Today's Sermon 11/25/18 - Is Someone Standing on Your Wings?

Is Someone Standing on Your Wings?

(based on Rev. 1:4-8)

          This is the sermon that I’ve wanted to write for a long time.  When today’s lectionary passage from Revelation fell on Christ the King Sunday, I thought it might be the perfect time to write it.  Today we celebrate the full cycle at its conclusion of Christ’s life – next Sunday with the beginning of Advent, we start that cycle anew.

          From Revelation we get the culmination of Christ’s life – what was his purpose and what tried to thwart that purpose?  From Revelation we learn that Jesus sits on the throne.  He is the faithful witness, the firstborn from all those who have died, and the ultimate ruler, even over all the kings of the earth.  We also learn that Jesus loves us, that he paid the ultimate sacrifice to free us from our chains of bondage to sin and has granted us the privilege of being part of the Kingdom of God. 

These gifts from Christ for the entire human race did not come easily.  There were those that wanted to stop him.  There were those that opposed his teachings, who tried to silence his voice, to keep him from becoming all that he was meant to be.  They hung him on a cross in the style of crucifixion, nailing his hands and feet to that cross, and at last, piercing his side.  Yet, even death could not silence him, nor could it stop him from achieving his life’s purpose.  In fact, those very actions that were made to suppress him, were the very ones that brought his life’s purpose to fulfillment.

Just over thirty-three years ago I was fresh out of college and beginning seminary here in Pittsburgh.  I wanted a place to worship regularly on Sunday mornings.  Rev. Bob Lamont had been an interim pastor at my home church in West Chester, Pennsylvania.  During our time with us, I had learned that at one time he had also been the pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, downtown.  So, one Sunday morning shortly after beginning seminary I got on the bus and went downtown to hear Dr. Bruce Thielemann preach, their current pastor at that time in the mid 80’s.

Every Sunday, I would sit in the pew and listen to his sermons.  And every Sunday, I wondered if he’d been spying on me or following me because his sermons were always relevant to the very things I’d been dealing with that week.  One particular Sunday, I was struggling with my call to ministry.  Not exactly whether or not I felt called, but rather what purpose I would serve God in being called.  What goal did God have in mind for me?  At the time I was 21 years old, I was full of raw energy and wanted to be used by God to set the world on fire, but felt unfulfilled, useless, weighed down by a heap load of studying without knowing or feeling like it was going to matter or make any difference.

During his sermon, Dr. Theilemann gave an illustration about being overweight.  I’m not sure if any of you had known him or had heard of him, but Dr. Theilemann was a big man.  And I mean a really big man.  He stood at 6’4” or 5” and was just about as big around as he was tall.  He was huge.  That morning, one of his illustrations was about his own life.  About being the fat kid in school and being teased a lot for how big he was.  One day as an adult, he said that he was standing in front of the mirror, looking at his big old self, and crumpled into tears.  It wasn’t the struggle of being overweight that depressed him and had brought him to such a low point; but rather it was the weight of all the bad things people had said about him that kept him from being more social, kept him from pursuing certain things that he’d always wanted to do.  It was the weight of other people’s judgment about him that had caused him to question everything he did and question everything that he wanted to do.  It was that weight, not the physical weight of his body, that had held him down.

His sermon, that day, changed my life.  The title of his sermon that Sunday morning was, “Is someone standing on your wings?”  Thirty-three years later, that message still impacts me.  It was on that day that I realized that it was other people’s expectations of me and therefore, as a result, the expectations I had for myself that was causing me to not see God’s plan for my life.

One of my favorite musicals is called Camp.  It’s about a group of misfit kids that go to music camp for the summer.  All of them have spent their young lives trying to please others, trying to be and act the way others expect them to act, or to simply fulfill and play out the roles that others have assigned them.  This includes the old, washed-up, alcoholic musical director of the camp.  He had a one-hit wonder years ago and then couldn’t seem to produce anything to cement his new-found fame after that.  The critics and people in general started giving him bad reviews, saying that he was just a has-been or a hack.  They began to overlook him for any current or future projects until he started believing all those negative lies himself.  The climax of the musical is when one of the students finds a piece of music this had-been musician had composed and gathers his fellow students together to try it out.  The song is called the Century Plant. 

“Outside my house is a cactus plant, they call the century tree.  Only once in a hundred years it flowers gracefully, but you never know when it will bloom.”

The song goes on to talk about people who have bloomed at various stages of their lives.  It ends with the story of man who lost his only love because he was afraid to tell her.

“Didn't know how to tell her for over thirty years

Kept locked up inside himself

No one saw the tears

Then she went away

And he woke up that day

So he went back to college at the age of sixty-three

Graduated with honors with an agriculture degree

And he joined up the Peace Corps at the age of sixty-nine

And he rode the grand rapids at the age of eighty-five

Now he brings roses to his sweetheart

She lives most anywhere

He sees someone suffering

He knows that despair

He offers them a rose

And some quiet prose

About dancing in a shimmering ballroom

'Cause you never know when they will bloom.”

What or who is keeping you from fulfilling your dreams, your purpose in life?  What or who is keeping you from blooming?  What or who is standing on your wings and keeping you from taking off?

If it’s something from the past – let it go.  Those voices will knock you down every time if you let them.  They’ve already kept you down this long, don’t let those voices rob your future, too.  Let other people’s negativity be the power, the energy to revitalize you. 

If it’s the expectations of others or what you’ve grown to expect from yourself because of what others have wanted from you, listen to your heart, listen for the Spirit of God that speaks to our spirits and fulfill your own destiny and purpose. 

Is someone or something standing on your wings?  Brush them aside, unfurl those wings, and fly.

Just like the Century Plant – it’s never too late.

Today's Sermon - Live by the Spirit

Live by the Spirit

(based on Galatians 5:13-26)

When we read passages from the epistles or from the letters to the early churches, it is extremely important to understand the context that these letters were written.  Each letter was written to a specific church regarding specific actions or reactions to the message of the gospel.  This passage in Galatians is similar, but we can get a general understanding of what the author was trying to tell his readers from the passage itself.

          You were called to freedom.  What exactly does that mean?  It means that you don’t really need a long list of do’s and don’ts, a list of rules and laws like the entire books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and even parts of Exodus in the Old Testament that write down the long list of rules and regulations in order to live well and to live in right relationship to God and others.  If you have spent any time reading the New Testament, spent time in church listening to the sermons, if you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you’d know by now what’s important to God. 

          It’s a pretty short list.  Last week, we capsulized it in one of the gospel accounts.  The long list of rules and regulations boils down to two things; Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.  That’s it. 

          And that’s what the author in Galatians is trying to get across.  Be free to live in this way.  That does not mean that you are free to do anything you want.  It does not mean that there aren’t any rules or any limitations.  There are.  But the difference is this: if we lived only by a set of rules, without a clear understanding of the foundation of those rules, we become a slave or we become burdened and shackled by the rules themselves. 

          For example, the law says that you should drive no faster than 15 miles an hour in a school zone, when the lights are flashing or between certain hours.  Why is it 15 miles an hour?  Where does the school zone end, where does it begin?  What are those specific hours?  As a society that needs to have laws that everyone abides by, we’ve had to become very specific and it’s extremely difficult and burdensome to know every law and the rationality behind each one.

However, what is behind the purpose of this particular law?  The purpose is to keep children safe, so that they are not injured by a reckless driver, so that they can cross the street without fear of getting hit.  So that the drivers are even more vigilant in watching out for children who might suddenly race into the street to retrieve a ball or a hat that blew away without thinking about traffic.

Now, if we know and understand the underlying principle of the laws for traffic violations in school zones and if every single person actually took that principle to heart we could probably do away with the laws themselves because then everyone would be looking out very carefully to keep children safe – we’d want to drive very slowly when children are around, we’d be extra careful during times when we know school was about to begin, throughout the day and when school was ending.  Each and every one of us would take special precautions to obey all those laws, without there actually being a law.  That’s the freedom the author is talking about here.  When the understanding of the law, when the principle of the law is written on our hearts it gives us a lot more freedom, because it’s already part of who we are.  It’s part of our mind, our abilities, our spirit and soul.  We don’t have to think about specific laws and whether or not we’re breaking them.  We just live freely, obeying the law of our hearts because it is written there.

Wouldn’t it be great if that was the way our society worked?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that was the way life worked?

Yes, I know….That’s a dream world, a utopia we’ve never seen or been a part of.  Perhaps especially not now.  But, that’s the world that the author of Galatians wants us to dream about, to be a part of, to make happen, to begin to experience by living - that - way.

The author wants us to live by the Spirit.  How do we live by the Spirit?  Here, the author uses the concept of fruit to help explain.  A tree that has been infested with some kind of disease is not going to produce very good fruit.

Many years ago – close to 30 years now, there was a peach tree outside my back door.  When I first moved into the house, there were many peaches on the tree, the second year I noticed that the peaches didn’t quite taste as good as I had remembered them from the previous year and there weren’t nearly as many.  The third year, it produced hardly any fruit at all.  That fourth spring I was determined to figure out what was going on with it as I’d never had a peach tree before and perhaps I needed to trim it, to move it, put some fertilizer down.  I was studying the tree that late spring and trying to figure out what to do, when I leaned down to look around the base of the tree.  As I did, I used the tree to support myself, pushing slightly against it, when suddenly the whole tree just fell over.

It had a boor which had eaten away the inside of it and had weakened its roots.  A good tree would have continued to produce wonderfully tasty fruit for many years.

The author uses this concept to explain the way of the Spirit.  The good fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  “Against such things there is no law”, the author of Galatians says.  Why, because there doesn’t need to be.  You are free to live in this way.  It is written on your heart to behalf, act, think, and obey all that flows from that kind of life.

The fruit or the results that flow from that kind of living break us entirely free from law.

Love – this is the desire to be other-centered rather than self-centered.  The desire to help, bless, do for, care for others.  It is not based on what you will get out of it, but simply how it will help another person.

Joy – this is a happiness that is not dependent on circumstances.  A happiness that flows from knowing you can trust God to help you with any struggle, any situation.  So, it doesn’t matter what gets thrown at you.  God’s got it and you can rely on that knowledge.

Peace – this is a sense of well-being that is also independent on current circumstances.  A sense of well-being that overwhelms you in the midst of hardships.  Joy comes at the beginning and ending of those hardships, while peace gets you through it.

Patience – taking time to think through situations before responding, to put up with inconveniences, quick to forgive violations against you, giving people second and third chances without utterly giving up on them too quickly, giving others time as well as opportunity to improve their own behavior and actions, slow to dismiss others for their inadequacies.

Kindness – being gracious, considerate, thoughtful about the needs or desires of others.

Goodness – similar to love, but doing something beneficial for others, to give to them something that will elevate them, uplift them.  Goodness is more proactive and purposeful than love.  It is based on what it right and true.  Goodness lifts us all up.

Faithfulness – being reliable and loyal to God, to others, to yourself.  So that your yes means yes and your no means no.  That your promises and vows are kept.

Gentleness – a mildness towards others, one that cooperates with the will of God.  This should be confused with weakness.  Gentleness is being assertive, but not aggressive. 

Self-control – to not be easily overcome by temptation, wrong desires and the ability to know what is right and the ability to control ourselves without an outside person, entity or law having to do it.  The ability to control our own language, anger, temper, habits, impulses, behaviors, eating, drinking, and spending.

These are the fruits of the Spirit and the results of living by the Spirit.  If these good qualities are in your life and are increasing, you are living by the Spirit.  If they are not, or if you struggle with them, it simply might mean that you need a bit more fertilizer, (to spend time with God – some time reading and studying God’s word), perhaps you might need a good healthy trimming – cutting off those bad influences in your life, finding more positive friendships, relationships, ending a bad habit.

What a world we’d live in with we could show the rest of the world how.

Thanks be to God.

Today's Sermon - The Greatest Commandment - 11/4/18

The Greatest Commandment

(based on Mark 12:28-34, and Matthew 22:34-46)

          Last year the lectionary gave us this very same passage, but it was the one from Matthew 22:34-46.  Today we read it from Mark.  First, let’s take a look at how these passages from the two gospels differ.  And then we’ll get into a bit more depth on what Mark has to tell us.

          (Read both passages again.  Matthew and then Mark.)

          It’s important to note that Matthew was writing to a Hebrew and Jewish readership in order to qualify Christ as the Messiah, the one they’d been hoping would come.  And it is believed by most biblical scholars that Mark was written first and in that sense, has an urgency in how it is written. Because of this, most stories that are in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Mark will have an abbreviated story.  Matthew and Luke are more expressive and give more details.  Mark was writing to an audience who believed that Jesus was returning to earth within their lifetimes, during their own generation.  Therefore, he gets right to the point and doesn’t waste too much energy on detail.  Because of the difference between these gospels, two things stand out.

The first one in Matthew is the set up.  The Sadducees and the Pharisees, two separate sects of the Jewish faith at the time, were trying to bait Jesus into a trap to disqualify him as the Messiah.  Jesus navigates their questions well, in fact shuts down their arguments and in turn asks them some of his own regarding the Messiah. 

The second one in Mark is Christ’s answer to the questioner.  When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Understanding the background to both the readership and the authorship can give us a more in-depth understanding about the passages themselves.  Since we are neither a Jewish readership and needing validation that Christ is the Messiah, nor do we have the notion that Christ is coming back any time soon, since it hasn’t happened yet in 2000 years, what are we to take away from the differences in these gospel accounts?

The meat of the passage is in Christ’s response to the question regarding which one of all the commandments in the law is the greatest commandment.  But he wasn’t able to pin the Greatest Commandment down to just one.  Instead, he chose two of them, as if they were one; as if they were nearly equal.  These two commands are part of one another.

          First, he said to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Then he said, “And a second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.”

          The connecting bond between these two commands is love.  And yet, that concept is more than we can possibly fathom.  It’s important to note that God created the world out of love.  The light that shines in the day and the moon that shines as night, the stars that amaze our children and make us breathless when we try to grasp the infinity of it all.  The water that flows down a mountain stream as fish like salmon brave the journey home to spawn, water that surges in the ocean depths with behemoths like humpback whales who frolic and live there.  Water that rains down to nourish the earth that brings forth the trees and plants, each bloom and blossom.  Each bird that flies above the landscape, that soars in the air; every tiny insect that crawls or burrows beneath the surface to every elephant that stomps on the earth was created by God.  Even the oddest and strangest among them; birds that swim, fish that walk, mammals that lay eggs, and males that give birth.  All created by God in amazing and pure love.

          But it was all made for us, for our living and growing, for our enjoyment and enlightenment.  A Creator who loved us more than anything else in all of creation.  God created you out of pure love.  God created each human being out of love.

          You were not created as an experiment by God to see what mess he could make.  No, you were created in the image of God, perfect and holy.  You were created out of love, to be loved.  And here’s the challenge that we’ve twisted and changed, marked as unattainable in this maddening world of ours: we are to love in return.  Not just God, who created you, but the other command that goes along with it – to love one another, as well.

          I think it is in this part of the command that we fall short.  For us, as Christians who stand on our faith and our beliefs, it’s easy for us to say that we love God, that we love the Lord, that we would do anything for God.

Last year I challenged you to the second part of the greatest command.  I know how well you are doing with the first part of the command.  It’s obvious with your attendance and commitments here at church that you love God, but how well are you doing with that second part?  “Loving your neighbor as yourself”?  And here’s where it gets a bit more personal in asking that question.  I’m not talking about doing for others.  I’m not talking about volunteering for the Food Bank, or to visit a shut-in or to collect socks for the homeless.  I’m talking about the heart.  I’m talking about the inner voice that sometimes says something completely differently than what the outer works show.

What is the condition of your heart for others?  Are you always generous, kind, humble, in your thoughts, words, actions towards others?

To be perfectly honest, we, as Christians, aren’t very good at being charitable people when it comes to matters of the heart.  Think about the 3 main religions that have a common background in monotheism and believe in the same one true God, Yahweh, or Allah.  Over thousands of years, Moslems have broken off into two main branches: the Sikhs and the Sunnis.  Jews have broken off into three main branches: Conservative, Orthodox, and Progressives or Reconstructionists.  But Christians have broken off into many main branches: Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Eastern Orthodox, Seventh Day Adventist, Church of God, Church of the Brethren, United Church of Christ, Nazarene, Mormons, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few.  And each of those branches have broken off into perhaps even hundreds of others.  All over, in my opinion, matters of the heart, more than anything else.  If we were truly generous, kind and humble, most of our arguments would have gone away a long time ago rather than breaking us up into smaller and smaller pieces.

The central command, the first and most important, that Jesus referred to in this passage, was given to all three religions of this monotheistic faith: Love the Lord your God with your entire being, and your neighbor as yourself.  Jews, Christians and Moslems – all three were given this same great command.

And yet, members of three of the main religions in the world, complain about everything from the minute to the ridiculous.  I hear us chastise those who believe differently.  I hear us criticize those who are morally ambiguous.  I hear us slander and hurt, lie and steal and berate another who has done the same, but the only difference is that the other got caught. 

We aren’t perfect people and we should stop pretending that we are.  We struggle with the same sins that everyone else struggles with.  We struggle with the same inner battles, the same heartaches, the same demons.  Maybe, just maybe we’ve learned over many, many years of struggle how to cope with them better, how to ignore the voices that lead us down an instant gratification and easier road.  But we are no better than those who are still struggling and still perhaps losing in those struggles.

This challenge is not meant to be an indictment against you, but rather as a serious consideration for us to take a closer look at what Scripture tells us, what God wants from us, and how we are actually living.

There is too much hatred in the world.  Look around, it’s everywhere.  We know it and have experience it.  It’s on the news daily, it’s in our city streets, at shootings and massacres around the globe and now even here at home.  There is only one way that this will end.  And that way is for the cycle to be broken.  For love to win out over hate.

We cannot expect someone who has known misery and heartache and pain, who has not found or known the love of God through the actions of God’s people, to suddenly wake up one morning and think, “Oh, maybe I’ll be nice today.”  It’s not going to happen.  It has to start with us.  It has to start with the people of God who refrain from judging others, who refrain from speaking badly about others, who refrain from idle gossip and slanderous speech.  It has to start with us, truly taking this commandment that Jesus spoke about, to love one neighbor as we love ourselves, to heart as a challenge for better behavior on our part.  To show the world a different way of living.  That is why Jesus came to earth.  Not just to be a substitution on the cross for paying the penalty of our sins, but more than that – to show us the way, the truth, and the life.

There is too much hatred in the world and the only way that it will end is if we take Christ’s commandment to heart as a challenge to do better.

The connection that Jesus made when asked the question about which commandment is greatest, reaches back to the purpose of the cosmos, when God out of pure love created the stars, and it settles in the heart of who you are, of whose you are.  God created you out of love and joy.  And Jesus asks us to give love and joy back to God and to one another.

AMEN.