And it will be hard
Third Sunday after Pentecost - June 1, 2008
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Please note: The following sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |
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God has a plan, and it is going to be hard, hard to hear, hard to do, hard to be. It will be so much easier to go our own way, to make up our own plan. But that always leads to disaster.
The mortgage mess in the country going on right now is a sample of the typical way it works. It can be a simple, old-fashioned case of the sin of greed. The seller's agent may encourage it. A person wants a larger, finer house than the income permits. Our eyes are always bigger than our checkbooks. The lender can make more money selling a larger house, and does. The mortgage broker passes on the risk to the big conglomerates, who in turn pass on the risk to international investors. There just might be a touch of greed at any step of the way; everyone is at fault, or no one is at fault, but either way, it is a mess.
If this particular scenario hasn't caught up a person in the nave today, something similar in another area of life will do so. It is easy to read Paul's admonitions about laying aside the works of darkness and taking up the works of light, but it is so hard to actually put into practice. We would much rather have a quick and easy success.
There is even a TV personality to help us along that path, who says things such as “If you become a Christian, your life will go much better” “God really wants you to succeed, as this culture defines success.” “Choose to be happy.” and so on. It is called the “Prosperity gospel.” Some of it is just nice advice, some is encouragement for someone down in the dumps, but when it is applied to our standing before the Lord God Almighty, it is seriously lacking. There seems to be little in the “Prosperity gospel” that would make it specifically Christian!
Compare it with our Gospel reading for today. Jesus does not tell his followers “Be nice, think nice thoughts, and all will go well with you.” Believing in Jesus will lead to action, he says, and that action will be arduous. It is the vast difference between a sand castle and a stone house; they're not even in the same league.
I watched last fall on the island of Menorca as workers literally quarried out blocks of limestone with a giant chainsaw on dozer tracks from what will eventually be the basement of a new building. And then in another spot, workers were starting to build up from such a basement, pouring solid concrete columns, floors, and walls with steel reinforcing as they went. It is a very slow, laborious process, that makes our 4-year bridge project here in Williamsport look like a speed race, but the result in Menorca will be a building that will last for generations. Less than a hundred yards away, children were making sandcastles on the beach that will wash out in high tide.
So this Christian life is slowly built, and it is hard work. We get it. But then what about those times when we suddenly realize that our hard work is not going to ultimately secure our lives. We're still dying, very one of us, and all of the positive, upbeat thinking in the world cannot change that.
The life that is like the house built on stone, a solid life, is very different from that which we would expect from the world's standards. What makes our house and life solid is not how many stones we have collected, but how we have used whatever resources have been given to us. We often say that this church building is a gift to us from God by way of the last generation. So what shall we do with it? It is the finest of places for worship, for concerts, for youth and adult study and learning, for quilt-making and kit assembly... and we hope in the not too distant future as a temporary respite for a few members of homeless families. In other words, it is our headquarters for mission that stretches around the world. It would be a betrayal of the trust the last generation has passed to us if we treated it merely as some kind of shrine to be piously visited now and again but generally ignored. That would make it a house of sand.
Each of us should think of our own life on the same model. For each of us, life begins as God's gift through the hard work and provision of our parents and family. How then shall we use it? The best answer is... --as an instrument of God's mission, --as a living out of the Gospel of Jesus, --as a living and breathing signpost that points to the kingdom of God.
I'm thinking of one of our members, now in a nursing home bed. How is this person a signpost of the kingdom? This person's very helplessness is a sign of our complete dependence on God at all times. I'm thinking of one of our members who in retirement years continues in great and wide-ranging activity. By the exercise of persistence, this member is a signpost of God's persistent love for us, in spite of us.
I'm thinking of one of our members who in intellectual inquisitiveness is a living signpost of the joyous wonder of life and all of creation in which God has placed us.
I'm thinking of one of our members who in generosity of self and time is a signpost pointing to that self-giving love of our Lord Jesus, who by what e says and does proclaims God's kingdom.
I've purposely made these descriptions vague enough so that each of us can fill in the blanks with names of persons we know, and then begin to ask how our lives can take on those same patterns.
I didn't say anything about it being easy or comfortable. Folks would much prefer a “prosperity gospel” that promises an easy time of it, right now, if you work hard and lift yourself up.
One person explained the tremendous popularity of the “prosperity gospel” in this way: “For most people to whom we preach, getting saved, being redeemed, having Jesus come in and take over their lives would make their lives much more difficult. That's why you don't hear much talk these days in churches like ours about the need for Jesus to save us. We think that we've saved ourselves by ourselves and, well, the way Jesus saves people, all of that loving and giving and dying and rising, ...better not say too much about that hard stuff.”
Heart and mind and body and actions...all shaped by Jesus and all pointing to his Lordship. That is the infinitely satisfying and yet difficult life to which we are called. There will be failures. Our string of successes is quite short, at least as the world measures it. After all, we are following a Lord Jesus who was judged to be a petty criminal, an embarrassment, a failure, and was executed at an early age to get him out of the way. That was not the end of his story, nor is it ours, either. God has a way of using even disasters and defeats for his purposes.
A man who is a prominent medical doctor and author was on a retreat and got to talking late one night with the retreat director, a nun of at least 87 years. “I'm failing in my marriage,” he confessed. “Oh, that's wonderful,” she replied. “Perhaps you didn't hear me. I said that I'm failing miserably in my marriage,” he said. “I heard you perfectly well, young man,” replied the nun, “and I am glad for you. Do you know how terribly insufferable you would be if you were never failing?”
The doctor was quite startled at what she said, but pondered it deeply. He later wrote about the incident: “It occurred to me that it was perhaps no accident that both Sister Lucia and I were attempting to follow a Lord of failures according to the world, who nonetheless turned this around quite differently. And about the same time, my marriage also began to improve as I gave up measuring success in marriage in just my way and began to ask in prayer what God might want to be accomplishing in my life and marriage.”
A church building, a congregation, a house, a marriage, an individual life....are each of them built on a solid foundation? As we live and wrestle with answers to that question day after day, we do so while hanging onto what our Lord promises:
When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie, My grace, all sufficient, shall be your supply. The flames shall not hurt you; I only design Your dross to consume and your gold to refine. (LBW#507.3) God has something in mind, and it will be hard, but ultimately shown to be worthwhile. Amen.
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