Christian Teachings We Rarely Hear: Surrender, Romans 12:1-8, The Rev. Connie Frierson

Romans 12:1-8   The New Life in Christ

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

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         Let’s start with our bible passage this morning. Our scripture talks about being a living sacrifice that true worship is to make yourself and myself into a living sacrifice.   Oh no, a living sacrifice didn’t have much to do with my plans this morning. As my eyes peeped open at the alarm clock, I did not bounce out of bed, yelling good, good time to sacrifice. That is not how I pictured worship this morning.  I was thinking along the lines of a cup of coffee, a nice breakfast, a few peaceful prayers, a little learning sermon, pleasant music and then lunch.  Sacrifice didn’t have much to do with my plans.  But this passage on sacrifice reflects our next rarely taught Christian lesson, surrender. This lesson goes by several names. Whether you call this lesson surrender or sacrifice or submission or abandonment of self, surrender is at the core of living a Christian life.

         Surrender of the self is what Jesus calls us to do.  There is this passage from Matthew 16:24-5 “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  Jesus is describing a spiritual practice of surrender.  Jesus calls it denying oneself.  But in this surrender instead of losing your life you find it.  This is a paradox.  A paradox is two statements that seem to be contradictory or even impossible or mutually exclusive.  But in actuality is profound truth.  Here is the paradox.  You have to be a living sacrifice. According to our scripture if you can be a living sacrifice you can be not conformed to world but be transformed. According to Jesus, You have to lose your life to find it. This is surrender that lead to life.

         Surrender is just too hard a concept.  So I wonder if we can simplify. Is there one image that could help us this morning?  I am hoping this is it, A Snow Angel. If you have ever made a snow angel raise your hand.  If you are over 50 especially, raise your hand. It doesn’t matter if you have done this yesterday or 50 years ago, you know how it works.  The snow has been a little skimpy lately but if you get a good deep snow and you fall backwards and fan your arms and legs, there you have it ‘A Snow Angel.’ That instant when you tip over backwards that is surrender. This big hard concept is a simple as this.  

         But the problem is we make it hard. We don’t like surrender. Quite frankly surrender has never been much encouraged.  What do you think of when you think of surrender?  If you surrender, you are a loser. You have raised the white flag. You have given up. You are defeated.  We don’t value any of that.  We are a “never say die” culture.  Our hero’s don’t surrender. They go down fighting. How odd Jesus did exactly the opposite of our hero culture.  Jesus emptied himself of power and went to the cross.  Jesus practiced complete surrender to God so that through him God could overcome death. God wants the same for us.  God wants us to surrender to God so we can overcome, overcome our faults, our limitations and ourselves and even to overcome death.

         Perhaps if we just answer two questions we can get back to the simplicity of that snow angel. 1) Who we surrendering to and 2) what are we surrendering? First of all you need to think of whom we are surrendering to. Does God want us to give up and give in to an enemy? No. The surrender is not to a stranger or an enemy but to a father, a creator, a mother hen, and a sacrificing savior. Your surrender isn’t to a stranger but to someone who knows the hairs on your head, someone who knows you better than yourself.  This surrender is not to an enemy who will humiliate and ridicule and perhaps massacre you but to the God who made you, works to guide and teach you and ultimately whom you will return to.  So in this way surrender isn’t a crazy radical act.  It is the nature turning of a child to a parent. Or it is as easy as tipping back into deep soft snow.

         The next question is what are we surrendering?  We surrender our life, our control of our life to God.  Well let’s just turn that one over in thought.  What do we control in life?  Can anyone make you taller by sheer will?  Can you prevent cancer?  Can you prevent your loved ones from dying?  Can you control what people think of you?  Seems to me that there is a whole bushel worth of things I think I can control but that I really can’t.  Perhaps I could surrender this silly belief that I am in control. It seems the most important thing to surrender is the illusion that I am god, that I know what is best, that I am always right, that my wishes and dreams are reality. This process of surrender might free me of a lot of anxiety. 

         I will give you an example.   In NYC there was a mother named Becky.  Becky had a child with Downs’s syndrome.  When her little one was little she would work and help with care plans and it seemed to be working.  But in time her little boy got older. He needed to go to a new school with new schedules and new teachers and new faces. And Becky would be bolt awake at 4:00 am worrying about all this.

In her devotionals she wrote, “We feel tension because we care. So much. We carry tension because we fear we’re not enough.” The basic truth is that while she could do lots there would always be something that she could not do.   There are always things we cannot do.  When we face this we need to practice surrender. We do the things that we are called to work on and leave the results to God. Surrender leads to God dependence, which leads us to peace. This surrender is what Paul was getting at when he wrote, “Do not be anxious about anything, 
but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 
And the peace of God, 
which transcends all understanding,
will guard your hearts 
and your minds in Christ Jesus” 
Philippians 4: 6, 7

         We need to surrender not just the illusion of control but also our very selves.  We give God the big and the little things of our life.  As an example there was a Seinfeld episode that illustrates this.  George Costanzia is a rotten guy.  He is selfish and pretentious. His life is a mess.  So in this episode, George acknowledges that all his basic instincts are wrong. So he decides to live his life doing the compete opposite of what he would ordinarily do.

So instead of ordering a ham on rye sandwich, he orders a tuna fish on whole wheat. Instead of lying to a woman and telling her he is an architect, he admits he is unemployed and living with his parents. Instead of pocketing some money he found he returns it to the owner.  His life totally changes around.  We are like that too. Instead of asking what we want, we ask what God wants. We think we are doing this practice of surrender for God right.  Wrong.  We are actually doing the surrender for us.  Our passage from Romans 12 has been paraphrased in the message like this. “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”

         We have an illustration of this ordinary walking around life right in this service.  The second hymn was “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” I loved that Hymn. The hymn is a fantastic combination of ragtime, speak easy and gospel. That is about my favorite combination. But that hymn represents what is the basic orientation of our life.  Jesus, come follow me.  Do what I am doing. Follow me around my life and make it whole and safe and good.  Maybe this ordinary walking around life can be redirected in a foundational way. Before I start walking, I offer God the steps. Before I slip my feet in slippers, I offer God my feet. Before my mind makes elaborate plans for today, I let God renew my mind. All that has the simple abandon of an angel in deep snow. We will close with the hymn “I Surrender All.”

                 

Amen.

St. Patrick’s Prayer: Discovering Christ Within, The Rev. Connie Frierson

John 14: 15-27

15 ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’ ²²Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?’ ²³Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

25 ‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. ²⁸You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.”

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         This morning is the first week in a new sermon series. Graham and I are about to preach for four weeks taking Saint Patrick’s Prayer as our focus. So I started my research. I asked my friend Peter, who was raised a good Irish Catholic, to tell me everything a good catholic would know about Saint Patrick. Peter was baptized Peter Paul Donovan so you would think that he would be a wealth of knowledge.  But the only thing he could remember was that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.  That was the sum of his knowledge on the subject! Faith and beggorah!  Our feeble protestant knowledge is just such a wee poor thing as well. 

         So the first thing is to remedy our ignorance and get a sense of who St Patrick was and why would this prayer be attributed to him.  St. Patrick was born in the early 5^th century and was raised in Roman England probably in the west near the coast.  His father was a deacon; his mother was fairly well connected, so it sounds like young Patrick was lucky. The early middle ages didn’t have a middle class but if they did Patrick would have been comfortably in that class. But a great misfortune befell young Patrick. At the age of about 16, Irish pirates kidnapped him.  The blackguards scooped him up and sold him into slavery to a druid high priest in Ireland.  And there he stayed as a slave for six years.  His job was as a shepherd and though Patrick had never been particularly religious before his enslavement, he experienced God in prayer on those hillsides. One night he had a dream that he should go home. He feared a beating if he was caught but he escaped and persuaded a ship to take him away.  The ship crashed on the coast and Patrick and his shipmates walked and starved. But Patrick prayed for God’s help and shortly after they came upon a herd of wild hogs. So they had dinner and Patrick’s stock when up in the eyes of his fellow castaways. St. Patrick ended up walking over 200 miles to get home. And he came home a changed young man.  Now in his early 20’s he studied to be a priest.  As he grew more mature he had another dream in which the children of Ireland were calling to him to go there as a missionary. And Patrick went using the shamrock of Ireland to illustrate the trinity and converting kings and regular folk.  St Patrick never forgot his experience as a slave and a captive.  He was one of the first church figures to speak out against slavery. That is what we know of St. Patrick.

         Now let’s turn to the prayer. The St. Patrick prayer is also called St. Patrick’s Breastplate. This prayer that has Christ before and behind and above and below and within has made Christians through the ages think of Christ’s protection. The form of the prayer really is similar to Druid incantations that were known at the time. How typical of St. Patrick to use a form that would have been so familiar to his Irish converts to reuse and repurpose that form for Christ.  At it’s most basic we can think of this prayer as calling on Christ to be all around us, as Christ protecting us, hence the name St. Patrick’s Breastplate. But St. Patrick would have thought of this prayer as more than protection.  He would have thought of it, as the way God is – not describing what we are asking God to do, but what God is already doing. And that understanding is quite different from a simple prayer to God to surround us and keep us safe.  Christ is within as near as the words on our lips and the beat of our heart.  This morning we will be looking at that particular aspect of the prayer, Christ within.

         But this idea of Christ within is really not as common in Christian thinking as you might assume.  Maybe it is not so foreign at Calvin as Quakers and mystics have influenced us.  But in the larger church, we might think more often in terms of ‘We are in Christ’ and not so much ‘Christ is in us’.  The bible uses both term. Both terms are true.  But so often the church has just focused on getting all of us to be in Christ.  As though Christ is a baptismal pool and if we can just get everybody to dip in a finger then we are in Christ.  The emphasis is on US joining in Christ. The focus is on US coming into the baptismal pool, the saving light or even the church. Like we get to join the Jesus Club but then we can just be lapsed members.  Perhaps our emphasis on our own sin makes the thought of Christ within so unlikely.

         In another way we think of our church, meaning all of us, as ‘the body of Christ’ but that is the collective whole of us. We often remember ‘that where one or more are gathered in Christ’s name then Christ is there.’  Does that then mean that if you are by yourself that Christ isn’t there, that you are just flat out of luck? An understanding of Christ within means that alone or in a crowd, with believers or without, Christ is there with you. We often feel ourselves too undeserving for Christ within.  So we rely on the church, the gathering of lots of believers to be the body of Christ. Scripture tells us that we are the Body of Christ.  But that does not mean that we as private, flawed individuals are not also able to invite a life with the Christ within.

         Another the habit of protestant faith that sets the idea of Christ Within on the back burner is that we get very focused on the externals.  We believe that Christ died for our sins. This is focusing on the historical actions of Jesus to step in on the cross for us. We hear that Christ is a substitute for us before the father.  This is a very external and even legalistic understanding of Christ. All that Christ did is important but it is external to us.  It sets what Christ did as outside of us.

         Jesus was plainer and more personal. In John 14:20 Jesus says he will send a comforter and helper to be with us.  In John 17 Jesus goes on and on about him (Jesus) being in you (the disciples and all who believe) just as the Father is in Jesus. Jesus turns this ‘I am in you and you are in me and the father is in me and I am in him’ phrase over and over.  The words tumble about and mix I and you and Jesus and the Father so that WITHIN is the main point Jesus is making.  Paul writes just as plainly, “Don’t you know that Christ is in you? (2 Cor.13; 5)

         This is also the thoughts and devotional writing of many of the most revered and respected saints of the church. Here are some examples;

"Our Lord Jesus Christ...became what we are, so that He might bring us to be even what He Himself is." - Irenaeus c. 180 AD

"The man of God is consequently divine and is already holy. He is God-bearing and God-borne." - Clement of Alexandria c. 195 AD

"God became man so that man might become God." - Athanasius c. 325 AD

         I guess having Christ within asks a big question.  What difference does it make to have Christ within?  The reality of Christ Within makes a tremendous difference at the hardest spots of life.  For St. Patrick abducted, lonely and enslaved it made the most profound difference.  Christ within lit lonely nights on the hills, helped Patrick see the possibility of escape and ultimately led him back to Ireland, to his abusers, to work for there own healing, salvation.  Christ within speaks when there are no other voices to be heard in the darkness. 

         This same experience of the presence of Christ within has come to others down through the ages. It has come to me and Graham and many of you.  An example of this is the AP journalist Terry Anderson. On March 16 1985 the day before St. Patrick’s Day, Terry Anderson was kidnapped at gunpoint in Lebanon.  He would be the longest held hostage by the Hezbollah.  He was beaten, threatened daily with death, kept in isolation much of the time, denied medical care and used as a pawn in middle-eastern politics for seven years.

           The days passed into months, the months into years, and eventually Anderson felt so low that he had no choice but to turn everything over to God.  During his captivity, he spent a lot of time assessing his life, and realized that he was arrogant, abusive, and not the man he should be—the man that God created him to be.  In the midst of a lonely room, isolated from all others, he repented to God.  Let me share with you what he says about his own repentance.  He said, “I can’t do this, God.  I’m finished.  I surrender.  There's nothing I can do to change anything, nothing anyone can do.  And it’s just going to go on, and I can’t do it.  Help me.  There’ no reason why you should.  Don’t we always turn to you when we’re in trouble, and away from you when things are good?  I’m doing the same.  But you say you love me.  So help me.

          So far down.  My mind so tired, my spirit so sore.  And more to come, more and more.  I just can’t do it. But at the bottom, in surrender so complete there is no coherent thought, no real pain, no feeling, just exhaustion, just waiting, there is something else.  Warmth/light/softness.  Acceptance, by me, of me.  Rest.  After a while, some strength.  Enough for now.”

         This is a Christ Within experience. We are so fortunate probably none of us will be kidnapped and held hostage.  But for each of us there comes those times of darkness and isolation.  It is in those times that Christ within is the difference between life and death, hope or despair. St. Patrick found this Christ within, so did Terry Anderson and so have so many other people of faith. 

         I would like to end with a fragment of a poem called Faith that Terry Anderson wrote from his book, Den of Lions.

Sometimes I feel

 all the world’s pain.

I only say that once

 in my own need

I felt a light and warm

 and loving touch

that eased my soul

 and banished doubt

 and let me go on to the end.

It is not proof—there can be none.

Faith’s is what you find

when you’re alone and find you’re not.”

Amen

 

Character Matters: Making the Impossible Possible, 3-23-14 The Rev. Connie Frierson

MATTHEW 17:14-20

 Jesus Cures a Boy with a Demon

14 When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, ¹⁵and said, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. ¹⁶And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.’ ¹⁷Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.’ ¹⁸And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. ¹⁹Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ ²⁰He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’

MATTHEW 19:13-26

Jesus Blesses Little Children

 Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’ And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.

The Rich Young Man

 Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these; what do I still lack?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

 Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’

     

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This morning we continue on with our sermon series on Character Traits that matter in the Christian life.  But the character trait that called to me also eluded me.  I wanted to speak of hope.  But hope is such a huge aspect of Christian life. Hope is so big that it seems too big for a personal character trait. Perhaps, hope is more a gift of the spirit.  I wanted to speak of optimism. Optimism seems to be the private or personal character trait that relates to hope. But optimism seemed too secular. It was perhaps more the arena of slick motivational speakers than preacher of God’s word. These two quality also seemed too nebulous and ephemera, maybe too wishful. And what if you don’t have the trait of natural ebullient optimism? What if you are a pessimist?   I am. Perhaps it is my early life training or perhaps is a lawyer’s mind that always circles around worst-case scenarios, but whatever the cause I tend to pessimism. What about people like me? What about pessimists with faith? I started to think about Whinny the Pooh characters.  Eeyore, the donkey, is exactly the opposite of hope. He is doom and gloom. A private rain cloud seems to hang right over his hanging, drooping head.  So the opposite of Eeyore must be hope right?  But the opposite of Eeyore is Tigger. And let’s face it Tigger is an idiot. I don’t want cockeyed optimism or ridiculous hope. What I wanted was to add in grit and realism and perseverance to hope. I wanted to add legs to the hope. I want to talk about a hope that has wings to mount up like eagles, leg to run and not be weary, and feet to walk and not faint. I want to talk about optimism with guts and muscle to work.        

         So I asked, “How does the bible talk about hope and optimism?” The bible talks about making the impossible possible. The bible is chuck full of the impossible. From an old and childless Abraham who was promised descendants that outnumber the stars, to the wandering children of Israel who overcame giants in the promised land, to the walls of Jericho that fall when an army of believer blows some horns and shout; the bible is full of impossibilities.  But the king of the impossible has got to be Jesus. He feeds thousands on a little boy’s lunch. He heals the hard cases. He raises the dead. He dies and is resurrected. He instills in his eleven fearful, working class nobodies in a backwater of the Roman Empire the ability to change the world.  And then in John 14:12 Jesus says to us “Those who believe in me will do greater things than these.” Talk about the impossible! Evidently, God is inviting us into the business of making the impossible possible.  This is part of what we are asked to do. Doing greater things than Jesus is part of our charter. Believing the impossible is possible becomes part of our Christian character.

         Ah, come on. We can’t do that.  Actually that is precisely the situation in our passage today. The disciples are standing in exactly the same situation that we imagine ourselves to be.  A distraught father has asked the disciples to do the impossible, “Heal my son.”  And they couldn’t do it.  So Jesus gives them a tiny lesson on making the impossible possible. “Why couldn’t we do this?” they ask. Jesus says, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.”

         If we want to learn about making the impossible possible we need to consider the mustard seed. Evidently in one tiny seed there is a gigantic and indispensible message. This is a tiny/big message. First, the tiny part, the mustard seed is so small. At Matthew 13:31-32 Jesus is teaching and again using the mustard seed as his metaphor. Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Jesus declares a mustard seed to be the smallest of all seeds, but when grown it grows large enough for birds to nest in it. Actually, Jesus was not a keen botanist because the smallest seed ever is actually a tropical rainforest orchid. That orchid seed is 1/300^th of an inch, which is smaller than the eye, can see. But for Palestinian farmers of his day the seed of the black mustard, Brassica nigra, was the smallest seed they would have sown. Farmers in that day spread seed by casting the seed with their hands.  And the mustard seed would have grown about twelve feet high so birds could nest in it. As Jesus wasn’t addressing an international conference of botanists but a more local crowd we can cut him a break. The point is Jesus is saying it is OK to start small.  

         The small tiny start leads to the big part, putting our faith in a gigantic God. The impossible starts with a small turn in our orientation, a nod of the head, a willingness to start, that hesitant small desire, the small first step. This is our start, one step and then another and another and another.  Each step is like that mustard seed plant that almost overnight grows beyond our expectation or understanding.  The first step is tiny, but the power of that step is not simply in accumulating more tiny steps.  The miracle of growth, the impossible that happens isn’t our efforts but God’s.  The hidden potential for growth isn’t our work. The result is God working in and around and through. I have been reading Elie Wiesel’s classic about the Nazi concentration camps, Night.  As those poor dear sons and daughters of Abraham suffered they would recite the prayers of the Jewish faith.  Over and over they would pray the Kaddish a prayer for the dead.  This name for God has rung like a bell in my mind. They address God as Master of the Universe.  As the earth was created, as day and night emerged, as all things came into being, God is Master of the Universe. As that tiny seed of the mustard plant breaks forth in luxurious, amazing growth, there is the power of the Master of the Universe at work.

         Often we forget the most important element of making the impossible possible. We forget God, Master of the Universe. Here is an example of how this happens.  I was in seminary. Life was pretty hectic, I had started to work at Calvin Presbyterian Church, but I was still in seminary. One March I had lots of papers due and mid-term tests. I was really focused on getting this stuff done.  One morning as I was up early. I looked at the calendar on the frig and suddenly the bottom fell out of my stomach. I looked at the date and it was my son’s birthday. March Lloyd Frierson born on March 8^thin the middle of a March snowstorm.  For goodness sake, my son’s name is March, named after his birthday month and here I forgot this important date. Like any reasonable mother I panicked.  But then I remembered a couple of presents I had set aside to give him at Christmas. So I quickly exchanged Birthday wrapping paper for Christmas wrapping paper. I made the traditional birthday pancakes with chocolate chips for the birthday breakfast. Luckily we live in a day and age when I can get a quick cake with inscription. I call my sister for an impromptu party. She picked up some balloons. And God is so good! March’s favorite birthday dinner food is Chinese takeout.  The day was saved. My problem wasn’t that I didn’t love my son. My problem wasn’t that I didn’t know the date he was born. I remember every detail. I was there. My problem was I had forgotten. We have the same problem when we forget the power of God, Master of the Universe. We do it all the time, not on purpose but because we are just too busy. Or we are so focused on what we will do. The power of making the impossible possible isn’t by focusing more and more on what we will do but by remembering we serve the God of the impossible and then doing in simple obedience what is in front of us to do. The tiny message is start small and then pay attention to what the real power of God is blessing.

         The tiny part is us, the power of the impossible is Gods.  The gospels have other lessons about the impossible.  In Matthew, Mark and Luke there is also the story of the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and asks what he must do for eternal life.  He already follows the law and the commandments. But Jesus tells him to sell his possessions and follow him. The young man sadly goes away unable to take that step. The young man goes away defeated. Later in discussion with the disciples Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  The disciples ask who then can be saved.  And Jesus replies, “for humans it is impossible for God nothing is impossible.” So often we take away from this story the cautionary tale of the dangers of money and greed. This is a good lesson. But Jesus is pointing to a more profound step, that everyone and everything is dependent on the power and presence of God.  God makes our salvation possible. God makes our healing possible. If we are called to make the impossible possible then we need to be in God’s company.

         There is a baseball story to illustrate:  Once a boy and his brother went to a St. Louis Cardinal’s ballgame with their grandmother. Now the truth is that deep down they would have rather had their dad or uncle take them. But it was a workday afternoon so better granny than no baseball game at all. So off they went. But on the way they stopped and picked up another elderly woman and brought her along. Great thought the boys, in a few more stops they could pick up the whole grey haired prayer group. But the kids knew something was up when they pulled to the curb at the stadium and a uniformed man stepped up and opened the car doors and said, “Good afternoon Mrs. Divine.” They valet parked the car. Then they were ushered to a special elevator and the attendant, said, “Good afternoon Mrs. Divine.” Then they were escorted to a private box. The boys realized that Bing Divine, the General Manager of the Saint Louis Cardinals had a mother.  And that they were sitting in his private box with his mom. All this special treatment was not because of who they were but because of whom they were with. We are like those boys. Our blessings or successes are not so much because of who we are, but because of who we are with.  We are like those boys in another way. They thought they were hanging out with another boring little old lady. In the same way, we think we are hanging out with a toothless, ‘do nothing’ God.  Our estimation of God and what God can do is too small. And so our faith is too small, below the size of a mustard seed, maybe like that hothouse orchid seed at only 1/300 of an inch.

         So here are some things to think about this day and perhaps through the week.  What is your mountain?  Sometimes it is not always a mountain for instance in this same story is in the Gospel of Luke, but the mustard seed faith moves a mulberry tree instead of a mountain. What is the impossible relationship or task or addiction or problem? What do you think is beyond the power of God?  Can you make that tiny movement towards faith? What is the smallest unit of measurement you can take towards that mountain? Is it a teaspoon of dirt? Or is it a shovel?  Could you maybe rent a backhoe? Then look carefully for what God is blessing.  This is the way to develop a faith that makes the impossible possible.

  Amen.

Character Matters: Compassion

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Philippians 2:1-9

March 16, 2014

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,…

            I want you to stop and think for a moment. Who is the most compassionate person you can think of? It can be someone in history, or it can be someone you know. Can you think of one? When I think of the most compassionate, at the top of the list is Father Damien. He was a Roman Catholic priest who ministered in Hawaii in the mid- to late-1800s. He spent his life caring for lepers who had been quarantined and almost left to die on the Hawaiian island of Molaka’i.

            Born in 1840, Father Damien grew up in Belgium as the seventh child of a Flemish corn merchant. His name was originally Jozef De Veuster. Throughout his childhood he wanted to find a way to serve God by caring for people. After he entered seminary, he prayed over and over that God would help him become a missionary. His prayers were answered in 1864 when he was sent to Hawaii and ordained a Catholic priest. It was there that he found his life’s purpose and work.

            About the same time as he arrived, Hawaii was struggling through an epidemic of what was then called leprosy, but we now call Hansen’s Disease. It’s a disease that is said to cause people to lose their extremities—fingers, toes, noses, ears, etc… In fact, it’s not the disease that causes the loss of the extremities. The disease simply kills nerve endings so that people can’t feel pain at all. And their inability to feel pain means that they bump fingers and toes, but don’t realize it. Their lack of feeling allows infections to grow in these bumped fingers and toes, but, again, they don’t realize it. Eventually the extremities become gangrenous, and need to be cut off or fall off. It’s the loss of pain that leads to the loss of fingers and limbs. If you remember old biblical movies, those who had this disease often lived in caves or hid from others, hiding their condition behind cloths covering their faces. They were shunned.

            Worrying that the disease might spread throughout the islands, King Kamehahmeha V approved the “Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy,” in 1865, which quarantined all lepers to colonies on north shore of Moloka’i, an island that even today is remote and that discourages outsiders. About 8000 Hawaiians were sent to live in these colonies. They were meant to be safe place for them, where they could live in peace, grow their own food, and not be the target of prejudice. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way. Nobody realized that people whose disease caused them to lose fingers and toes can’t really farm. Also, they couldn’t build houses, so these colonies became like the Wild West with people attacking each other, living in drunkenness, all while living in lean-to shacks.

            The Catholic Church realized that it had to do something to care for these lepers, but they also realized that appointing priests to minister for them could be a death sentence. So they asked for four volunteers to live with them, with the idea that the priests would serve for three months on, and nine months off. Father Damien was the first to volunteer, and once he got to Moloka’i, he decided that this was his life’s purpose. He stayed for most of the rest of his life.

            His impact on the colonies was immediate. He started by building a church, and getting all the residents to help him, which created a center for the colonies. Then he helped them build decent houses, managed to have food shipped in, built schools for children, organized the farms, and established laws. For the next twenty years he lived among them. He rubbed their feet when feeling left them. He dressed their wounds. He ate their food and stayed in their houses. In 1884, he contracted the disease himself, and literally became one among them. He died five years later in 1885, and is still celebrated in Hawaii today. Father Damien Day is an official holiday in Hawaii on April 15^th.

            What really made Father Damien stand out was that he didn’t just have sympathy for these people, or even empathy. He had compassion. What’s the difference? It helps to understand the words themselves.

            The word “compassion” literally means “to suffer with” (com=with + passion=suffer). When we have compassion for someone, we are literally willing to “suffer with” that person, to walk with her or him through her or his troubles. We may not know what to do to fix the problem. We may not have an answer for her or his struggles, but we stay with her or him anyway.

            Have you ever visited someone who is really sick in a hospital, and didn’t know what to say, but you sat with him or her anyway? Have you ever gone to a funeral home, and didn’t know what to say, but you stayed anyway? Have you ever been with a friend who is going through a really difficult time, and you couldn’t fix it? Yet you listened anyway? That’s compassion. You are wiling to suffer with the person, and suffer yourself with not being able to fix anything.

            Compassion is very different from another term we often confuse with it, which is empathy. Empathy literally means to “feel within” what the other person is going through. It comes from em=within + pathy=feel. As a therapist, I have been taught to be empathetic. I have been trained to listen to what others are going through, and to be able to identify their feelings by tapping into my own memories of times that I have felt like them. But I don’t suffer with them. I still stay a step away, which is appropriate. I have to keep a bit of emotional distance, but I still need to be able to feel something of their suffering.

            Compassion is also very different from sympathy. Sympathy literally means to “feel with” another person. It comes from sym=with + pathy=feel. When we have sympathy for people, we feel their pain, and are willing to help them, but we usually aren’t willing to go too far to help them. We are sympathetic, but we aren’t willing to suffer with them.

            Unfortunately, the modern problem isn’t that we substitute sympathy or empathy for compassion. Our problem is that we often have no-pathy. Too many people look around at other people’s struggles, and they just don’t care. They may act like they have sympathy, but in the end they don’t necessarily care if people are poor, struggling, hurting, or suffering. And for them it leads them to non-passion. Non-passion is the unwillingness to share in another person’s struggles.

            To really understand “compassion,” it helps to understand the original Greek word for it used in the Bible. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus says, “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.”or “Suffer with others as your Father suffers with others (YOU).” Jesus is telling people to enter into suffering with others. The Greek word for compassion is “splangchnizomai.” It is a word that literally means to “feel in our intestines,” or gut. To really have compassion means to feel the suffering of another deep within us, and to feel it viscerally. This is the core of Christian compassion: we feel in our guts the struggles of others, and we respond out of that core. Jesus demonstrates this compassion when 5000 people have come to hear him, and he tells the disciples to feed them. They tell Jesus to send them away, and Jesus says no. Luke tells us what is going on in Jesus emotionally: “When he saw the people he had compassion (ἐσπλαγχνίσθη, «esplangchnizai») for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

            To have compassion as a Christian means to be willing to suffer with people, even if it means that we can’t fix their problems or them. It means doing a lot of the things that we Christians do, such as visiting someone in hospital, sitting with struggling person even if you can’t do anything to really help, listening to someone we can’t help, helping someone who won’t always help him- or herself, or being the constant friend of someone suffering with mental illness who has been rejected by everyone else.

            Having true compassion comes out of having character because it requires a willingness to suffer with people with no payoff for ourselves. The fact is that it can be incredibly frustrating because sometimes these people suck all of our time and efforts, and we barely get thanked. It can be time-consuming, meaning we give up other things we want to do in order to be with them. It can make us feel helpless because we don’t know what to do. It can mean denying ourselves and putting ourselves out, sometimes with no thanks and little appreciation. But it also means serving God by being God’s presence in people’s lives.

Amen.

Character Matters

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Romans 5:1-5

March 9, 2014

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

            Back when I was in tenth grade I had a painful experience that in many ways changed my approach to life. It wasn’t traumatic, and it wasn’t the kind of experience that most people on the outside would look at and say, “Oh my! I feel so bad for you.” Instead, it was a minor painful experience that had ramifications for how I decided to live the rest of my life.

           

            At the time I had just completed about six straight years of being a lazy, poor student. In many ways I became that student because I became what everyone said I was. I was criticized a lot for not being a better student, yet no one ever sat down with me and said, “Can I help you learn how to learn.” I’ve learned that if you are criticized enough for not working hard enough, you eventually become what they criticize. So I became a bad student, but I was good at was sports. It was the one area where I didn’t get criticized quite as much, and where I did get praise.

            Before tenth grade my main two sports were soccer and ice hockey. I had been a starter on the 7^th & 8^th grade and 9^th grade soccer teams, but as I got older my inability to use my left foot made it harder for me to excel. I have a basic problem with my athletic prowess. I am exceptionally coordinated with my right hand, arm, and leg. I am also exceptionally klutzy with my left hand, arm, and leg. I can feel it just standing still. If I raise my right hand, it feels capable of accomplishing anything. When I raise my left hand, it just feels uncoordinated. You give me something to do with the right side of my body, and nothing feels beyond my ability, whether it’s throwing or catching a ball, hitting a ball, grabbing something, or moving something. If all sports were just one-handed, I felt like I could have been great. But my left side was a severe problem. And it meant that my soccer career was stalling because you can only circle to your right for so long before you have to kick the ball with your left. I can kick the ball 60 yards with my right foot. I have a hard time kicking six feet with my left.

            At the same time, I was becoming very good in ice hockey, where I could be just right-handed. I was a strong and nimble skater, and I had very good stickhandling skills. I was an all-star in the Pittsburgh area in ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. I’ll be the first to admit that Pittsburgh area ice hockey wasn’t the greatest, and being an all-star here wasn’t saying much, but in all-star games against teams from Canada, and in summer ice hockey camps with kids from New England, I held my own.

            So, I faced a dilemma. I was no longer starting on the soccer team, and my hockey practices were every Wednesday afternoon beginning at 6 p.m. The problem was that soccer practice didn’t end till 5:30 p.m., meaning that I had very little time to get to the rink three miles away, get on my hockey equipment, and get out on the rink for practice. And I loved hockey practice. I went to the coach and asked if I could get out early on Wednesdays so that I could get to my hockey practices. The coach, without even pausing to consider, flatly told me “no.” So I did what any logical tenth-grader would do. I quit.

            That evening I came home and told my father I had quit the soccer team. He asked me why, and I told him everything I just told you. Instead of saying what I expected, which would be something like, “That’s okay, Graham. You’re good in hockey, and you don’t like soccer that much,” he responded in a very different way: “Graham, you don’t quit. You never quit. You made a commitment to that soccer team, whether you like playing or not. You do not quit. I want you to go to the coach tomorrow, apologize, and ask him if you can come back on the team.” Are you kidding me? I made my best case, but you have to remember that my father was a lawyer at the time, so I wasn’t going to get far. The next day I went up to the coach in school, apologized, and asked him if I could come back on the team. He let me back on, and I pretty much sat on the bench the rest of the season.

            Having to apologize and stay on the team had a pretty big impact on me. Enduring soccer practices, which I had come to hate, day after day, changed me. It taught me to persevere. It taught me to do what Paul talks about in our passage today, and in the process it began to teach me how to develop character.

            This experience was really my first clear understanding of what Paul said in our passage when he said, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.” I realize that sitting on the bench on the tenth grade soccer team doesn’t seem much like suffering to an outsider, but it was to me. I did one thing well at the time, and that was play ice hockey. It was the only thing anyone ever praised me for at the time, and it was anguish not to practice normally for the next six weeks. But I endured it, and in the process it taught me that I could endure most of anything I faced, and if I did I could get better.

            I was a very different person in high school than I am now, and it’s not because I’m older now. Back then, other than for things I had passion for, I gave up more than I put in.  And even with the things I had a passion for, I didn’t work that hard at them (hockey was the exception). My father’s making me go back, apologize to the coach, ask to be back on the team, and pretty much sitting on the bench for the rest of the season started my transformation of character. The biggest thing it taught me was to endure, which led to good things.

            The experience had an impact on my grades. One reason I had been a bad student was that I didn’t like enduring homework. I hated it. To me it felt like suffering, and studying for tests was worse. Why endure that pain when I could watch episodes of Star Trek and Kung Fu instead? But after this experience I realized I could endure homework and studying, and my grades slowly started to improve. It took a while because I had to teach myself the studying skills that many third-graders now have. My grades slowly got better throughout high school, and then throughout college where I finally made the dean’s list. They got even better in graduate school, and I was eventually able to graduate with a 4.0 gpa for my Ph.D.

            It had an impact on my eventually becoming a very good all-star lacrosse player in high school. It also had an impact on my being able to play on a national championship college team as a freshman, and starting on a nationally ranked team as a senior. What allowed me to eventually play in college wasn’t my great skill. It was the endurance I had learned from my father. As one of my college coaches told me after I graduated, most players come into the program at a pretty high level, and graduate at a very high level. I came in at a very low level and graduated at a very high level. Just like my playing ice hockey in the Pittsburgh area, which was no great shakes in places like Canada and New England, my having played in the Pittsburgh area was no great shakes in comparison to kids coming from Maryland and New York.

            I had to have endurance to play lacrosse in college because for those four years I was an outsider. I didn’t come from a lacrosse area. I hadn’t played with or against any of the kids on the team, or on any college teams. No one from this area at the time, except one teammate of mine who became an All-American goalie, really played at the top levels of lacrosse. The coaching and the competition we faced in high school just weren’t good enough. So I was an outsider on the team. For those four years I practiced, worked, and played, yet I barely had any teammates ever talk with me. I can only guess that it was because I was an outsider, since in every other area of my life, including every other sports team I have played on, I was fully accepted and developed great friendships. College lacrosse was the exception. I’m sure my teammates might have a different story to tell, but from the first try-outs no one talked to me. I wouldn’t even get a “hi.” But I endured. I stuck with it. More skilled and accepted players quit because they were sitting on the bench, but I stayed with it. I had learned my lesson about quitting, and it allowed me to eventually succeed. I always wish I had had one more year, but I still managed to start and play at the highest level at that time. The endurance led to develop the character to never quit, and that character led to hope, and that hope led to joy.

            This endurance had an impact on my eventually getting into graduate school, to eventually getting a Ph.D., to writing a number of books and carving out a unique career. And it had an impact on becoming a pastor, and especially being a different kind of pastor. One thing I’ve learned as a pastor is that if you don’t fit into a typical churchy box, you get criticized. I’ve been criticized by other pastors and church members in this town for the way we are as a church, and I’ve been criticized by other pastors and church members in our presbytery for not being their kind of pastor. For example, one pastor in our presbytery has complained to others that “I swear, Graham Standish waits to see how I’ll vote before he decides to vote the other way.” As if I’ve ever had a problem having my own beliefs and opinions. But it doesn’t matter. What I’ve learned is to have enough character to be true to how I’ve been called by God to be, and not to try to be what others demand that I be. God didn’t call me to be them. God called me to be me, and I think this is also what has allowed Calvin Church to become a church that reaches out to very different kind of people—the kind of people who normally won’t go to a typical Mainline church or a contemporary, conservative evangelical church.

            All along, this endurance has made me a tremendously hopeful person because I have seen how endurance pans out. If we are willing to persevere, be self-disciplined, and endure, we find out that things work out in the end. In fact, it is this endurance through difficulties that gives us the time and experience to discover that what we thought was a disaster or hopeless eventually gives way to great possibility.

            It’s the lack of endurance and character, which eventually leads to hope, that often is the problem with suicides. Suicides are tragic, especially because most teen suicides are for kids who could have found hope if they had hung on long enough. So often at the funerals of teen suicides you hear testimonies of people saying that the teen had so much potential, so much to live for. And that is true. Most likely he teen would have discovered hope and joy if she or he had just endured. I see the same things with addictions. Many alcoholics and other addicts aren’t willing to endure. They can’t imagine life without their booze, drug, fix, or high. They can’t endure normalcy. But those who get through recovery find hope because they discover that committing themselves to something better makes things better. Giving up makes things worse. As Paul said, if you are willing to endure struggles and suffering, the character that comes out of it makes many things possible

            I believe life is filled with joy, wonder, and great surprises, but if you don’t form the character that comes from the willingness to endure struggles, you can’t find it. If you spend your life complaining about how you can’t get a fair shake, you never find that joy. The truth is that nobody in life every gets a fair shake. It’s endurance and character that leads to our creating fair shakes for ourselves. If you spend your life complaining about what you don’t have, you never find that joy. If you spend your life frustrated because things don’t come your way, and it’s all too hard, you never find that joy. But if you are willing to endure and allow character to be built, you can find joy in everything because you find hope in every situation.

            Amen