7-17-2011 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE WAY: PART V

    Two months ago we began a sermon series based upon the first part of the sixth verse of the fourteenth chapter of the gospel according to John.  There Jesus says to his disciples, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” From that one simple verse theologian Eugene Peterson devised the following theory: The Jesus way wedded to the Jesus truth brings about the Jesus life. While church schisms – and even wars – have been fought over the Jesus truth, very seldom do we invest much energy in discerning the Jesus way.  That is precisely what we are attempting to do in this sermon series. The question thus becomes, “What is the Jesus way, and how do we go about following it?”

    As we noted initially, the Jesus truth – in and of itself – is not enough to bring about the Jesus life.  Jesus calls us to follow the Jesus way as well.  Then we noted that the Jesus way is not a list of rules and regulations.  The Jesus way cannot be codified or simplified or summarized.  The Jesus way is meant to be lived.  When we examined the life of Abraham, we discovered that the Jesus way involves testing and sacrifice.  God has a unique way of sifting people when he wants to use them to accomplish great things for his kingdom. And finally, when we examined the life of Moses, we discovered that God has a unique purpose for our lives. What’s more, that purpose is subject to change from time to time and we have a responsibility to continue to seek out God’s purpose for our lives in spite of whatever changes might take place.  Are you with me so far?

    Today we come to Part V in our sermon series on The Way.  In our journey through the Old Testament, we have examined the lives of Abraham and Moses.  Today we’re going to be examining the life of King David.  Thus, if I were to come up with a subtitle for this sermon, it might be called The Way of David, or…The Way of Imperfection.  In any case, I invite you to come along with me as we seek to discern the Jesus Way.         

    If I were to tell you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 151, many of you would open your Bibles in the middle, turn left, and look for it near the end of the book of Psalms. I also suspect some of you would realize that there are only 150 Psalms in the Bible. There is no 151^st Psalm. Yet when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, a 151^st Psalm was found.  This is what it says:

Smaller was I than my brothers,

And younger than the sons of my father.

Yet he appointed me shepherd for his sheep,

And ruler over his kids.

            My hands have made a flute,

            And my fingers a lyre,

            And I have given glory to Yahweh.

I said in my soul,

O that the mountains would bear witness for me,

And O that the hills would tell.  

            (Yet) the trees have taken away my words               

            And the sheep my works.

For who can tell,

And who can speak,

And who can recount my works?

            The Lord of all saw,

            God of all – he heard.

            And he has heeded.

He sent His prophet to anoint me;

Samuel to make me great.

            My brothers went out to meet him;

            Handsome of form,

            And handsome of appearance.

Tall in their height;

Handsome with their hair.

Them God did not choose.

            But he sent and took me from behind the sheep,

            And anointed me with holy oil.

            And he appointed me leader for His people,

            And ruler over the sons of His covenant.

    Does that sound like anyone you know?  It is now widely believed that the 151^st Psalm was written by none other than David himself.  The words depict a humble boy who performed his appointed tasks in relative anonymity. No one noticed; no one knew what he did. Yet God knew.  And because of his faithfulness to God and to his father, God would send the prophet Samuel to anoint him king over all of Israel.  David’s career began in utter humility and gratitude to God.

    As a boy, David was summoned to the court of King Saul.  King Saul was deeply troubled in spirit and David was brought in to play soothing music for him. It brought peace to the king and he loved David very much – so much so that he made David his armor-bearer. Then came the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines.  A giant named Goliath taunted the armies of Israel and insulted the name of God.  David was the only person brave enough to face him.  You know the story.  David slew Goliath with a stone from his sling.

    This turned David into quite a celebrity.  As he grew to adulthood, he had more success on   the battlefield.  David’s success brought forth a deep-seated resentment in Saul.  Saul made it   his life’s mission to kill David.  David was on the run with a few loyal warriors of his own.  It was reported to Saul that David was in the wilderness at a place called En-gedi, just west of the Dead Sea.  Saul took three thousand of his best warriors and went to En-gedi in search of David. 

    David and his men were hidden in a cave in the wilderness.  The day was hot and the cave was cool.  They were deep inside the cave, resting.  Suddenly a shadow formed across the front of the cave.  David and his men were astonished to discover that it was none other than King Saul himself.  They were probably also surprised to find that he was that close in his pursuit of them. Saul entered the cave, but he did not see them lurking in the shadows.  Saul was there to answer a call from nature.  He had to go to the bathroom! So he threw aside his royal robe and turned his back on the men in the cave.  David’s warriors wanted to kill him right there, but David stopped them.  Instead, he snuck up and cut off a small piece of King Saul’s robe. 

    When King Saul finished his business, he put on his robe, strapped on his sword, and walked down the mountain.  Once he was a safe distance away, David appeared at the mouth of the cave   and cried out, “My lord, the king!”  Saul looked back in astonishment.  David bowed down, reverently honoring the king.  Then he said, “Why do you listen to those who tell you that I am your enemy? See what I have in my hand?  It is the skirt of your robe. Just now, instead of cutting your robe, I could have cut you.  But I will not do that because you are God’s anointed.”

    David was known for killing Philistines. In fact, David was known for killing just about anyone who opposed God’s people, Israel.  It was a part of the bloody barbarism of what we call the Iron Age.  People then did not think and act the way we think and act today.  Life was not nearly so precious.  Yet here David reveals his integrity, his compassion and his faith in Almighty God.  Why, at this point in time, one might even say that he was noble. That, however, was all about to change.

    David soon became king over Israel.  As it says in verse 1 of chapter 11 in the second book of Samuel, “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers, and all Israel with him…but David remained at Jerusalem.”  It was there, when David was walking on the roof of his palace, that he spied a woman bathing.  Her name was Bathsheba, and David wanted her for himself.  He committed adultery, and when Bathsheba turned up pregnant he concocted a plan to put her husband at the forefront of a battle where, of course, he died.  Ah, sin begets sin, does it not?  Not only was David guilty of adultery, now he was also guilty of murder. 

    As someone once said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  The Learning Channel recently ran a special called “Sex, Lies & Power.” With a single tweet, U.S. Congress-man Anthony Weiner set off a series of events that smeared his reputation and toppled his once promising career.  Just weeks earlier, Maria Shriver left her longtime husband Arnold Schwarzenegger, after it was revealed the former governor had fathered a child with the household help.  And then, perhaps most blatant of all, there was presidential candidate John Edwards’ covert extramarital affair.  The list goes on and on.

    The question was asked, “Why do these men cheat, and what makes them think they can get away with it?”  The answer is really quite simple.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  They come to believe they are above the rules and regulations that guide the rest of us. Perhaps we could say that the same was true of David. But he did not fool God, did he? God knew what David had done, and he sent the prophet Nathan to confront him about it.

    Yet perhaps an even more blatant example of David’s disregard for the rules that govern the rest of us occurred in a little-know story in the 3^rd chapter of the second book of Samuel.   While battles raged between the house of Saul and the house of David, Saul’s military commander, Abner, decided to defect to David’s army.  Yet David would only accept Abner if he would bring David’s former wife, Michal, back to him.  By this point in time, she was married   to another man – a man named Paltiel.

    Abner did as he was told.  Michal was forcibly removed from her husband and her home and taken to David.  Paltiel followed her, weeping and wailing all the way.  It’s really quite a heart-breaking scene – Paltiel and Michal, husband and wife – ripped apart by a self-serving political stratagem.  There is no evidence that David felt any emotion or regret about what he had done.  He was oblivious to both Michal and Paltiel.  David was not about to let personal feelings interfere with his political maneuvering.  If the scene at En-gedi showed David at his best, then in the matter of Michal and Paltiel, he is at his worst.  He has become a man willing to sacrifice his humanity at the altar of power.

    There can be no confusion as to what is revealed in the stories of David.  The life of David is a paragon of good and bad, perhaps not so much unlike our own lives. What we admire in David does not cancel out what we despise in David, and what we despise in David does not cancel out what we admire.  The life of David is not a model for imitation, nor is he himself a candidate for a pedestal.  The story of David is simply an immersion in humanity – an immersion in humanity conditioned by its culture and flawed by its sin.  Perhaps we could even go so far as to say that the story of David is not a story of what God wants us to be, rather, the story of David is a story of God working with the raw material of our lives as he finds us.  Write that down.  The story   of David is not a story of what God wants us to be, rather, the story of David is a story of God working with the raw material of our lives as he finds us.  In other words, God still loves us – and God can still work with us – in spite of any mistakes we may have made along the way.  Ladies and gentlemen, the God we love – the God we worship – is always willing to give us a second chance.

    About ten years ago, I wrote a poem called The God of Second Chances.  I actually wrote it for a woman in my church in Salem, Ohio who was getting married for the second – or maybe it was the third – time.  Yet I think it’s applicable to other mistakes we may have made as well.  In any case, listen now to a poem entitled, The God of Second Chances.

To come of age in this wide world,

One finds life’s full of dances.

One knows there is, yet turns not to,

The God of second chances.

            We want to spread our mighty wings

            To soar far as we can.

            A conquest here, a conquest there:

            Who thought it’d be this grand?

We have success and all is good

In this terrestrial life.

To top it off, we then seek out

A husband or a wife.

            We fall in love and happiness

            Is all we think and feel.

            And then along come one, two, three

            Children with which to deal.

But that’s all right.  It gives our life

A sense of true delight.

We always have more love to share.

It simply feels so right.

            We live our lives by our own rules

            ‘bout each and every day.

            We have success, but then come woes

            To boot, along the way.

A child in whom we took such pride

Turns out not like we’d planned.

He takes a wrong turn here and there

In spite of our demands.

            And then that husband or that wife

            No longer feels the same.

            So they want out.  And we want out.

            It’s such a hurtful game.

Then there’s that job for which we strove

Our hardest every day.

Turns out it’s simply a dead end.

We only work for pay.

            Or what if everything’s still grand?

            In life we find no “whys?”

            But then that one we loved so much

            Gets sick and then he dies?

We find that life is not all fun

And games along the way.

We have our good days and our bad.

So then we learn to pray.

            As long as we maintain our faith

            Across life’s wide expanses,

            We’ll find that we are blessed by Him:

            The God of second chances.

To get a second chance at life

And love; a chance to cope.

We want it and we find that this

Is all for which we hope.

            Perhaps the second time around

            We won’t take it for granted.

            The seed of love now in our hearts

            Will be securely planted.

We learn life has its ups and downs,

But still, we do find love.

We find a sense of happiness:

It comes from up above.

            Oh, there are those who’ll think we’ve failed

            And made a few mistakes.

            But until life takes twists and turns,

            You don’t know what it takes.

No longer are we fooled by all

Life’s trials, hoops and trances.

We’ve found we now owe all to Him:

The God of second chances.

    David got a second chance.  We might say David got a third and a fourth and a fifth chance, as well.  Yet David always managed to confess his sin and to throw himself upon the mercy of God.  Truth be told, that’s what the Psalms are all about.  We would do well to do the same… because the fact of the matter is, living a Godly life in spite of all our imperfections is part and parcel to walking the Jesus Way.  Amen.

 

7-10-2011 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY

    I have an incredible story for you this morning.  Ultimately it has to do with the true nature of forgiveness.  It’s just that it takes a somewhat circuitous route to get there.  Thus, I invite you to sit back – get comfortable – and encounter one of the most startling stories to come out of World War II.  It’s a story that probably should have made front-page news, yet somehow it failed to do so.  Listen closely just the same.

    At 4:00 a.m. on July 16^th, 1945, Hunters Point Dock in San Francisco, California is a quiet, deserted place, and it strikes many of the crew of the USS Indianapolis as odd.  Usually Hunters Point Dock harbors some 15 ships, but tonight it’s like a graveyard.  The Indianapolis is a heavy cruiser designed to bombard enemy placements on land and blow enemy aircraft out of the sky.  She’s 610 feet long – a floating city with enough weaponry to lay siege to San Francisco. She’d been at Mare Island Naval Yard for two months for repairs.  Four days earlier, however, this respite had been abruptly terminated by orders that the Indianapolis set sail immediately.

    From out of the fog, two army trucks thunder to a stop, and a detachment of armed Marines steps out.  The canvas flaps at the rear of the trucks are parted to reveal a black metal canister and a large wooden crate. A cable from a crane aboard the Indianapolis snakes down above the crate – which is secured with straps, lifted skyward, and set upon the hangar deck.  The crate is then placed under strict guard by the Marine detachment.

    The canister, meanwhile, is taken aboard by two sailors, who carry it up the gangway suspended from a metal pole.  It’s secured to the deck in Admiral Raymond Spruance’s cabin,     then padlocked.  (The Admiral is in Guam, planning the invasion of Japan.)  Accompanying    the canister are Major Robert Furman and Captain James Nolan who introduce themselves as artillery officers.  In reality, Nolan is a radiologist and Furman is an engineer engaged in top-secret weapons development.

    The captain of the ship gives the order to get the Indianapolis under way.  At about the same time, on an expanse of desert in New Mexico, a tremendous flash fills the morning sky.  It’s an explosion of staggering magnitude and the aftershock knocks men off their feet five miles away.  It’s the first explosion of an atomic device in the history of the world.

    Inside the crate sit the integral components of the atomic bomb known as Little Boy. Packed   in the canister in the admiral’s cabin is a large quantity of uranium-235, totaling half the fissile material available to the United States at the time.  In three weeks, the bomb will be dropped on Hiroshima.  At 8:00 a.m. the captain of the Indianapolis clears the harbor and sails past the Golden Gate Bridge into the nuclear age. 

    The Indianapolis sails from San Francisco to Tinian Island in the Philippine Sea – a journey of 6214 miles.  After unloading their precious cargo, they sail toward Guam, about 140 miles away, to receive more routing orders.  They’re told to sail from the Marianas Frontier to the Philippine Frontier.  The captain is told that conditions along his proposed route are normal, even though Japanese submarines are known to be in the area.  In fact, three days earlier, the USS Underbill had been sunk by a torpedo, killing 119 men.  On July 28^th, the USS Indianapolis sets sail into a sea the captain thinks he understands.

    Sixty feet below the surface of the Pacific, in the submarine I-58, Lieutenant-Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, the son of a Shinto priest, frets.  Incredibly, during his four years at    sea, he has yet to sink an enemy ship.  He’s erected a shrine aboard the sub and he prays to it   for his luck to change.

    Suddenly, about 10,000 yards away, Lieutenant-Commander Hashimoto sees something up ahead – a blur on the horizon.  He can’t believe his luck!  He orders the sub to attack depth and creeps ahead at a quiet three knots.  He’s studying the approaching vessel through the periscope, but he can’t make out what type of ship she is.  Realizing a kill shot will be difficult from head on, Hashimoto swings the sub around and falls into position to meet the ship broadside.  From this angle, he can see that it’s a warship – a huge one.  It’s the Indianapolis, headed for the Philippine Frontier.

    One eye pressed to the rubber cup of the periscope, he gives the order to fire.  Each torpedo carries 1210 pounds of explosive – enough firepower to level a six-story building – and Hashimoto releases six of them, at three second intervals, in a widening fan of white lines. 

     While the torpedoes race toward the Indianapolis, her crewmen are playing poker, reading paperback novels, making coffee and sleeping.  Marine Private Giles McCoy – remember that name – Marine Private Giles McCoy, only 19 years old, is guarding two prisoners down in the brig.

    At about 12:02 a.m., the first torpedo blows an estimated 65 feet of the bow skyward.  The explosion sends a plume of water lit from within by red streamers of flame 150 feet into the air, showering the men on deck with foaming sea water, fuel oil, and burning shrapnel.  A second torpedo hits below the waterline and careens through a powder magazine and a tank filled with thousands of gallons of fuel.  This explosion is massive.  The Indianapolis seems to pause for a moment, like a huge beast struck between the eyes, and then she continues plowing ahead at 12 knots.  With her bow gone, she begins scooping up seawater by the ton.  Already, 100 men are probably dead and the Indianapolis is listing to starboard. She has very little time left and those aboard have even less time in which to decide their fate.

    The captain gives the order to abandon ship.  As many as 500 men are massing at the port rail near the stern, and they begin jumping, screaming as they drop 30 feet into the sea.  The ship’s angle is now lifting propellers Number 3 and Number 4 out of the water – and Number 3 is still running.  Some of the men drop into the massive, spindling blades and are cut to ribbons. 

    After jumping, the men are scattered in a jagged line that will eventually stretch for 20 miles.  A vast, poisonous blanket of black fuel oil pours from the ship’s ruptured hull and spreads across the water. It coats and clogs the men’s eyes, ears and mouths – eating away at the sensitive membranes.  As they drift, many of them are in shock, and nothing is visible of their blackened faces except the whites of their eyes.

    As the Indianapolis sinks, distress signals are sent.  These messages are sent out repeatedly     by two men in a pair of radio rooms filling with smoke.  Somebody – somewhere – should be receiving them.  In fact, four U.S. vessels will receive S.O.S. messages from the Indianapolis, and none of them will take any conclusive action to determine their accuracy.  That’s because Japanese forces, hoping to draw out helpless rescue vessels, have regularly broadcast bogus distress signals.  Thus, no one comes to help.

    Marine Private Giles McCoy – remember him? – desperately attempts to swim away from the ship.  As the 10,000 ton Indianapolis sinks completely, it lets out one last tremendous explosion.  McCoy gets sucked under water and blacks out.  He comes to moments later as he feels himself rushing back toward the surface.  He’s caught in a giant air bubble that eventually lifts him three feet out of the water.  He returns to a dismal world of screaming men.

    Coughing up seawater, Giles McCoy makes his way toward a life raft.  A body drifts out of the darkness toward him.  McCoy can’t tell who it is, but he pulls the man close and cuts off his life vest.  The corpse sinks beneath the waves and is gone.

    As Private McCoy stares into the darkness, he spots something on the horizon.  He thinks it’s a rescue ship. He pulls out his pistol and fires two shots in the air. Then he realizes he’s not looking at a rescue ship.  It’s the Japanese sub, prowling the kill zone.  Throughout the war, it’s been the practice among Japanese sub commanders to machine-gun a sunken ship’s survivors.  The sub circles the area for half an hour, but when the risk of being discovered by a destroyer seems too great, the I-58 takes off.  Assuming he has sunk the ship, Lieutenant-Commander Hashimoto orders up a celebratory meal of boiled eels and potatoes for his crew.  Little does he know that in seven day’s time, the members of his family will be vaporized by a new kind of weapon…a new kind of weapon called the atomic bomb.

    The crew of the Indianapolis who remain alive are convinced that rescue can only be a day or two away.  At 10:00 a.m. the following morning, they unexpectedly drift free of the oil slick and beneath them the ocean lights up like an enormous green room. The relief from the stinging oil is instant.  But then the sharks arrive in frenzied schools.

    “You know how a bobber on a catfish line floats on the surface above the bait and runs when a fish hits?” Seaman John Bullard will later recall.  “The last time I saw this one fellow, his head was running like a bobber. A shark had hit him.” Of the men adrift in life vests, those who thrash end up dying, and those who play dead survive.

    Subtler forces are also taking their toll.  At this near-equatorial latitude, the Pacific is a steady 84 degrees – warm by most ocean standards – but still cool enough to induce hypothermia.  Dehydration and dementia are also setting in.  Then men start to hallucinate.

    On Thursday, August 2^nd – four days after the Indianapolis was sunk – a 24-year-old Navy pilot accidentally discovers the remaining crew. Rescue vessels are sent. Out of a crew of over 1200, only 321 men survived.

    The following week, the Enola Gay drops Little Boy on Hiroshima and 120,000 people are annihilated.  President Truman later steps into the Rose Garden to announce the surrender of Japan.  The effect is simple: Either by design or by happenstance, the Indianapolis disaster is buried under the headlines announcing America’s victory.

    Remember Marine Private Giles McCoy?  He became a physician to dedicate his life to something good.  In Hawaii, in 1990, on the 49^th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he met Lieutenant-Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto.  Hashimoto, of course, commanded the sub that sank the Indianapolis.  Through an interpreter, Dr. McCoy managed to say to Hashimoto, “I forgive you.”

     Hashimoto replied, “Well, I forgive you, too.”

     “Forgive me for what?” shot back Dr. McCoy.

    “Tell Dr. McCoy,” Hashimoto answered through his interpreter, “that I came from Japan to be with him, to pray with him for the losses I caused on the Indianapolis. And I ask him to pray with me for the losses I suffered at Hiroshima, because I lost my whole family in the bombing.”

    There are two sides to every story, aren’t there?  Forgiveness is a two-way street.  Let us keep that in mind when we finally find ourselves big enough to forgive our transgressors.  For its altogether possible that they have suffered just as much as we have.  Amen.

 

6-26-2011 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

    A couple of years ago, my oldest son and I were walking the dog in the woods at Colonel Crawford Park.  Suddenly we heard a loud crack off in the distance.  I said to my son, “Rob, did you hear that? What would you do if that was a bear?” Rob said, “I’d run!” I said, “Rob, you can’t outrun a bear!”  To which Rob replied, “I don’t have to outrun a bear.  I only have to outrun you!”  Great!  This child I have loved and nurtured for 22 years – for whom I have sacrificed my all – is going to outrun me and let me get eaten by a bear!

    I remember the day he was born like it was yesterday.  I was getting ready for work in our house in Columbus Junction, Iowa when my wife said to me, “I think it’s time!”  We raced to the hospital in Iowa City as fast as we possibly could.  The doctor who delivered Rob had the fastest scalpel west of the Mississippi.  My wife had to have a C-section.  Rob was delivered, and my wife was being wheeled out of the room in less than 25 minutes.  Once they had Rob all cleaned up, they stuck him in my arms.  It was the first time I’d ever even held a baby.  I thought, “What am I supposed to do with this?”  It was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me.  Suddenly I realized that along with God’s great blessings comes great responsibility.

    Consider Abraham of whom Susan read a moment ago.  God came to Abraham some 4000 years ago and promised to make of him a great nation. But was Abraham blessed that he might hoard those blessings unto himself?  Was Abraham blessed that he might stockpile his wealth?  No, he was blessed to be a blessing to others.  He was to share the grace of God with the world.  This story answers what has become my new favorite question of late. My new favorite question is this: Does God exist to serve us, or do we exist to serve God?  We exist to serve God because – as we see with Abraham – along with God’s great blessings comes great responsibility.

    The same thing was true for the disciples of whom we read in the gospel according to Matthew.  Twelve men Jesus called, and they all began to follow; ever so slowly at first, doubting him every step of the way.  They watched as he healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and mended the lame.  They listened as he spoke of a kingdom that had no end.  What had begun as mere curiosity had turned into a call to discipleship.  What had begun as mere friendship had grown into a deep abiding love. The more they saw – the more they heard – the more they came to love this man called Jesus with a love they had never known before.  They were with Jesus as they celebrated their last supper together.  They prayed with him in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Then they watched him get arrested, and they saw him hung on a cross to die.  Yet after Jesus’ death, he made several appearances to his disciples.  In the passage we read from Matthew, he gave his disciples what we call the Great Commission.  He said, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” The disciples were blessed to have walked with Jesus Christ. Yet along with God’s great blessings comes great responsibility.

    Let’s talk about this sacrament of baptism the disciples were told to administer for a moment.  Baptism is meant to symbolize three basic things.  Number one, baptism symbolizes our admission into the Church universal. Number two, baptism symbolizes our cleansing from sin. And number three, baptism symbolizes our reception of the Holy Spirit. What exactly is the Holy Spirit?  We know God the Father as God over and above us.  We know God the Son as God with us and for us.  And we know God the Holy Spirit as God in us.  And this is what worries me.  We are raising a generation of young people apart from the church.  Thus, we are raising a generation of young people absent the sacrament of baptism.  Can we not thus infer, from a theological standpoint, that we are raising a generation of young people bereft of the Holy Spirit?  Ladies and gentlemen, that should scare us to death.  For apart from the Holy Spirit, human beings are capable of almost anything. Yet the sacrament of baptism is not some magic elixir guaranteeing that your children will live a godly life.  The sacrament of baptism is like planting a seed.  And how do you make a seed grow? You must water it and fertilize it and nurture it. Along with God’s great blessings comes great responsibility. In other words, we – as parents – must become disciples ourselves.

    The real question thus becomes, “How does one become a disciple of Jesus Christ?”  Here at the First Presbyterian Church of Meadville we have devised what we call the seven covenants of a disciple of Jesus Christ. Those seven covenants are printed on the blue inserts in your bulletins.  Each discipleship covenant has three separate parts: Discipleship Practice, We Begin By, and We Aspire To.  Now I’m not going to go over all of them.  Let me just say this.  To be a disciple of Jesus Christ, one must worship regularly, pray daily, study diligently, live faithfully, serve joyously, give generously, and witness boldly. Ah, along with great blessings comes great responsibility.  But if we, as parents, manage to do just that…then perhaps the fate of our children will no longer be in our hands.  The fate of our children will be in God’s hands.  Frankly, I can’t imagine a better place than that, can you?  Amen.