Sermon at Centenry UMC on July 18, 2010
Jisun Kwak
Who Cares!
Isaiah 40:1-5, Matthew 25:1-13
A story before my sermon: Pastor’s Ass.

The pastor entered his donkey in a race and It won. The pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the Race again, and it won again.

The local paper read: PASTOR’S ASS OUT FRONT.

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of Publicity that he ordered the Pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.

The next day, the local paper headline Read:
BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR’S ASS.

This was too much for the bishop, so he Ordered the pastor to get rid of the donkey. The pastor decided to give it to a nun in a Nearby convent.

The local paper, hearing of the news, posted The following headline the next day: NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.

The bishop fainted. He informed the nun that she would have to Get rid of the donkey, so she sold it to a farmer for $10.

The next day the paper read: NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.

This was too much for the bishop, so he Ordered the nun to buy back the Donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.

The next day the headlines read:
NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE.

The bishop was buried the next day.

The moral of the story is .. . . Being Concerned about public opinion can Bring you much grief and misery & even shorten your Life.

So be yourself and enjoy life. Who Cares!?

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, the fortieth chapter, the third verse:
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.”
And in Matthew’s Gospel, the twenty fifth chapter, the thirteenth verse: Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

I have found one classic scene to be noticeably absent lately and that is the prophet – beloved by cartoonists, perhaps especially in the New Yorker – the prophet with beard, flowing robe and a placard which reads, “FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME!” I’m not sure what this absence says about the times we live in; whether perhaps that whole concept of the end of time, the last judgment is now completely passé.
But I am reminded, whenever I open up this great book of books, the Bible, that this idea of judgment and redemption, this call to get ready for a great day a comin’, is very much part and parcel of the faith that is passed down to us.
That warning to those foolish maidens: Beware, for you know neither the day, nor the hour!
That old cry of Isaiah to prepare the way for God’s coming, has echoed and re-echoed across all the centuries of Christendom.
If we were, of course, to take with total seriousness that parable at the other end of this twenty fifth chapter of Matthew, the parable of the sheep and the goats, then we might realize that this “coming of the Lord” for which we are to prepare is not an event confined to the end of time. In that parable, Jesus tells those sheep and goats, and by extension he tells us that we meet him face to face, we confront the risen Christ, not simply at the judgment, but each day as we encounter the needs, hurts, fears of those about us. “Inasmuch…” was the way he put it:

Inasmuch as you have welcomed, fed, clothed and
cared for any of these my brothers and sisters…
you have done so unto me.
What then?
If Christ meets us, not only at the end of time,
but in the chance encounters of each day,

how will we be ready for such meetings,
just how do we prepare this way of the Lord?

Let me propose the way this church might go about preparing to meet the Christ.
The first commandment is this; (said Jesus)
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength…
and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The first is the love of God.
But how do you, how can you love God?
I mean, can we really develop an affection for such an abstract concept; should we try to cozy up to the ground of all being, creator of all that was and is and to be?
It’s all very well for Jesus – he did have special connections after all – but how do we go about loving some all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, omni-present force that we cannot even fully conceive of, let alone see, hear, touch, taste, smell? Just how does one set about this love of God?
One of the exciting things I did in Korea when I went there few years ago was visiting the college where I graduated from. It was nice to visit the professors whom I dearly respected, the old historic buildings, and those new faces on campus… There, I saw a huge building, where I used to take many classes, was damaged, so was closed just few days before I went there. Some of you may know about the political situation in Korea. The little country have been divided into two different nations. Unification between South and North has been the dearest prayer of my mother’s generation.
To make the long story short, thousand college kids gathered in the building to urge attention of government on unification. They fought, were hurt, arrested, and the building was all broken. I am not trying to talk about the political issue here. What I was awfully disappointed was the people’s heart. Majority of other kids did not care.
I don’t mind if unification is not their primary concern. It is not my most concern either. But thousands of their friends were hurt, the huge building they were supposed to be in and have classes was severely damaged. But rest of the students were just passing by the broken building not caring about it.
One of my nieces who was a college sophomore in Korea then had asked me to bring a pair of newest style of blue jeans from America. I bought a pair of Calvin Klein jeans for her. You know how expensive those are. I proudly presented the Calvin Klein blue jeans to her. And her response was, “Who wears Calvin Klein nowadays? No one wears Calvin Klein!” Calvin Klein was not the leading trend among her peers then. She would not even want to try them on. But those jeans were not even on sale.
No one wears Calvin Klein!
This one short phrase has been with me since.
“So? I don’t care! Who cares!” It was my niece’s response when I tried to share about the broken building.
Who cares!
Our faith teaches that God created this world and still sustains it, every blessed atom of it, in his creative love. This is our God’s world and we are charged with the care of it. We live in difficult, dangerous, despairing times; times when, the old scourges of hatred, hunger, inhumanity and random violence have renewed their deadly ways; times, indeed, when the cumulative impact of such problems is no longer to challenge people, but to bring them to despair, to give up that ancient dream of a better, more just and free world, and settle for survival.
That old question of George Bernard Shaw,
“Is there intelligent life in the universe?”
And his response, “If there is, then they are clearly using this planet as their insane asylum.”
Someone has reckoned that, for every word in this
treasured book, the Bible, twelve children died of hunger in the past year. That means our text alone – Prepare the way of the Lord – represents seventy two young lives.
Who cares?
Who cares for this earth anymore, its beauties, its tragedies?
Who cares about this church, this people of God, the Centenary United Methodist Church, about these faces, lives around us in the pews, their pains, joys, problems and vast potentials?
Who cares about the Lord, whose love surrounds and sustains us even when we take no time to acknowledge and rejoice?

Who cares?

I believe we care…
perhaps falteringly, perhaps all too occasionally, perhaps even carelessly, but we do care.
We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.

Now let us put our caring into living; building ways to open hearts, souls and lives to the Lord of life, to this community of life and to those out there who yearn for life in Christ. And in so doing we have a promise that in giving life we will find it, together.
What was that Isaiah said again?
For to those who truly will prepare the way of the Lord, those who make straight in the desert places a highway for our God, to them the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh, yes all flesh shall see it together.

Let us pray: