11-11-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

 

CHRISTIANITY 101: GOD IS GOOD

  My sister, Lora, and her husband, Mike, were married in September of 1982.  For many years they tried to have a baby, without success.  Then, finally, in December of 1995, they had a little boy.  They named him Griffen.  He was a beautiful, healthy, perfect little boy…and no parents ever loved their son any more than Mike and Lora loved Griffen.  Their house had become a home; a couple had become a family.

  When Griffen was eighteen months old, Lora was playing with him on a swing in the back yard.  For some strange reason, he didn’t seem to feel very well, so they sat down together on a blanket.  Suddenly, Griffen collapsed.  Mike and Lora began a frantic trip to the hospital.  As Mike drove and Lora held their little boy, she suddenly cried out, “Hurry, Mike!  Griffen’s stopped breathing!”  Mike quickly pulled into a fire station and those firemen – God bless every one of them – worked valiantly to restore that little boy to life.  In the end, they were unable.  No one knows to this day why that little boy died.

  Mike and Lora were devastated.  There was nothing anyone could say to make their emptiness go away.  Yet believe it or not, there were some people who tried.  One person said to them, “You’re young.  You can always have another baby.”  Another person said, “God never gives us any more than we can handle.”  Another person said, “God just needed him more than you did.”  And last but not least, another person said, “It was God’s will.”  As you might suspect, Mike and Lora were not terribly comforted.

  Does God sometimes give us more than we can handle?  Did God need their baby more than they did?  Was the death of their son really God’s will?  What kind of God would allow his children to suffer so?  Is that the kind of God we are called to worship and adore?  Who is this God that we should love him?  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

  Last week we talked about the contrast between our tendency to gratify the desires of the flesh and the Apostle Paul’s call for us to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  We noted how human will power lacks the capacity to change much of anything.  Change happens when something else is modified.  What needs to be modified?  What needs to be modified is our personal narrative of who and what God is.  We need to have the proper story in our minds as to who and what God is if we’re ever going to change who and what we are…because everything stems from our own internal narrative.

  What does our internal narrative tell us about why bad things happen to people, like that which happened to my sister and her husband?  People actually said to them, “It was God’s will,” and I have no doubt that they really believe that.  Of course, it’s easier to see something as God’s will when someone else is suffering, but that’s beside the point.  We see that same kind of narrative about God in the passage we read from the book of Job.  Allow me to set the scene for you.

  There once was a man in a land called Uz whose name was Job.  Now Job was blameless and upright; a man who feared God and turned away from evil.  He had seven sons, three daughters, a barnyard full of livestock, and a multitude of servants.  He was considered by his peers to be the greatest man in the east.  He was healthy, wealthy and wise.

  As the story goes, God and Satan were having a conversation about Job.  God says to Satan, “Have you seen my servant Job?  He is upright, blameless and faithful.  There is no one else like him on all the earth!”  To which Satan replies, “Of course there is no one else like him on all the earth.  You’ve given him everything anyone could possibly want.  Let me take a few things away from him, and then let’s see how faithful he is.”

  So Satan was given permission to wreak havoc in the life of Job.  His livestock was stolen by plunderers.  His servants were killed in a fire.  His children lost their lives when a house collapsed upon them.  Yet after all that, Job worshipped God and said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return.  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  But the Devil wasn’t done just yet.  He then afflicted Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.  Even his wife said to him, “Curse God and die!”  At first, Job defended God.  Yet soon after that, he came to curse the day he was born.

  Now at this point in time, let me say that I do not believe for a minute that God and Satan have conversations about people where God allows Satan to destroy their lives.  I think the book of Job is meant to be a metaphor.  Oh, there may have really been a Job who suffered so, but it is highly unlikely that God made a deal with Satan to make it that way.  The book of Job is probably a little bit like that movie where they tell us that it’s based upon a true story.  What that means is that the writer has license to elaborate a little bit.  Are you with me?

  So there sits Job in a heap of ashes, cursing the day he was born.  Three of his friends come to console him regarding the reason as to why he has suffered such a fate.  One of those friends was Zophar the Naamathite.  He says to Job, “You say, ‘My doctrine is pure and I am clean in God’s eyes.’  But oh, that God would speak and tell you the secrets of wisdom!  Know then that God exacts of you less that your guilt deserves.”  In other words, “It’s not as bad as it could be,” and “God is clearly punishing you for some sin you must have committed.”

  That, my friends, is a narrative about God.  Call it cause and effect.  When we do good things, God rewards us with good things.  When we do bad things, God punishes us with bad things.  Truth be told, this particular narrative about God hearkens back to Greek mythology.  Nearly all the ancient religions were built on a narrative that says we have to do something in order to get the blessings of the gods, and conversely, if we anger the gods we will surely be punished.  It’s a narrative that can be summed up this way: “God is an angry judge.  If you do well, you will be blessed…but if you do not, you will be punished.”

  Allow me to insert a quick theology lesson here.  As Christians we say, “What we know to be true of Jesus Christ, we know to be true of God.”  Now this occasionally runs counter to what we might read in the Old Testament.  That’s why, when we read the Old Testament as Christians, we must always interpret it as pointing to Jesus Christ.  Thus, in Jesus Christ, in a manner of speaking, God is saying to us, “No, no, no…this is who I am!”  What we know to be true of Jesus Christ, we know to be true of God.  Therefore, our narrative as to who and what God is …must come from Jesus Christ.

  So let’s look back to our earlier narrative.  Is our suffering a result of God’s punishing us for our sin?  Is God an angry judge who says to us, “If you do well, you will be blessed…but if you do not, you will be punished?”  Perhaps we need to consider what Jesus would say about that.  Perhaps we need to look at this from Jesus’ point of view.

  Consider the passage we read from the gospel according to John.  As Jesus and his disciples walked, they encountered a man who was blind from birth.  His disciples – his own disciples, mind you – asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Do you see the narrative from which they were operating?  If a man was born blind, it was clearly the result of some sin his parents committed, or the result of some sin he must have committed in the womb.  Let me also say that those who believed in reincarnation would claim that his blindness was the result of some sin he committed in a previous life.  In fact, reincarnationists believed – I am not making this up – reincarnationists believed that when a man was born blind, it was because he had killed his mother in a previous life. 

  The narrative from which the disciples operated was that God was an angry judge.  Since a man was born blind, it must have been God’s will…it must have been some kind of punishment from God.  So they said to Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  In their minds, it had to be one or the other.

  Jesus set out to establish a new narrative within them.  He quickly replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.  He was born blind that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”  In other words, “God is good; God wills the good…and the glory of God will ultimately be revealed in him.”  And upon saying those words, Jesus healed the man born blind.  The point is that God wills what’s best for all of us.  The problem is that we don’t see the big picture as God sees the big picture.

  When I graduated from seminary in May of 1985, I had several viable options for employment.  One opportunity was as a solo pastor in a dying church in St. Louis, Missouri.  One was as a solo pastor in a very small town in Columbus Junction, Iowa…and one was as an assistant pastor in a fairly large church in North Platte, Nebraska.  Plotting out my career path in my mind, I felt that accepting the call to North Platte, Nebraska would afford me the best opportunity to get where I wanted to go.  Of course, that reminds me of one of my favorite sayings.  That saying is, “If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans!”  In any case, I turned down the churches in St. Louis and Columbus Junction, and accepted the call to North Platte.

  Prior to accepting the call to a church, I had to go before what was called in those days, The Care of Candidates Committee.  We debated various theological topics for six long hours, and I truly felt I won the battle…but in the end, I lost the war.  By a score of three to two, they voted not to ordain me.  They never really did say why.  Needless to say, I was devastated.  Four years of college and three years of seminary were down the drain.  I thought about going back to school to get a Ph.D. to teach.  I thought about switching over to the United Methodist Church.  After several days of frustration and consternation – not to mention the crushing disappointment I saw in my parents’ eyes – one night, I flopped down on my bed, looked up to the heavens, and cried out to God, “God, I give up!  What do you want me to do?”  And suddenly I knew what I had to do.  I had to contact the church in Columbus Junction again.

  To make a long story short, everything fell into place and a very grace-filled congregation taught me how to be a minister.  But here’s the point.  When the Care of Candidates Committee refused to ordain me, I was more devastated than I had ever been in my entire life.  It seemed like God had abandoned me and the world was coming to an end.  But God had something else in mind.  Had I not gone to Columbus Junction, I would not have the wife I have, I would not have the children I have, and I certainly would not be here. 

  Isn’t it amazing the impact one little decision can have on your entire life?  And isn’t it wonderful that when you get it wrong, sometimes God intervenes to set things right?  God is good.  That’s my personal narrative about God.  God is very, very good.  When things initially went sour, naturally, I was not in a position to realize that.  Yet perhaps our own experiences of disappointment with God say more about us and our expectations…than they do about God.

  When you realize that God smiles more than he weeps; when you realize that his laugh is louder than his reprimand; when you realize that nothing can separate you from the love of God; when you realize that God’s arms are outstretched toward you; when you realize that God makes all things work together for good; when you realize that God has been calling you beloved, innocent and pure ever since he created the universe; when you realize that God has been proud of you every time you’ve succeeded and every time you’ve failed; when you realize that God is the one who’s responsible for every good thing you have; when you realize that God thinks you’re worth dying for; when you realize that God is for you, not against you; when you realize that God is good…everything changes.  Now there’s a narrative about God that we would be wise to claim.  Amen.

 

11-4-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

CHRISTIANITY 101: CAN A LEOPARD CHANGE ITS SPOTS?

  My wife and I were recently driving home after taking our daughter out to dinner in Pittsburgh.  We were travelling north on Interstate 279, right where it merges into Interstate 79.  We were in the right lane behind a very small car that appeared to contain a very large man.  As the lanes came together, the man in the small car in front of us quickly moved from the right lane into the center lane.  It just so happened that there was a Ford pickup truck moving at a very high rate of speed in that center lane, and the small car cut him off.  The man in the pickup truck slammed on his brakes and laid on his horn.  Then he cut in front of me in the right lane, raced around the small car, then jerked his wheel back to the left, cutting off the man in the small car.  He nearly caused about a ten-car pileup.   

  The man in the pickup truck soon got back into the right lane and got off of the interstate at the Wexford exit.  As he proceeded down the exit ramp, he suddenly slowed his vehicle, rolled down his window, stuck out his arm…and extended his index finger.  I believe that’s what is euphemistically referred to as a Pittsburgh wave!  In any case, as we moved past the large man in the small car, I noticed that he was wearing a black shirt with a little white collar.  The man in the small car was a priest!  Thus, the man in the pickup truck cut off – and flipped off – a man of the cloth.  It all happened because one man had cost another man about a quarter of a second from his day.  Some people are just so angry these days.

  A man named Scott Rothstein graduated from law school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in May of 1988.  For 14 years, his law career was relatively inauspicious.  Then in February of 2002, he began a law firm of his own.  In his own words, he was bound and determined to make it the biggest and the best in the state.  But Rothstein needed capital to feed his appetite for success.  The question thus became: Where was he going to get it?

  Rothstein came up with an investment plan that involved purchasing fabricated structured settlements, where people sell their monthly payments from legal cases for lump sums of cash.  The ruse attracted hundreds of investors who paid millions of dollars for settlements that did not exist.  Rothstein promised a return of 15% or more on his investors’ investments.  It all sounded too good to be true…which, of course, it was.

  Rothstein himself owned a fleet of luxury cars.  He had a yacht named after his wife.  He lived in an opulent house where even the toilets were overlaid in gold.  He became a local celebrity.  He was the go-to guy for politicians in need of money, and he was a source of enormous donations for local charities, as well.  Rothstein spent money like it would never run out…but when it did, the devastating truth was revealed.  Rothstein had run a 1.2 billion dollar Ponzi scheme.  In the end, forty-eight-year-old Scott Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in prison.  Some people are just so greedy these days.

  Now try this story on for size.  A woman writes, “My husband got tangled up in a text-messaging fling with one of my friends.  I caught on to it after a couple of weeks, but had no actual proof until I could get my hands on one of our cell phone bills.  There were over 4000 texts and several phone calls between them over the course of a single month!  I confronted him about it, and he admitted to everything.  He says it was nothing more than a phone thing, but I’m not 100% sure.  Still, I’ve done everything possible to make his life absolutely miserable for the last few months.

  “I got a little revenge on my so-called friend as well.  She has very long hair, and takes such pride in it, that I knew I had to do something to ruin it.  So I went to a local bath and body shop and purchased a gift basket of shampoo, conditioner, lotion and perfume.  Then I left the basket on her front porch with a note that said that it had come from a secret admirer…but not until I’d had a little fun with the shampoo and conditioner.  I poured the contents out in a bowl, and replaced them with Nair hair remover.  Then I placed some of the original product back in the bottles, just to make sure they smelled like they should.   

  “She fell for it.  She used the products and most of her hair fell out.  It thrills me to death every time I see her now!  I still have a little more revenge to get, but I haven’t got all the details worked out just yet.  In time, I’m sure I will.”  Some people are just so vengeful these days.  Okay, that’s a good one.  But still, some people are just so vengeful these days. 

  Truth be told, the protagonists in the scenes I have just described could conceivably describe any one of us.  We all have a tendency to be angry, we all have a tendency to be greedy, and we all have a tendency to be just a little bit vengeful.  We all have a tendency to – as the Apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the Galatians – “gratify the desires of the flesh.”  What are the desires of the flesh?  The Apostle Paul says, “The works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity and licentiousness; strife, greed and anger; dissention, envy and vengefulness.”  The list goes on and on.  Paul later adds, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  Thus, perhaps we could say that doing those things is not a good thing.  To gratify the desires of the flesh is to keep oneself from encountering the peace of God.

  Paul’s antidote to the desires of the flesh is to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  Yet the two are so mutually opposed to one another that one cannot possibly give allegiance to both simultaneously.  “The fruit of the Spirit,” Paul says, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”  Talk about a contrast of opposites!  The question thus becomes: How do we live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, as opposed to the desires of the flesh?  After all, it’s human nature to want to gratify the desires of the flesh.  Can a leopard change its spots?  Can a person really change who and what they are on the inside?

  What people generally do when they want to change something about themselves is to muster up their willpower.  When is the most common time for people to muster up their willpower?  It happens every New Year’s Day.  We call it our New Year’s resolutions.  Of course, research reveals that about 95% of all New Year’s resolutions are broken by the end of January.  And most people assume that the reason they failed to keep their resolutions is because they didn’t have enough willpower.  That’s unfortunate, because willpower – in and of itself – doesn’t really have the capacity to change much of anything.

  You see, the will actually has no power at all.  The will is the human capacity to choose.  “Should I wear my black shoes or my brown shoes today?” we ask ourselves.  If we choose the black shoes, our will is the hinge upon which the decision was made.  But the will did not actually do anything.  The will is not an organ or a muscle that can contract or expand.

  The will is more like a horse that responds to the impulse of its rider.  For example, a horse does not choose where to go.  It goes whatever direction the rider tells it to go.  The will works a lot like that.  Yet instead of one rider, human will has several.  The three primary influences on the will are the mind, the body and the social context.  First, what we think in our minds will in turn create emotions, which lead to decisions or actions.  Second, the body is a complex inner working of impulses that influence the will.  Most of our bodily systems function without our help, but when the body has a need – food or water, for example – it expresses itself to the mind through sensations like hunger or thirst…saying, “Get food or water now!”  And finally, the will is also influenced by social context.  We are highly influenced by the people around us.  Some might call it peer pressure.

  The will itself, however, is neither strong nor weak.  It only has one task: to do what the mind – influenced by the body and the social context – tells it to do.  Therefore, change – or a lack thereof – is not an issue of the will at all.  Change happens when something else is modified.  The question now is: What?  What must be modified in order for this leopard to change its spots?  What must be modified in order for us to change?

  We human beings are creatures who live by stories – our stories.  From our earliest days we are told stories by our parents that help us interpret how life is or how it ought to be.  As we grow, we form stories of our own on how life is or how it ought to be.  Yet sometimes the stories we form are not as healthy as they should be.

  John was a young man who was born into a house of privilege.  His father owned a thriving insurance firm, and his mother was a social butterfly.  From the time he was an infant, John had everything he wanted, except the one thing he wanted most: the love and affection of his parents.  Thus, he proceeded to come up with ways to get his parents’ attention.  If he could not get it in positive ways, perhaps he could get it in negative ways.

  It all began in kindergarten.  He was accustomed to getting his way at home, and became quite frustrated when he could not get his way at school.  He discovered that at the base of his desk chair leg, there was a stem that enabled the chair to slide.  If you put your feet on either side of it, you could pull the stem off.  The stem was held in place by a long narrow brad that made it resemble a very large tack.  John came up with the idea of putting that tack on the chairs of unsuspecting fellow students.  It amused him to no end when they sprang back out of their chairs far more quickly than they had sat down.  Discipline was handled internally, until the day John placed a tack on the substitute teacher’s chair.  His father was called down to the school, and after considerable negotiation, his father got him off the hook.

  When John was in the sixth grade, the local newspaper ran a front page story about an elementary school break-in.  Televisions and video equipment were stolen.  A few days later, John’s father was startled to discover that all the missing equipment was in his back yard shed.  John swore up and down that he had not broken into the school; that he was only holding the stuff for someone else.  John’s father returned the equipment, and again utilizing his considerable negotiation skills, got his son off the hook.  Are you starting to see a pattern forming here?  John acts out, and then his father bails him out…only John keeps raising the stakes.

  This pattern went on for a number of years.  Finally, when John was in college, after a wild night on the town, John and a few of his friends decided they wanted some railroad ties to decorate their apartment.  They removed a number of railroad ties from an active railway line, causing a train to derail.  Fortunately, no one was hurt…but this time, John’s father could not get him off.  He ended up spending a year in jail.

  Like I said before, we human beings are creatures who live by stories.  John’s story was that he did not believe he was worthy of love and attention, so he concocted various schemes in order to get it.  What John probably needed was a good psychologist to help him develop a measure of self-worth.  He needed to discover that he was a person of value, even when he was not the center of attention.  In order to change his behavior, what he needed was a new narrative.

  We were speaking a moment ago about overcoming our human nature.  We were speaking of being guided by the Holy Spirit of God as opposed to the desires of the flesh.  We noted how the will is incapable of securing such change within us.  We noted how change happens when something else is modified within us.  The question was, “What?”  What must be modified in order for this leopard to change its spots?  What must be modified in order for us to change?

  Maybe what we need is a new narrative as well.  Maybe what needs to change is our narrative about who and what God is.  Do we see God as vengeful and vindictive, or do we see God as loving and compassionate?  Do we see the providence of God as something to be feared, or do we see the providence of God as something to be cherished?  Did God send his Son to be tortured and killed, or did God himself come to earth to suffer in our stead?  Maybe we need to examine our own narratives as to who and what God is.  And that is exactly what we’re going to be doing over the course of the next few weeks.  Amen.