05-27-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

LIVING THIS SIDE OF THE CROSS: PART IV

    A good friend of mine passed away last week.  He was only 43 years old.  He leaves behind a wife and three children – a son in college, a son in high school, and a daughter still in elementary school.  He was diagnosed a few months ago with a highly treatable form of leukemia, and seemed to be on the road to recovery.  Then, something went terribly wrong.  He died in the hospital, surrounded by his family, on Tuesday afternoon.

    We have come, these days, to not expect such calamitous things to happen.  So many previously deadly diseases are now treatable.  Life expectancy seems to increase every year.  We all expect to live to a ripe old age.  So when such things do happen, we find ourselves at a loss for words.  We grieve deeply, and then we begin to question God.  “How can a loving God allow such things to happen?” we wonder.  “Why do bad things happen to good people…like us?”

    If any one of us takes the time to take stock of our lives, we will find that a great number of things have gone wrong.  Illness and injuries set us back.  Children don’t turn out quite the way we planned.  A husband or a wife turns out not to be who we thought they were.  The economy collapses and we wonder how we’re going to survive our golden years.  These are not things we typically bargain for, and when we believe we are following Jesus Christ, we expect them even less.  So when they do happen, our faith tends to falter.  “How can a loving God allow such things to happen?” we wonder.  “Why do bad things happen to good people…like us?”  Keep that thought in mind as we move on. 

    This is the fourth in a series of sermons entitled, Living This Side of the Cross.  The thesis of the series is pretty much summed up in verses 14 and 15 in the 4^th chapter of the book of Ephesians.  There the Apostle Paul writes, “We must no longer be children tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head…into Christ Jesus our Lord.”  In other words, this is a sermon series on growing up in Christ.

    Four weeks ago, we talked about how the church is meant to represent the kingdom of God on earth.  We said that the kingdom is here…but not fully here.  Thus, could it be that the church we have is exactly what God intended when he created the church?  Could it be that the church we have provides the very conditions necessary for growing up in Christ?  While we live in a throwaway society these days, perhaps there are some things we shouldn’t throw away.  After all, the providence of God means that wherever we have gotten to – whatever we have done – that is precisely where the road to heaven begins.

    Three weeks ago we talked about living a worthy life.  A worthy life – a life that is truly growing up in Christ – is a life formed not in isolation, but rather, in community.  Christian maturity develops as we form friendships with the friends of God…not just the friends we prefer.  You see, God chooses to act and intervene in the world through us.  We see God acting in the world today when we witness the heartfelt convictions of those who serve him.

    A man named Walter Percy wrote six novels in which he made us insiders to the sense of alienation that he found so pervasive in American culture.  His name for this condition was, “lost in the cosmos.”  In other words, from a spiritual perspective, we don’t know who we are.  We don’t know where we came from, and we don’t know where we’re going.  We are lost in the cosmos.  This tends to be particularly true when things go wrong in our lives.  So Walter Percy wrote his novels to wake us up to our desperate condition, and to set up a few signposts to help us find our way.

    Believe it or not, the Apostle Paul knew a little bit about being lost in the cosmos as well, although he certainly would not have used those words.  Yet Paul also tries to wake us up to our desperate condition, and to set up a few signposts to help us find our way.  Paul does so, however, by providing an extensive witness to how God works in the world.

    In the passage I read from the book of Ephesians, for example, it all begins with God.  Paul fires off seven strong verbs that illuminate God’s way of working with us in the world.  The verbs are: blessed, chose, destined, bestowed, lavished, made known, and gather.  Let’s begin with the verb “blessed,” because I think that’s where our real questions lie.  After all, when we take stock of our lives, we find that a great number of things have gone wrong.  How blessed are we, really?

    In verse 3 Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”  That’s two “blesseds” and one “blessing” in a single sentence.  The Greek word for bless is eulogia.  We derive the word “eulogy” from this word.  Eulogia literally means, “a benefit bestowed by God in Christ.”  Yet there are times when we don’t feel very blessed, are there not?  Could it be that this is simply a matter of perspective?  Listen to this.

    A group of students was once asked to list what they thought were the present-day Seven Wonders of the World.  Though there were some mild disagreements, the following things received the most votes: 1) Egypt’s Great Pyramids, 2) The Taj Mahal, 3) The Grand Canyon, 4) The Panama Canal, 5) The Empire State Building, 6) St. Peter’s Basilica and 7) The Great Wall of China.

    After gathering the votes, the teacher noticed that one student had not yet finished her list.  So she asked the girl if she was having any trouble.  The girl replied, “Yes, a little.  I couldn’t quite make up my mind because there are so many.”  The teacher said, “Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help.”  The girl hesitated, then said, “I think the Seven Wonders of the World are: to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to feel, to laugh and to love.”

    The room was so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop.  Perhaps the Seven Wonders of the World are things we overlook as simple and ordinary…and often take for granted.  Perhaps the same could be said about our blessings from God.  If we could learn to dwell on the good things we have – instead of on the things we don’t – perhaps we would begin to see that.  We are indeed blessed by God.

    So first, Paul says that God blesses us.  He goes on to say that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him.  God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.  God bestowed grace upon us through the person of his Son. God lavished redemption and forgiveness according to the richness of his grace.  God made known to us the mystery of his will through our relationship with Jesus Christ.  And finally, God gathers up all things to him in Christ.

    There it is: your roadmap through the cosmos.  As Christians, we are blessed by God…chosen in Christ, destined for adoption, bestowed grace, lavished redemption and forgiveness, made to know the will of God through Christ, and gathered up to God in the end.  You are a precious child of God – created in the image of God – and destined for eternal life.  Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.  Thus, there remains but one thing left for us to do.  We must receive it.  We must receive God’s gift to us in Christ.  But how?

    On a blustery autumn day, a young man named Bryan Anderson came across an elderly woman standing beside her car on an old country road.  He pulled up behind her brand-new Mercedes Benz in his rusty, old pickup truck and asked her if she needed help.  Yet even with the smile on his face, the elderly woman looked frightened.  No one had even passed by – let alone, stopped to offer help – for over an hour.  And this man looked tired, poor and hungry.  “Was he going to hurt her?” she wondered.

    The young man could see that she was frightened.  He said to her, “I’m just here to help you, ma’am.”  Noticing that her left rear tire was flat, he said to her, “Why don’t you just wait in the car where it’s warm?  I’ll take care of this tire for you.”

    So the woman got into the car while the young man crawled under it and looked for a place to set the jack.  He got the job done – skinning his knuckles a time or two in the process, and getting pretty dirty.  As he was tightening up the lug nuts, she rolled down the window and began to talk to him.  She told him that she was from Philadelphia, and was only passing through.  She could not thank him enough for his kindness. 

    The young man just smiled as he put away the jack and closed the trunk.  The woman then asked how much she owed him.  Any amount would have been all right with her.  She had already imagined the terrible things that could have happened to her had he not stopped.  But this was not a chore to the young man.  This was helping someone in need.  God knows, there were plenty of people who’d helped him out in the past.  He had lived his whole life that way, and it never occurred to him to live it any other.

    He told her that if she really wanted to pay him, the next time she saw someone who needed help, she could give that person the assistance they needed.  Then he added, “And think of me – Bryan Anderson.”  He waited until she started her car and drove off.  It had been a cold and depressing day, but he felt good as he headed for home. 

    A few miles down the road, that elderly woman stopped at a small café for a bite to eat.  It was a dingy-looking restaurant, but it was the only place in town.  The woman went in and sat down, and the waitress brought a clean towel over so she could wipe down her wet hair.  The waitress had a sweet smile – one that even being on her feet the whole day could not erase.  The woman also noticed that the waitress was pregnant – very pregnant.  The woman was touched by the waitress’s kindness…and then she remembered Bryan Anderson.

    After the woman finished her meal, she paid the tab with a one hundred dollar bill.  The waitress went to get change for the woman, but by the time she got back, the woman was gone.  Then she noticed something written on the napkin.  It said, “You don’t owe me anything.  I have been where you are.  Somebody once helped me the way that I am helping you.  If you really want to pay me back, here is what you do: Do not let this chain of love end with you.  And under the napkin, the waitress found four more crisp one hundred dollar bills.

    Well, there were tables to clear, sugar bowls to fill and people to serve…but the waitress made it through another day.  That night when she got home from work and climbed into bed, she was thinking about what the woman had written.  How could she have known how badly she and her husband needed it? With bills to pay and the baby due next month, it was going to be really tight.

    She knew how worried her husband had been about expenses.  As she crawled into bed and he lay sleeping next to her, she whispered in his ear, “Everything’s going to be all right.  I love you, Bryan Anderson.”

    The issue at hand was receiving the grace of God.  The question was, “How do we do that?”  Maybe the way to receive God’s grace…is to simply pass it on.  Amen.

 

05-06-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

LIVING THIS SIDE OF THE CROSS: PART III

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an early 20^th century German theologian. He was educated at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and rose to become President of a theological seminary in Germany while he was in his early thirties. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant scholar.  He was also morally outraged by the tyranny of Adolph Hitler.  In fact, he was so upset by the atrocities committed by Adolph Hitler that he actually became involved in a plot to assassinate him.  The plot failed, and Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo.  He was executed a mere 23 days before Germany’s surrender in World War II.

    On that day – April 9^th, 1945 – a fellow inmate wrote: “Pastor Bonhoeffer held a little worship service that touched the hearts of all.  He had hardly finished his closing prayer when the cell door burst open. Two evil-looking soldiers came in and barked, ‘Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.’  The words meant only one thing…the scaffold.  But as Pastor Bonhoeffer bid us goodbye, there was a light in his eyes.  He said, ‘For me, this is the beginning of a new life – eternal life.’”

    Like I said, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a brilliant theological mind.  During his 24 months in prison he continued to work out his theological convictions.  In what was then referred to as the modern era, the consensus among theologians was that God had been pushed to the gaps of human existence.  In other words, God was only relevant in places where human logic and sound reasoning failed.  Why, it was almost as if God was being kept offstage in the play of human drama – until all was apparently lost – and then only lowered into the fray on stage in order to solve the unsolvable and explain the inexplicable.  According to the best theological minds of the day, God had been pushed to the gaps of human existence.

    Bonhoeffer wrote, “It is wrong to use God as a stopgap for the incompleteness of our knowledge.  We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t.  God wants us to realize his presence not in unsolved problems, but in those that are solved.”  What he proposed was what he called a “religionless” Christianity – a faith that looks for God in what we know, and not in what we don’t.

    Bonhoeffer’s reflections raise many important theological questions.  By no means did he deny that God has acted and continues to act in human history.  But he did reject the notion that God’s activity is only to be found in the mysteries of human existence.  Yet if God is not to be found only in the gaps – if God is not the hypothesis we only use to explain what reason cannot – does that mean that God does not intervene in human history at all?  What, then, does the Christian faith mean when it affirms that God acts or intervenes in the world as we know it?  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

    This is the third in a series of sermons entitled, Living This Side of the Cross.  The thesis of the first sermon was pretty much summed up in verses 14 and 15 in the 4^th chapter of the book of Ephesians.  There the Apostle Paul writes, “We must no longer be children tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head…into Christ Jesus our Lord.”  In other words, this is a sermon series on growing up in Christ.

    Last week we talked about how the church is meant to represent the kingdom of God on earth.  We said that the kingdom is here, but not fully here.  Could it be that the church we have is exactly what God intended when he created the church?  Could it be that the church we have provides the very conditions necessary for growing up in Christ?  While we live in a throw-away society these days, perhaps there are some things we shouldn’t throw away.  After all, the providence of God means that wherever we have gotten to – whatever we have done – that is precisely where the road to heaven begins.

    It is generally believed that Paul wrote the book of Ephesians while he was in prison in Rome.  As it says in verse 1 of chapter 4, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”  Perhaps the first question, then, is this: What does it mean to lead a worthy life? 

    Allow me to begin by citing the work of a great Methodist theologian by the name of John Wesley.  He taught what is now referred to as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.  Although John Wesley never used the word “quadrilateral” himself, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral was nevertheless inferred from his work.  He taught that we lead a worthy life by building on the foundations of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience.  In other words, we base our decisions in life first on what the Scriptures say, second on what our tradition teaches, third on what our reason infers, and finally on what our experience tells us.  Scripture, tradition, reason, experience…in that order.

    My theory is that, these days, we have reversed the order.  We base our decisions in life first on what our own experience tells us.  Then we might consider reason.  Since we don’t really know what our tradition teaches, and now that biblical illiteracy is rampant, we hardly consider them at all.  How can we lead a worthy life if we don’t even know what a worthy life is?

    The Greek word Paul uses for worthy is axios.  An axios is literally a set of balancing scales; the kind of scales formed by a crossbeam balanced on a post, with pans suspended from each end of the crossbeam.  For example, you place a one-pound weight in one pan, and then measure out flour in the other pan, until the two pans are in balance.  Balance means to be in equilibrium.  So does a worthy life.  A worthy life is a life lived in equilibrium.

    The question now is: What are the two things that need to be in balance?  Paul says to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.  Therefore, perhaps the two things that need to be in balance are these: God’s call…and our walk of faith.  Again, the two things that need to be in balance are God’s call, and our walk of faith.  For you see, when God’s call and our walk of faith balance…then we are truly growing up in Christ.

    A man who is probably the best preacher I’ve ever heard graduated from Wooster College in the early 1970s.  He became the senior minister at a large Presbyterian church in New Jersey while he was still in his twenties.  Trust me, that doesn’t happen very often.  About ten years later, he became the senior minister at one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the country, the Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas.  Not long after that, he became the senior minister at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in downtown New York City…one of the most prestigious pulpits in the world.

    That sounds like a man who was leading a balanced life, does it not?  He was clearly balancing God’s call upon his life with his own walk of faith...and with a great deal of success, I might add.  Then he hooked up with a seminary intern who was working at his church.  He lost his wife, he lost his family, he lost his church, and he lost his ordination to the ministry.  Then the husband of the woman with whom he had the affair sued him for a million dollars…and the church for three million more.  That’s what can happen when God’s call and our walk of faith fall out of balance.   

    God calls us to serve him, and then God equips us with the gifts we need to serve.  For example, I think of a woman who was appalled by the fact that there are so many couples who are not raising their children in the church.  Young people who grew up in the church now have nothing to do with it, and thus, their own kids have nothing to do with it either.  So she formed a group that gets together to pray for those kids – some of whom are their grandchildren.  The group is called Grandmas in Prayer.  And if God doesn’t listen to grandmas in prayer, I suspect he doesn’t listen to anyone.

    I think of another woman who was appalled by the fact that the high school no longer held baccalaureate services for graduating seniors.  So she formed a committee out of the high school’s senior council members to bring back the baccalaureate service.  She involved her husband as an advisor to the senior council, and she involved me as a member of the Meadville Area Ministerial Association.  Since her husband and I are both afraid to tell her no, we agreed to take part in the cause as well.  The baccalaureate service has been growing every year for the past 8 years.  Like I said, God calls us to serve him, and then God equips us with the gifts we need to serve.  This applies to each and every one of us.  And by the way, in case you were wondering, the word “retirement” is not in the Bible.   

    There is a catch, however.  God calls us to serve him, and then God equips us with the gifts we need to serve.  Note that I said, “God calls US,” and, “God equips US.”  In other words, this is not just a conversation between God and me.  Jesus is more than my personal savior.  This is a conversation God wants to hold with each and every one of us.  Thus, a worthy life – a life that is truly growing up in Christ – is a life formed in community.  Christian maturity develops as we form friendships with the friends of God…not just the friends we prefer.  In other words, if we are to grow up in Christ, we have to do it in the company of others who are responding to the call of God as well.  Whether we happen to like them or not…has absolutely nothing to do with it.

    Now back to the questions Dietrich Bonhoeffer posed at the beginning of this sermon.  He said, “It is wrong to use God as a stopgap for the incompleteness of our knowledge.  We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t.”  The question was, “What, then, does the Christian faith mean when it affirms that God acts or intervenes in the world as we know it?” 

    I think the answer to that question…is us.  God chooses to act and intervene in the world through us.  In fact, that may be the most convincing argument for the existence of God there is.  We see how God acted in the past when we read the pages of Scripture.  We see God acting today...when we witness the heart-felt convictions of those who serve him.  Amen.

 

04-29-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

LIVING THIS SIDE OF THE CROSS: PART II

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau…did I get that right?  Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an 18^th century   social theorist.  His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution, and the development of modern sociological thought.  In a book entitled Discourse on Inequality, he wrote:

The first man who fenced in a piece of land and said, “This is mine,” then found people naïve enough to believe him...that man was the true founder of civil society.  From how many crimes and wars and murders; from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

    That is really quite profound.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a brilliant man, but Jean-Jacques Rousseau was not a humble man.  In the first pages of his final book, ironically titled, Confessions, Rousseau imagines himself having died and gone to heaven.  He approaches the heavenly gates with his head held high.   He carries a copy of his Confessions.  As he passes through the Pearly Gates all of heaven turns toward him. The heavenly host actually set their praise of God aside to listen to his story.  He boasts, “I have bared my secret soul, as God himself hast seen it.  So let the numberless legion of my fellow men gather round me and hear my confessions.  And may any man who dares, say, ‘I was a better man than he.’”

    Wow!  Now there was a man who was full of himself.  Contrast this scenario with the story of a man named Karl Barth. Karl Barth was arguably the greatest theologian of the 20^th century. His epic work was entitled, Church Dogmatics.  It consists of 14 volumes, and it is some of the most complex reading I have ever encountered.  Someone once quipped, “When Karl Barth dies, God is immediately going to take him up to heaven so he can find out more about himself.”  Such was the intricacy and complexity of Karl Barth’s writing.

    In his biography of Karl Barth, a man named Eberhard Busch quotes the great theologian speculating on his appearance at the Pearly Gates.  Barth imagines himself pushing along a cart full of books.  Yet the heavenly host does not turn to him for a reading.  Instead…they    laugh.  “In heaven,” Barth says, “we shall know all that is necessary, and we shall not have to write on paper or read any more.  Indeed…I shall be able to dump even the Church Dogmatics on some great heavenly floor as a pile of waste paper.”

    Rousseau dared to imagine that God and the heavenly host might be illumined by what he had to say. Barth understood that his mortal understanding of God – as great as it was – was still very limited.  Which of these two stories better captures your understanding of your own self-worth in God’s eyes?   Which of these two stories better describes your sense of your own standing before God?   If it’s the former, I think you may have a small problem.  If it’s the latter, congratulations!  You’ve been paying attention all these years.

    While we may have our standing before God in proper perspective, I’m not so sure we have our standing in the world in proper perspective. We have become an individualistic society. Ask a teacher.  If a child gets in trouble at school and his parents are called into the principal’s office to deal with it, who are the parents most likely to believe is at fault: their child…or the teacher?  Ask an employer. Many will agree that these days, a lot of people feel as if they are doing the employer a favor by showing up for work. As I’ve said before, there are two common phrases that pretty much sum up one of the greatest problems in our society.   One is the Burger King mantra: “Have it your way.” The other is a code by which many retail stores abide.  That code is, “The customer is always right.”  Those two phrases have helped to skew our perspective on our place in the world.  Perhaps we could even say that our world-view has become more Rousseauian than Barthian.  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

    Last week we began a sermon series entitled, Living This Side of the Cross.  The thesis of   that sermon was pretty much summed up in verses 14 and 15 in the 4^th chapter of the book of Ephesians.  There the Apostle Paul writes, “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and blown about by every wind of doctrine.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head…into Christ Jesus our Lord.”   In other words, this is a sermon series on growing up in Christ.

    When it comes to growing up in Christ, perhaps the place to start is the church.  Jesus Christ himself established the church through his disciples.  The church was called the body of Christ. 

The church is not Jesus, yet it is called to do the work of Christ in the world.  And many of the epistles in our New Testament were letters written to specific churches.  Case in point, the passage I read from the book of Ephesians.  The church in Ephesus was established by an eloquent Jewish preacher by the name of Apollos.  Paul initially stopped to visit this fledgling Christian congregation on his second missionary journey.  He met with them – there were only twelve of them at the time – and guided them into receiving the Holy Spirit.  Due to certain trying circumstances, he ended up staying with them for three years.

    Now most of the epistles in the Bible were written to resolve some particular problem that had arisen in the church. In Thessalonica some of the members of the church were sure that Jesus’ return was so imminent…that they quit working.  The Corinthians were squabbling about diet, sex and worship. The Galatians were regressing into tired old Jewish legalism and needed a thorough shaking up.   Like I said, most of the epistles in the Bible were written to resolve some particular problem that had arisen in the church. It seems as though there have always been problems in the church.

    The book of Ephesians is the lone exception. The book of Ephesians was not provoked by a problem. Ephesians may have actually been a general church letter that was circulated among several first century congregations.  So you see…the book of Ephesians works from the other direction.  It immerses us in holy and healthy conditions...out of which a mature Christian life can develop.  That is why it will be my primary text throughout the course of this series of sermons.

    The book of Ephesians begins with such peaceful eloquence. “To the saints who are faithful   in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes, “Grace to you, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  It sounds so calm. It sounds so serene. It sounds so ideal.  And isn’t that the way we all want to experience church?  Yet IS that the way we all experience church?

    There is a quote from Eugene Peterson printed in the Silent Reflection portion of your bulletin this morning. He writes, “Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity.”  Like I said earlier, “When it comes to growing up in Christ, perhaps the place to start is the church.”  Then he writes, “But church is difficult.”  In fact, “Many Christians find church to be the most difficult aspect of being a Christian.”  Finally, he adds, “So many drop out.  There may be more Christians who don’t go to church, or go only occasionally, than there are who embrace it, warts and all.  And there are certainly plenty of warts.” 

    What has hurt the church more than the scandals involving Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart?  And need I mention the headlines some Catholic priests made a few years ago?  And then there are the endless arguments over the ordination of homosexuals…and the burgeoning debate over same-sex marriage.  Casual or superficial experience with the church can leave one with impressions of bloody fights, acrimonious arguments, blatant hypocrisy, and warring factions.   If the church is meant to be God’s advertisement to the world – if the church is meant to be a utopian community put on display so that people will flock to it, clamoring to get it...it has obviously become a piece of failed strategy.

    Yet the church is meant to be the core element for providing a human witness and a physical presence to the coming kingdom of God.  In other words, it’s all we’ve got.  As my systematic theology professor, Harold Nebelsick, used to say, “The kingdom is here…but not fully here.” Perhaps the question now...is this:  Could it be that the church we have is exactly what God intended when he created the church?  Could it be that the church we have provides the very conditions necessary for growing up in Christ? Could it be that God knew what he was doing when he gave us the church; this church?   Perhaps the answer to those questions depends on whether you are Rousseauian or Barthian.  In other words, is the church meant to please people, or is the church meant to challenge people to grow?

    I want you to listen to a story.  I don’t know who the author was, but one could assume that the person who wrote it is in his – or her – mid-to-late seventies.  In any case, listen closely.

    I grew up in the 1940s with practical parents.  My mother would wash aluminum foil after she cooked with it, and then reuse it.  She was the original recycling queen…even before they had a name for it.  My father was always happier getting an old pair of shoes fixed, rather than buying new ones. Their marriage was good; their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away.

    I can almost see them now: Dad in trousers, a t-shirt, and a hat; Mom in a house dress with a dish in one hand and a towel in the other.  It was the time for fixing things: a curtain rod, the kitchen radio, the screen door, the oven, the hem in a dress…they were things we kept.  It was    a way of life, and it sometimes made me crazy.  All that fixing, saving and reusing…just once I wanted to be wasteful.  Waste meant affluence.  Throwing things away meant that you knew   there would always be more.

    But then my mother died, and on that clear summer’s night in the warmth of a hospital room, I was struck with the pain of learning: Sometimes, there isn’t any more.  Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away, never to return.  So – while we have it – it’s best that we love it, and care for it, and fix it when it’s broken.  This goes for the kitchen radio, the screen door, the oven…and the hem in a dress.

    Yet maybe it also applies to marriages, to children with bad report cards, to strained relationships and even to churches.  We live in a throw-away society.  Yet maybe there are some things we shouldn’t throw away. Maybe there are some things that are worth fighting to keep. 

    God certainly feels that way about us. That’s why he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, in the first place.  So maybe we can let ourselves off the hook when it comes to that desperate question:  “Am I in the right place? Have I done the right thing?”  Sometimes we need to acknowledge   that we – or others – have made mistakes, and we must certainly try to learn from them.  But we should not foster the kind of worry that leads to despair.  We should not give up…on the church, on others, or on ourselves.  The providence of God means that wherever we have gotten to – whatever we have done – that is precisely…where the road to heaven begins.  Amen.