Complete Joy - 4/19/09 Sermon - Part 3

This morning, I was tempted to share with you a long litany of the lives that have been changed as a result of God’s working through this church, through the church. Make no mistake, that litany was a long one. There are many wonderful stories of testimony, of courageous action in the name of Christ, of the life-giving power of God manifest in our midst. Praising our WIHN efforts, our children’s ministry, our scouting program, our Sunday School. All of those beacons of light, reflections of the divine in our midst. I was trying my best to follow the form of this letter of 1 John:
"Concerning that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen and with our hands we have touched, which we have looked at an now proclaim"
But I think If that was the sermon I would have preached, we would have missed the point. 1 John talks about God’s light, and an awareness of our own sin as being necessary for true fellowship and complete joy.
So, it seems to me that a better, more glorious sermon, a sermon that is true to the spirit of 1 John, would be to discuss our shortcomings. The things that set the alarms off from within. An acknowledgement that we’re not there yet – we’re not even close.

This fellowship – it’s made up of people with rough edges. The people who have been here for awhile know the rough spots we’ve been through. While most folks come here dressed up, all the folks here are up to their eyeballs in sin. Not all of us cheat on our taxes, very few of us (I hope) are murderers or serial killers, the great majority of us really do try to honor our fathers and mothers, but when you shine God’s light into the deep recesses of our hearts, it’s not very pretty. We’re all the same in that regard. Different sins, same sinful nature. We all stand in need of mercy before God. And yet, some here are the recipients of complete joy. Honest fellowship. The ones who experience this peace, this joy, this unity, they get what brother 1 John is telling us – we’re not perfect. We need Jesus. Now get out there and find some other folks who need to hear that or who already live it.

I close with this illustration. I’ve got two kinds of materials here. I want to make something strong. Something that will hold up under pressure. Something that will weather the storms of life. Here’s one material – a plastic Easter Egg. It’s shiny – smooth – put together. Quite nicely. It’s very pretty to look at. But if you want to make something out of it that will last, well, good luck.

Here’s another material – a rough jagged stone. Dirty. Rough edges. Who knows where it’s been. But look at how well it fits together. Imagine 3 or 4 hundred of these stacked together – and you’ve got yourself by the grace of God – something that lasts.

On Christ the solid rock we stand – all other ground is sinking sand. Brothers and sisters, I share with you what I have seen and heard and touched – concerning the word of life – that we may have true fellowship with the one who is before all things and with one another, and that our joy may be complete. Amen.

(Stone Wall picture from North Wales Picture Library, Paul Mattock)http://www.northwalespicturelibrary.co.uk/Landscape%20folder/pages/stone%20wall(toned)%20copy.html

Complete Joy - 4-19-09 Sermon - Part 2

(This sermon is based on 1 John 1:1 - 2:2)

Concerning that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen and with our hands we have touched, which we have looked at an now proclaim
Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance, where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor disturbance. Where there is poverty with joy, there is neither covetousness nor avarice, Where there is inner peace and meditation, there is neither anxiousness nor dissipation . . . Where there is mercy and discernment, there is neither excess nor hardness of heart. (St Francis of Assisi, Francis and Clare, p. 35, as printed in the People’s Companion to the Breviary, p. 431)
I know a man whose life became one of fear and trepidation when he received news from the IRS that his tax records didn’t add up, and he was being audited. It caused fear in the depths of his heart because he really did have something to hide – evidently the numbers looked suspicious because he was not being honest. He was not being honest because he believed he needed the money more than the government did. But, to be honest, he didn’t want to tell the government that. He chose to hide it from them. Truth be told, that kind of cowardly self-confidence was pervasive in his life, and it keeps him bound in some measure of fear.
I know of another man who suspected his elementary school daughter stole something. He came down very hard on her. Thing about it is, I also know because of his boasting that he didn’t report all of his income this year. I find the two positions grossly inconsistent.

1 John 1:8-10
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Contrast that with a movie I watched this week – I finally got around to watching Ben Kingsley’s marvelous portrayal of Mahatma Ghandi. As an Indian native in South Africa during the time of apartheid, there is a scene in which Ghandi speaks out against the pass system. The South African government was requiring that all Indian folks carry a pass and be fingerprinted like criminals. Ghandi organized a small rally to protest the system, and proceeded to burn his pass in public, the police standing by to discourage such insurrection. Perhaps if you’ve seen the movie, you remember the scene, Ghandi loudly proclaiming the reason for his defiant action, then placing his pass in the fire. The police responding with a sharp blow to his arm. When Ghandi reaches with the other arm to burn the pass, he is struck again. He reaches to burn another pass. He is struck again. There is great courage in his actions – fully transparent – not fearing any punishment his captors could inflict. Not lashing out or attempting to retaliate against the authorities, trusting that the ultimate good for which he stands will win out over the violent system of oppression.

1 John 1:5-7
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

What really impressed me about Ghandi in the movie, though, was what happened when the nonviolent movement that he started became violent. I had learned somewhere that Ghandi had used a hunger strike as part of his protest against British rule. What the movie portrayed was that Ghandi decided to fast – to go without food – because his own movement had lost its way – the people that were fighting for his own ends had gotten caught up in sinning. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, he said. The sin was not out there, it was also inside.

Complete Joy - 4-19-09 Sermon -- Part 1

As some of you know, Benson Memorial is the second church that Amy and I have served. Our first church was Rush Chapel United Methodist Church – a beautiful small old country church in Northwest Georgia. Rush Chapel was a country church. We were moving from the big city to the country, and Rush Chapel had a parsonage right across the road. From a suburban neighborhood cul-de-sac to a beautiful, albeit rural country road. Just up the road was a trailer park – in fact many of our neighbors lived in mobile home trailers – single or double-wide models, that had been endowed with some sense of permanence by the addition of a wood deck or skirting around the bottom. This was to be a far different neighborhood, and I dare say it was going to take some getting used to.

As we met with the super-caring people of Rush Chapel about the parsonage and the preparations for our arrival, a few things became evident. First of all, we were the first young family to have lived in the parsonage for about 2 decades. Secondly, we weren’t from around there. The parsonage was in a state of disrepair. We spent the summer cleaning it up. But it needed a few more significant improvements – namely a fenced yard and an alarm system. As parents of two toddlers – Amy and I were concerned that our young wandering ones would wander right down our little hill and out into the country road, where one of the area Dukes of Hazard wannabe’s would be driving too fast. The other improvement was an alarm system. Maybe we’d watched too many movies, but our suburban house had had an alarm system, and we felt like we needed one on that dark country hill even more. Well, we compromised on the fenced yard – and they built a nice deck with a railing around it and a gate – it proved to be a good container for our young wanderers – keeping them from straying down the hill, and providing a barrier against the roaming packs of neighborhood dogs who included our house and yard in their territory. And we got an alarm system, complete with glass break sensors that listened all the time and gave us some peace of mind. And we all lived happily ever after.
Now, you know how kids are. Every once in awhile, they call for you in the middle of the night – for a glass of water, or because of the dreaded nightmare. It was on one particular night that little Grace had a bad dream. Evidently it was the mother of all bad dreams, because she woke up screaming. That woke us up, of course, but evidently not fast enough, because before we could get there, she racheted up the screaming, evidently to a pitch that matched the sound of breaking glass. Because in addition to her screaming came the deafening siren of our alarm system. Which woke up Noah and started him to screaming. The phone rings, of course, because the alarm company has been notified, and I’m sure there was some cursing because of a stubbed toe, and soon the whole event goes down in the annals of the loudest nights ever spent in a parsonage.

The other thing that happened, not too long afterwards, was that Noah as a 4 year old was climbing on the railing – riding it like a horse – harmless, really, and within arms reach of the gardening that Amy and I were doing; but as he went to get down he miscalculated, his legs didn’t catch him, and he landed the wrong way on his arm, breaking it clean across.
Well, that reminiscing was fun for me – but it does have another point. We get so worried about what’s out there, when the real threats come from within. We were worried about wild dogs, but it was gravity that got Noah’s arm. We were worried about robbers in the night – the alarms were triggered by our own actions.