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.
No comments:
Post a Comment