9-18-09 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

WHO IS YOUR TIMOTHY?

Many years ago, when I was serving a church in southwest Minnesota, there was a woman in my congregation by the name of Lola.  Now I’m going to say that Lola was born in 1900, so she was well into her 90s by the time I knew her.  Lola was born in Maquoketa, Iowa.  She once told me a story about how she boarded a train in Maquoketa at the tender age of 17, and rode that train all the way to Philadelphia to stay with a cousin.  At night, Lola and her cousin would go to a dance hall and dance with soldiers about to be shipped overseas during World War I.  I was shocked!  I’ve been to Philadelphia.  There is no way on God’s green earth that I would allow my 17-year-old daughter to go to Philadelphia by herself!  I asked Lola, “Were they nice to you?”  Lola replied, “They were perfect gentlemen.”  Now before we romanticize too much about the early 1900s, let me say this.  Women were not allowed to vote back in those days.  And I’m guessing our nation would not have elected an African-American President back then either.  But on the other hand, perhaps people were a bit more Christ-like.  Our nation back then was perhaps a kinder, gentler place than it is today.

Case in point, as many of you know, my oldest son is a sophomore at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.  He’s in a fraternity, and not long ago some guys from his fraternity went to attend a fraternity function at Kent State University.  While he was there, my son met a young man from Ohio State University.  This young man bragged about the fact that on numerous occasions he had drugged girls.  He put something in their drinks that would make them vulnerable to whatever advances he might dream up.  Can you imagine a more vicious, more self-centered act than that?  It sounds to me as if this is a young man who could use a little spiritual renewal.  This is a young man who could benefit from the gospel of Jesus Christ…not to mention a little jail time!

Yet there’s a lot of resistance to the gospel of Jesus Christ these days.  My youngest son is a sophomore at the Meadville high school.  Just last week in one of his classes the students were asked to name who they thought was the most influential person in the history of the world.  My son, much to his credit, wrote down the name “Jesus Christ.”  When later he was asked who he wrote down, he was ridiculed for his answer.  One young man said, “There’s no proof that Jesus Christ even existed!”  I told him, “Yes, there is.  Apart from the Bible, we have the writings of a Jewish historian named Josephus, a Roman historian named Tacitus, and a Roman governor named Pliny the Younger.”  My son was angry at the response he received.  He said, “I wanted to punch that guy out!”  I said, “That might not be the most Christ-like response.”  He gets his temper from his mother, you know!  The point is this.  While Jesus Christ may be the answer to many of our social and spiritual ills, apparently far too few people are asking the question.

That brings us to the discipleship issue with which we’ve been wrestling for the last several weeks.  The question was asked, “What constitutes a healthy disciple?”  The following criteria have been proposed:

1.      Who is your Lord?  In other words, when everything else is said and done, whose agenda are you truly following?

2.      Who are you?  At the beginning of each day, do you wake up thinking you’ll have to go out and win your own share of security and significance, or can you truly say that those are priceless gifts you have already received?

3.      Who is your Barnabas?  Barnabas spoke up for the Apostle Paul and was something of a mentor to him.  Who is your spiritual mentor, who is showing you how to follow Jesus Christ?

4.      Who is your Timothy?  Paul was something of a mentor to Timothy.  Who is your apprentice – the one to whom you are passing along the life lessons that God has entrusted you?

5.      Where is your Antioch?  Antioch was something of a safe haven for Paul where the call of God could find him.  What small group of friends is helping you discern the call of God in your life?

6.      Where is your Macedonia?  Macedonia was something of a field of ministry for Paul.  To what field of ministry is God calling you, that hauntingly stirs your deepest passion?

The question we want to wrestle with today is this: Who is your Timothy?  Who is your Timothy?  You see, discipling is how the gospel has been spread for the last 2000 years.  We need a Barnabas.  We need someone to show us how the live the Christian life.  And then we need a Timothy.  We need an apprentice to pass along the life lessons that God has entrusted us.  But how are we to find a Timothy if there aren’t any young people in church?  Apart from our immediate families, who are we going to mentor if there aren’t any young people in church?

As many of you know, we’ve been conducting a mission self-study in recent weeks.  The data is in and it’s somewhat startling.  The data reveals that almost to a person, we want to add new young families to our church.  Yet the data also shows that we don’t want to change very much in order for that to happen.  In fact, here’s a chart that plots out in part who we are as a church.  On the top of the chart is the word “adaptive,” which is a nice way of saying we’re willing to change.  At the bottom of the chart is the word “settled,” which is a nice way of saying we don’t want to change.  At the right side of the chart is the word “conservative,” which is a nice way of saying we’re conservative.  And at the left side of the chart is the word “progressive,” which is a nice way of saying – dare I say it? – liberal.  Do you know which side of the chart we were on in terms of progressive and conservative?  We were actually on the progressive side.  Not by a lot, but we were.  And do you know where we were when it came to being adaptive or settled?  We were near the bottom.  We were plugged in right about here.  (Let me show the choir…)  So here we are, caught between a rock and a hard place.  We desperately want to add new young families, but we don’t want to change for that to happen.  What are we to do?

I recently had something of an epiphany on that subject in a conversation I was having with Keith and Debbie Mink.  I told Keith that he was the source of my inspiration, and Debbie said that that was probably the case.  (I’m kidding.  That’s NOT what Debbie said.)  But here’s what I got to thinking.  Several weeks ago, in the class I was leading on the gospel according to John, we got to talking about what salvation is.  Is salvation just going to heaven, or can salvation happen in the here and now?  In the Bible, we are led to believe that salvation can happen in the here and now.  For example, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew people experienced salvation when Moses led them out of bondage in Egypt.  Salvation to them was essentially freedom from tyranny and oppression.  In the New Testament, Jesus gives us something of a different slant.  He says, “He who saves his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake and for the gospel’s will save it.”  In other words, we will experience our salvation, we will find our inner peace, we will become the people God intended us to be when we learn to die to self and to live for Jesus Christ.  In other words, we quit being so selfish, and we place our primary focus on others.  It occurred to me that the very same thing might be true of the church.  Too often in the church we only focus on what we need or what we want.  Maybe the church needs to die to the self as well.  Maybe the church needs to become what it was meant to be.  You see, we come to church to grow as Christians, and then we go out into the world in order to transform it.  Maybe the church will start to grow when we realize that.  What need in the Meadville community is the First Presbyterian Church called by God to fulfill?  Find the answer to that, and we will find our salvation.  Discipling is how the gospel has been spread for the last 2000 years.  If we don’t find our Timothys, this church will die, and the gospel of Jesus Christ will die alongside it.  Amen.   

 

 

 

9-11-09 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

WHO IS YOUR BARNABAS?

     I believe it was Red Skelton who once said, “All men make mistakes, but married men find out about it sooner.”  Again, “All men make mistakes, but married men find out about it sooner.”  While there may very well be some truth to Red Skelton’s observation, let’s place our focus today on the first part of his statement, which was this: “All men make mistakes.”  Or perhaps better put, “All people make mistakes.”

     Perhaps we could even say that people make mistakes when it comes to how they look at God.  The Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes, the senior minister at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church  in Pittsburgh, addresses this issue in his latest book entitled, The Pastor as Minor Poet.  He believes that people are often mistaken in how they look at God.  He goes on to say that one of the tasks of the minister is to help people to see God as God really is.  He writes:

Just because people call themselves “Christian” and have a long history in the church, (that does not mean) they have a biblical image of God.  To the contrary, the longer they’ve hung around religion, the greater the chance that they’ve acquired some false ideas about God that have a negative impact on their self-image.

 

In pastoral counseling, the minor poet (Barnes refers to the minister as the minor poet) in pastoral counseling the minor poet is wading through these false images, which are the real blocks to their ability to make changes.  We are thus made in the image of a false god, and until the image of God is seen correctly in the grace and truth of Jesus Christ, we never will be able to gain a correct image of ourselves.

 

When people tell me about their struggles with anger, a little digging reveals they believe God is angry with them.  Those who struggle with compulsive work patterns have been worshipping a demanding God who is never satisfied.  People who have a hard time trusting their hearts to others don’t really believe in the steadfast love of God.  None of them can discover real change in their lives apart from a Christological view of God.  So conversations that begin with improvements they want to make in life should end with the pastor demonstrating the changes Christ has already made to their lives.

 

Rather than use the few reflective listening skills we learned in our Introduction to Pastoral Care classes in seminary, which is only another way of holding up the judgmental mirror, we pastors need to hold up Jesus Christ.  “See him?” we say.  “That’s who you really are.  Everything else about you is just pretending.” 

     Barnes concludes with these words.  “The human self is never more truly itself than when it is living in Christ, the Restorer of the holy image of God in humans.”  Like I said, we all make mistakes.  Sometimes we even make mistakes in our image of who or what God is.  That’s when we need a guide.  That’s when we need a mentor.  That’s when we need someone to straighten out our misguided notions of God.

     Ladies and gentlemen, I think that brings us back to the discipleship question we’ve been wrestling with for the last several weeks.  The question was asked, “How can we identify a healthy disciple?”  The following criteria were presented:

1.      Who is your Lord?  In other words, when everything is said and done, whose agenda are you truly following?  Ideally, of course, the agenda we are following is that of Jesus Christ.

 

2.      Who are you?  At the beginning of each day, do you wake up thinking you’ll have to go out and win your own share of security and significance, or can you truly say that those are priceless gifts you have already received?  We noted a couple of weeks ago that Christ gave his life to secure our significance in the eyes of God.  There is nothing left  for us to prove.

 

3.      Who is your Barnabas?  Barnabas spoke up for the Apostle Paul and was something of a mentor to him.  Who is your spiritual mentor, the one from whom you are learning how to follow Jesus Christ?

 

4.      Who is your Timothy?  Paul was something of a mentor to Timothy.  Who is your apprentice – the one to whom you are passing along the life lessons that God has entrusted you?

 

5.      Where is your Antioch?  Antioch, to Paul, was a safe haven where the call of God could find him.  What small group of friends is your safe haven…that is helping you to discern the will of God in your life?

 

6.      Where is your Macedonia?  Macedonia was a field of ministry for Paul.  What field of ministry is most closely aligned with God’s call on your life, and hauntingly stirs your deepest passion?

 

     This week our focus is on the third criterion of a healthy disciple: Who is your Barnabas?  Who is your Barnabas?  Yet before we ask who your Barnabas is, perhaps we should answer the question of who Barnabas was.  That only makes sense, don’t you think?

     Barnabas makes his first appearance in the pages of Scripture in the fourth chapter of the book of Acts.  His real name was Joseph of Cyprus, but the apostles gave him the name Barnabas, which meant literally, “son of prophecy” or “son of encouragement.”  What did Barnabas do to warrant such a title?  It was in the early days of the church in Jerusalem.  The first century church seemed to advocate communal living.  Barnabas sold a field that belonged to him and he brought the money – all of the money – to the apostles and laid it at their feet.  They kept their money in a community treasury of sorts and shared it with fellow Christians as they had need.  No one in the early Christian community would have found themselves in want.

   Let me take a moment to explain early Christian communal living.  Yes, it appears that the first century Christians did in fact hold everything in common.  That does not bode well for our great American philosophy of individualism and capitalism, does it?  Yet let me also say this.  It is obvious that the communal living of the early church didn’t last for very long.  Perhaps we could even say that it did not work.  That’s why the practice was discontinued.  While that statement does not baptize the greed in many a Christian heart, it does seem to speak against any requirement of communal Christian living.  That should make everyone feel at least a little bit better.

     Let’s get back to Barnabas.  He laid the proceeds from the sale of a field at the feet of the apostles in Jerusalem.  His next appearance in Scripture is in the passage we read a moment ago.  Saul of Tarsus – later known as the Apostle Paul – was a fierce opponent of Christianity everywhere.  He would literally take Christians in chains to the Jewish authorities.  He stood and watched and approved of the stoning of a Christian named Stephen.  Saul of Tarsus was feared by Christians far and wide.  Yet on a lonely road to Damascus, Jesus Christ had appeared to him and he had been transformed.  When Saul came to Jerusalem as a new Christian convert, everyone was afraid of him.  It was Barnabas who went to Saul and brought him to the apostles.  In other words, if it weren’t for Barnabas, there would have been no Paul.  And if it weren’t for Paul, Christianity might not have ever reached the hearts of those who were not Jewish.  Paul brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, yet he did so after being mentored by Barnabas.

The Apostle Paul needed a mentor, and God provided him one in the person of Barnabas.

     Glenn McDonald describes how important this whole “mentoring” thing is in his book, The Disciple Making Church.  It’s the very same quote that is printed in the Silent Reflection portion

 of your bulletins.  He writes:

In his book The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard points out that all of us learn how to live – for better or for worse – from those who teach us.  Each of us is somebody’s disciple.  “There are no exceptions to this rule, for human beings are just the kind of creatures that have to learn and keep learning from others how to live.”  Most of us    have been discipled, consciously or unconsciously, by a diverse collection of “somebodies” over the years. 

     Think about it.  How did you learn right from wrong?  Did you figure that out on your own, or did somebody teach you?  How did you learn how to drive?  Did you figure that out on your own, or did somebody teach you?  How did you light upon your present career path?  Did you figure that out on your own, or did somebody teach you?  Glenn McDonald is right.  “Most of   us have been discipled, consciously or unconsciously, by a diverse collection of ‘somebodies’ over the years.”

     We could look at that conversely as well, I suppose.  I heard a story not long ago about a first grade teacher at a school in our community.  She asked the kids in her class a very simple question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  She was absolutely appalled when many of the kids replied, “When I grow up, I want to lay on the couch and watch T.V. all day like my dad.”  She said to one, “Where do you get your money to live on?”  The child replied, “We go to this place and they give him a check.”

     Here’s what that teacher did.  She brought meat and cheese and crackers to school with her one day.  Then she asked the kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  If a child replied, “I want to be a doctor,” she gave them a piece of meat, a piece of cheese and a cracker.  If a child replied, “I want to be a teacher,” again she gave them a piece of meat, a piece of cheese and a cracker.  But if they replied, “When I grow up, I want to lay on the couch and watch T.V. all day like my dad,” she only gave them a cracker.  When the child cried out, “I want a piece of meat and a piece of cheese, too!” she said, “You have to work for that.”

    Now there’s a brilliant teacher who brought a brilliant lesson home to a group of first-graders.  But it ignores the larger problem.  Where are these kids getting the idea that it’s all right to lay on the couch all day and watch T.V.?  They’re getting it from their Barnabas.  They’re getting it from their mentor.  They’re getting it from a person they love who is modeling how to live for them.  And therein lies the problem.  Everyone needs a Barnabas.  Everyone needs a mentor.  Everyone need someone to show them how to live, and how to live well.  

     Perhaps we could raise the very same issue when it comes to our own faith.  How did you learn how to be a Christian?  Did you figure that out on your own, or did somebody teach you?  Or, perhaps even better put, how did you learn how to live as a Christian?  Did you figure that out on your own, or did somebody model that for you?

     Relationships that entail mentoring are not intended to be the exception to the rule.  Discipling is just the way God does things.  Jesus Christ himself gave himself fully to a dozen interested men.  He loved them, he lived with them, he told them stories, and he stretched their imaginations.  He scolded them when their hearts were calloused and he nurtured them when they were confused.  He invited them to walk with him into situations that ranged from the ambiguous to the controversial to the outright dangerous.  Sometimes he was formal, sometimes he was rhetorical.  Frequently he engineered opportunities for his disciples to place their trust in God.  Yet on every occasion, Jesus was communicating one important thing.  He was saying to them in essence, “Let me show you how to live.”        

     George Mason has been the senior minister at the Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas for more than 20 years.  In a recent address, he said:

For those of us who grew up on T.V., the quirky “Gilligan’s Island” is part of our culture.  You know it must be because now that we are middle-aged and have some buying power, commercials are using the theme song and bringing back characters to plug their products.  But what was its appeal?  Endearing characters, people we could identify with, certainly.  The blow-hard skipper, the brainy professor, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the plain-Jane girl, and a bumbling first mate.  Sounds a lot like society in general.  But the story is the thing.  Shipwrecked on an island, they don’t always get along, they are none of them alike, but they all need each other.  They have to work together to survive and build the best life possible because they are all in the same boat, literally.

     Along those same lines, G.K. Chesterton once said of humanity: “We are all in a small boat on a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”  Life is not easy for anyone.  Everyone is a disciple, and everyone needs a mentor.  Everyone needs someone to model the Christian life for them.  So I ask you again, “Who is your Barnabas?”  If you can’t answer that question now, perhaps you should begin to look into how you can.  Amen.  

    

    

    

    

                  

 

  

  

    

 

    

 

9-27-2009 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

WHO ARE YOU?

     A number of years ago, a little girl on the East Coast made the following statement.  She said, “My name is Martha Bowers Taft.  My great-grandfather was President of the United States.  My grandfather was a United States Senator.  My daddy is an ambassador to Ireland.  And I am a Brownie.” 

     Perhaps we could say that little girl was very fortunate in that she knew exactly who she  was.  If life’s most important question is, “Who’s in charge?” then perhaps life’s second most important question is this: “What is your relationship to the one who is in charge?”  In other words, “Who are you?”

     As you hopefully know by now, we’ve been doing a sermon series on discipleship.  A couple of week ago the question was asked, “How can we identify a healthy disciple?”  The following criteria were presented:

1.      Who is your Lord?  In other words, when everything is said and done, whose agenda are you truly following?  Last week we discussed how Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for us, and how we ought to be willing to make some sacrifice for him.  And don’t think for a minute that it doesn’t matter.

 

2.      Who are you?  At the beginning of each day, do you wake up thinking you’ll have to go out and win your own share of security and significance, or can you truly say that those are priceless gifts you have already received?

 

3.      Who is your Barnabas?  Barnabas spoke up for the Apostle Paul and was something of a mentor to him.  Who is your spiritual mentor, the one from whom you are learning how to follow Jesus Christ?

 

4.      Who is your Timothy?  Paul was something of a mentor to Timothy.  Who is your apprentice – the one to whom you are passing along the life lessons that God has entrusted you?

 

5.      Where is your Antioch?  Antioch, to Paul, was a safe haven where the call of God could find him.  What small group of friends is your safe haven…that is helping you to discern the will of God in your life?

6.      Where is your Macedonia?  Macedonia was a field of ministry for Paul.  What field of ministry is most closely aligned with God’s call on your life, and hauntingly stirs your deepest passion?

     Our focus this week will be on the second criterion of a healthy disciple: Who are you?  In other words, at the beginning of each day, do you wake up thinking you’ll have to go out and win your own share of security and significance, or can you truly say that those are priceless gifts you have already received?  Or, perhaps better put, do you feel you have to prove your worth on a daily basis, or has your value been bestowed by God already?

     I guess the place to start is by asking what matters most to us in life.  Think about it.  What are our essential needs in life?  Perhaps no one has described better what our basic needs in life are than psychologist Abraham Maslow.  He developed what we call Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  The first things we need to consider are our physiological needs.  We need oxygen, food and water and, as he puts it, “a relatively consistent body temperature.”  As human beings, I suppose it’s quite obvious that those are our basic needs.

     Once our biological needs are met, then we can consider our safety needs.  We want a safe place to live, a secure environment for our families – that sort of thing.  Then we need love and affection and a sense of belonging.  If we can satisfy those needs – if our biological, security and sense of belonging needs are satisfied – then we deal with our self-esteem.  Humans, so says Maslow, have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect AND respect from others.  This is the one that hangs us up, as we’ll see in a moment.  And finally, if all our other needs are met, we have a need for self-actualization.  In other words, we seek out a way to do what we feel we were born to do.  There you have it, our basic human needs in a nutshell.      

    The one we seem to have a problem with is the need for self-esteem.  We seem to think we can gain our self-esteem by way of material splendor.  The more we have, the happier we seem to be.  And better still if we have more than the next guy.  As someone once put it, “Some people want the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the center of attention!”  But listen to this.  Lillian Daniel addresses this issue in an article she wrote in The Christian Century entitled, “Affluent Christians.”  She writes:

David Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College, believes that we – as a nation – are growing more unhappy and depressed.  Myers writes about the bad side of affluence.  Apparently too much money may buy a supersized case of the blues.  Today’s youth and young adults have grown up with much more affluence, slightly less overall happiness, a much greater risk of depression and a tripled teen suicide rate.  Never has a culture experienced such physical comfort combined with such psychological misery.  Never have we felt so free or had our prisons so overstuffed.  Never have we been so sophisticated about pleasure or so likely to suffer broken relationships.

     Wow!  What does that say about our current American culture?  Obviously, something is missing.  Obviously, having more and more things is not the answer.  Maybe the answer to      the question, “Who are you?” is not, “I am a consumer.”  Perhaps we can look to the passage   we read from the gospel according to Luke to find the answer to who we really are.

     You know the story.  It’s the story of the prodigal son.  It seems a man had two sons and the younger of the two came to his father and said, “Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.”  In other words, “I want what you’re going to give me anyway when you die.”  How’s that for an endearing conversation starter?

     We are not told how the father felt about his son’s request, we are only told that he did as he was asked.  So the son took the money and went to another country.  He squandered everything on what we might call “loose living.”  Just let your imagination run wild.  In the end, he had nothing left and wound up feeding pigs, yet even the pigs ate better than he did. 

     He began to recall how well his father’s servants lived.  He decided to return to his father and live as a hired hand.  He would beg for his father’s forgiveness and hope that he would not turn him away.  Yet what happened when his father saw him off in the distance?  His father ran to him and declared a celebration!  He put a robe on him, a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  He even killed the fatted calf – one they were likely saving for a special occasion – and hosted a sumptuous feast.

     I think Jesus tells that story to point out how precious each and every human being is to God.  God does not want any of us to be lost.  God wants us to repent and to return to him.  Unlike far too many human beings, God is guided by love, not by vengeance.  Again, God is guided by love, not by vengeance.

     It reminds me of a poem entitled, “Heaven.”  The author is unknown.  Listen closely to the words.

I was shocked, confused, bewildered

As I entered Heaven’s door,

Not by the beauty of it all,

The lights or its décor.

 

            No, it was the folks in Heaven

            Who made me sputter and gasp –

            The thieves, the liars, the sinners,

            The alcoholics and the trash.

 

There stood the kid from seventh grade

Who swiped my lunch loot twice.

By him was my old neighbor

Who said not one thing nice.

 

            Herb, who I always thought

            Was rotting away in hell,

            Was sitting pretty on cloud nine,

            Looking incredibly well.

 

 

I said to Jesus, “What’s the deal?

I’d love to hear your take.

How’d all these sinners get up here?

Did God make a mistake?

 

And why are folks so quiet?

            So somber – give me a clue.”

            “Hush, child,” he said, “they’re all in shock

            At the thought of seeing you!”

 

     Like I said, each and every human being is oh, so precious to God.  God does not want any lost, for God is motivated by love, not by vengeance.  But there remains the older brother, does there not?  The older brother had remained loyal to his father while the younger brother had squandered his inheritance.  When he came in from the fields that night, he saw a party taking place in the house.  After asking a servant what was going on, he was dismayed to say the least.  In fact, he refused to go into the house.

     His father came out and spoke to him.  He said to him, “All that is mine is yours.”  In other words, “Your faithfulness will be rewarded.  You don’t have to worry about that.”  But he also expressed his infinite joy in having his son return.  In spite of what the younger boy had done, the father still loved his son.  In spite of what we may have done, the Father loves us as well.

     That’s how the story ends.  We do not know if the older boy went in to the party, or whether he ever restored his relationship with his brother.  If he did, in fact, restore his relationship with his brother, there was one thing he needed to overcome.  He needed to overcome his own sense of self.

     Ladies and gentlemen, that is the secret to knowing who we are.  Each of us is one of six billion people here on earth, each of whom we can presume God loves equally.  Yet we are also like an only child in that we are the most precious thing in the world to God.  It’s quite a conundrum, isn’t it?  Yet in order to be truly reconciled to one another, and in order to be truly reconciled to God, we must overcome our own sense of self.  That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Those who would save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”  We must recognize that God has given us the best that he has to give: he gave us his Son.  And we must also recognize that God did so for a reason.  He did it that all the world might be saved.  We need not worry.  Everything the Father has to give to us will be ours.  We just need to recognize the fact that God has other children as well.

   Once upon a time, in a third grade classroom, there was a nine-year-old boy who wet his pants.  There was even a little puddle on the floor.  He thought his heart would stop because he could not imagine how it happened.  It had never happened before, and he knew that once the other boys found out they would never let him hear the end of it.  And once the girls found out, he would be ostracized.

  The boy was devastated, so he did the only thing he could think of to do.  He said a little prayer.  He said, “Dear God, this is an emergency!  I need help now!  Five minutes from now I’m dead meat!”  He looked up from his prayer and the teacher was approaching him with a look in her eyes that said he had been discovered.

     As the teacher was walking toward him, a classmate named Suzie was carrying a goldfish

bowl that was full of water.  Suzie tripped in front of the teacher and dumped the entire bowl of water in the boy’s lap.  The boy pretended to be angry, but all the while he said to himself, “Thank you, Lord!  Thank you, Lord!”

     All of a sudden, instead of being an object of ridicule, the boy was the object of sympathy.  The teacher took him downstairs and gave him a pair of gym shorts to wear while his pants dried out.  The other children cleaned up the mess around his desk.  But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his was transferred to someone else.  It was transferred to Suzie.  She tried to help clean up, but the other kids yelled at her, “You’ve done enough, you klutz!”

     Finally, at the end of the day, they were waiting for the bus.  The boy walked over to Suzie and whispered, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”  Suzie whispered back, “I wet my pants one time, too.”

     In a silly story like that lies the key to who we are.  When we remember that all of us make mistakes, when we can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we can put ourselves aside for someone else’s sake.  Therein we just might find our ultimate happiness.  Amen.