The Message: Engage
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
October 26, 2014
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Jeremiah 14: 7-9
Revelation 2: 1-7
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For
your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
So in the
last four weeks, using our Order of Worship as a way to study what we do as a
church and where we are, we have looked at the Prayer of Preparation, where in
getting ready for the message of the worship service, we looked at the external
issues that we face as a church heading into the future: all the things that go
on around us, all of which we have no control of. Then we looked at the Call to
Worship, where each week we get a reminder, a strong statement about who God
is, and the wonders he has done, taking stock in the fact that it is amazing
that we are here at all, for we have been greatly beating the odds. Between all
the external things and the way this world is, it's just so much standing in
our way, we shouldn't succeed, but we shouldn't have gotten to this point
either. It is wonderful to think about all the miracles that have brought us
here. Then last week we took some time to look inward, at ourselves, where we
fall short, where we doubt, where we seek to control, tightening our grip, as a
part of our Prayer of Confession. It is like Moses taking off of his shoes, we
bear our souls and humbly come to approach God.
So with
the ground of our hearts and minds fertilized, we have been called to worship
God, and we have confessed and reconciled to God, we've passed the peace of
fellowship, it is now time for us to hear the Word of God read and proclaimed,
to wrestle anew, hearing once again what God's Word is speaking to us today.
What an honor it is to get to wrestle with scripture each week and find in it
truth that is timeless, and certainly wholly relevant in our lives today.
Every week
I say the same prayer of Illumination. I never thought that I would use a rote
prayer, the same prayer for something like this, and when I wrote the poem that
is the basis for it years ago, I never planned for it to be used like this, but
every week I say it because there is never anything that is more true to what I
want to say before I read scripture and preach, so let us pray this again. . .
Help us to see despite our eyes (for our eyes are blind to so much)
Help us to think outside of our minds (for our minds hold on to the wrong things)
Help us to be more than our lives (lest we
should ever think that we are or have done enough)
For
your eyes show the way (from you outside of us)
Your
mind knows the truth (from you outside of us)
Your
being is the life. (from you we owe everything)
Amen. (it’s not just be but we humbly coming
forward to be filled anew)
I chose the
New Testament Lesson for this morning from Revelation the letter to the church
in Ephesus. Revelation 2: 1-7
1
“To the angel of the church in
Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand,
who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
2
“‘I know your works, your toil and
your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those
who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false; 3 I
know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have
not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have
abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember then from what you
have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to
you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. 6 Yet
this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To
him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the
paradise of God.’[1]
I hope
that you have taken the time to look at the insert. There you will find a bit
of truth, troubling and real. You see that we have our work cut out for us.
There are so many factors that have brought us to this point. . . and it's not
dire, it's not awful, but it is certainly real. We face real challenges as a church.
Most churches do these days. . . Stuff costs more, we are aging, the building
is aging. . . times are tough, but we already talked about that. We thought as
a Session that it was time that we let everyone know exactly where we are. And
the first of the changes that we want to make is to try to do a better job of
exactly that: making sure everyone knows where we are as a church, and not just
financially, but all parts because as Presbyterians we are all called to be a
part of it. We all must engage. But today is not so much about looking at the
problem, but trying to paint a picture of where we go from here.
I've been
trying to think about how to address our situation and what to say about how we
can work on it. Basically the mathematics of the situation are that, though we
have some money saved away, it is quickly being used, and our giving is slowly
decreasing as well. At the same time the cost of the things that we need to do,
those external things that we can't change, they are all going up. It is the
times we live in. It is difficult for churches. I want you to know what I was preparing and thinking about this week
in preparation, and really for the last 6 months or so, and through all the
times we've talked around and around it in Session meetings again and again,
many times seemingly in circles.
But this
morning, keeping with the theme of the parts of the worship service, this
morning we have gotten to the center piece of our worship service, the Word is
read and proclaimed. I want to talk about what I do when I preach, and that by
way of a sermon itself let you all in on the process. One thing that I promised
myself when I started, was that the moment that I had nothing original, new,
and meaningful to say, to preach every week, I would be done. That I, if I am
going to stand up, have a responsibility to offer something that has never been
said, and the only way that I know how to do that is to bring out my own point
of view. That means I have to wrestle with the text, with the situations of the
world, with the truth myself, and I do, at least week to week. That being said,
there are always things going on in my life that echo my studying, giving me
more to process, to wrestle with, to think and pray about. This week is no
different.
So here I
am giving a Stewardship Sermon to a church whose finances are in trouble,
facing challenges, and I am teaching Oedipus Rex in class. Talk about a
humbling thing because there sure is a pressure in this situation to promise
that it all will work out. . . to stand in front of everyone and lay out a
plan, saying if you do what I say, stick to the plan, and listen to me, it will
all work out, the church will grow, and our coffers will be full. That is
exactly what Oedipus does. He’s faced with a plague ravaging his city of
Thebes. His citizens come to him and beg him to step in a do something. People
want action from a king—they want to know that everything is alright, that the
king is on it. But the theme of the play surrounds what happens when God’s will
and the job of protecting the people is in conflict. What happens, what does a
king do when the city is destined to struggle, and that is just the way it is?
Can a politician, or can I as a preacher ever say that for real. So the
flipside is to promise the world, promise that everything will be alright, just
believe in me. . . Oedipus says, “You
pray. . . . but if you listen now to me, you’ll get your wish. Hear what I have
to say and treat your own disease—then you may hope to find relief from your
distress”. . . .can’t you see the problem? Listen to me, do what I say. . .
just tithe more. . . volunteer more. . . and your reward will be great.
Everything will work out. But there is a great line in the play that says, “The
king who waits for the will of God and humbles himself, in his city no tragic
poet sings.” Oedipus is a tragedy, it doesn’t work out, despite his promises.
The church is similar. There have been many times where preachers and priests
promise to know the will of God and are proven wrong by events. So that is on thing going through my heard.
Also
though this week, I watched the 30 for 30 ESPN documentary about the 1983 N.C.
State championship basketball team and was so inspired by coach Jim Valvano,
that I also watched one of his motivation speeches, called “Cutting the Nets
Down” where he talks about the need for a dream, for seeing it, embodying it,
and believing in it for success to happen. He talks about how he always holds a
practice at the start of every season where they don't play with balls, just
with scissors, and they cut the nets down in practice, because they want to see
themselves as champions, practicing the victory tradition because you have see it
to do it, he said. And he talked about his father, and how when Jim said his
dream was to win the National Championship as a coach, his father promised to
be there. . . He said, “Dad you know it’s hard.” He said, I’ll be there. So
when he made the tournament the first
time with Iona, he called his dad, and his dad, “Son my bags are packed” Jim
said, “but dad its hard” I know son, my bags are packed. In 1983 N.C. State had
to win 10 games in a row to win the National Championship game. They had to win
the ACC tournament because their record wasn’t good enough to get an At Large
bid, and then they had to win each round of the NCAA, but they believed and
somehow the got it done, the cut the nets down. He said,
“How do you go from where you are to where you wanna
be? And I think you have to have an
enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be
willing to work for it.”
Enthusiasm and a dream, believing
in it, having your bags packed. . . now pair that with Oedipus. And you see
that things aren’t ever simple. But what inspiration!
Then on
Friday I was picking up the girls, they were going to practice with me, and
they were watching their cartoons, “The Grasshopper and the Ants.” You know
where the grasshopper talks like Goofy—Coralee says, “hey he sounds like goofy”
and I’m like “Garsh (like Goofy) you know he does” Then I sing his song, “Oh
the world owes me a living. . . deda dada deda dada doo” and he spends his
summer playing while all the ants are working and when winter comes, well, you
could get the idea that God helps those who help themselves. . . but is that
what I want to say. . . sounds too much like Oedipus.
Then we’re
at practice and I don’t know if you’ve ever been around a 1-6 team of high
school football players, but focus is not a part of what they are about. We had
a kid jump off sides three plays in a row, even after telling him the count. It
was amazing. Why do we work, someone said, “It’s a miracle,” and in pops into
my head the “Night Before Christmas” special with the mice and the clock, and
their song, “Even a miracle needs a hand.” The line, “We’ll help our maker, to
make our dreams come true, but he can’t do it alone.” Wow, talk about a
troubling theological statement, but I was faced with it. What a message, let’s
take it upon ourselves, be enthusiastic, everything will work alright. . . .
Wait a minute. . . Oedipus. . . I can hear the tragic poet starting his song. .
. humility.
Then I
remembered the fact that I said last week that the title of this sermon for
this week was going to be “engage.” And that’s it, the real problem of Oedipus
is that he, and many other characters in the play are unable to face the truth.
They either run away from it, or try to change it, but the real answer is to
engage with it. It may not do anything, but it’s life, it’s living. . . it’s
what being human is about. Engaging. I teach boys at Blue Ridge and their
parent’s are at their wits end about what to do to get their boys to be
successful. And they come to me for parent conferences, and they see the faith
that I have in their sons, and they ask me what it is I’m going to do. And I
tell them I am going to do whatever it takes to get them to engage, to be
present. . . I don’t promise they’ll be rocket scientists or get into Harvard,
but I do promise that if they engage they will be them. They will be
themselves. And what else can an engaged parent want? It’s not a promise that
can’t be delivered. It’s a truth that has to be wrestled—a truth that will shape the life being lived around it
according to it. It’s life, it is all we can hope for is to engage.
And that
is how it is for God’s will. His will, will be done. We know that. And I can’t
tell you what exactly the future will entail for this church. I can’t promise
you that it will all work out, all I can do is ask you to engage, as I ask
myself to engage. I can’t tell you the future, but I do know something about my
own past, and my own present, and I believe that there is no place else that I
am supposed to be at this very moment than here, and engaged. And there is
faith in that, there is enthusiasm that can come from that. And it is to that I
place my hope. I’ll engage today and pray that I can engage tomorrow, the rest
whatever may come is in God’s plan, and I’ll engage with that when it comes. Jesus
said "Seek ye first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you." Seeking
is another word for engaging, seeking God's will and honestly becoming a part of
it. What a calling!
Now I
chose the letter to the church in Ephesus
for a reason this morning because it gives us a warning. Look at it
again. . .
I
know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear
evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and
found them to be false; 3 I know you are enduring patiently and
bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. 4 But
I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
As we engage, as we go through tough times, what we call
adversity, it will be really easy to point fingers. It will be really easy to
think, well I do this, why can't they do this, or am I the only one who ever
does this, or I need to do this all myself. . . and what is missing there is
love. Right now we don't have a problem with this. We are a loving
congregation, a caring congregation, but as we go through the rough road ahead
it will be easy to fall in that trap. Let us all work with our eyes and hearts
open to not only engage with the truth, but be committed to staying engaged
with each other as well.
There is one thing that I have
learned this year with football, and like everything else, it all fits in
together, but it is that there is no better motivating and enthusiasm creating
stuff than success. Like I said before yesterday we were 1-6, and had lost our
last five games. The team has been filled with finger pointing and blaming.
When times get hard it's easy to point fingers, but yesterday we won 54-18. So
many kids had break out great games, and it was incredible. This kid who hasn't
played much all of a sudden ran for 200 yards and 4 touchdowns. He was the
player of the game, the kids carried him off the field. It was awesome. All the
pointed fingers disappeared and they were together. Success is awesome, so I want
to make sure that we remember that we have had some really amazing successes
this year, and they are connected to a really great strength of us. We are
great at big events. We come together; we work together, and the result is
wonderful. Do you remember Joan's funeral, and the energy and the people, how
magical it was? Do you remember Vacation Bible School? We should be proud of
those. We have great momentum. We should have great enthusiasm for what we can
do here. We have three big events coming up, and they can really be the kind of
momentum building stuff that is awesome. Trunk or Treat, Apples and Art, the
Civil War Christmas Service. All three of these are in our wheelhouse for what
we do well, and our enthusiasm for them can really become infectious to the
people we get to meet and know. It's all there for us. I'm not going to promise
that it will all work out, but I can promise that we as a group of people have
been called to this moment in time. . . let us engage with the truth we face
and seek the kingdom of God. The rest is up to God.
Jim Valvano gave another speech,
that is probably more famous. In 1993 his body riddled with cancer, he gave his
"Never Give Up Speech." Usually you see him giving the speech, with
such strength and passion, but I saw a larger piece this week. I saw Dick
Vitale helping him get up the stairs, when he could barely walk. I saw him saying
that before he got up there he had been vomiting in the bathroom, but on stage he
had such strength. What an amazing story. There is fight in us beyond what we can
believe. Engaging with life, can there be any higher call. I'm truly blessed to
fight with each and every one of you. Let's go together, engaging with our future.
Thy will be done. . .. amen.
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