same as looking at ourselves from others’ points of view so that they’ll accept us. When we pursue popularity, we are look at ourselves from outside of ourselves in order to cover over our fears and insecurities. That’s being false. Seeing ourselves from outside of ourselves in a spiritual, mature way means seeing the faults in us that others may see in us, but also recognizing the good and beauty others may see—and especially that God sees.
So much of Scripture is devoted toward nurturing our true selves. For example, when Jesus says that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, he is telling us to step outside of ourselves. Look at what we’re doing from the other person’s perspective and experience. Would we want them to do to us what we are doing to them?
Scripture’s teachings about sin are also a counter to narcissism. And there’s nothing that shows more how narcissistic we are in our modern culture than our aversion to acknowledging sin. Many people who have left the Christian faith have complained about the church’s emphatic belief that we do sin and that we need to be forgiven for our sin. Narcissists don’t want to hear about what’s wrong with them, only about what’s right. Many of the evangelical megachurches have tapped into our culture’s aversion to sin by getting rid of confession during worship. You’ll notice that in most contemporary worship services there is no confession. Why? Because Americans don’t like to think about sin. So they’ve gotten rid of the emphasis on sin in worship. Don’t want to bum people out. The irony is that many of these churches have strong theologies that emphasize how sin is everywhere, but they deemphasize sin in worship. They do so because they are trying to attract non-Christians, whom they know don’t want to think about sin. So publicly they put on a non-sin-emphasizing face, while being sin-emphasizing in private.
Our Scripture for today is also an example of the need to look at ourselves from outside of ourselves. It starts with an honest assessment of the way we often are by telling us to “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).” It then goes on to tell us to adopt ways of being that require us to be sensitive to how others perceive us: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.”
So let’s say you wanted to start looking at yourself more from outside of yourself. How would you go about it? It starts with just listening to yourself, and I don’t mean listening to your voice. I mean that we should pay attention to our inner monologues and what we tell ourselves deep within. For example, if we find ourselves consistently being critical of others, getting angry or frustrated with them, irritated and disgusted, it means we aren’t very self-aware. The reason is that we’re not very aware of our motivations.
This gets into psychology 101. For a long time psychologists have recognized that while our emotions emerge from our bodies and our biology, many of our emotions are responses to cognitive thoughts. The famous psychologist, Albert Ellis, developed a whole therapy based on the idea that emotions are responses to thoughts. He worked with clients to get them to make choices about their emotions, and about what emotions to act upon. To clients who would say to him, “My father made me mad,” or “My wife made me mad,” he would respond, “Nobody can make you mad. You choose to be angry in response to what they’ve done.” He points out that we have emotional choices. You’ve experienced this. For instance, have you noticed (if you’re married) that the behaviors your spouse does now that drive you nuts had much less impact on you when you were dating? Back then you chose to have a different emotion in response to that behavior. Now, you choose to be angry or irritated.
The Christian life is about becoming aware and honest about our motivations. Why do we get angry with others? Why do we choose to be unkind? To understand why, we have to look at ourselves from outside of ourselves, even as we are looking at the deepest part of ourselves.
To become self-aware also means to spend time reflecting on how others see us, and paying attention to others when we’re with them. When we are talking with others, do we pay attention to the clues they give us about how they’re experiencing us? If they lean back, look away, act disinterested, are we picking up on that, or do we keep on going with whatever we’ve been doing?
Finally, there’s also a spiritual part. Part of seeing ourselves from outside ourselves means trying to see ourselves as God sees us. To do this means more than just recognizing our sin and recognizing God’s love, both of which are crucially important. To see ourselves as God sees us means becoming humble. This takes us right back to Genesis. To be humble means to recognize that everything that’s special about us comes from God, not from us. The Genesis story tells us that God created us from dust, and then breathed God’s Spirit into us. Without that Spirit, we are no different from every animal, every plant, every rock, and dirt. We are a collection of carbon molecules constructed in an interesting way. It’s the breath of Spirit that makes us special, that gives us human insight and abilities. Being humble means recognizing our own earthiness, and God’s greatness as expressed in the gift of life we’ve all been given.
Ultimately a key to living a healthy life has to do with learning to look from outside of ourselves to discover who we really are. The question I’d like you to reflect on is simple: Do you have the guts to look?
Amen.
Real-Life Proverbs: Life Is a Tightrope and Balance Is the Key
Matthew 6:25-34
July 3, 2011
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Do you remember the song by Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be happy?” It came out in 1988, and it made lots of people happy. Bobby McFerrin is a jazz vocalist, meaning that he creates music a cappella and by himself. What’s amazing is that listening to him, he sounds like full jazz band, yet he’s producing all the sounds himself. He’s quite amazing. The song, and especially the video that accompanied it, became a phenomenon. If you want to see it again, or if you never saw it, go to YouTube and see it. It’s wonderful.
The video also is appropriate for this morning because it seems like it captures perfectly the message of our passage for this morning. Who could argue with the idea of “don’t worry be happy?”
The fact is that so many of us worry, and for good reason—there’s lots to worry about. We worry about our finances. We worry about our kids. We worry about our parents. We worry about our bills. We worry about our debt. We worry about the nation’s debt. We worry about terrorism. We worry about crime. We worry about our weight. We worry about our age. We worry about our work. We worry about our health. We worry about our future. We worry about our past. We worry about death. We worry about what happens after death. We worry about our lives and about what’s not happening in our lives. We worry about what people think about us. We worry that people don’t think enough about us. And on and on and on and on and on…..
Worry is our constant companion, and that makes it hard to live a life of “don’t worry, be happy.” Human worrying isn’t a new thing. It was a constant companion in Jesus’ time, too. In fact, they had a lot more to worry about. Well, perhaps not more, but the worries they had were more life-threatening. They didn’t just worry about their health. They worried about things that we take for granted. For many, a broken bone, a prolonged illness, a loss of a job, or a major injury could make the difference between subsistence and poverty. We take for granted much of what they feared. When we get bronchitis, we go to the doctor for treatment. Back then, illnesses like bronchitis could lead easily to death and impoverishment for the grieving family. An infected finger could lead to amputation. Their worries were real worries.
Jesus knew that people had so much to worry about. Yet Jesus’ response to their and our worries hasn’t been “don’t worry be happy.” His response is “don’t worry, be faithful.” He’s saying that the answer to our worries isn’t denial or repression of the real facts of life. A real response to worries means turning to God in the face of them.
What Jesus is really talking about is restoring balance to our lives. He’s recognizing that the reasons we end up with so many worries is that our lives get out of balance. And the fact is that most of our lives are out of balance.
For example, I believe that one of the most evil ideas Americans every created and subscribed to is the idea of 24/7. It is incredibly alluring to show how committed we are to our work by saying that we are available 24/7, but that availability really doesn’t make life better. In fact, it makes life terrible because it creates unbalanced lives. And much of American life has become unbalanced. It doesn’t take long to see examples of how systematic our unbalancing act is. Look at our federal budget. It’s not only unbalanced, but it is persistently unbalanced, and we’re locked in dissonant wrangling over it. Our politics is unbalanced. We don’t work together. Instead, we have a culture that is invested in being Republicans or Democrats over being American. Many of us are unbalanced in our work and home lives. And we have this obsession with thinking that acquiring more wealth can bring more balance. But having grown up in incredibly wealthy areas like Sewickley and the Mainline of Philadelphia, I’ve noticed that greater wealth brings about greater imbalance. Many people with great wealth live lives that lead to great spending. They have the same problems we do, but on a larger scale. They spend their money on bigger things than we do, so their greater wealth becomes consumed with more expensive houses, cars, activities, and baubles.
Jesus preached balance. His life was a testimony to balance. Of course, in the American interpretation of the Gospel, we turn him into an energy dynamo, always doing, doing, doing. We see him teaching here, preaching there, healing everywhere. We think he was a guy on the go with no place to rest his head. But that’s because we read the gospels with a 24/7 mindset. Read it more closely. Jesus taught, and then went off by himself to pray. Jesus preached, and then went off with his disciples on retreat. Jesus healed, and then went to a mountain to spend time with the Father and the Spirit. Whenever Jesus was on the go, he later retreated for a time of recollection, reflection, and relaxation. He was balanced.
I’ve learned from Jesus that life is like a tightrope, and that balance is the key. It is hard for us to walk that fine line of being involved in life and taking time for ourselves, for our families, and for God. It’s hard for us to walk that fine line between work and play, time with others and by ourselves, activity and rest, self-focus and other-focus, world-focus and faith-focus. Most of us would rather gravitate toward ones side and not the other, but when we do that we don’t move forward. We fall off the wire into a safe-feeling net that leads us to become stagnant, causing our lives to become complacent.
To live in balance means to walk that tightrope of life by living life from a center that lets us live calmer, more grounded lives, and more compassionate lives. It means getting enough sleep, trying to eat what’s healthy and not too much, drinking in moderation, balancing work/home/play, exercising, reading, resting, relaxing, and praying and reading scripture—being intentional. Being intentional means making decisions intentionally to live a life of balance, no matter what we face in life. It means “Don’t worry, be faithful.”
The key to all of this balance is not trying to do everything, but trying to let everything come out of God at our center. When we live life by placing God at the center, it makes all the difference in the world. The question that I’d like you to reflect on this morning is this: What kind of balance do you have in your life?
Amen.
July 3, 2011
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Do you remember the song by Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be happy?” It came out in 1988, and it made lots of people happy. Bobby McFerrin is a jazz vocalist, meaning that he creates music a cappella and by himself. What’s amazing is that listening to him, he sounds like full jazz band, yet he’s producing all the sounds himself. He’s quite amazing. The song, and especially the video that accompanied it, became a phenomenon. If you want to see it again, or if you never saw it, go to YouTube and see it. It’s wonderful.
The video also is appropriate for this morning because it seems like it captures perfectly the message of our passage for this morning. Who could argue with the idea of “don’t worry be happy?”
The fact is that so many of us worry, and for good reason—there’s lots to worry about. We worry about our finances. We worry about our kids. We worry about our parents. We worry about our bills. We worry about our debt. We worry about the nation’s debt. We worry about terrorism. We worry about crime. We worry about our weight. We worry about our age. We worry about our work. We worry about our health. We worry about our future. We worry about our past. We worry about death. We worry about what happens after death. We worry about our lives and about what’s not happening in our lives. We worry about what people think about us. We worry that people don’t think enough about us. And on and on and on and on and on…..
Worry is our constant companion, and that makes it hard to live a life of “don’t worry, be happy.” Human worrying isn’t a new thing. It was a constant companion in Jesus’ time, too. In fact, they had a lot more to worry about. Well, perhaps not more, but the worries they had were more life-threatening. They didn’t just worry about their health. They worried about things that we take for granted. For many, a broken bone, a prolonged illness, a loss of a job, or a major injury could make the difference between subsistence and poverty. We take for granted much of what they feared. When we get bronchitis, we go to the doctor for treatment. Back then, illnesses like bronchitis could lead easily to death and impoverishment for the grieving family. An infected finger could lead to amputation. Their worries were real worries.
Jesus knew that people had so much to worry about. Yet Jesus’ response to their and our worries hasn’t been “don’t worry be happy.” His response is “don’t worry, be faithful.” He’s saying that the answer to our worries isn’t denial or repression of the real facts of life. A real response to worries means turning to God in the face of them.
What Jesus is really talking about is restoring balance to our lives. He’s recognizing that the reasons we end up with so many worries is that our lives get out of balance. And the fact is that most of our lives are out of balance.
For example, I believe that one of the most evil ideas Americans every created and subscribed to is the idea of 24/7. It is incredibly alluring to show how committed we are to our work by saying that we are available 24/7, but that availability really doesn’t make life better. In fact, it makes life terrible because it creates unbalanced lives. And much of American life has become unbalanced. It doesn’t take long to see examples of how systematic our unbalancing act is. Look at our federal budget. It’s not only unbalanced, but it is persistently unbalanced, and we’re locked in dissonant wrangling over it. Our politics is unbalanced. We don’t work together. Instead, we have a culture that is invested in being Republicans or Democrats over being American. Many of us are unbalanced in our work and home lives. And we have this obsession with thinking that acquiring more wealth can bring more balance. But having grown up in incredibly wealthy areas like Sewickley and the Mainline of Philadelphia, I’ve noticed that greater wealth brings about greater imbalance. Many people with great wealth live lives that lead to great spending. They have the same problems we do, but on a larger scale. They spend their money on bigger things than we do, so their greater wealth becomes consumed with more expensive houses, cars, activities, and baubles.
Jesus preached balance. His life was a testimony to balance. Of course, in the American interpretation of the Gospel, we turn him into an energy dynamo, always doing, doing, doing. We see him teaching here, preaching there, healing everywhere. We think he was a guy on the go with no place to rest his head. But that’s because we read the gospels with a 24/7 mindset. Read it more closely. Jesus taught, and then went off by himself to pray. Jesus preached, and then went off with his disciples on retreat. Jesus healed, and then went to a mountain to spend time with the Father and the Spirit. Whenever Jesus was on the go, he later retreated for a time of recollection, reflection, and relaxation. He was balanced.
I’ve learned from Jesus that life is like a tightrope, and that balance is the key. It is hard for us to walk that fine line of being involved in life and taking time for ourselves, for our families, and for God. It’s hard for us to walk that fine line between work and play, time with others and by ourselves, activity and rest, self-focus and other-focus, world-focus and faith-focus. Most of us would rather gravitate toward ones side and not the other, but when we do that we don’t move forward. We fall off the wire into a safe-feeling net that leads us to become stagnant, causing our lives to become complacent.
To live in balance means to walk that tightrope of life by living life from a center that lets us live calmer, more grounded lives, and more compassionate lives. It means getting enough sleep, trying to eat what’s healthy and not too much, drinking in moderation, balancing work/home/play, exercising, reading, resting, relaxing, and praying and reading scripture—being intentional. Being intentional means making decisions intentionally to live a life of balance, no matter what we face in life. It means “Don’t worry, be faithful.”
The key to all of this balance is not trying to do everything, but trying to let everything come out of God at our center. When we live life by placing God at the center, it makes all the difference in the world. The question that I’d like you to reflect on this morning is this: What kind of balance do you have in your life?
Amen.
Real-Life Proverbs: Focus on the Fundamentals
Ephesians 4:1-6
June 26, 2011
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Many of you heard that I wasn’t in worship on Memorial Day weekend because I was taking part in a special event. I was down in Baltimore, Maryland, taking part in a celebration on the field of the Baltimore Ravens’ stadium. Every year the NCAA hosts the college lacrosse championships at a major stadium, where they attract upwards of 50,000 people. On that Sunday, the 1978 Roanoke Lacrosse team, which won the Division II-III championship, was introduced and celebrated at halftime of the Division II championship game. It was a fun event, and an honor, to be part of that group.
Before and after the event, I spent time reflecting on what it meant to me to be part of a championship team. Even though we were a small college of only 1200 students, we competed and beat most of the teams that came from the biggest universities. For example, we beat Duke University, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, and others with big-name college lacrosse pedigrees.
I learned a lot from being on that championship team, even though I was only a freshman. I didn’t have a big role, but I absorbed a lot, especially learning lessons that I use in being pastor of this church. And one of the biggest lessons I learned was about what to do when things aren’t going well. I learned that when things go awry, focus on the fundamentals.
The first time I really saw this principle in play was after we lost to the University of North Carolina. The game was a close one, and it was one of only two losses we had that year. We were as good a team as them, but we just didn’t play well as a team. We struggled to find continuity. The low point of the game was when the goalie, who had the ball (goalies in lacrosse often come out of the goal to carry the ball up field to look for open players), couldn’t find anyone open, so he tossed the ball backwards to a player he thought was behind him. There was no one there, and the ball bounced into our own goal.
At our next practice, I expected the coach to do what we all want coaches of our favorite teams to do when things don’t go well. You know what I’m talking about. Whenever the Steelers or Penguins are doing really poorly, we say to others, “The coach needs to let them have it and yell at them! He needs to wake them up.” I expected that we would be yelled at, but instead the coach said to us very calmly, “We didn’t lose to UNC because they were better than us. We lost to them because they played better than us. They did the simple things better, and that’s what we need to get back to.” So we spent the whole practice working on our fundamentals. In lacrosse, the fundamentals are picking up the ball, throwing the ball, catching the ball, and shooting the ball. We spent 2 and ½ hours doing drills.
We started out doing what are called ground balls. The ball would be thrown out and we’d have to pick it up and throw it back. Then we would do one-on-one’s, where the ball would be thrown out and we’d have to compete with another to get the ball. Then we’d do two-on-one’s, with the person in the middle competing against the two on the outside. The expectation was that the person in the middle would beat the two. We moved onto catching and throwing. The whole practice was culminated in a weaving drill. We were broken up into groups of three. We had to run all 120 yards of the field, passing the ball back and forth to each other, while moving from the wing to the middle and back out to the wing. We were told that we couldn’t leave the field until we managed to go the length of the field without dropping the ball.
By the next game, we were a different team. We were solid. We were fundamentally sound. I’ve since learned that the really good coaches are always like this. I’ve been able to watch the Steelers’ coaches—Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin—and they all respond to losses by focusing on the fundamentals. I’ve noticed the same things when the Pirates and Penguins were winning championships. Championship coaches lead their players to play fundamentally sound, and all other success flow out of that. We responded to that loss by focusing on fundamentals, and that philosophy remained the same all four years I played.
I also learned from lacrosse how ineffective yelling can be. I’ve learned that the best coaches rarely yell in anger. They teach. Our college deviated from our norm of focusing on fundamentals in one game during my senior year. We were playing North Carolina State University as part of a double-header lacrosse game that also featured the University of Virginia against the University of Maryland. ESPN was televising both games, so this was perhaps part of my fifteen minutes of fame. By halftime we were down 10-3. And we weren’t playing even that well. We gathered in the locker room. The coach came in and proceeded to yell at us. He overturned tables in his anger. We were so motivated after that we ended up losing the game 23-11. We were worse in the second half than the first. What we needed was a way to calm down and focus. We needed simple instructions on how to get back into the game. We had a young team that was making fundamental mistakes. The yelling just magnified our problems. He never did that again, and in the future we always went back to fundamentals.
I learned a lot of lessons from those games, lessons that have influenced my faith and my life. One of the prominent lessons I learned is that when anything in life gets confusing, difficult, or uncertain, we need to focus on the fundamentals.
Unfortunately, when most of us go through tough times, instead of focusing on the fundamentals, we tend to look for answers that make our lives more complicated. And the added complexities tend to make our lives harder. Richie Furay is a perfect example of this, and of how focusing on life’s fundamentals can get us back on track.
Do you recognize Furay’s name. You’ve most certainly heard his voice. Furay is a musician who first gained notoriety as part of the Au Go Go Singers in New York City in the early 1960s. The group only recorded one album, but it was a first step to his greater fame. Stephen Stills was part of that group. After the group folded, both moved out to L.A., where they joined some other up-and-coming artists, such Neil Young and Jim Messina (later of Loggins and Messina), to form a supergroup. It lasted only three years, but they produced some really memorable songs. Their group was Buffalo Springfield, and they are known for songs such as “For What It’s Worth,” “Mr. Soul,” and “Rock and Roll Woman.”
As one of the lead singers, Furay was riding on the top of the world. He had fame, fortune, and everything he could want. His life was moving fast. Then everything crashed as the group broke up. Stephen Stills and Neill Young formed a new group with David Crosby from The Byrds, and Graham Nash from The Hollies. Jim Messina formed a new group with Kenny Loggins. Furay struggled for a while, but got it all back when he formed a new group called Poco, which became well known for a number of songs in the early 1970s.
Still, not everything was right. He was popular, playing sold-out halls and stadiums, and wealthy beyond his dreams. But something was wrong. It all came crashing down when he almost overdosed while in Paris. He realized things weren’t right, but he didn’t know what to do. He left Poco to form the Souther Hillman Furay Band, a band that also had some top hits. His life fell further apart, despite his success. It was during his seven-month separation from his wife that he started to focus on the fundamentals. He decided to put faith at the center of his life. From there everything changed.
He started attending the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, and there he worked on creating a solid foundation for his life. It led to his wife and he getting back together. In 1982, he felt called to take his faith deeper and become a pastor, eventually starting the Calvary Chapel in Boulder, Colorado. He has been pastor there ever since. This doesn’t mean that he’s disconnected from life, while living in a religious reverie. He continues to play music, both Christian and rock. He’s rejoined with Stephen Still, Neil Young, and others to tour this fall with Buffalo Springfield. The difference is that now he’s doing so with the fundamentals in place.
Furay learned a lesson we all need to learn. As Christians, we’ve been given fundamentals. These aren’t the fundamentals that fundamentalists believe in. Those are theological fundamentals that often feel oppressive and restrictive. I’m talking about spiritual fundamentals that simplify and ground our lives. Just as in lacrosse, where the fundamentals are picking up the ball, catching the ball, throwing the ball, protecting the ball, and shooting the ball, in the life of faith there are fundamentals. And the spiritual fundamentals ultimately are those that help us love God and love others.
Our passage gives us some of these fundamentals. Among them are the fundamentals of our passage. I want to close by sharing some of these fundamentals with you to help you get a sense of how to root your life.
The first fundamental comes from Paul’s statement that he begs us to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. He is saying that all of us have a calling in life, and our callings are distinct from those of others.
My calling is probably easier to recognize than yours, but that’s because they church has given my calling a title: pastor. To be a pastor isn’t the only calling, nor the most important one. I have other callings, too, some of which are more important. At one point my calling was to be an athlete. Now I’m called to be a writer, a teacher, a counselor, a spiritual guide, a father, and a husband. All of us have callings in life. Our careers and jobs may be part of our callings, but there’s much more to them. We’re called to find ways to love others, and care for others, to make the world better in our own small ways in the places we are—at work, home, with friends, or even in stadiums. The question is whether we pay attention to our callings. Do we seek God’s calling for us in life, in whatever stage of life we are living, and in each moment? To get back to the fundamentals of life means to spend time asking what our calling is, and to try to the best of our abilities to live that calling out.
Another fundamental is to live lives of humility and gentleness. What that means is that we are quit thinking so highly of ourselves, and instead to treat others with gentleness and consideration. To be humble doesn’t mean to become will-less and weak. It takes a lot of strength to be humble. It means having a strong enough ego to not have to be the center of the universe. It means being strong enough to not be offended by other’s slights. It means to be strong enough to put others first, especially God.
Humility means recognizing that at our foundations we are nothing but glorified dirt. The world “humble” comes from the word dirt. It comes from “humus,” or “earth,” which is also the root of the word “human.” To be humble means to recognize that we were created from earth, and that whatever we have that’s special comes from God’s breath—God’s Spirit—within us.
Patience is another fundamental. The life of faith is a life of patience. We recognize that God is really patient with us, and so we need to be patient with others. Impatience is arrogance. It’s thinking that the world must revolve around our schedule. Patience recognizes that some things take time. God takes time. And we often have to wait for God. The life of faith is fundamentally built on being patient with God, being patient with others, and being patient with life.
Finally, Paul talks about living in unity, saying that we should make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. In other words, we should find ways to work on what connects us, not divides us. We Americans aren’t good at this. We’ve become very good at dividing over everything: political belief, generational differences, faith differences, racial and ethnical difference, economic differences, and so much more. The life of faith calls us to union, not division.
I learned from being on a championship team that the greatest teams have this kind of unity. They have stars, but the stars are never more important than the unity of the team. To gain this kind of unity in faith, it requires being rooted in our callings, becoming humble and gentle, and becoming patient.
Living a life of faith isn’t necessarily hard, but it does require being grounded in fundamentals that form a foundation for our lives. And this is especially true whenever we begin to struggle. The question for us to answer is whether our lives our grounded in fundamentals, or in something else?
Amen.
June 26, 2011
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Many of you heard that I wasn’t in worship on Memorial Day weekend because I was taking part in a special event. I was down in Baltimore, Maryland, taking part in a celebration on the field of the Baltimore Ravens’ stadium. Every year the NCAA hosts the college lacrosse championships at a major stadium, where they attract upwards of 50,000 people. On that Sunday, the 1978 Roanoke Lacrosse team, which won the Division II-III championship, was introduced and celebrated at halftime of the Division II championship game. It was a fun event, and an honor, to be part of that group.
Before and after the event, I spent time reflecting on what it meant to me to be part of a championship team. Even though we were a small college of only 1200 students, we competed and beat most of the teams that came from the biggest universities. For example, we beat Duke University, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, and others with big-name college lacrosse pedigrees.
I learned a lot from being on that championship team, even though I was only a freshman. I didn’t have a big role, but I absorbed a lot, especially learning lessons that I use in being pastor of this church. And one of the biggest lessons I learned was about what to do when things aren’t going well. I learned that when things go awry, focus on the fundamentals.
The first time I really saw this principle in play was after we lost to the University of North Carolina. The game was a close one, and it was one of only two losses we had that year. We were as good a team as them, but we just didn’t play well as a team. We struggled to find continuity. The low point of the game was when the goalie, who had the ball (goalies in lacrosse often come out of the goal to carry the ball up field to look for open players), couldn’t find anyone open, so he tossed the ball backwards to a player he thought was behind him. There was no one there, and the ball bounced into our own goal.
At our next practice, I expected the coach to do what we all want coaches of our favorite teams to do when things don’t go well. You know what I’m talking about. Whenever the Steelers or Penguins are doing really poorly, we say to others, “The coach needs to let them have it and yell at them! He needs to wake them up.” I expected that we would be yelled at, but instead the coach said to us very calmly, “We didn’t lose to UNC because they were better than us. We lost to them because they played better than us. They did the simple things better, and that’s what we need to get back to.” So we spent the whole practice working on our fundamentals. In lacrosse, the fundamentals are picking up the ball, throwing the ball, catching the ball, and shooting the ball. We spent 2 and ½ hours doing drills.
We started out doing what are called ground balls. The ball would be thrown out and we’d have to pick it up and throw it back. Then we would do one-on-one’s, where the ball would be thrown out and we’d have to compete with another to get the ball. Then we’d do two-on-one’s, with the person in the middle competing against the two on the outside. The expectation was that the person in the middle would beat the two. We moved onto catching and throwing. The whole practice was culminated in a weaving drill. We were broken up into groups of three. We had to run all 120 yards of the field, passing the ball back and forth to each other, while moving from the wing to the middle and back out to the wing. We were told that we couldn’t leave the field until we managed to go the length of the field without dropping the ball.
By the next game, we were a different team. We were solid. We were fundamentally sound. I’ve since learned that the really good coaches are always like this. I’ve been able to watch the Steelers’ coaches—Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin—and they all respond to losses by focusing on the fundamentals. I’ve noticed the same things when the Pirates and Penguins were winning championships. Championship coaches lead their players to play fundamentally sound, and all other success flow out of that. We responded to that loss by focusing on fundamentals, and that philosophy remained the same all four years I played.
I also learned from lacrosse how ineffective yelling can be. I’ve learned that the best coaches rarely yell in anger. They teach. Our college deviated from our norm of focusing on fundamentals in one game during my senior year. We were playing North Carolina State University as part of a double-header lacrosse game that also featured the University of Virginia against the University of Maryland. ESPN was televising both games, so this was perhaps part of my fifteen minutes of fame. By halftime we were down 10-3. And we weren’t playing even that well. We gathered in the locker room. The coach came in and proceeded to yell at us. He overturned tables in his anger. We were so motivated after that we ended up losing the game 23-11. We were worse in the second half than the first. What we needed was a way to calm down and focus. We needed simple instructions on how to get back into the game. We had a young team that was making fundamental mistakes. The yelling just magnified our problems. He never did that again, and in the future we always went back to fundamentals.
I learned a lot of lessons from those games, lessons that have influenced my faith and my life. One of the prominent lessons I learned is that when anything in life gets confusing, difficult, or uncertain, we need to focus on the fundamentals.
Unfortunately, when most of us go through tough times, instead of focusing on the fundamentals, we tend to look for answers that make our lives more complicated. And the added complexities tend to make our lives harder. Richie Furay is a perfect example of this, and of how focusing on life’s fundamentals can get us back on track.
Do you recognize Furay’s name. You’ve most certainly heard his voice. Furay is a musician who first gained notoriety as part of the Au Go Go Singers in New York City in the early 1960s. The group only recorded one album, but it was a first step to his greater fame. Stephen Stills was part of that group. After the group folded, both moved out to L.A., where they joined some other up-and-coming artists, such Neil Young and Jim Messina (later of Loggins and Messina), to form a supergroup. It lasted only three years, but they produced some really memorable songs. Their group was Buffalo Springfield, and they are known for songs such as “For What It’s Worth,” “Mr. Soul,” and “Rock and Roll Woman.”
As one of the lead singers, Furay was riding on the top of the world. He had fame, fortune, and everything he could want. His life was moving fast. Then everything crashed as the group broke up. Stephen Stills and Neill Young formed a new group with David Crosby from The Byrds, and Graham Nash from The Hollies. Jim Messina formed a new group with Kenny Loggins. Furay struggled for a while, but got it all back when he formed a new group called Poco, which became well known for a number of songs in the early 1970s.
Still, not everything was right. He was popular, playing sold-out halls and stadiums, and wealthy beyond his dreams. But something was wrong. It all came crashing down when he almost overdosed while in Paris. He realized things weren’t right, but he didn’t know what to do. He left Poco to form the Souther Hillman Furay Band, a band that also had some top hits. His life fell further apart, despite his success. It was during his seven-month separation from his wife that he started to focus on the fundamentals. He decided to put faith at the center of his life. From there everything changed.
He started attending the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, and there he worked on creating a solid foundation for his life. It led to his wife and he getting back together. In 1982, he felt called to take his faith deeper and become a pastor, eventually starting the Calvary Chapel in Boulder, Colorado. He has been pastor there ever since. This doesn’t mean that he’s disconnected from life, while living in a religious reverie. He continues to play music, both Christian and rock. He’s rejoined with Stephen Still, Neil Young, and others to tour this fall with Buffalo Springfield. The difference is that now he’s doing so with the fundamentals in place.
Furay learned a lesson we all need to learn. As Christians, we’ve been given fundamentals. These aren’t the fundamentals that fundamentalists believe in. Those are theological fundamentals that often feel oppressive and restrictive. I’m talking about spiritual fundamentals that simplify and ground our lives. Just as in lacrosse, where the fundamentals are picking up the ball, catching the ball, throwing the ball, protecting the ball, and shooting the ball, in the life of faith there are fundamentals. And the spiritual fundamentals ultimately are those that help us love God and love others.
Our passage gives us some of these fundamentals. Among them are the fundamentals of our passage. I want to close by sharing some of these fundamentals with you to help you get a sense of how to root your life.
The first fundamental comes from Paul’s statement that he begs us to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. He is saying that all of us have a calling in life, and our callings are distinct from those of others.
My calling is probably easier to recognize than yours, but that’s because they church has given my calling a title: pastor. To be a pastor isn’t the only calling, nor the most important one. I have other callings, too, some of which are more important. At one point my calling was to be an athlete. Now I’m called to be a writer, a teacher, a counselor, a spiritual guide, a father, and a husband. All of us have callings in life. Our careers and jobs may be part of our callings, but there’s much more to them. We’re called to find ways to love others, and care for others, to make the world better in our own small ways in the places we are—at work, home, with friends, or even in stadiums. The question is whether we pay attention to our callings. Do we seek God’s calling for us in life, in whatever stage of life we are living, and in each moment? To get back to the fundamentals of life means to spend time asking what our calling is, and to try to the best of our abilities to live that calling out.
Another fundamental is to live lives of humility and gentleness. What that means is that we are quit thinking so highly of ourselves, and instead to treat others with gentleness and consideration. To be humble doesn’t mean to become will-less and weak. It takes a lot of strength to be humble. It means having a strong enough ego to not have to be the center of the universe. It means being strong enough to not be offended by other’s slights. It means to be strong enough to put others first, especially God.
Humility means recognizing that at our foundations we are nothing but glorified dirt. The world “humble” comes from the word dirt. It comes from “humus,” or “earth,” which is also the root of the word “human.” To be humble means to recognize that we were created from earth, and that whatever we have that’s special comes from God’s breath—God’s Spirit—within us.
Patience is another fundamental. The life of faith is a life of patience. We recognize that God is really patient with us, and so we need to be patient with others. Impatience is arrogance. It’s thinking that the world must revolve around our schedule. Patience recognizes that some things take time. God takes time. And we often have to wait for God. The life of faith is fundamentally built on being patient with God, being patient with others, and being patient with life.
Finally, Paul talks about living in unity, saying that we should make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. In other words, we should find ways to work on what connects us, not divides us. We Americans aren’t good at this. We’ve become very good at dividing over everything: political belief, generational differences, faith differences, racial and ethnical difference, economic differences, and so much more. The life of faith calls us to union, not division.
I learned from being on a championship team that the greatest teams have this kind of unity. They have stars, but the stars are never more important than the unity of the team. To gain this kind of unity in faith, it requires being rooted in our callings, becoming humble and gentle, and becoming patient.
Living a life of faith isn’t necessarily hard, but it does require being grounded in fundamentals that form a foundation for our lives. And this is especially true whenever we begin to struggle. The question for us to answer is whether our lives our grounded in fundamentals, or in something else?
Amen.
What You Don't Know about the Holy Spirit
Acts 2:1-21
June 12, 2011
Pentecost Sunday
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
You know, no matter how we try to explain the details of Christian faith, we face an unavoidable problem. The fact is that Christianity can be really confusing, especially for people who are new to it, or who aren't necessarily willing to dig down deep into its mysteries. And the Holy Spirit is part of that confusion.
Both Christians and non-Christians have struggled since the beginning with the Christian understanding of God, which is God as a Trinity. And because we’ve struggled with the Trinity, we’ve had a hard time understanding God as Holy Spirit. The Trinity is a paradox. It has a complex shell that, on the surface, seems to make no sense. But its core opens us to an amazing relationship with God. The problem is that its complex-seeming shell is hard for some people to crack.
What they don’t understand is that the concept of the Trinity was designed to help us form deep relationships with God. It’s based on the idea that God truly is one God. There aren’t three Gods. Nor is there one God with three parts. The Trinity expresses the idea that God is one God, but that we experience and form relationships with God through three distinct experiences of God.
Throughout the centuries, Christians have tried hard to represent this idea of Trinity, and it’s because of Calvin Presbyterian Church’s belief in the Trinity that we find a Trinity symbol in our church logo. It is the triangular symbol that reveals one figure with three tips. The idea is that we connect with God through those tips, yet God is always a whole no matter how we distinctly we experience each person of God.
We can experience and come to know God as Father and Creator, who is our source. This is God whom we experience as being in heaven, somewhat separate from us, but whom we also know loves us more deeply than we can fathom, and created us for something good.
We experience God in Christ. But this isn’t just Christ who lived 2000 years ago. This is Christ who the Bible says was “in the beginning,” and that he was “with God and in God, and all things came into being through him.” In other words, this is God who is the incarnation of God in the world. Christ is God whom we know in Jesus, but this is also God who is in the world, and in each of us. This is God we experience in our own hearts, in each other, in sunsets and mountaintops, and in Scripture.
We also experience and have a relationship with God who is everywhere, who permeates everything. This is God in the Holy Spirit. What I thought I'd do today, as we celebrate the coming of this Holy Spirit on the day of the Spirit, Pentecost, is to give a brief history of the Holy Spirit.
So where does the Holy Spirit first appear? The Spirit initially appears in the very first sentence of the Bible, where we read, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Actually, this is not quite an accurate translation of that sentence. One of the problems when we translate from Hebrew or Greek (the original languages of the Old and New Testaments) is that our language is designed differently from them. In English, if we come up with a new idea, we come up with a whole new word for it. That’s not the way Hebrew and Greek work. One word can have multiple meanings, depending on how it is used. And often the multiple meanings are intentional, conveying a richness of ideas at once. That’s the case in this passage. The Hebrew word for “wind,” or ru-ach, doesn’t just mean “wind.” It means “breath,” “life-force,” “breath of life,” and “Spirit.” This passage is saying that in the beginning God’s Spirit flowed across the water. The Spirit was already there, ready for Creation.
We find the Spirit mentioned a chapter later when we read, “Then the Lord God formed human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living being.” Again, that work, ru-ach, shows up. The translators translated it as “breath of life,” but it’s more accurate to say that God breathed God’s Spirit into the first human. In other words, the Holy Spirit isn’t just in the world, but the Spirit is in each of us, and since that Spirit is part of the Trinity, that Spirit in us is also Christ’s Spirit in each of us.
From these beginnings the Spirit appears constantly in the Bible. The Spirit speaks to Abraham, calling him to follow into the wilderness. It speaks to and rests on Moses. Then it appears to and rests on the elders and judges of Israel. And as the nation of Israel grows, the Spirit comes to the kings and prophets, guiding David and speaking to Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and more. Throughout Israel's history, God's Spirit rests on leaders, prophets, and even on the enemies of Israel. For example, the king and armies of Assyria and Babylon are seen as carrying out God’s will, with the Spirit, when they attack Israel for their lack of faith.
Then, in the early pages of the New Testament, the Holy Spirit enters Jesus in his baptism, and leads him out into the desert, where Jesus wrestles with his own human nature—a nature that would diminish the Spirit if it could, just as we often diminish the Spirit in our lives. It really wasn't until after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension that the world discovered the full force of the Holy Spirit. First, Jesus breathes the Spirit onto the disciples, giving them the Spirit’s wisdom and a deep and holy awareness of God all around them. Then, on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit comes into the early Christians, which is the experience we read about today. We’re told that the Spirit allows them to speak in all different languages, and that the flame of the Spirit rests on each of them.
That’s the history of the Spirit in the Bible, but Christianity doesn't just teach that the Holy Spirit was God at work in the world in biblical times. We believe that the Holy Spirit is completely available to each and every on of us today. We believe that in each and every one of us the Spirit is ready to come into our lives, if we want the Spirit in. The problem is that too often we modern Christians struggle with that idea. We’re not sure we want the Spirit to be that close. We’re a bit uncomfortable with God being that intimate. It’s somewhat easy to believe in God who is in heaven, looking down with smiling benevolence, but do we really want God to be as close to us as each breath? What if we open up to that Spirit and it challenges us to live a different life, to change in ways that call on us to give up things we hold dear?
The temptation of all Christians is to hold God at bay. In fact, many denominations slip into doing just that. That’s how both the Quaker and Pentecostal denominations started. They were both reactions to churches that were holding off the Spirit. The Quakers, during the 17th century, were so determined to become radically open to the Holy Spirit that they used to quake while they prayed—quaking because they were experiencing the Spirit. The Pentecostal faith started in 1903 at the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in direct response to the Christian churches of the time that had become so staid that they left no room for the Spirit. And many of these Pentecostals reported that they had an experience much like the Christians 2000 years earlier on the day of Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit isn’t just available for Quakers and Pentecostals. Right now you have the power to let the Spirit become a power in your life, but you have to choose—just like the early Christians chose. Being open to the Spirit doesn’t mean we have to quake or speak in different languages. Most people don’t have those kinds of spiritual experiences. Most of us who experience the Spirit experience the Spirit as a gentler, guiding, empowering, and coincidental/providential force.
I’ve experienced the Holy Spirit many, many times throughout my life because I've made a choice to be open to the Spirit. I experience God's Spirit working in me all the time, and often in really simple, unassuming ways. For instance, over the years I’ve noticed often that if I get overwhelmed and start running out of time during the week, the Spirit helps me. Many of you have learned that I have an open door policy. If you or anyone else shows up to my office during the week, I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and talk with you. What that can mean is that sometimes I run out of time to get all that I need to get done. And during those weeks when I’m completely overwhelmed, I’ve been amazed at how people will call me up and cancel appointments with me, and not because I’ve asked them to. It’s as though the Spirit is looking out for me. I get calls from those with appointments telling me that they have to see a doctor and the only time was the same time as our appointment, or they have to pick up their kids, have to get a crucial task done, or something like that. The Spirit takes care of me.
I’m not alone in my experiences. Calvin Presbyterian Church has made the choice to become open to the Spirit, and I’ve seen time and again how this has led to God-incidences. I’ve mentioned over and over one of the biggest coincidences. Back in 1999, when we were in the middle of a capital campaign to renovate our sanctuary, start an endowment fund, and discern whether to build onto the church or not, one of the houses (what became Faith House) came up for sale. We were able to buy it outright because of the money we had gathered during the campaign. We had left the second year of the campaign undesignated, saying that we wanted to see what God had in store for us. Because we were in that second year, and had money from the campaign and from the sale of the church manse (a house the church had owned that the previous pastor had lived in), we were able to buy the house outright. The next year a second house (what has become Charity House) came up for sale, and we were able to buy it with the rest of the money we had on hand. Two years later, we were able to buy a third house (what has become Hope House) by taking out a mortgage paid for by the rental of Charity and Hope houses. Without all of those houses, we would never have been able to do our renovation and expansion four years ago. This is how the Spirit works with those who are ready and open to the Spirit.
The Spirit isn’t just available for pastors and churches. The Spirit wants to work in all of our lives, to help us wherever we are: at work, at home, with friends, with difficult and important tasks, in mission, and in ministry. It doesn’t matter where, the Spirit is here to be in our lives and make a difference.
What Christian faith and our passage teaches is that the Holy Spirit is available in all of our lives, but to let it work in us, we have to want it to work. We have to wait, be ready, and let the Spirit in. And there’s no magic way of doing it. All we have to do is to want the Spirit in our lives, to ask it to enter our lives, and to let it in.
Amen.
Resurrection Stories: Sharing the Resurrection
Matthew 28:16-20
June 5, 2011
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Have there been people who have made a faith difference in your life? I’m talking about people who have shared their faith with you at some point in their lives, and because they did it changed your life. I’ve had several of these kinds of people in my life, and as I look back, in many ways they’ve been the difference between my living a good life, and my living a selfish life.
My father was one of these people, and sharing his faith with me has made a tremendous difference. He never preached to me or my brothers and sister. In fact, he didn’t really talk about faith that much unless we asked him about it. But there were times when we would be talking late at night around the kitchen table, and we would ask him why church was so important to him. He would say things like, “It’s important because it’s where I say thank you to God. God has blessed me in so many ways, and I’ve done nothing to deserve it. But when I go to church I can thank God, and it’s also one of the ways I hear God speaking to me. Without God I’m nothing.” He would also say things like, “I don’t see how you can live without faith. God has done so much in my life. God’s given me you guys, our house, our friends, my career. I see it all coming from God.”
Even though I walked away from church at age fifteen, these kinds of talks stayed with me. When I struggled in my life at age 24, it was these talks that brought me back to the church. It wasn’t being preached at, it was being spoken to by a person of faith who spoke simply, personally, and authentically about God.
My father was one of these people, but over the years I’ve had a number of these kinds of people in my life, and all of them made a difference because they shared their faith. It’s the simplicity and authenticity of their sharing that made a difference. I’ve also been spoken to by a large number of Christians who have tried to share their faith in an aggressive, sales-pitch way, and I think I became a Christian despite them. They turned me off, but the ones who spoke plainly and honestly made the difference in my life.
The fact is that sharing our faith really has a tremendous power to change lives. Unfortunately, most of us are shy about our faith and have a hard time talking about it with others. I’m not sure why, but even as a pastor I’m often afflicted with this shyness. Is it because of our culture’s emphasis on separation of church and state? That may be part of it. Certainly there seems to be a powerful push from our culture to deny our faith and to keep it private from others, lest they be offended or attack us for speaking publicly.
Do we keep our faith private because talking about faith makes us too vulnerable? I think this certainly can be the case. There are many people who look down on religious folk, and to share our faith makes us vulnerable to their criticism or denigration.
I also think we may keep faith private because we think that we have to have everything figured out if we are to talk about our faith. We all feel so inadequate to put to words what we think and feel deep down. It’s also hard for us to talk about our experiences of God, especially if they haven’t been flashy or like a thunderbolt. Most of us experience God simply and quietly. Also, we’ve been so turned off by Christians who think they have it all figured out, and who come across like Christian know-it-alls, that we worry that we’ll come across that way if we share our faith. We worry that we’ll turn people off.
Still, whether you think you have it figured out or not, the fact is that all of us have a calling from God to share our faith. This calling is in our passage for this morning. Basically there are two GREAT callings in the gospels: the Great Commission and the Great Command. Our passage for this morning comes from the Great Commission, where we are told by Jesus to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Jesus is saying that we have a responsibility to share our faith, but that faith has to be rooted in the other great calling, which is the Great Command. You know what the Great Command is. It’s found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it is a command that “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” We can’t take part in the Great Commission without the Great Command, but we also can’t live out the Great Command without a desire to take part in the Great Commission. When we start to really fall in love with God, it leads us to want to share God’s presence with others.
The problem we have today is that in many ways our churches are split between the two. Evangelical churches often emphasize the Great Commission as the main thing, while de-emphasizing the Great Command. Meanwhile, we Mainline Christians emphasize the Great Command, while de-emphasizing the importance of the Great Commission. We are called to do both, but how we do it is unique to each situation and to each of our personalities and faith stories.
Tony Campola has learned how to do both. Do you recognize his name? He is a very popular evangelical speaker who lives in the Philadelphia area. He is well known for teaching evangelicals how to care for people and share the Gospel in a Great Command way. A number of years ago he was in another city to speak at a conference. For whatever reason he couldn’t fall asleep. So, at 2 a.m., he got up and walked to a diner across the street from the hotel. As he sat at the counter eating a doughnut (not the kind of food I’d probably choose to eat if I couldn’t sleep, since it would keep me awake for the rest of the night), in walked two prostitutes who had just finished their evening’s work. They sat on either side of him and talked with the owner of the diner and his wife, who was in the back cooking. Campola was a bit uncomfortable.
In the midst of their conversation, one of the prostitutes mentioned that tomorrow was her birthday, but that she had never had a party. Campola perked up. He said, “Well, then, why don’t we have a birthday party for you tomorrow morning at 2 a.m.? I’m in from out of town, but if the owner here can bake a cake, I can bring party hats and stuff.” They all looked at him as though he was strange, but they agreed.
The next night Campola went into the diner at 2 a.m., and saw that the owner and his wife had baked a cake. In walked the prostitutes. Campola handed out the hats, and they all sang happy birthday. The prostitute was teary-eyed. She then asked if, instead of eating the cake here, she could take it home since she had never had a birthday cake at home. They all agreed, and she left. After a short time of silence, the owner of the diner said to Campola, with a puzzled look, “Hey, you’re a Christian, aren’t you?” Campola smiled and said yes. The owner then said, “And I’ll bet you’re a preacher, too.” Campola said yes. Then the owner said, “What kind of preacher are you?” Campola said, “The kind that has birthday parties for prostitutes at 2 a.m.” He then talked a bit about his faith, not in an aggressive, live-my-way, judgemental manner, but in a simple, ‘this is the difference God has made in my life” manner.
He never found out what kind of impact he made on them, but I’m also not really sure it matters. What mattered was that he shared his faith, much in the way St. Francis said to share faith. Francis said, “Preach the Gospel always. And if necessary, use words.” That’s what Campola did. That’s what we’re called to do.
The point is that all we are called to do is to share our faith in some way. We’re not responsible for converting people on the spot. We’re only responsible for offering them hope. And sharing this church is part of offering them hope.
When I pray over the church each week at the end of worship, I do so with both the Great Command and Great Commission in mind. I pray us out, asking God to lead all of us to share God’s love in faith wherever we are. We have a Command and a Commission to follow everyday. The question is whether we are willing to look for opportunities to do so everyday.
Amen.
Resurrection Stories: Overcoming Fear, by Connie Frierson
It is still Easter everyone. For a week of Sundays we are celebrating Easter and this sermon series is exploring what the resurrection means, what difference does it make that Christ was raised. What was the profound change in the universe? There was a little boy who heard the phrase “Christ is Risen.” He asked his mom what that meant. She explained that Jesus died on the cross was buried and rose from the dead. And the little boy exclaimed, “Jesus is a Zombie?” Scary huh? What if the meaning of the resurrection is to wake the dead? That doesn’t sound like the Holy Family. That sounds like the Adam’s Family. That’s even scarier. But what if the meaning of the resurrection is waking us up from grip of fear?
Well if the purpose of the resurrection is to free us from fear the bible has a funny way of going about it. It is a toss up which is scarier the crucifixion or the resurrection. But I am laying odds on the resurrection. The Crucifixion is a true horror story, a gruesome death with God forsakenness, darkness at noon, blood and water. This is an agonizing, violent, bloody and dark death. But for sheer shock value, Easter morning has it beat. The Resurrection is completely unexpected. Death by crucifixion is cruel but common. We are all too familiar with the cruelty of humans to humans. But the Resurrection is scary and unique. On Resurrection morning: An earthquake strikes with incredible force. An angel looking like lightning in snow-white clothes throws away the tombstone. The burly and courageous guards shake violently and faint dead away. Jesus, who was dead, "suddenly" pops up in front of the visiting women, (who evidently were made of sterner stuff than the guards) and says "Boo!" The women who witnessed this were seized with "terror and amazement" (Mark 16:8). Fear and great joy combine. What an emotional roller-coaster ride.
Fear is personal and it touches us in ways we don’t always expect and in ways that we can’t always rationalize. Who here is afraid of spiders? Who is afraid of heights? Who is afraid of public speaking? Ah you see there is the number one fear. In fact more people are afraid of public speaking than are afraid of death, our second biggest fear. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, that means that more people who rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Fear is so personal. Yet if the purpose to the resurrection was to defeat our old enemies of sin and death, how would that affect us? What if we could be free of night terrors or even better to be free of the day terrors too?
I have a story of fear and hope of my own. As so many of you know my husband Allen died very suddenly in July 2006. And darn it all, he died the first day of a three-week vacation time. The first two weeks we had planned lots of home projects. But the third week we planned a vacation with the boys and my sister and her husband to Myrtle Beach. All of that changed. But after the funeral I decided that going to Myrtle Beach was what we would do any way. It would get us away; break up that time of deepest grief. My nephew, David, came along in Al’s place to help ride herd and distract Nate and March. David, Nate, March and I would fly down. My sister and her husband would drive. We arrived about seven hours earlier than my sister, played in the sand and the ocean then went back up to the condo to shower and eat. But later in the long summer’s twilight I walked down to the beach to walk by myself, while David watched the boys in the condo. The beach was virtually empty. I had it to myself, so I could cry and struggle with God and with Grief. The thing that I yelled at God again and again was the demand to know that Allen was well, that despite death, Allen was well. As I walked I saw the full moon rising on the ocean. It was a golden path from where I stood on the beach to the edge of eternity on the horizon. I thought, “OK God, I get that Allen has just gone ahead. But it is not enough.” I thought of that poem about the distant shores that makes a metaphor of a ship sailing out of sight for death and imagine the joyful greeting at the other shore. That poem has been a great comfort to many and in fact was a comfort to me at other times. But on this twilight of deep grief it was not enough. I wanted to know that Allen was well not some stupid metaphor of ships and shores and shining paths of light. I looked up again and saw a huge tall cumulonimbus cloud like a giant column. But as I looked the cloud looked like a fantastic pointer, an arrow to heaven. Now you have to know that Allen as a fighter pilot had a special fondness for cumulonimbus clouds. Evidently they were great fun to zoom around and in air-to-air combat could be used with great efficiency for hide and seek. But on this twilight, I was not comforted by a big puffy cloud pointing to heaven. It was not enough. I remember angrily telling God that cloud had no significance whatsoever, that in the next minute it would turn into a puffy dragon or a unicorn. I demanded God to spell it out. I wanted to know that Allen was well. I looked up into the twilight and there was a contrail, that is the vapor left behind in the stream of a jet. Allen loved contrails. One never came overhead that Allen didn’t point to it and guess about the type of plane or its destination. But this contrail was in a perfect A for Allen, spelled out above the pointer column of cloud, above the shining path of the moon on the ocean. God had spelled it out for me in a language that was so particular and unique to Allen and my relationship. Allen was well and it was enough. I stood staring at that shining path and that cloud and that giant contrail of an A for about ten minutes. My eyes couldn’t open wide enough to take it in. I was dumbfounded and grateful and comforted. Then my cell phone rang. I tore my eyes away from the sky to rummage through my windbreaker pockets for my cell. It was my sister calling. They had just crossed the line into Myrtle Beach. They would be there in just a few minutes. I ended the call and looked up. There was the moon. There was the shining path. But that huge cloud was gone. The contrail was gone. I scanned the sky looking for wisps of the cloud, smaller clouds that get broken up by the breeze. But there was none. The sky was completely clear. All gone in a one-minute phone call.
What do we make of stories like this? Was it a psychotic break? A hallucination brought on by grief and salt water? I recall Paul having a vision of heaven and not knowing if he was in the body or out of it. Well I knew I was in my own body, standing outside the condo, a few feet from the steps across the dunes. This was a message of comfort and faith. This was a resurrection message to drive out fear.
Christ’s message to the Mary’s was do not be afraid. Meet me in Galilee. This is not a total rejection of fear. I have to say some fear is built into our life for life to continue. Good fear is what keeps us from playing in traffic. But Christ is making a new claim for fearlessness in the resurrection. Don’t be afraid so that you can meet me. You can go tell my brothers that we are reconciled and we will meet. You can be people of joy, even after the horror of the crucifixion. You can let go of fear so that you can embrace life. You are not plodding round the year unknowingly passing up your death date till death takes you. You are living now with the knowledge of resurrection to come. So we don’t live like we are dying. But we live like those who are resurrected.
The great preacher Barbra Brown Taylor said, God "is not in the business of granting wishes. God is in the business of raising the dead, not all of whom are willing." That is us. We are unwilling. Perhaps it is too good to be true, too much to take in, too much to hope for. Those words, “too, much, too good, too much” are words of fear. We try to protect ourselves by hoping little. But this fear doesn’t protect us. It keeps us trapped in disbelief, in the ordinary and prevents us from rushing on in joy to meet God.
One thing we can say about Jesus is that he had this profound awareness of God. And it was this awareness that led him to challenge injustice, to live with compassion toward others, to be filled with inner calm and happiness. His life had a “raised up” quality. He was awake. He was truly alive. One can say that Jesus was raised up long before Easter. And what Jesus was about was this: He said, you, too, can be awakened. You, too, can be raised up, resurrected, alive. The reign of God is right under your nose, he said, and you can live in it. You, too, can know true happiness, peace and freedom. The same power that raised Jesus—giving him new life, freedom and joy—is able to raise all people. And so in this sense we are raised with Jesus. In the last verse in Matthew, Jesus says, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We can experience the same life-giving presence of God as Jesus did. His spirit is with us.
Resurrection is a mysterious, ever-unfolding process in the lives of each generation. It is something we experience in the here and now. We experience the here and now when we are not blinded and paralyzed by fear. In the words of the Persian poet, Rumi, “Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody”! Let it be us. Amen.
Well if the purpose of the resurrection is to free us from fear the bible has a funny way of going about it. It is a toss up which is scarier the crucifixion or the resurrection. But I am laying odds on the resurrection. The Crucifixion is a true horror story, a gruesome death with God forsakenness, darkness at noon, blood and water. This is an agonizing, violent, bloody and dark death. But for sheer shock value, Easter morning has it beat. The Resurrection is completely unexpected. Death by crucifixion is cruel but common. We are all too familiar with the cruelty of humans to humans. But the Resurrection is scary and unique. On Resurrection morning: An earthquake strikes with incredible force. An angel looking like lightning in snow-white clothes throws away the tombstone. The burly and courageous guards shake violently and faint dead away. Jesus, who was dead, "suddenly" pops up in front of the visiting women, (who evidently were made of sterner stuff than the guards) and says "Boo!" The women who witnessed this were seized with "terror and amazement" (Mark 16:8). Fear and great joy combine. What an emotional roller-coaster ride.
Fear is personal and it touches us in ways we don’t always expect and in ways that we can’t always rationalize. Who here is afraid of spiders? Who is afraid of heights? Who is afraid of public speaking? Ah you see there is the number one fear. In fact more people are afraid of public speaking than are afraid of death, our second biggest fear. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, that means that more people who rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Fear is so personal. Yet if the purpose to the resurrection was to defeat our old enemies of sin and death, how would that affect us? What if we could be free of night terrors or even better to be free of the day terrors too?
I have a story of fear and hope of my own. As so many of you know my husband Allen died very suddenly in July 2006. And darn it all, he died the first day of a three-week vacation time. The first two weeks we had planned lots of home projects. But the third week we planned a vacation with the boys and my sister and her husband to Myrtle Beach. All of that changed. But after the funeral I decided that going to Myrtle Beach was what we would do any way. It would get us away; break up that time of deepest grief. My nephew, David, came along in Al’s place to help ride herd and distract Nate and March. David, Nate, March and I would fly down. My sister and her husband would drive. We arrived about seven hours earlier than my sister, played in the sand and the ocean then went back up to the condo to shower and eat. But later in the long summer’s twilight I walked down to the beach to walk by myself, while David watched the boys in the condo. The beach was virtually empty. I had it to myself, so I could cry and struggle with God and with Grief. The thing that I yelled at God again and again was the demand to know that Allen was well, that despite death, Allen was well. As I walked I saw the full moon rising on the ocean. It was a golden path from where I stood on the beach to the edge of eternity on the horizon. I thought, “OK God, I get that Allen has just gone ahead. But it is not enough.” I thought of that poem about the distant shores that makes a metaphor of a ship sailing out of sight for death and imagine the joyful greeting at the other shore. That poem has been a great comfort to many and in fact was a comfort to me at other times. But on this twilight of deep grief it was not enough. I wanted to know that Allen was well not some stupid metaphor of ships and shores and shining paths of light. I looked up again and saw a huge tall cumulonimbus cloud like a giant column. But as I looked the cloud looked like a fantastic pointer, an arrow to heaven. Now you have to know that Allen as a fighter pilot had a special fondness for cumulonimbus clouds. Evidently they were great fun to zoom around and in air-to-air combat could be used with great efficiency for hide and seek. But on this twilight, I was not comforted by a big puffy cloud pointing to heaven. It was not enough. I remember angrily telling God that cloud had no significance whatsoever, that in the next minute it would turn into a puffy dragon or a unicorn. I demanded God to spell it out. I wanted to know that Allen was well. I looked up into the twilight and there was a contrail, that is the vapor left behind in the stream of a jet. Allen loved contrails. One never came overhead that Allen didn’t point to it and guess about the type of plane or its destination. But this contrail was in a perfect A for Allen, spelled out above the pointer column of cloud, above the shining path of the moon on the ocean. God had spelled it out for me in a language that was so particular and unique to Allen and my relationship. Allen was well and it was enough. I stood staring at that shining path and that cloud and that giant contrail of an A for about ten minutes. My eyes couldn’t open wide enough to take it in. I was dumbfounded and grateful and comforted. Then my cell phone rang. I tore my eyes away from the sky to rummage through my windbreaker pockets for my cell. It was my sister calling. They had just crossed the line into Myrtle Beach. They would be there in just a few minutes. I ended the call and looked up. There was the moon. There was the shining path. But that huge cloud was gone. The contrail was gone. I scanned the sky looking for wisps of the cloud, smaller clouds that get broken up by the breeze. But there was none. The sky was completely clear. All gone in a one-minute phone call.
What do we make of stories like this? Was it a psychotic break? A hallucination brought on by grief and salt water? I recall Paul having a vision of heaven and not knowing if he was in the body or out of it. Well I knew I was in my own body, standing outside the condo, a few feet from the steps across the dunes. This was a message of comfort and faith. This was a resurrection message to drive out fear.
Christ’s message to the Mary’s was do not be afraid. Meet me in Galilee. This is not a total rejection of fear. I have to say some fear is built into our life for life to continue. Good fear is what keeps us from playing in traffic. But Christ is making a new claim for fearlessness in the resurrection. Don’t be afraid so that you can meet me. You can go tell my brothers that we are reconciled and we will meet. You can be people of joy, even after the horror of the crucifixion. You can let go of fear so that you can embrace life. You are not plodding round the year unknowingly passing up your death date till death takes you. You are living now with the knowledge of resurrection to come. So we don’t live like we are dying. But we live like those who are resurrected.
The great preacher Barbra Brown Taylor said, God "is not in the business of granting wishes. God is in the business of raising the dead, not all of whom are willing." That is us. We are unwilling. Perhaps it is too good to be true, too much to take in, too much to hope for. Those words, “too, much, too good, too much” are words of fear. We try to protect ourselves by hoping little. But this fear doesn’t protect us. It keeps us trapped in disbelief, in the ordinary and prevents us from rushing on in joy to meet God.
One thing we can say about Jesus is that he had this profound awareness of God. And it was this awareness that led him to challenge injustice, to live with compassion toward others, to be filled with inner calm and happiness. His life had a “raised up” quality. He was awake. He was truly alive. One can say that Jesus was raised up long before Easter. And what Jesus was about was this: He said, you, too, can be awakened. You, too, can be raised up, resurrected, alive. The reign of God is right under your nose, he said, and you can live in it. You, too, can know true happiness, peace and freedom. The same power that raised Jesus—giving him new life, freedom and joy—is able to raise all people. And so in this sense we are raised with Jesus. In the last verse in Matthew, Jesus says, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We can experience the same life-giving presence of God as Jesus did. His spirit is with us.
Resurrection is a mysterious, ever-unfolding process in the lives of each generation. It is something we experience in the here and now. We experience the here and now when we are not blinded and paralyzed by fear. In the words of the Persian poet, Rumi, “Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody”! Let it be us. Amen.
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