Sermon for
Sunday,
October 10,
2004
ORDERING OUR LIVES AFTER
THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST
6th
in a Series on “Change is Good; You Go First”
by
Rev. Dr.
Harvey C. Martz
Scripture:
Romans 12:1-2
1 I
appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is
your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this
world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove
what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Laurie Beth Jones has a recent book entitled,
“Teach Your Team to Fish”. We have some copies of it on our bookshelves.
In it she asks us to imagine a newspaper ad written
in the time of Jesus that goes something like this.
Startup company seeking workers who will give up their personal
lives, their families, and possibly their health. Work with us and you
will get spat on, ridiculed, and maybe even killed. At times we will
need you to work without any pay at all, and sleep wherever you can find
a place to lay your head. We have no written policy manuals or
instructions and you will be required to fund your own transportation.
You may be asked to disappear on a moments notice. You will work with
income tax agents, former prostitutes, fishermen fresh off the boat, and
a man identified as an accessory to the murder of one of our first
employees. To apply, contact man with beard prowling the shore of Lake
Galilee.
We have been focusing for a five week period on
change and how we deal with change and what kinds of changes we are
asked to face as we sign on to be followers of the bearded man on the
shore of Lake Galilee. What sorts of changes do you think would be
required for people answering that ad? They are the changes that we are
signing on for when we say, “yes” to Christ and then let Christ form and
shape our lives into his likeness.
And to let him form us will change us, the apostle
Paul says, from conforming to the values and goals of our world and our
culture. Christians will look different from others; they will be living
by a new set of values. Christians will be, in the words of one UM
Bishop, “resident aliens”, people who are engaged in this world but who
bring a kinder, more compassionate, unselfish set of values and ethics
to it. They are new people, a new creation, Paul says elsewhere.
We can see some of these changed lives all around
us in this congregation. People deciding to do something finally about
the stewardship of their bodies and health and making significant
changes that will give them a new lease on life. Scott Bell of our
congregation in the past two years has taken his well being seriously
and responded to an invitation from his brother to take part in a
500-mile bike trip in Wisconsin. Scott’s says when he got that phone
call from his brother he had just gotten back to his office after a
doctor visit where he had been advised to make some changes in his life
to deal with how out of shape he had been. To Scott’s great credit, he
told his brother he would do the bike trip with him in a few months. He
called Goodson Rec Center and signed up for a personal trainer, worked
out twice a week there and would also spend an hour at a time on his
treadmill at home, built up his endurance and lost weight, and went to
Wisconsin where he made most of that 500 mile bike ride because he was
willing to spend the discipline and the time to be a better steward of
his health. This summer he did a weeklong bike trip again and rode the
480 miles – even with some ease he said.
Scott’s story is a really inspiring one and I have
not had time to do it justice. I encourage you to talk with Scott-I had
his permission to tell you all this – if you want to make some changes
in your life for the sake of your health and well being.
We see people making real changes for their
spiritual fitness here also, changing their weekly calendars and
deciding that Bible study and spiritual growth are really important and
taking part in classes and groups: 130 people in Disciple Bible
study this fall, 37 people in the first two visiting scholar classes on
Genesis and on Methodism that began this week. In this unique
congregation, members and non-members and new folks are making changes
and deciding to do some new things and get off their spiritual plateau.
And people are showing their faith in action, volunteering at the food
bank warehouse last Sunday afternoon so that food can be distributed to
Colorado citizens caught in the computer glitch in our state system.
Christians are called to be different and act
different and live differently from the arrogance and selfishness and
materialism and complacency that we see around us. We are called to let
Christ change us and make us into new people and different people.
In one of our new classes where 70 people have
signed up for a Wednesday morning study of Marcus Borg’s book, The Heart
Of Christianity, we are reading this week his chapter on being “born
again”, and Dr Borg says that we mainstream Christians need to recover
this image of “born again”, that we can expect new behaviors, a new way
of life from each other when we say “yes” to Christ as Lord of our life.
Christians are not just conformists to the way that
other people might be doing things. We are, in the words we use when new
people join our community of faith, to order our lives after the example
of Christ.
What does that look like? Let me offer two stories
of compassion and kindness that might give us a clue.
A few years back the great actress Dorothy Maguire
was appearing on Broadway in Tennessee Williams’ play “The Night of the
Iguana”.
Just before curtain time on a Friday
night, the theater was disturbed by the shrill voice of a woman in the
audience shouting, “Start the show! Start the show! I want to see
Dorothy Maguire!” The woman was clearly emotionally disturbed, but
after a moment of shocked silence some in the theater began to turn on
her. “Listen, you old bag, get out!” someone heckled. “Throw her
out! Start the show!” another jeered. The house manager came to try
and reason with the woman, but she pulled away shrieking, “All I want
to see is Dorothy Maguire; then I’ll leave.”
Suddenly, through the part in the
curtains, Miss Maguire herself appeared. She crossed the stage and
walked calmly over to the disturbed woman. She spoke quietly to her
and then hugged her. The woman, who had recoiled whenever anyone else
had touched her, drew close to Miss Maguire, got up from her seat, and
together they walked toward the exit. Before they left the theater,
Miss Maguire paused and turned to the audience. With grace and
kindness, she announced, “I’d like to introduce another fellow human
being.” This was testimony – a bearing witness – to a truth about
this woman that no emotional illness or any abuse from others could
take away. Dorothy Maguire was a reliable public witness to a promise
proclaimed in worship: this was a child of God, a fellow human being.
Page 64
Ordering our lives after the example of Christ.
Here is another example of that. A teacher named Mary Ann Bird tells in
her book about the impact of someone who showed the compassion and love
of Christ to her in a way that turned her life completely around.
Mary Ann Bird was born with multiple birth
defects: she was deaf in one ear, had a cleft palate, a disfigured face,
a crooked nose, lopsided feet. As a child she suffered not only the
physical impairments but also the emotional damage inflicted by other
children, “Oh, Mary Ann,” her classmates would say, “what happened to
your lip?”
I cut it on a piece of glass,” she would
lie.
One of the worst
experiences at school, she reported, was the day of the annual hearing
test. The teacher would call each child to her desk, and the child
would cover first one ear, and then the other. The teacher would
whisper something to the child like, “The sky is blue” or “You have new
shoes.” This was “the whisper test”; if the teacher’s phrase was heard
and repeated the child passed the test. To avoid the humiliation of
failure, Mary Ann would always cheat on the test, secretly cupping her
hand over her one good ear so that she could still hear what the teacher
said.
One year
Mary Ann was in the class of Miss Leonard, one of the most beloved
teachers in the school. Every student, including Mary Ann, wanted to be
noticed by her, wanted to be her pet. Then came the day of the dreaded
hearing test. When her turn came, Mary Ann was called to the teacher’s
desk. As Mary Ann cupped her hand over her good ear, Miss Leonard
leaned forward to whisper, “I waited for those words, “ Mary Ann wrote,
“which God must have put into her mouth, those seven words which changed
my life.” Miss Leonard did not say, “The sky is blue” or “You have new
shoes.” What she whispered was, “I wish you were my little girl.” Mary
Ann went on to become a teacher herself, a person of inner beauty and
great kindness. Page 86
There is an old sermon title about these changes
and behaviors that Christ expects us to be showing once we have said we
“yes” to Christ as Lord of life. The title is, “If You Were To Be
Arrested For Being Christian, Would There Be Enough Evidence To Convict
You?” How would people know we are followers of Christ and of
his teachings and his example? They might see us in church regularly or
irregularly, and being in worship and in study groups is really
important, but as our scripture for next week tells us, it is not just
our words that are important, it is our deeds of service and kindness
and compassion and generosity and justice.
The song we sing occasionally says, “They Will Know
We Are Christians By Our Love”, that is, Christians are to be known by
our consideration of more than just ourselves and our own comfort and
pleasure. They will know us for asking the question of what would Jesus
do and then doing that. One group, several months ago, expanded that
question by asking in a time of international energy crisis, “What Would
Jesus Drive?” Would Jesus be concerned about the environment and about
energy and pollution issues that he might drive a hybrid or would he
drive a Hummer? What do you think the relationship is between the
Bible’s concerns for caring for our earth and what we decide to purchase
the next time we purchase a car? That question did make a difference for
me the last time we looked for a car because I believe we are called by
the book of Genesis to be good caretakers of the environment and not to
be wasteful of natural resources.
And now that this question of what Jesus might
drive has made us a little uncomfortable, let me add to that by asking a
more unsettling question for me of, “How Would Jesus Drive?” Do we
expect of Christians some kindness and courtesy and consideration even
when they are behind the wheel or is it OK to just leave all that church
stuff behind us once we get to the parking lot and start our car so it
becomes every person for themselves and the rules of the road include
never ever letting any other person get in front of us or try to pass
us? How would Jesus drive? What changes would I make if I let the
example of Christ even influence my road manners? Let’s leave that issue
before it really makes us squirm!
Do not conform, Paul says, to the habits and
ethics of the world around us, the ethics of me first and do unto others
before they can do it unto you. Be transformed; be changed, by your
friendship with Christ as Lord of life. So people can know you are a
friend of Christ by your kindness, your compassion, and by your
generosity and unselfishness.
Followers of Jesus Christ will be known for being
different in how we manage and share our stuff and our money. We will be
known for our generosity because generosity is one of the habits of
being Christian. We remind each other of that in our seven habits list
that Preston will show us on the screen.
7 Habits of Highly Effective Christians
Study
with others
Worship
with others
Serving
others
Faith
sharing
Prayer
Generosity
Seeking
God First
Jesus keeps asking people he talks with to become
more generous, to be less selfish and less inward centered and to be
willing to use our resources to make a difference. There are three
standards in the Bible for us to use when we decide how to be generous.
The first one is that our giving to God is be sacrificial, it is
to be at a level that stretches us out of comfort and convenience. That
is why Jesus praises the poor widow who puts two little coins in the
temple treasury even when the more affluent people have put in lots of
money.
He stops what he is doing and points her out and
praises her and says, “This woman has given more than anyone else
because her giving really cost her something. The others gave out of
their leftovers, what they had to spare; her giving was sacrificial.”
The second standard in the Bible for how we give
back to God is that our giving is to be proportional; we will give in
proportion to how we have been blessed. That will vary at different
times in our lives. If we have been able to gather much, then God asks
us to share in proportion to that. How does Jesus talk about this? “To
whom much is given, much will be expected.” There is more responsibility
that goes with more affluence.
The third standard for measuring our generosity is
the notion of the tithe. A tithe means returning 10 % of our resources
to God each year. It is a goal for every Christian.
There was a bumper sticker many years ago that I
really liked. This was a time when some bumper stickers said, “Honk if
you love Jesus.”
The bumper sticker I liked said, “If you love
Jesus, tithe. Any fool can honk!”
Tithing, returning 10 per cent of our money to God,
is something our family has been practicing for 32 years now – giving to
our church 10% of what we earn and then giving additionally beyond that
to other groups that are doing God’s work of compassion and justice.
Judy and I will give away almost $11,000 this year to the operations of
St. Andrew plus an additional amount to fulfill our building fund
pledge. We have just always done that and it is some of the most
satisfying money we spend. Our church believes in asking people to tithe
and to give sacrificially and most of us can still keep growing in this
spiritual habit. Look at the chart that is in your bulletin. Many of us
have been moving up this chart year-by-year, step-by-step. But there is
still much potential for us to keep growing in the spiritual habit of
generosity.
Carole Lhotka and I met with a cross section of our
leaders last month to talk about what kind of potential there is here
for growth in giving. We learned that the average household income in
the zip codes we serve is between $90,000 and $140,000 depending on the
zip code. And we saw that in our congregation, 80 % of our members who
pledge give less that $2000 a year to our programs. This does not
include our building fund monies but it is still not a measure of what
we could be doing. Most of us start as new Christians at the lower half
of this chart and keep moving upward as our faith grows and as we become
more disciplined and committed as followers of Christ. On the last
Sunday of October we will have a new chance to live out our promise that
Christ is Lord in our lives and fill out our commitment cards in worship
and bring them to this altar table as an act of worship.
Some people who hear us talk this openly and
frankly at St Andrew Church will misunderstand and forget that Jesus
talks more about giving and about money than he talks about prayer
because he know that the way we manage our stuff is one true test of
what is really at the center of our lives – is God there or is something
else there?
And some people will hear all this discussion of
being good stewards and generous people and say, Gosh, if I really take
Jesus words seriously, that will mean that we will have to rearrange
some things and change some things in our lives and in our spending
habits, and we will have to do some things pretty different from how we
have been doing them. And Christ would say to that – what do you think
Christ would say?
He would say, yes, that’s right, you are beginning
to understand what it means to follow me and to be changed by me and to
not be conformed to the habits and patterns of this world but to be
changed and transformed by your relationship with me. I think he would
say to us, “Yes, now you are starting to get what all this is about and
how important it is and how life changing it is!”
There’s an old hymn I grew up with that I want to
close with:
“Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart Lord Jesus.
Come in to day. Come in, to stay. Come into my heart Lord Jesus. |
