Sermon: “Hope-Filled Grief”
A Sermon Delivered
by
The Rev. John D. Painter
at
Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
November 6, 2005
(All Saints’ Sunday)
Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. —1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (NRSV)
“We do not grieve as those who have no hope,” says Paul to the Thessalonians. Yet we still grieve. Elsewhere Paul calls death “the final enemy.” And when that enemy touches our lives—snatches from our loving grasp those whom we love—we grieve. Grief is normal, natural.
Psychologists speak of “grief work.” And that’s just how it feels, doesn’t it? It is hard, tough work. “The hour of lead,” is how Emily Dickinson named grief.
And it isn’t just in the days afterward. Grief goes on. The way I figure it, in a congregation, on any given Sunday, easily 99.9 percent of us are in grief over someone or something. That’s why we sometimes weep at funerals of near strangers. That’s why we occasionally avoid funerals. Grief keeps coming back at odd times, grabbing us from behind, and throwing us into deep sadness. Loss has so many tentacles that hold us in their grip.
I remember well standing in the greeting-card aisle at the pharmacy in early May 1993, a little over three months after my mother’s sudden death from a stroke. I was grazing through the Mother’s Day cards looking for just the right one for my wife, my aunt, and…. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the realization that I would not need to purchase a card for my mother for the first time in over four decades. The tears began to flow, and I thought I would need to abandon the cards I had picked out and leave the store. As I recall, that was the year I purchased an extra personal card for my mother-in-law.
That was also the moment when I believe my grief finally surfaced—more than it had in the weeks since Mom’s death—and the moment that marked the beginning of my journey toward healing.
Paul says we grieve. Truly we do. Yet, we do not grieve “as those who have no hope.” Hope of what?
Here’s what we Christians hope. We hope that the same God who raised Jesus from the dead, will raise us as well. We hope that just as Christ ventured forth from the realm of death into life, so shall he take us along with him.
Our hope is not unfounded, not wishful thinking. Our hope for the future is based upon what we know of Christ in the present. In Romans 8, Paul says that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. If our experience with Christ has taught us one thing, it is that our God longs to be with us, will do almost anything to be near us, and will go to any lengths to have us.
That is the story that we recite and celebrate every Sunday here in church: in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures; the prophets; the Law and the Commandments; the Psalms; the Gospels of Jesus’ birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection—God seeks us. When Jesus was resurrected, what did he do, first thing after he was raised? He came back to us, to his disciples who had betrayed him.
That is the basis of our hope. We are confident that the God who has gone to such extraordinary lengths to be close to us in life, will not cease those efforts in death. Therefore, we do not grieve as those who have no hope.
We believe that the same God who so pursued us, and reached out to us, and sought us in all the days of our lives will not cease to pursue us, reach out to us, and seek us even in death. Our hope is not in some vague and wishful immortality of the soul; or in the expectation of some eternal spark that just goes on and on; or in reincarnation; or in some other assumption that we have within ourselves about immortality. Our hope is that the love of God is stronger than the devastation of death; that ultimately, nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. God, having gone to such great lengths to save us and have us in life, will continue to claim us even in death. That is why we do not grieve as those who have no hope.
This is the hope that we experience on Sunday in church. Having experienced, on so many Sundays, Jesus coming to us, being really present to us in Word and Sacrament, we hope for and count on his presence with us forever. Our hope is not that we are immortal, not that some eternal spark lives on in us, surviving death. Our hope is that we will, by the work and will of God, be with Jesus forever. Death, the final enemy, has been defeated. So think of Sundays as “dress rehearsal” for eternal life. Think of our experiences of Sunday worship as our way of loving Jesus now, so that we might love him forever, and praise God for all eternity.
“[B]ecause I live, you also shall live” (John 14:19b, NRSV), Christ tells his followers in the Gospel of John…at their final meal together. And that’s why we have hope. Encourage one another with these words: Because I live, you also shall live.
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PRAYER
Lord God, giver of life, we thank you for the gift of life—for beautiful spring and fall days, for the change of seasons, and the bounty of earth’s goodness. We thank you for life.
Because we love life so much, we also fear and hate death. Death robs us of those
whom we love, takes from us the joys of their presence, and throws us into great grief.
Lord, help us to follow you in life and in death, to have faith that your love continues to hold us even when death takes us; that you shall rescue those whom we love from the devastation of death; that you will raise us again to life.
In the resurrection of Jesus you defeated death, triumphed over the powers of evil, and established your reign. Give us grace to believe in your triumph and cling to your power in death, in life, and in life beyond death.
Lord, help us to comfort and to encourage one another with this Resurrection hope. Amen.
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Read MoreSermon: “Minting Errors”
A Sermon Delivered
by
The Rev. John D. Painter
at
Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
October 16, 2005
(Stewardship Sunday)
Text: Matthew 22:15-22
Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away. —Matthew 22:15-22 (NRSV)
I’m holding a quarter in my hand: Twenty-five cents. “Big deal!” you say.
If you have any quarters in your pocket or change purse right now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how much they are worth. Whether you call it a quarter, two bits or a 25-cent piece, each one is worth 25 cents. In some places, five of them will still get you a cup of coffee, 10 of them a mocha latte…maybe. It’s for darn sure “two bits” won’t still get you a shave and a haircut, however!
But there is a slight chance that you might have a quarter worth as much as $1,500.
The new quarters being issued these days are part of the “50 State Quarters” program. Beginning in January 1999, the United States Mint has, every 10 weeks, released a new quarter celebrating one of the 50 states, and they have been doing so in the order that the states were admitted to the Union.
Thus the first quarter that was issued honored the state of Delaware, and the final coin in the series, to be stamped in August 2008, will celebrate Hawaii. The quarter I have been holding is a New Jersey state quarter, issued in 1999.
Things have been going along fine, but in October 2004, when Wisconsin’s coin was put into circulation, coin collectors across America sat up and took notice.
The reason? Minting errors. Every time the mint produces a new quarter for a new state, it makes about 500 million of them, and sometimes mistakes are made. Normally the quality-control procedures at the mint weed a lot of those out, but in the case of the Wisconsin money, some error coins got by, and they have one of two kinds of blunders.
The state side of the perfect quarters has the head of a cow, a wheel of cheese and an ear of corn bursting forth from the husk. On one of the error coins, however, the version numismatists call “extra leaf low,” there is a little mark on one side of the corn ear that appears to be an additional husk leaf half peeled off the ear. The version of the mistake the collectors have dubbed “extra leaf high” is much the same, except that the shadow “leaf” is not peeled quite as far from the ear.
Anyway, because only a few of these minting errors made it into circulation, collectors are eager to get their hands on them. So if you find one in your pocket or your piggy bank, you might get anywhere from $150 to $1,500 for it. Believe me, I am encouraging our counting team members to carefully peruse the coins in our Barrel Offerings from now on!
Actually, minting errors are not all that rare in the money that reaches the public, and the Wisconsin quarter is hardly the only flub in our coinage. Go into any coin shop and you can see several examples of minting-error coins, in denominations from the penny to the silver dollar. The fact is that the U.S. Mint, between its Philadelphia and Denver locations, produces billions of coins every year. They are struck at the rate of nearly 10 coins per second, so many that visual inspection of all but a few is impossible. There is some machine sorting, but mistakes do get out there.
Our New Testament reading puts before us today the incident where some influential men who were opposed to Jesus tried to set him up for big public embarrassment and destroy his credibility.
In front of a crowd—perhaps equivalent to asking him on a live TV news conference—they asked Jesus whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. Their devious idea was that if Jesus argued against the tax, they could accuse him to the Roman governor of urging rebellion against Rome. On the other hand, if he endorsed the tax, the common people who hated their Roman overlords would likely view him as sympathetic to Rome, and thus turn away from him. For Jesus, it was—they thought—a lose-lose situation.
Unfortunately for them, they had no plan when Jesus turned their question on its head, and that’s exactly what he did. Calling for his challengers to produce a coin of the realm, Jesus asked them whose head (Greek: eikon “image”) was imprinted on it. After the challengers gave the obvious answer that the image was that of the Roman emperor, Jesus instructed them to “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21b, NRSV).
Jesus was telling his audience that day about a kind of minting error that they could make with their money. In fact, he turned the whole incident into a teachable moment in which he reminded them that they should be as attentive to their responsibilities toward God as they were to their obligations as subjects of the empire.
Since we are followers of Jesus today, it is therefore worth asking what sort of minting errors we make with our money and the things we possess.
One way to frame our answer to Jesus’ show-me-a-coin question is that it is not our likeness that appears on our money. In the ultimate sense, which is the sense that Jesus’ question was really about, whatever we have is not really ours. All things come from God. Forgetting that is a minting error.
There is an old story that illustrates how easy it is to deny that what we have comes from God. A prosperous farmer was miserly in what he gave to his church. So his minister went to visit him in hopes of getting him to increase his giving. The minister pointed out to him that the Lord had given him a fertile piece of land and had blessed him with sunshine and rain so that his crops would grow. The preacher added, “You know, this farm and everything you have is really on loan to you from God. You should be more grateful.”
The farmer replied, “I don’t mean to complain, Reverend, but you should have seen what a mess this place was when God was running it by himself!”
Can’t you sympathize with that farmer? Theologically, the preacher was right that everything we possess comes from God, but we tend to believe that our prosperity has more to do with our work ethic and a good college education than it does with a theological idea.
There is a natural sense of pride we feel when we have accomplished something that makes us reluctant to share the credit, perhaps even with God. But to say that all things come to us from God is to acknowledge that behind everything is God. Without God’s grace, blessings and mercy, we literally could not exist. God is, in the ultimate sense, the monarch of our world, and we make a minting error when we think that we do not owe God the coin of God’s realm, which includes such things as vision, risk and hope and results in our commitment, gratitude and generosity.
An Old Testament story gives us a healthy perspective on that. The last several chapters of 1 Chronicles contain the record of King David’s preparations to turn the leadership of the kingdom of Israel over to his son, Solomon. The last two chapters include David’s instructions to the people to help Solomon with the building of a permanent temple to house the worship of God.
Up to this time, the center of Israel’s religious life had been the tabernacle, the portable tent which the children of Israel had carried with them during the 40 years of wilderness wanderings following the exodus from Egypt. Once David had consolidated the kingdom of Israel and had established his capital at Jerusalem, he decided to build a glorious and permanent structure to replace the tabernacle. But then God forbade David to do this, but had told David that the son who succeeded him to the throne would be the one to build it.
David therefore did the next best thing. He gathered all of the materials needed to do the job. He contracted with skilled craftsmen to serve his son. And he donated not only income from the royal treasury, but also huge sums from his personal fortune as well.
Finally, he challenged the people themselves to offer not only their skills and talents but also their offerings to the task that lay ahead. The people responded in both ways generously.
Chapter 29 in 1 Chronicles contains the prayer of thanksgiving David prayed after the people joyfully made their commitments. It is a very humble prayer to be prayed by a king, and in it he cautions his subjects to avoid a couple of minting errors.
For one thing, unlike other kings in the surrounding nations, David ascribed to God the attributes that were normally used to speak of the monarch. He said, “Yours, O LORD, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all” (1 Chronicles 29:11).
The second notable thing was that David acknowledged that ultimately, the people needed to thank God and not the king for everything they had. He said, “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to make this freewill offering? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you” (1 Chronicles 29: 14).
To use current church terminology, David’s prayer referred to stewardship, the recognition that, as Psalm 24 puts it, “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it” and that therefore we are both users and custodians of it.
The word “stewardship” comes from an Old English expression, “sty ward,” that meant “keeper of the pigs.” Eventually it came to refer to anyone who had responsibility for the estates or properties of another.
It may be surprising, therefore, that the word, originally used for a pig keeper, later became a proper name for a royal British family: the Stuarts. But as King David’s prayer shows, he would have understood that. Even kings are only temporary agents for the guardianship of God’s world.
In the church, we often use the word stewardship to refer to how much money we give to our congregation’s budget, and that is part of it—indeed the part that we’re focusing on this week—but the biblical sense of stewardship is larger than that. It involves how we use everything God has provided for us, including our planet and environment, our talents, our time, our ability to think and to feel and even our lives themselves. And it is based in gratitude for God’s gifts. It would be a minting error to think any less.
In an issue of Playboy appearing in the early 1980s, a beautiful young woman named Susie Scott was the centerfold. (By the way, I didn’t know that from seeing that particular issue of Playboy, but from some other articles I happened to read about Susie…with no pictures!) She spent the next 10 years doing modeling, acting and promotional work for the magazine, making a good living and enjoying the kind of celebrity that often attaches itself to that lifestyle. In 1988, after one failed marriage, Susie married Aspen, Colorado, attorney Joe Krabacher, and settled down to enjoy a life of comfortable wealth. For a time Susie was a partner in an antique store and a sushi bar.
But then, a little over 11 years ago, Susie happened to see a TV documentary on orphans in Mongolia, and she felt that she ought to do something to help. That’s when a friend of hers said she ought to consider Haiti, because it was much poorer than Mongolia and almost in the back yard of the United States. So Susie soon sold her other businesses and traveled to Haiti, where she asked a taxi driver to take her to where “the poor people are.” He drove her to a shantytown and then quickly sped off. There, a family of 17 took her in for the night, and Susie learned firsthand the plight of many people in that country, which is one of the world’s poorest.
Susie later told a reporter about that first visit to Haiti: “I knew I had been born that day.” She went on to say that she completely committed herself to Christ when she started working in Haiti. Since then, with her husband as a partner, Susie launched the Foundation for Worldwide Mercy and Sharing, an organization dedicated to serving the children of Haiti. The foundation now operates six schools, five orphanages and a hospital ward for abandoned children. Susie’s group feeds, clothes, educates and nurses close to 2,000 children on an ongoing basis.
Susie Krabacher has not merely set all this up. She spends up to half of each year there herself, nursing sick children, and helping in every way she can. Along the way, she has contracted lice, scabies and mange, and has been treated for encephalitis. She has also been threatened by gangs and troubled by bureaucrats, but she has stuck it out, and has won the respect of the local people of Haiti and of the Haitian government.
Susie’s is a stewardship story. In terms of money, Susie and Joe Krabacher fund the administration, publicity and travel expenses of the foundation out of their own pockets. The operating expenses come from donations, some of which come because of Susie’s unique personal story and her Playboy background—which shows that in God’s economy, transformation is always possible and nothing is ever wasted. But it is also a stewardship story in that Susie was able to see that not only her money, but her position of privilege, her celebrity and her life experience itself were treasures on loan from God, and she put them to use in a way that honors Christ.
None of us likely has the same resources Susie Krabacher does, but all of us have the treasures God has given us. The worst minting error we can make is to think they are only for our personal use. But it is a correctable situation, and one we can start in motion by acknowledging that everything we have comes from God’s hand.
This week you will receive a letter from Rich Fritsche, our Stewardship Chairperson, and me inviting you to share your commitment to our ministry and mission in 2006. I trust you will prayerfully consider your response and, as you acknowledge that everything we have comes from God’s hand, and remember the bountiful blessings which you have received from our benevolent God, that you will—with “an attitude of gratitude”—share generously in your gifts of presence and prayers; time, talents, and service…and of your financial resources.
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PRAYER
Generous God, whatever we give to you is already yours. You entrust us with so much abundance; accept whatever we commit to you in the days ahead as signs of our love for you and our desire to serve you. You alone are Lord of our lives. It is already so; make it so even more for us, day by day. Amen.
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Sermon: “Timeless Matters”
A Sermon Delivered
by
The Rev. John D. Painter
at
Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
October 9, 2005
Text: Philippians 4:1-9
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to every-one. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplica-tion with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is any-thing worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
—Philippians 4:1-9 (NRSV)
Imagine that you’ve climbed aboard an amazing time machine and traveled ahead to the year 2505—five hundred years from today—and you’re browsing about in the ancient history section of a university library (assuming universities and libraries still exist in 2505). Glancing through the titles, you come across A History of the 20th Century. It catches your attention, and as you open it, you find a list of the top ten events that shaped the world way back then…and still matter in 2505.
So, here’s the question to ponder: What are the top ten events listed in that book? What events that occurred in the relatively recent past will be remembered 500 years from now? Inter-esting, huh?
Some have suggested that to really understand the question and our answers, it might be helpful to put our time machine into reverse: What do you think were the two most important events that occurred within the last 500 years—all the way back to 1505 or so? That might be quite a challenge, since many of the events our forbears might have considered earth-shattering in their day have likely been relegated to the dustbins of history—or consigned to an obscure Ph.D. dissertation, which some would contend is the same thing. It may be hard for us to imagine that “9/11,” or the Iraq War, or the dual devastation of Katrina and Rita may be only minor blips on the grand radar screen of history half a millennium from now.
What do we honor or revile from 500 years ago…or maybe even 100 years ago? I can imagine any number of possibilities. Wars and battles…was the battle of Gettysburg a pivotal event in America’s Civil War, or is it mainly remembered because of what Abraham Lincoln said there after the battle? Scandals and political intrigues…can anyone here name the main players and problem in the Teapot Dome scandal?; Can your kids tell you what Watergate was all about?; will anyone remember Enron in the next decade, let alone 500 years from now? Great art and architecture…the Sistine Chapel is magnificent, and so are many great works of art and splendid buildings around the world. But are they the first things that leap to our minds when we think about the past 500 years?
A few folk have suggested that the more enduring markers for any age are the ideas and explorations that advance human understanding. James Trefil, a physicist, proposes that new dis-coveries are really what stand the test of time. He concludes, for example, that the two most piv-otal events in the past 500 years or so were Copernicus’ discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe—ushering in the age of modern science, and Columbus opening up the European exploration of the New World. While Dr. Trefil acknowledges neither is the subject of any great literature, “each forever changed humanity’s view of its place in the universe.”
You could probably debate those two events and, in the case of Columbus, argue as to whether “discovery” is always a good thing. (Probably not a considerate thing to do on the eve of Columbus Day.) I might substitute Guttenberg’s invention of moveable type printing, for exam-ple. Dr. Trefil’s point, however, is that ideas and discoveries last because they seem to move us into the future.
So what of the next half millennium? What will be remembered about us 500 years from now? Dr. Trefil says that two 20th-century events—landing a man on the moon and cracking the genetic code—will be the most important. “Future humans,” he says, “will look back on the Apollo program the same way we look back on the early European explorers.” Understanding the human genome will enable us to better understand how life works and help us learn how to “get under the hood and change the system, to alter life.” Again, one might want to debate the implications of this contemporary exploration.
Well, that’s what one scientist has to say about the timelessness of ideas. What does the ancient theologian have to offer?
The Apostle Paul certainly lived more than 500 years ago…actually closer to 2000 years ago…but it appears that he had his focus squarely on the things that would last. In his letter to the fledgling Christian community at Philippi, Paul urges them to “stand firm in the Lord” (Phi-lippians 4:1). And that may be an important word in the midst of an apparent conflict between Euodia and Syntyche, two sisters in Christ at odds with one another within the Philippian Church. Sensing their anxiousness about the struggle, the Apostle urges the Philippian commu-nity to move out of their present focus on problems and instead “Rejoice!” because “The Lord is near” (Philippians 4:4-5). “Do not worry about anything,” says Paul, reminding them of the big-ger picture, but guard your hearts and minds with “the peace of God, which surpasses all under-standing” (Philippians 4:7). It’s a peace that transcends even the cycle of human conflict.
Paul’s worldview of what really lasts was bound up in his understanding of the cross and resurrection. The death and resurrection of Christ was the linchpin of history, ushering in a new age and anticipating an age to come. He understood that human history has an end point, but God’s Kin-dom does not. What really lasts, says Paul, are the ideas and actions that mirror Christ. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).
There is an old Quaker story told about a king who asked for an inventory to be taken of all the flowers in his kingdom.
He sent out a census taker with a clipboard to count all his flowers. Then he realized that the information would be of little value to him unless he had something to compare it with. So he called for a second census taker. This one was asked to count all the weeds in the kingdom. Be-fore long, the first census taker came back, floating into the king’s chamber, draped in smiles and warmth. “King, whatever you do, don’t ever transfer me or my family out of this kingdom. It has to be the most beautiful kingdom in the world. It is overrun with flowers.”
Just then the door slammed and the second census taker came stomping in, threw down his clipboard and demanded an immediate transfer to another land. “King,” he shouted, “this has got to be the worst kingdom in the world. It’s overrun with weeds. I didn’t even get past the drawbridge and I couldn’t count all the weeds in this kingdom. I want out!!”
The moral of the story is, that in this life you are going to see what you are looking for, and it will affect your feelings and behavior. If we look for the things that are excellent and good, we will excel and be good. Look for the junk, and you will feel and behave junky.
Paul had a strong sense of the excellent, beautiful and timeless as opposed to the banal and temporal. He understood the difference between that which was eternal and that which is ephemeral. He believed in the Unseen as having more value, or as being more “real” than the Seen, the Spiritual as being more “real” than the Physical.
He understood that everything—everything!—we see when we look around is some day going to pass away. Nothing will be left standing. Something may be built in its place, but it too will come down either because we tear it down, or because it falls under its own weight, a victim of natural processes.
But Beauty—well, that’s a concept, an Idea, a Form that is absolutely eternal. As is Love. As is Truth. Justice. Honor. Pleasure. These things cannot—repeat, cannot—be destroyed. There is no power or force of any magnitude, dimension, range or design that can destroy these things.
That’s why Paul suggests that in anxious times, in our worrying moments, we should re-turn to the Timeless, to the things that count.
So what about our lives so far?
Few of us will be remembered individually 500 years from now, or perhaps even 50 or 100 years from now. I well remember the day many years ago when I was reminded of my own mortality and the fickle finitude of history. In the midst of what I thought was a significant mo-ment of conflict and challenge…perhaps between a couple of folk like Paul’s Philippian sisters in Christ, Euodia and Syntyche…a wise man gently asked me: “John, a hundred years from now, how important do you think this event will be?” Indeed, I don’t even remember the actual event or the people who were involved anymore…but his question continues to offer me a reassuring perception of what really matters.
Our lives on this earth are, in perspective, pretty brief and not likely of great historical note. If we really want to increase the store of human happiness and well-being and leave our mark on the world, then, the best way to do it is to follow the way of Christ—to think on and do the things that really matter in the long view of God’s Kin-dom.
The truth is that we humans have short memories…but God doesn’t. What we do for God is what will really last!
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PRAYER
O God, how often we forget that to which you have called us. Ensnared by worldly en-ticements, our spirits become numb to the pulsating richness of life wholly centered in you. Transform our weary self-centeredness into your greater glory. Instill in us the vision that lifts our eyes off present struggles that we might once again see the big picture. Guard our hearts against unforgiving hardness, anxious worries and covetous behavior. May we reflect but one small fraction of Jesus’ glory and love to a world longing for gentleness, peace and unconditional understanding. All honor, glory and praise be yours. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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Sermon: “Follow the Rules”
A Sermon Delivered
by
The Rev. John D. Painter
at
Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
October 2, 2005
Text: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Then God spoke all these words:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.” —Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 (NRSV)
For many years there was an empty frame on the wall in the lobby of the Pulaski County Courthouse in Kentucky. That silly looking empty frame was not put there as a joke. It bore tes-timony to something that had been removed.
The frame once contained a copy of the Ten Commandments, but a district judge ordered that the display be removed in 2001, and in 2003 a federal appeals court upheld that ruling, de-claring that the posting violated the First Amendment of the Constitution forbidding the “estab-lishment of religion.” Down came the commandments…but the frame remained in place until last winter, when the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the federal appeals court’s decision.
We all know that there has been no lack of intensity around this issue. “It’s about our heritage. It’s about our history,” said Christian-radio owner David Carr to the Lexington Herald-Leader (March 3, 2005). “It’s about the future of our children.” But others say no, as Americans we’ve got to maintain separation of church and state.
And so the arguments go on, and no doubt will continue to go on for many years to come. But as we ponder this issue, it’s clear that “Pulaski County’s empty frame” does raise for each of us the question of where the Ten Commandments belong in our own lives. We need to ask our-selves: Am I displaying them clearly in my own daily words and deeds? Am I keeping them prominently posted in my personal life? Or am I an empty frame?
It’s true that the commandments contain a list of rather daunting “thou-shalt-nots,” but these 10 rulings are not meant to drag us down into negativity. In fact, they are intended to give us a very positive framework for the living of our lives. The first four commandments provide us with guidance for our relationship with God, and the last six explain what it means to have a healthy relationship with each other. Perhaps you can think of the Ten Commandments as being two pictures, instead of one. After all, God used two tablets of stone to deliver the command-ments to Moses.
Worship of God’s majesty. That’s picture one. And love of one another. That’s picture two. They are equally beautiful, equally innovative, and equally well-crafted. No doubt Jesus had this two-frame approach in mind when he said that the greatest commandment called us both to “love the Lord your God” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-40).
Clearly, these commandments are designed to help us, not to hurt us. We tap into a source of energy and security when we worship God, rather than the powers of this world. And we lead a much healthier life when we take the time to rest, instead of working around the clock seven days a week. The worship of God’s majesty is a positive, not a negative. It makes us stronger, not weaker.
The very same can be said for the second frame of the Ten Commandments, despite the repeated “thou-shalt-nots” that it contains. There is an enormous amount of guidance and direc-tion to be gained from these final six commandments, despite our natural tendency to rebel against any limitations on our human freedom.
Whichever commandment the flashing red stop light appears in front of, we don’t like to hit the brakes and hear “thou-shalt-not.” But these commandments are not all about the nega-tives—they also provide a positive framework for the living of a good life in relationship to our neighbors. The keeping of these commandments moves us into relationships that not only reflect the will of God, but also provide us with much happier and healthier lives.
People may talk about “breaking” the Ten Commandments, but that’s not exactly right. We cannot actually break anything as solid as the law of God, even when we engage in some se-rious sinfulness. Instead, it’s more accurate to say that we break ourselves against the Ten Com-mandments. Think of the commandments as big slabs of stone that we smash ourselves into. And when we collide with the commandments, we’re gonna get hurt. Period.
David Carr was probably right when he said, “It’s about our heritage. It’s about our his-tory. It’s about the future of our children.” The Ten Commandments are about all these things, and they’re also about a framework for worshiping God and loving one another. When you read the New Testament, and come across the Great Commandment of Jesus to love God and love neighbor, it is important to visualize the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, and to post them prominently in your heart and mind.
On one tablet you have the first four commandments concerning your relationship with God. And on the other you have the last six commandments concerning your relationship with neighbor. On one side is God. On the other side is neighbor. Both are important. Both are God’s will. Both are found throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New. Both are close to the heart of Jesus.
In his provocative book about the Ten Commandments, Losing Moses on the Freeway, New Jerseyan Chris Hedges has observed:
“The commandments guide us toward relationships built on trust rather than fear. Only through trust can there be love. Those who ignore the commandments diminish the possibility of love, the single force that keeps us connected, whole and saved from physical and psychological torment.
“The commandments do not protect us from evil…They protect us from committing evil…The commandments hold community together…The commandments call us to reject and defy the powerful forces that can rule our lives and to live instead for others, even if this costs us status and prestige and wealth. The commandments show us how to avoid being enslaved, how to save us from ourselves. They lead us to love, the essence of life.”
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PRAYER
We thank you, God, for your life-giving precepts of wisdom in the great commandments that lead us to order, balance, and wholeness. We thank you for bringing us out from our places of bondage into freedom, where we come to remember you, our creator, bow our knees in adora-tion and open ourselves to your words and will. We thank you that we have freedom to worship because you are working your holiness into us, freedom to pray because you hear and care, free-dom to grow because you forgive our sins, and freedom to love because you have shown us how. Amen.
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Sermon: “Of Rocks and Grace”
A Sermon Delivered
by
The Rev. John D. Painter
at
Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
September 25, 2005
Texts: Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16, Philippians 2:1-13
In February 2005, the engineers of the California state transportation agency (Caltrans) had a serious problem. A mountainous 30-foot boulder teetered above the Pacific Coast Highway posing a serious risk to life and limb, and conventional methods of disposing of this boulder were probably not going to work.
Granted, it would have been convenient if they could’ve applied the approach of the an-cient Rabbi of Nazareth: If you had faith the size of a tiny pebble, you could say to this gigantic boulder, “move from here to there,” and it would move.
But that particular method not being available to the Caltrans engineers, they considered a more traditional approach for disposing of huge rocks like this: simply blast it to smithereens.
The problem is that such a blast generates a lot of flyrock: sporadically deadly and often dangerous and destructive rock projectiles that are created when an explosive blast occurs. There are some ways of controlling flyrock, but none seemed practical for the stone at hand.
There are some other methods used to destroy boulders, and each was probably consid-ered for this one—including bursts of electricity from high-voltage capacitors, slugs of water shot at high speed, or steel pistons rammed in water-filled holes.
In the end, the engineers used a super-sized jackhammer called a Ho-Ram, which is es-sentially a tractor-mounted jackhammer. Bit by bit they chipped it apart.
We all have rocks in our lives. Some are huge. Some are small. They may be at our feet as stumbling stones blocking our faith walk, over which we trip; or strung around our necks as millstones threatening to sink us down; or lurking in our hearts, shielding us from love, or pain, or hope, or joy; or, perhaps, even rocks inside our heads making us plain hardheaded toward God.
Shakespeare’s Othello says, “My heart is turned to stone: I strike it, and it hurts my hand.’’ The rocks of our lives hurt us. If we even notice our stumbling stones, our rocks of heart or head, our weights about our necks, our sins, our blindness, our denials, bigotries, hatreds, an-gers, prides, betrayals and jealousies that we carry, or trip over, hurting ourselves, we still may not turn to God for healing. Even when and if we notice the pain we cause others with the stones of our own making, even then we may not turn to God for healing.
Instead, lacking expertise, we still may choose to do the demolition alone, by ourselves. We tend to deal with things in our own way, and load up the stones with dynamite whenever we can, to explode these suckers, sending flyrock debris scattering every which way, injuring any-one who happens to be nearby.
So how do we deal with the boulders that hover over our lives, or squat stubbornly across the road, impeding our progress? Who can deal with this?
God can. God will. And there won’t be any flyrock. God doesn’t even need a Ho-Ram super-jackhammer, dynamite, high-voltage electricity, steel pistons or high-speed water slugs to crack apart the rocks in our lives.
In Psalm 78, the psalmist praises God, saying, “[God] splits rocks open in the wilder-ness…[God] made streams come out of the rock.” God did so in the desert. God can do so with us.
The psalm revisits a critical chapter in the lives of the Israelites. The writer provides in this song a listing of the awesome things God did for the people. The author, perhaps a teacher or a priest, announces his intention at the beginning: “Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; in-cline your ears to the words of my mouth” (Psalm 78:1). Then the psalmist begins to remind his readers or listeners of God’s past activity in their lives:
• Their enemies, with superior weapons, had been turned away (Verse 9).
• God worked miracles in the land of Egypt (Verse 12).
• God parted the sea to allow them to pass through safely (Verse 13).
• By day God led them through a daunting wilderness with a cloud, and at night by a pil-lar of fire (Verse 14).
And if that weren’t enough, God “split rocks open in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. [God] made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers” (Psalm 78:15-16).
The reason the psalmist recounts these interventions is so that “they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep [God’s] commandments” (Psalm 78:7).
You would think that if you have a God who is acting on your behalf in ways described in this psalm, having hope would not be a big problem. Your enemies are turned away. You’re looking at miracles before your very eyes. The waters of destruction are rolled back, providing a way of escape, and rocks, rather than being obstacles, are split open to provide the waters of sal-vation.
How hard can it be to believe in a God who does all that? How hard can it be to have hope when you have a God acting and intervening on your behalf like this?
Yet, the psalmist sadly notes: “Yet they sinned still more against [God], rebelling against the Most High in the desert” (Psalm 78:17).
No, I’m afraid that like our ancestors in the faith, we often prefer to deal with these rocks in our own way. We drill a hole, drop in a stick of TNT, and blast away with no thought about the flyrock risk. No wonder that this approach results in all sorts of injury to ourselves and those around us!
Better to confess our sins, approach God in humility, and understand that the God of cloud and fire, of parted waters and miracles, is perfectly able to deal with rocks in our lives that need removing.
So how does God take care of these rocks?
In the end, God deals with each of us in different ways. God may create a detour around the rock for one, provide a path in the wilderness that we’ve not yet seen for another, or show us some toeholds and handholds to enable us to climb over the rock. Like the Caltrans engineers, God may simply chip away at these obstacles until they can be removed and do so without the risk of flyrock. And in some cases, God simply takes it away. An old story reminds us of God’s gracious power and love for us.
A little boy was playing in his sandbox with his box of cars and trucks, his plastic pail and a shiny, red plastic shovel.
In the process of creating roads and tunnels in the soft sand, he discovered a large rock in the middle of the sandbox. The boy dug around the rock, managing to dislodge it from the dirt. With no little bit of struggle, he pushed and nudged the rock across the sandbox by using his feet (he was a very small boy and the rock was large).
When the boy got the rock to the edge of the sandbox, he found that he couldn’t roll it up and over the little wall. Determined, the little boy shoved, pushed and pried, but every time he thought he had made some progress, the rock tipped and then fell back into the sandbox. The lit-tle boy struggled, pushed, shoved—but his only reward was to have the rock roll back, smashing his fingers. Finally he burst into tears of frustration.
All this time the boy’s father watched from the window as the drama unfolded. At the moment the tears fell, a large shadow fell across the boy and the sandbox. It was the boy’s father. Gently but firmly he said, “Son, why didn’t you use all the strength that you had available?
Defeated, the boy sobbed, “But I did, Daddy, I used all the strength that I had!”
“No, son,” corrected the father kindly. “You didn’t use all the strength you had. You didn’t ask me.” With that the father reached down, picked up the rock, and removed it from the sandbox.
Some of the rocks in our lives are huge, like that 30-foot, twelve-hundred-ton “pebble” hovering over the Pacific Coast Highway. Some are small—hardly bigger than a grain of sand.—but they sometimes can be the hardest stones of all to deal with. A small pebble in our shoe can bring our walk to a halt pretty quickly, and if left in place, can result in blisters and bleeding.
When we invite God to be present in our lives. When we are faithful in prayer and medi-tation upon God’s Word. When we trust implicitly in God’s purposes, God’s methods and God’s timing. When we allow God’s grace to permeate our souls, our beings, every fiber of our exis-tence. As surely as God rolled away the boulder that sealed a tomb and raised Jesus Christ to life, our God is able to remove the rocks from our lives, and lead us toward the fountains of living and life-sustaining water from which we’re invited to drink freely.
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PRAYER
Lord, who has mercy upon all, take away from us our sins and mercifully kindle in us the fire of the Holy Spirit. Take away from us the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, a heart to love and adore you, a heart to delight in you, and to follow and to enjoy you, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
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