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Sunday, July 25, 2010
You Look Great!
By Rev. Jerry Herships
Scripture: I Thessalonians 5:11
11Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
God has a sense of humor. No doubt about it. I planned weeks ago to talk about encouragement and optimism. Being positive in your own life and being positive towards other people. Well God said, let’s have a little fun.
Tuesday the garage door broke. Wednesday morning I greeted the day with a sound I had never heard before. It sounded as if all the shirts, pants, sweaters and belts in my closet came crashing to the floor. It turned out it was all my shirts, pants, sweaters and belts crashing to the floor. I broke my closet. Now I don’t believe God broke my garage door or closet but I have to admit, the timing was a little suspect.
Telling people to be encouraging and positive sounds almost New Agey and that is really a shame. We now live in a place where to be positive and encouraging to others is seen as almost quaint. Sometimes it seems even naïve. It also makes you suspect. I love the t-shirt that said, “Smile, people will wonder what you’re up to.”
Turns out, as I look through the Bible I see that encouragement isn’t New Agey at all. It’s biblical. As we saw with spiritual gifts last week, the Bible loves to take important themes and tell them to us again and again in different ways. Ephesians 4, Proverbs 10, Acts 15. Hebrews 10 tell us, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another.” And we see it again and again in Romans and other parts of 1Thessalonians.
So if we see it over and over again, why don’t we do it? For one, I think a lot of us didn’t know it was a reoccurring theme in the Bible. Note to self: read Bible more.
Honestly, I think we have become a society that if you are positive and encouraging you are seen as weak. I certainly saw this in entertainment over and over again. I have seen something like it in ministry. You might be surprised to hear this but here it goes: there are some pretty big egos in the ministry business. I know…you’re shocked. Big egos don’t hand out a lot of compliments. Insecurity doesn’t breed building each other up. A lot of people in our conference want to see you doing well in ministry…but not TOO well. Encouragement is handed out very sparingly.
I brought this to people’s attention while I was going through the ordination process. They said they want to make sure probationary Elders don’t get a big head. I said, “Yea heaven forbid they display any confidence.” They didn’t like that much. Luckily I was ordained anyway.
We are in a world that can beat us down time and time again. Many times people really are out to get their own because that is all they have ever been taught. They see the equation as, “if they win, I lose and I ain’t gonna lose.” That equation is old math.
God does new math. God wants us all to win. God wants everyone to shine. And God knows that God is not always going to be able to get that message through to everybody every time. That is why we are here. We are not just to be God’s hands and feet in the world, but also God’s mouthpiece. We are to help people understand they are wonderful. We are to remind them they are a unique, special gift from God.
I heard a preacher say one time, “In any given moment we can choose to bring more love or less love into the world.” I’m going to do a sermon series on the book, Three Simple Rules. The rules are simple: do no harm, do good, stay in love with God. These are simple, but not easy. We chose if we want to bring more joy or less into the world a million times a day. It can be the smallest thing to us but not to them. Don’t be surprised if, on a regular basis, you start making people’s day.
God modeled this very type of encouragement. We hear it in two of the most famous verses in the Bible. The master in Matthew 25:21, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And in Matthew 3:17, “This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That second one was what my dad toasted to me on our wedding day, just over 18 years ago. As much as we don’t want to admit, we like when people say nice things, it feels wonderful when they do. It’s ok to like it….it’s not ok to NEED it. If God can hand out praise and encouragement…consider it a green light for us as well.
And so many people don’t. It costs us nothing and yet, so often, we stop ourselves before we say anything. I say, let the encouragement fly. It might be the single best thing you do all day. People are starving for encouragement. I think it is as essential as food. Talk to anyone who has achieved anything great and they will tell you they had their cheerleaders along the way, people who believed in them…and told them so.
Paul tells us in Romans, "Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification," (Romans 14:19). This is pretty straight forward…except for that edification part. What is edification? The Greek noun translated edification as oikodome. This is a compound word made up of, oikos, a house, and demo, to build. According to W. E. Vine, Oikodome is "only used figuratively in the New Testament, in the sense of edification, the promotion of spiritual growth."
One of the reasons we gather together is to lift each other up when we get here. We are here to encourage others out in the world but that doesn’t mean we can’t start right here with each other.
So let’s look at 1 Thessalonians. For one thing, it’s the oldest book in the New Testament and as a result, it is the earliest piece of Christian literature that we have. It was written at least 15 years before Mark which is our earliest Gospel. It was dated to about 20 years after Jesus’ death.
Paul set up this church in a large urban area. His M O was to stay in or close to the city so that he would have the greatest opportunity to meet the most people. Sound familiar? We know they were a tight knit group and that they had suffered persecution from the wider community.
We also know that the community was doing well even after Paul left. This letter, unlike many of Paul’s other letters, is not sent to “fix” the problems the community is having. It is more of a fan letter. Paul is telling them “good job and keep up the good work”. In a phrase, it’s a letter of encouragement.
I also want to be clear in saying that I am not talking about being a Pollyanna and ignoring when the lousy stuff happens. The garage door isn’t going to fix itself. It is just making a choice to see it in a better light, to see people in a better light.
One of the guys down in the park broke his ankle awhile back. He already was homeless but now he is homeless AND in a wheelchair. He told me last Tuesday that the doctors told him that his ankle is healed and that he is to use a walker to reacclimate his ankle to walking again. I told him what a pain this must have been for him and he told me, “I’m just glad it healed right and everything is working out. I don’t have health insurance so I have to deal with that and can’t afford a physical therapist to come by and my meds have run out but wow, it could have been so much worse. I thank God every day.”
This is what being an optimist looks like.
Write the note, tell someone you love them (preferably someone you already know), give that compliment. Encourage the folks around you. God did it. Jesus did it. Paul did it. That is some pretty awesome company to be in. I’m thinking it’s time to join the club.
I want to finish with a story about George Carlin. Years ago he was performing in a little club in Phoenix, and a college kid who lived in Tucson, about two hours away, drove all the way to Phoenix to give Carlin some jokes he had written. Carlin was polite (he always wrote his own stuff) but told the kid if you come back tomorrow, he would look over the jokes and they could talk. The kid drove two hours home that night. Then turned right around and drove two hours back the next night. The kid went in the back of the comedy club and there was his material all marked up and Carlin went through each of the 20 or so pages one at a time with the kid. He told him, “You’re very green, but there is something funny on each page.” Then Carlin said very earnestly, “If you’re thinking of pursuing this, I would.” The kid decided right then to try to pursue comedy.
The kid ended up becoming the mentor to a generation of people at the very top of the comedy world today. He became a mentor to the top writers, directors, and performers. One magazine says he is a kind of Yoda to every funny person born since 1960. And all of this because back in 1968 George Carlin told Gary Shandling he should consider pursuing comedy.
We never know what encouragement will do to someone and the ripple effect it will have. Why not encourage someone and then sit back and see what happens.