1-24-10 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

CHRISTIAN APATHEIA

     By now, I suspect, most of us are aware of the story of John Newton, author of the hymn, Amazing Grace.  He wrote the hymn after he became an Anglican clergyman, but before that    he was the captain of a slave trading ship.  Although he received some early religious instruction from his mother – who died when he was six – he had given up any serious religious conviction by the time he reached adulthood.  Then one night, as he attempted to steer his ship through a particularly violent storm, he experienced what he later referred to as his “great deliverance.”

     He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and he was convinced the ship was about to sink, he cried out, “Lord, have mercy upon us!”  Later, he reflected on what he had said, and began to believe that he had actually encountered God in that storm.  Perhaps that storm was the source of verse three of his famous hymn:

 

            Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;

            ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

 

     May 10^th, 1748 was the day of John Newton’s “great deliverance.”  Yet John Newton continued to pilot slave trading ships, although he did come to treat the slaves on his ships a little    bit better.  Some years later he had a stroke and in the aftermath of that, he again had a profound encounter with God.  It was then that he said that he felt truly at peace with God for the first time in his life.  Yet even then, he continued to invest financially in the slave trading business.  He finally became an abolitionist much later in life.  Then he apologized for a confession that, as he put it, “comes too late, and will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I once was an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.”  Perhaps that confession is the source of verse one of Amazing Grace:

 

            Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!

            I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.

 

     Ladies and gentlemen, there is more than one kind of blindness.  Of course, there is what     we call physical blindness.  Yet perhaps there is also a kind of blindness we might call spiritual blindness.  John Newton was not healed of physical blindness.  John Newton was healed of spiritual blindness.               

    Does spiritual blindness remain in our world today?  Perhaps we could say that Bernie Madoff suffered from spiritual blindness with his Ponzi scheme.  How could anyone with a conscience do what that man did?  I think anyone who suggests that the people of Haiti are only getting what they deserve, because some of them practice voodoo, may be suffering from spiritual blindness.  How can anyone see their suffering and think God remains oblivious?  And those of us in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world who want to hear our preachers talk about how we can get more out of God – who long for what we call the “prosperity gospel” – may be suffering from spiritual blindness as well.  Here we could ask, “How much is enough?”  Ah, there seems to be a bit of spiritual blindness in our world today, as well.

   Jesus addresses the subject of blindness in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke.  He comes to Nazareth – his own home town – and enters the synagogue on the Sabbath.  As he stands up to read, he is handed a scroll from the book of Isaiah.  Jesus reads:

 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to

the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to 

 the blind; to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 

    Much can be said about the aforementioned passage, but I want to focus on the recovery of sight to the blind.  How does Jesus restore sight to the blind?  More specifically, how does Jesus heal spiritual blindness?

   Spiritual blindness occurs when we suffer from what a fourth century monastic scholar named Evagrius called the eight deadly thoughts.  Two centuries later, Gregory the Great revised the concept of the eight deadly thoughts and called them the seven deadly sins, but for our purposes today, we’ll stick with the eight deadly thoughts.  Spiritual blindness occurs when we suffer from the eight deadly thoughts.  What are the eight deadly thoughts?  They are: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, accidia, vainglory, and pride.

   Gluttony is exactly what you think it is.  It has to do with overconsumption.  As I said in our staff devotions last Wednesday, many of us who attended the Lunch at First program last Tuesday were guilty of gluttony.  The sin of gluttony is that our own overindulgence can lead to a scarcity of resources for others.  The second deadly thought – lust – is what you think it is as well.  Just the thought of indiscretion can lead to its commitment.  I don’t think I need to go into that here.

     Avarice is the third deadly thought.  Avarice might also be called greed, but there’s a little more to it than that.  Our minds become so full of the desire to gain enough material goods to make ourselves secure against every possible calamity that we fail to pay sufficient attention to our neighbor or to God.  The opposite of avarice is generosity.

     Sadness is the fourth deadly thought.  Sadness arises when we compare our achievements with those of others, and we become deeply disappointed with our own lives.  This sadness is a form of self-pity, which we may experience as we think about what we might have become  had we not suffered with the restrictions that come from being Christian.  In other words, if it weren’t for the limitations our faith put upon us, we could’ve gotten more out of life!

     The fifth deadly thought is anger.  Here Evagrius is referring to the anger that arises from injuries we have suffered – or think we have suffered – from others.  They can so possess us   that anger becomes our permanent disposition, needing very little to set it off.  The very thought of those who have hurt us – or who we think have hurt us – fills us with hatred and ignites the burning passion of anger.

     The sixth deadly thought is accidia.  Accidia can also be called sloth, but it’s perhaps better understood as boredom or apathy that leads to despair.  Accidia arises from discouragement over our lack of progress in the Christian life, the failures of fellow Christians, mean spiritedness, gossip, and even church politics.  The point is that love between Christians is not in evidence.  No one seems genuinely interested in anyone else.  In short, accidia is what tells us that we do not seem to be getting anywhere in the spiritual life, and the church as a whole does not seem to us to be making any progress either.

     Vainglory is the seventh deadly thought.  It’s kind of the opposite of accidia.  As we find ourselves improving in the Christian life, we find that we want others to notice.  Perhaps we need to remember here that we are the branches and that Jesus Christ is the vine.

     Last but not least is the deadly thought of pride.  It’s similar to vainglory.  With vainglory, we crave notice for our achievements.  With pride, however, we take full credit for the progress we have made as if God had not been involved at all.  C.S. Lewis once called pride the ultimate sin.  “It’s what made the devil the devil,” he said.

     There you have it; the eight deadly thoughts.  The eight deadly thoughts are what lead us to spiritual blindness, not to mention, perhaps, a few other things.  How are we to overcome those eight deadly thoughts?  How can Jesus heal us of our spiritual blindness? 

     What we need is Christian apatheia.  Apatheia refers to a state of mind where one is free from emotional disturbance.  When we attain the state of Christian apatheia we are no longer disturbed by the eight deadly thoughts.  We are free to love God with all our heart and with all our strength and with all our soul and with all our mind.  And, we are free to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. 

     What does Christian apatheia look like?  I’m reminded of a wonderful story that is attributed to Catherine Marshall.  She wrote:

 

There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who could paint the best picture of

 peace.  Many artists tried and the king looked at all the pictures.  But there were only

 two he really liked, and he had to choose between them.

 

The first picture was of a calm lake.  The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it.  Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.  All who saw this picture thought that it was the perfect picture of peace.

 

The other picture the king selected had mountains in it too, but these mountains were rugged and bare.  Above them was an angry sky, from which rain fell and lightning flashed.  Down the side of the mountain tumbled a roaring waterfall.  At first glance,   this picture did not look peaceful at all. 

 

But when one looked more closely, one could see that behind the waterfall was a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock.  In the bush, a bird had built her nest.  There in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat a mother bird on her nest – in perfect peace.

 

Which picture do you suppose won the king’s prize?  The king chose the second picture.  He explained, “Peace does not mean an absence of noise or trouble or trauma.  Peace means to be in the midst of all those things, and to still be calm in your heart.”

 

     That, my friends, is the picture of Christian apatheia as well.  As Christians, we seek to be free of the turmoil caused by uncontrolled passions that we might be free to love God and neighbor.  The question is, how do we get there?

     The ancient spiritual masters believed that we reached such a state through what they called ascetical practices.  Ancient ascetical practices included things like prayer, fasting, spiritual study and almsgiving.  As Diogenes Allen put it in his book, Spiritual Theology, “As long as   our attention is distracted because we ourselves are divided in our wishes, wants, desires, and hopes, we cannot attend to the word of God.”  In other words, our spiritual blindness will continue – we will always fall short of the goal of Christian apatheia – as long as we remain distracted by the things of this world.  

     We must learn to separate ourselves from the things of this world.  We must take the time to focus exclusively upon God.  How are we to do that?  Let me give you one way to get started.  The ancients called it lectio divina.  Lectio divina consists of four basic things: reading a passage of Scripture to yourself out loud; meditating or thinking about what you have read; praying about what rises up in your heart or your mind in meditation; and then contemplation – simply resting silently in God for a time after you have prayed. 

    This is spirituality.  Spirituality, to me, is one’s union or one’s oneness with God.  And where are we to encounter God aside from Scripture?  As we grow closer to God, we will find our spiritual blindness going away.  It won’t likely happen overnight.  Recall, for example, how long it took John Newton to see the error of his slave trading.  It won’t likely happen overnight, but you will find yourself being mysteriously drawn closer to God.  You will find your spiritual blindness gradually fading away. You may even find yourself encountering Christian apatheia as the things that once seemed to matter so much…suddenly don’t seem to matter anymore.  Amen. 

    

 

1-10-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

     We seem to have developed – as Americans – a strange fascination with the supernatural.  Television airwaves are full of programs that deal with the subject at hand.  There’s a show called Ghost Hunters and a spinoff called Ghost Hunters International.  There’s a show called Ghost Adventures and a show called The Ghost Whisperer.  There wouldn’t be so many of these shows if there wasn’t a captive audience.  Like I said, we Americans seem to have developed a strange fascination with the supernatural.

     In fact, there’s a movie on that subject that recently became a blockbuster hit, entitled, Paranormal Activity.  Paranormal activity begins when a young man named Micah purchases a camera to record the strange things his live-in girlfriend, Katie, claims to be experiencing.  Micah’s purchase of the camera is more to appease her than anything else, and we soon find    out he’s more interested in electronics than he is in the strange occurrences that seem to be haunting his partner.  As the film progresses, however, the ghostly happenings become more   and more apparent – and intense – while the hand-held camera documents these occurrences,    as well as the sheer terror this young couple experiences.

     There’s an interesting exchange that occurs in the film when Micah and Katie go to visit a psychic.  Katie wants to use an Ouija board to discern what the entity wants and is puzzled by Micah’s lack of understanding.  Micah says to her, “I understand where you’re coming from.  Just remember too, that you didn’t exactly warn me about this kind of stuff before we moved in together, so I think I have a little bit of say in what we do.”        

     Katie replies, “I get that, but honestly, what was I supposed to say?  On our first date, ‘Hey, I think there’s a demon that I think has been following me.’”  Micah says, “No, but maybe on our fifteenth date, or our thirtieth date, or when we decided to live together…that might’ve been a good thing to bring up!”

     We seem to have developed – as Americans – a strange fascination with the supernatural.  Why do you suppose that is?  Is it merely because we like to be scared out of our wits?  Or is there something more?  Life can be very hard on all of us.  Is this perhaps a part of our process  of trying to discern if there’s something beyond this earthly life?  Is this perhaps a part of our process of trying to discern if there’s help from above?  Whatever the reason is, we have a strange fascination with the supernatural – with what we call the paranormal. 

     Paranormal is a term that describes unusual experiences that lack scientific explanation.  Approaching the paranormal from a research perspective is difficult because of the lack of physical evidence from most of the purported phenomena.  These phenomena are alleged to be outside of science’s current ability to measure or explain.  In other words, ghosts and ghouls and goblins are called paranormal because they’re beyond the realm of scientific explanation. 

     Perhaps, in a manner of speaking, we could say that Jesus himself experienced some paranormal activity in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke.  John the Baptist  went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus himself went to John to be baptized by him.  The question we should ask here, I suppose, is this: “Why did Jesus go to John for a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…when he, himself, was without sin?”  Some commentators say he did so as a mere formality.  Other commentators say he did so to appease his Jewish mother.  But the fact of the matter is, when Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan, he received his commission from God.  More specifically, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove.

     Technically, this constitutes the paranormal because no scientific inquiry can explain the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Yet we don’t usually call baptism paranormal activity; we call baptism a sacrament.  A sacrament is an outward and physical act, instituted by Christ, with an inward and spiritual meaning.  Again, a sacrament is an outward and physical act, instituted by Christ, with an inward and spiritual meaning.

     The outward and physical act of baptism is the placement of water on the head, or in more conservative churches, the act of dunking a person in water.  I don’t want to get into the theological distinctions of methodology here, so let’s just leave it at that.  The outward and physical act of baptism has to do with water.  To say that it is instituted by Christ is to say that Jesus told us to do it, which he does in the great commission.  You can look that up at the end of the gospel of Matthew.  What I want to talk about this morning though is the inward and spiritual meaning.  What is the inward and spiritual meaning of baptism? 

     It’s three things, really.  As water cleanses the filth off our bodies, the waters of baptism symbolize our cleansing from sin.  The sacrament of baptism also symbolizes our reception into the Church universal.  But perhaps even more important, just as the Holy Spirit descended upon

 Jesus like a dove at his baptism, so, too, does baptism symbolize our reception of the Holy Spirit.  Baptism symbolizes our reception of the Holy Spirit.        

     God the Father we know as God over and above us.  God the Son we know as God with us and for us.  But God the Holy Spirit we know as God in us.  So when the Holy Spirit descends upon us as the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus, God begins to dwell within us.  That’s a hard thing to measure scientifically, and perhaps it can be a hard thing for us to discern personally as well.

     In churches of the Pentecostal tradition, one knows one has the Holy Spirit when one can speak in tongues.  We are not of the Pentecostal tradition, and the Apostle Paul notes that the ability to speak in tongues is but one of the gifts of the Spirit, so no one needs to speak in tongues here to prove they have the Spirit.  The Apostle Paul describes the fruits of the Spirit in    the book of Galatians.  The fruits of the Spirit are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Again, the fruits of the Spirit are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  So in other words, one knows one has the Spirit when one produces the fruits of the Spirit.

     That seems pretty black and white, does it not?  So how do we deal with this when we don’t feel very loving, when we can find precious little joy in life, or when we don’t feel very peaceful or very patient or very kind?  Are we to assume then that we lack the Holy Spirit?  That’s a logical conclusion, wouldn’t you say?

     I’ve always had a hard time with this because there are times when I don’t feel very peaceful or patient or kind myself.  I found my eyes opened by C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity.  He contrasts two different people, whom he has named Mr. X and Mrs. Y.  Mr. X is not a Christian, but he is gentle and loving and kind.  Mrs. Y is a Christian, but she is cantankerous and impatient and a bit overbearing.  In light of what we just said about the Holy Spirit, how     are we to view this contrast?

     C.S. Lewis puts it this way.  Imagine how wonderful Mr. X would be if he were a Christian, and imagine how cantankerous Mrs. Y would be if she were not!  The point is this.  Each of us  is a work in progress.  None of us has reached the final destination of who we are or who we can become.  There is no way for us to determine who is in possession of, and who is not in possession of, the Holy Spirit.  The key is for us to strive to grow in the Christian life.  We must continue to work on producing the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  It’s something that could well take a lifetime.         

     Baptism symbolizes our reception of the Holy Spirit.  No one is qualified to determine whether or not we do, in fact, possess the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes we may even feel as if     we’re not qualified to determine for ourselves whether or not we possess the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps we just need to trust that the Holy Spirit is there.  The better we learn to produce         the fruits of the Spirit, the more convinced we can become. 

     But here’s my concern.  You’ve heard me talk about this for about six years now.  Our society continues to raise a generation of young people apart from the church.  Thus, our society is 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 who are essentially bereft of the Holy Spirit?  

     As a church, I think we need to do something about that.  We need to continue to pursue a dynamic and vital youth ministry in this church.  At the rate we’ve been going the last couple    of years, we may not be able to afford such a person.  Thus, perhaps we need to do a couple of things.  First, we need to prayerfully reconsider our giving patterns.  And second, we need to pray for the young people in our community.  They face way more temptations and challenges than many of us ever did.  How can they decide wisely if God is not with them to help them?  We can help to change all that, you know.

     Ladies and gentlemen, we need the presence of God’s Holy Spirit.  Pray for God to send his Spirit to our young people.  Pray for God to send his Spirit to our community.  Pray for God to send his Spirit to our church.  That, my friends, is the kind of paranormal activity we all can use.  Amen.

 

 

      

    

 

12-20-2009 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE PARADOX OF BLESSEDNESS

     Last Tuesday afternoon, our Lunch at First group was privileged to hear our own Kevin Dill perform a Christmas concert on the organ.  He played moving and complicated pieces from Samuel Wesley and Nicolas-Joseph Wackenthaler and Johann Sebastian Bach.  Now let me add that Kevin’s wife, Sonya, was there with their eleven-month-old daughter, Clare.  After Kevin had performed a particularly moving piece and a majestic silence filled the air, little Clare stood up in the back of the sanctuary and cried, “Da Da!”  It was the perfect ending to a Christmas concert.

     Children are such a blessing.  Kevin and I got to talking about what happened at the concert the next morning.  It reminded me of when my own kids were little.  I told him of a time when my wife and I were in a Wendy’s restaurant with our children in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.   I’m going to say Rob was seven, Mariah was four, and Travis was probably two.  We told the kids to clear the table before we left.  So Rob grabbed one napkin, ran over to the trash can, and put it in.  Then Mariah grabbed one hamburger wrapper, ran over to the trash can, and put it in.  Then Travis grabbed one French fry sack, ran over to the trash can, and put it in.  They were laughing with glee as they discarded one item at a time.  To my wife and me, they seemed to be making quite a scene, so we discreetly tried to hush them up.

     About that time, a very elderly man ambled over to our table.  I think he sensed our consternation.  He looked at us and said, “These are the best days of your lives.”  Then he turned and walked away.  We had no idea who he was, and we never saw him again.

     He was right, you know.  Those probably were the best days of our lives.  If I could go back to the days when our children were young, I’d do it in a heartbeat.  Like I said a moment ago, children are indeed a blessing from God.  But is there more to a blessing from God than meets the naked eye?  Could it be that there’s a purpose behind our blessings from God?  Could it also be said that there’s a paradox of blessedness?               

    Listen to this.  Ten or fifteen years ago, I was involved in a conversation with three other guys.  Brock was the young man who was about to marry my wife’s niece, Kim.  Jeremy was a nephew who had recently gone through a very bitter divorce.  And Ron was friend of the family who’d been married for twenty or twenty five years.

    Brock, the young man who was about to be married, was experiencing what we in the business call “cold feet.”  It happens a lot to young men and young women about to be married.  They start to wonder if they’re doing the right thing.  Jeremy, the young man who’d recently gone through the bitter divorce, talked about how awful marriage can be.  His wife had cheated on him and he told us his sad tale of woe.  Ron, the man who’d been married for twenty or twenty five years, also talked about how awful marriage can be.  He felt his marriage had grown a bit stale, and he told us his sad tale of woe.

     I felt I needed to stand up for the institution of marriage – not just because I was going to perform Brock and Kim’s wedding – but also because I really believe it.  I told them that I wouldn’t trade my marriage for anything in the world.  It’s a partnership – ideally, it’s a loving partnership – and I can’t imagine going through life any other way. 

     Of course, they all made fun of me and told me what I was full of, but I can’t repeat that here.  Then I talked about the kids.  If it weren’t for our marriages, we wouldn’t have those kids.  Even Jeremy, the one who’d gone through that bitter divorce, but who had a daughter whom he loved very deeply, had to agree.  But Ron looked at me and said, “Those kids will disappoint you one day.” 

     “Those kids will disappoint you one day,” he said.  I knew there was something behind what Ron was saying, but he didn’t go into it there.  I later discovered that his oldest son had a drinking problem.  Then one night, two of his boys were out on the town.  They’d gone home, but the oldest one wanted to go out again.  His brother went with him because he was in no condition to drive.  As they barreled down the road to their next destination, the older brother missed a turn in the road.  As the pickup truck they were driving careened off the pavement, he was thrown from the vehicle and died instantly.  His younger brother was badly injured, but he managed to survive.

     “Children are a blessing,” I had said to Ron, and he said to me, “Those kids will disappoint you one day.”  Perhaps there is more to a blessing than meets the eye.  It brings to mind a phrase from a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson that dates from 1850.  He once wrote:

            I hold it true, whate’er befall;

            I feel it, when I sorrow most;

            ‘Tis better to have loved and lost

            Than never to have loved at all.

     Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?  I can’t answer that question because – thank God – I have not loved and lost.  Some of you do know the answer to that question, and I’m sure it’s a painful thing to even think about.  It brings to mind the paradox of blessedness.  Children, for example, are a tremendous blessing.  But isn’t it a paradox when things don’t turn out the way you planned?  How difficult it is when the source of our greatest joy turns out to be the cause of our greatest pain.

     In the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke, we get to see the paradox of blessedness first hand.  Mary has been visited by the angel Gabriel – the angel who told her that she had been chosen to bear the very Son of God.  Then, shortly after that event transpired, she took a trip to visit an older kinswoman named Elizabeth.  Who was Elizabeth?  She was the wife of a priest named Zechariah and she, too, was carrying a child.  The child whom Elizabeth would bear was none other than John the Baptist. 

      When Mary came to visit Elizabeth, the child leaped in her womb.  Then Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb…And blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to   her by the Lord.”

     Children are a blessing, are they not?  Elizabeth proclaims to Mary how blessed she really    is.  The New Testament Greek actually uses two different words to describe Mary’s blessedness, although they mean similar things.  The first word is, heulogaymenay, which means, “provided with benefits from God.”  The second word is, makaria, - not macarena, makaria – which means, “blessed, fortunate, or happy…as in the privileged recipient of divine favor.”

     Mary was blessed.  She was the privileged recipient of divine favor.  Yet consider how William Barclay describes her blessedness in his commentary on the gospel according to      Luke.  Speaking of this very encounter with Elizabeth, he writes:

This is a kind of lyrical song on the blessedness of Mary.  Nowhere can we better see 

the paradox of blessedness than in her life.  To Mary was granted the blessedness of being the mother of the Son of God.  Well might her heart be filled with a wondering, tremulous joy at so great a privilege.  Yet that very blessedness was to be a sword to pierce her heart.  It meant that one day she would see her son hanging on a cross.       

     That, my friends, is what we call the paradox of blessedness.  Mary was blessed with the honor of carrying and raising the very Son of God.  Yet she was also – dare we say “cursed” – with the agony of seeing that same Son die a bitter, brutal death.  What a paradox her state of blessedness turned out to be.  The source of her greatest joy would ultimately become the cause of her greatest pain.

     Biblical commentator William Barclay notes that to be chosen by God so often means at one and the same time a crown of joy and a cross of sorrow.  That’s what the paradox of blessedness is.  The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for a life of ease and comfort and relaxation.  God chooses a person for a task that will take everything they’ve got within them    in order to bring it to bear.  In other words, God chooses a person in order to utilize him or her for a greater cause.  Again, God chooses a person in order to utilize him or her for a greater cause.    

     I think of the parable of the talents Jesus once told.  You know the story.  A man went on a journey and to each of his servants he entrusted a measure of his property.  To one man he gave five talents, to one man he gave two talents, and to one man he gave but one.  The man who received the five talents went out and made five talents more.  The man who received the two talents went out and made two talents more.  But the man who received the one talent buried his talent in the ground. 

   As you recall, the man who made five talents was rewarded by his master.  The man who made two talents was rewarded by his master as well.  But the man who buried his talent in the ground – the man who gave the master no return on his investment – was chastised and cast from the land in which they dwelled.  God represents the master in the story, and God expects a return on his investment.  God expects us to use our God-given talents as well.  And from those who are entrusted much, even more is expected.

     I recently came across a story called The True Spirit of Christmas.  I don’t know who the author is.  Listen closely just the same.

While shopping for a present for my niece, I spied a little girl poring over Barbie dolls with her father, a roll of money clutched in her hand.  Each time she saw a doll she liked, she turned to her father and asked if she had enough to buy the doll.  Of course, each time her father said, “Yes.” 

 

Then I noticed a little boy wandering nearby with his father.  The two were looking at Pokemon toys.  The boy also had money in his hand, but it looked to be five dollars or less.  In contrast to the little girl, he was told, “No,” nearly every time he showed a toy to his father.

 

Meanwhile, the little girl had chosen the Barbie doll she wanted.  But before she went to the register to buy it, she noticed the little boy and his father as well.  By this time the little boy had a book of stickers in his hands and was looking sorely disappointed.

 

The little girl thought for a moment, then returned her Barbie to the shelf.  She chose a Pokemon game instead, and raced to the checkout counter.  After she paid for it, she whispered something to the cashier, who took the toy and put it in a bag under the counter.  When the boy got to the cashier, the cashier congratulated him on being the store’s 1000^th customer, and presented him with the game from under the counter.  The little boy’s face lit up as he exclaimed, “This is exactly what I wanted for Christmas!”

 

As they left the store, the little girl’s father asked, “Why did you do that?”  The little girl said, “Didn’t grandma and grandpa want me to buy something that would make me happy?”  Her father said, “Yes.”  To which the little girl replied, “Well, I just did.”

 

     “Out of the mouths of babes,” the old adage goes.  The author concludes, “As I watched her skip out of the store, I felt privileged to have witnessed the true spirit of Christmas.”  I’d say there’s one who used her God-given talents very, very well. 

     In this, the Christmas season, we anticipate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  God has given us the best he had to give.  Because of Jesus Christ, we are the blessed recipients of the forgiveness of sin and life everlasting.  Can you even begin to imagine what life would be like without them?  For without the forgiveness of sin and life everlasting, there is no ultimate hope.  Through Jesus Christ, we are the blessed recipients of the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. 

     Yet as did Mary, we too experience the paradox of blessedness.  The gift of the Christ Child and the benefits of the Christian life are not things that are meant to be hoarded unto ourselves.  The gift of the Christ Child and the benefits of the Christian life are things that God intends to be shared with the world…especially in this season of Advent.  So I ask you now: “With whom will you share your bounty?  With whom will you share Jesus Christ?”  Amen. 

 

      

 

12-13-2009 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

ZEPHANIAH’S SONG

 

     A number of years ago, I was at an event in Washington, D.C. called “The Festival of Homiletics.”  Those of us gathered there got to hear sermons from some of the finest preachers in the land.  There was also a very talented musician there who provided musical interludes between many of the sermons.  I was so impressed with his abilities that I actually tried to invite him to Meadville for one of our renewal weekends.  Unfortunately, he turned out to be a bit expensive for our humble tastes.  He wanted more than $4000.00 for a single weekend.

     Prior to one of the songs that he wrote himself, he talked about how frustrated ministers can become – so frustrated that they consider leaving the ministry altogether.  Then he sang his song about one such minister who contemplated leaving the ministry.  I don’t remember the song in its entirety, but I do remember one particular line.  The minister who considered leaving the ministry thought to himself, “I’d wind up flipping burgers…‘cause it’s the only thing I’m qualified to do!”  We minister-types roared when we heard that song because deep, deep down, we knew he was right.  A Master of Divinity degree – even a Doctor of Ministry degree – don’t qualify one to do much, other than serve a church or flip some burgers.

     I came to that stark realization here about six years ago.  The Presbyterian Women were holding an auction as a fund-raiser for one of their mission projects.  I was asked to make a contribution of some kind that could be auctioned off as well.  I couldn’t think of anything, so I offered to do a wedding.  When auctioneer Paul Huber came to my offer, I said, trying to make it seem to be of some intrinsic value, “You know, I often get anywhere between 250 and 500 dollars to do a wedding.”  Then Frank Smith asked, “How much does it cost to get married in the Methodist Church?”  Very funny.

     Now sitting in the audience that night were Marty Malone and his at-that-time unmarried daughter, Julie.  I don’t remember where Paul started the bidding, but there were no takers at $100.00.  There were no takers at 75 or 50 dollars either.  When the number dropped to $25.00, Marty Malone raised his hand and bought the wedding.  Yet as he did so, his single daughter, Julie, slunk in her chair and cried out, “Dad!”  But hey, a few years later we did that wedding, and I was honored to do so…for free!

     Apart from leading a church, what is a minister really qualified to do?  Diogenes Allen, a philosophy professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary, writes about a similar thing in his book, Spiritual Theology.  It seems his wife was a member of a silent auction committee for a school fair.  Various services were offered to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the school.  One person volunteered to examine investment portfolios.  One person donated an hour of legal advice, and one couple offered to act as waiter and waitress for a party. 

    The time came for Diogenes Allen’s wife to offer up something as well.  There was a noticeable pause, since everyone knew her husband was a clergyman.  Then, in a very matter-of-fact way, Mrs. Allen said, “My husband will give the highest bidder an assessment of his or her spiritual condition.”  Her well-meaning offer was greeted with an onslaught of laughter.  Diogenes Allen had this to say in the aftermath of what his wife endured.  He wrote:

Somehow it seems absurd to mention in a normal setting that people do have a spiritual

condition, let alone that it is possible to assess it as one would an investment.  Yet we    do care about how we are progressing in life, although we usually assess our progress    in terms of the ascent – or descent – of our careers.  We give far less attention to an assessment of the kind of person we are, the kind of person we can become, and the kind    of person we ought to be…according to God.

      Do we, in fact, have a spiritual “condition?”  And if we do, what is our spiritual condition?     I have a sneaking suspicion that all too often we’re inclined to tie our spiritual condition to the present state of our emotions.  In other words, if life is going well and we feel reasonably happy, then perhaps we feel our spiritual condition is good.  On the other hand, if life is not going well and we don’t feel the least bit happy, perhaps then we are likely to feel that our spiritual condition is bad.  Yet emotions are fickle.  Emotions come and go and rise and fall like the tide.  Perhaps our spiritual condition should move a bit beyond the state of our emotions.  Because the fact of the matter is, there is a monumental difference between happiness and joy.  Again, there is a monumental difference between happiness and joy.

     Yet before we get to dissecting that statement, let’s take a look at the passage we read from the book of Zephaniah.  Zephaniah was one of what we call the Minor Prophets in Old Testament times.  Note that the only difference between a Minor Prophet and a Major Prophet is the length of his book, not the substance of his prophecy.  The book of Zephaniah itself identifies the time of his prophecy as coming in the days of King Josiah, which would have been between the years 639 and 608 B.C.  It was a tenuous time to be a prophet, and it was a tenuous time to be a Hebrew.

     The nation of Israel and its capital city of Samaria had fallen to the Assyrians some one hundred years before.  Now the nation of Judah and its capital city of Jerusalem were under threat as well.  Assyrian power was waning, and Judah found itself a vassal state to Egypt.  Babylon was on the rise, however, and would soon drive the Egyptians back into Egypt and overthrow the nation of Judah entirely. 

     Can you even begin to imagine the overall sentiment of the Hebrew people in times such      as those?  Should a nation like Babylon invade Judah – which it later did, of course – people would lose their homes.  Children would be subject to slavery, women could be subject to something much, much worse, and men would likely be put to death.  Families would be separated, livelihoods would be lost, and assets would be scattered.  I’m not sure we can even begin to imagine what life might be like under those conditions.  It would have been a very difficult time in which to live, to say the least.            

     Zephaniah, however, was most concerned with the spiritual condition of the Hebrew people.  It was a time of idol worship, and many of their priests had become idolatrous as well.  The people had begun to practice temple prostitution and were sacrificing their children to the so-called gods of the land.  Economic and racial injustices were rampant.  People had lost their faith in God and were practicing what Professor A.B. Rhodes calls practical atheism. 

     Zephaniah chastises these practical atheists in verse 12 of chapter 1.  Speaking on behalf of God regarding the coming Day of the Lord, Zephaniah cries, “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently on their holdings, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.’”

     To the chosen people of God, God had become innocuous.  They said in their hearts, “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.”  So you see, to the practical atheist the question was not whether God, in fact, existed.  They believed that God was there, but in their minds, he did not impact life…one way or the other.  That, my friends, is what we call practical atheism.

     Practical atheism is the belief that the Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.  God may be there, but he does not impact life one way or the other.  Practical atheism was rampant in the days of Zephaniah.  The question is, is practical atheism rampant in our world today as well?

     I think of a recent presidential candidate.  He was running as a Democrat, but the man himself was a Roman Catholic.  Let’s just say that the Democratic Party and the Roman Catholic Church have somewhat different views on the subject of abortion.  The candidate was asked about that.  He stated quite clearly that he would not allow his personal faith to influence his public life.  That, my friends, is practical atheism.  When our faith in God has no impact on the way we live our lives, God is rendered innocuous.  I suppose could go on all day about practical atheism, but I think you get the picture.  Practical atheism seems to exist in our world today as well.

     Zephaniah chastised the practical atheists of his day.  He chastised everything that was wrong about his world from a faith perspective.  Speaking of a great Day of the Lord, he told the people that they would in time be judged by God.  You would think that Zephaniah would use scare tactics to get the people to repent and to live more Godly lives, and he did.  But in the passage we read from Zephaniah a few minutes ago, he made a promise on God’s behalf to those who repented of their evil ways – a promise to those who found a way in their hearts to be faithful.  We call it Zephaniah’s song.

     The prophet Zephaniah cries, “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!  The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies.  The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;  you shall fear disaster no more.”  He concludes by saying, “At that time I will bring you home,   at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.”

     What do you suppose the emotional state of the Hebrew people was in Zephaniah’s day?  They were facing conquest by the Babylonians.  They would lose their property, they would   lose their homeland, and they would be dispersed to other lands.  Do you think they were happy?  My guess is that they were not.  But then Zephaniah speaks of God’s final conquest and their ultimate delivery.  That’s where their faith would have brought them joy.    

     Which brings us back to the question of our own spiritual condition.  We talked about how we’re inclined to tie our spiritual condition to the present state of our emotions.  If life is going well and we feel reasonably happy, then we think our spiritual condition is good.  If life is not going well and we don’t feel happy, then we think our spiritual condition is bad.  Our spiritual condition must move beyond the state of our emotions.  Because the fact of the matter is, there  is a monumental difference between happiness and joy. 

     Listen to this.  Many years ago, the only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island.  He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the horizon in search of a ship, but every day he saw nothing but water.  Eventually he managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to shelter him from the elements and to store his few possessions.

     Then one day after scavenging for food, he went back to his hut, only to find it in flames.   The worst had happened.  Everything was lost.  The man was stunned with grief and anger.      He looked to the sky and cried out, “God!  How could you do this to me?  You’ve taken away absolutely everything!”

     Early the next day, however, he was awakened by the sound of a ship that was approaching the island.  It had come to rescue him.  The weary but grateful man asked, “How did you know   I was here?”  The captain of the ship replied, “Why, we saw your smoke signal in the sky.”

     Sometimes our lack of present happiness can lead to our ultimate joy.  A couple of weeks ago I said in a benediction that after all my years of preaching and teaching, I can make two distinct statements about the Bible.  Number one, God is trying to get us to think of someone besides ourselves.  And number two, God wins in the end.  God always wins in the end.  Our personal happiness may be fleeting.  It can rise and fall with the state of our emotions.  Joy is different.  For beneath true joy lies a confidence that God has everything well in hand.  God does have everything well in hand.  I mean, if you think about it, that’s what the Christmas story is really all about.  Amen. 

 

 

                      

 

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.