Sermon for Sunday, September 9, 2007

BEING TRUE TO WHO WE ARE

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: I Samuel 17:32-40

³²David said to Saul, "Let no one's heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine."   ³³Saul said to David, "You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are just a boy, and he has been a warrior from his youth."  ³⁴But David said to Saul, "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and whenever a lion or a bear came, and took a lamb from the flock,  ³⁵I went after it and struck it down, rescuing the lamb from its mouth; and if it turned against me, I would catch it by the jaw, strike it down, and kill it.  ³⁶Your servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God."  ³⁷David said, "The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine." So Saul said to David, "Go, and may the Lord be with you!"  ³⁸Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a bronze helmet on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail.

³⁹David strapped Saul's sword over the armor, and he tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to them. Then David said to Saul, "I cannot walk with these; for I am not used to them." So David removed them.  ⁴⁰Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the wadi, and put them in his shepherd's bag, in the pouch; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine.

Let me begin with some real life stories to set the stage for our three week discussion of being true to our best selves and see if you find yourself in any of these stories.

A woman has been with a small business for several years but sees the business cutting some ethical corners in a way that makes her uncomfortable. She decides that to be true to herself and her principles, she has to leave and find a different place to work where her values and the company’s values are a better match.

A senior in high school is visiting college campuses and makes a decision based on a couple of things: the culture of the school feels right to him and students he has met seem to be concerned about the same goals and values he tries to live by.

A woman in her thirties has had a couple of different successful jobs after college but none of them has felt like a good match in letting her pursue her heart’s desire, so she explores some continuing education courses in a field that she has more passion and interest.

A man is about to retire and the volunteer role he is getting into is very different from what he did professionally, but he tells his friends that his new non paying “job” is something he has always been interested in and will let him make a real and lasting difference.

An eighteen year old senior in high school, freshman in college – both of these could apply – is invited to parties where there will be drugs and an abundance of alcohol available and he says no, that’s not for me. I am not going to do something just because everyone else is doing it.

Maybe some of those stories sound familiar, maybe they will not, but they all have to do with finding and being true to the best in ourselves. Let me remind you of another true story of someone who failed to be true to his best self and, through a very painful experience, took a new direction in life.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Watergate scandal in American history that caused President Nixon to face impeachment hearings and to finally resign over his misuse and abuse of power. Several members of that administration served jail time for breaking the law and Magruder was among them. After his time in prison he went to seminary and became a Presbyterian minister. When he was sentenced for his role he said, “Somewhere between my ambition and my ideals, I lost my moral compass.”

His phrase about losing and rediscovering one’s moral compass has to do with our discussion today about being true to who we are, finding our best self and our true self when so many people are not sure they have a moral compass or do not know what their true principles and core values are. Groucho Marx used to joke about it this way: Those are my principles, if you don’t like them, then I do have others!

Being true to yourself. What do you think of with that image? When we were looking at the major parables of Jesus over the summer, the two most important parables gave us some help. The parable of the Good Samaritan featured a man who stopped on the road and risked his safety because another human being needed the help that he could give. He could not pass on by and do nothing because he would not have been true to himself if he failed to help.

The second most important parable of the father with two sons tells about the younger son who took his share of the wealth and wasted it. When he had nothing left, he found himself slopping the hogs and feeling so famished he would even eat the corn cobs he was giving to the hogs. Jesus says, when he found himself in that dire situation, “he came to himself.” He came to himself.

One fourth grader in Sunday school in retelling the story told it this way: he lost all his money and he had to sell his clothes to get food. First he sold his shoes. Then he sold his coat. Then he sold his shirt. Then he sold his undershirt. Then he came to himself!

Have you had that experience that he had—waking up and saying to yourself—this is not who I am. What I have been doing, where I am right now, is not the real me, the best possible me.

Let me offer another Bible story about being true to oneself, resisting the pressure to be what someone else wants us to be. This story occurs 1000 years before Jesus. David the teenage shepherd boy is bringing food to his older brothers while the Israeli army is encamped across the field from the Philistines. David is the youngest of these brothers but the prophet Samuel has already sought him out and anointed him to be the next king of Israel. It was a surprise to every one that God did not choose one of the other, older more muscular and handsome older sons of Jesse. Samuel looks at all of them and says none of these is the one—is there anyone else?

Yes, there is young David out taking care of the sheep. David is brought to Samuel who recognizes that this is the rightful king, and Samuel says something very important: he says that God chooses young, unlikely David as king instead of all these other sons of Jesse because while we look at the outward appearances, God looks at our hearts. God looks at our true selves, our inner selves that we sometimes lose touch with.

So back to the story of David and David being true to himself. The battle with the Philistines is at a stalemate because one of the philistines, a big fellow named Goliath, has issued a challenge: he will save some blood and some trouble. All these troops don’t have to fight each other. He will fight whomever the Israelites choose to send and the war will be settled that way.

No one has the courage to fight the giant until young David delivers some olives and cheese and fish and pita bread to his brothers and when he sees the standoff, offers to fight the giant. But he has to do it his way—remember this story?

He is brought to King Saul, the original king, first king of Israel, a terribly inadequate king and leader. Saul is pleased to have a volunteer to deal with Goliath and he insists that if David fights the giant, that David has to wear all of Saul’s armor. It is not a fit. Saul is tall and David is not. But more than that, Saul is trying to make David fit into a mold—trying to get David to do things the way Saul thinks they should be done and it is a way that is not right for, not true for David.

You probably remember the rest of the story about how David refuses to fit into someone else’s image of success and is successful when he pursues the way that is right for him. If you don’t know the whole story and want to, we can probably still get you into one of the Disciple Bible study classes that starts this week!

For all of us, there are people like Saul who try to get us to fit into their armor, their uniform, their little box in a way that does not feel true, does not feel right or authentic to us. David refuses to fit into the mold of someone else. He has to be true to himself.

St. Paul toward the end of his letter to the Christians in Rome tells them and us that there will be many efforts from people to get us to conform, to compromise, to give up who we are. We said it in the call to worship. Do not be conformed to the values and behaviors around us. One translation says it this way—do not let the world squeeze you into its mold. Let God form you and transform you into who God is calling you to be.

Who is God calling you to be? Many of us are still listening for that and being formed into God’s persons. The book of Psalms gives us some answers. Sometimes we have heard from religious leaders a very negative message about who we are. I remember one woman who joined our church in Colorado Springs who had grown up in an extremely negative church and what she heard growing up from the finger shaking minister was, “You are so bad. You are so depraved. You are a worthless wretch. God has saved you, but just barely—by the skin of your teeth—and you should never forget what a worthless worm you are.”

How do we discover our true selves, our best selves, when we have heard that!

Contrast that to the words in Psalm 8 about who we are:  God has created you just a little lower than the angels. Or in Isaiah 43—you are precious to God and God loves you and has called you by name and God will be with you and will not let life overwhelm you.

You are a wondrous creation of God and not a worthless worm, and God will help bring forth the best in you when you stay in touch with God and stay connected to God. When we are out of touch and disconnected, we will lose our moral and spiritual compass and we will miss the mark, miss our high calling. Incidentally, in the New Testament, the word in Greek that means sin really means missing the mark, missing the target. It is a term from archery. Falling short of the high calling God has for us when we are true to our best selves or true, in the words of Lincoln, to the better angels of our nature.

The culture around us will always pressure us to compromise on what we believe is important. Do not let the world around you squeeze you into its mold. I have been reading the new book by Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. We will have some copies for you soon. He tells about growing up in a family where church was important, where his parents made sure he had a moral compass, where he learned that just because everyone else was doing it, that didn’t make it right. Those spiritual principles stayed with him through college when he saw other students, even would be athletes, abusing alcohol and drugs and he refused to do that because he chose to be true to his best self.

He carried those principles into his professional career as an NFL player and then assistant coach, and head coach and now Super Bowl winning coach. He has always prayed with his team before and after each game. He said to the players and owners when he began as coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that he not only wanted to coach a winning team but he wanted to form a team whose players would make a positive difference in the community of Tampa Bay. He wanted to form people who were not just self absorbed but who gave of themselves to others!

He says in the quote in your bulletin that football is not life, it’s just football. He wants to win and he coaches players to win, but he is not willing to do anything to win. That is becoming a more common ethic—to do anything to win, win at any cost. It has become too common in sports with all the doping scandals; it has become too common in politics so that anything goes for some political strategists as long as it wins. That will continue until we raise our voices and ask for integrity and principled leaders and strategists.

Dungy knows what St. Paul said—other people will always try to get us to compromise our principles and our integrity and be somebody that we are not called by God to be. Every chapter in his book is preceded with a verse or image from the Bible and he knows his Bible very well because regular church involvement is important to him. By the way, taking time for family was important to him and as his children were growing up, he would take them to school each day and would often try to be available to pick them up because he knew the value of taking time with kids and just being available for some of those in the car conversations that can be very important.

Winning is not the only thing for Tony Dungy. It is important but it is not most important. Most important he says, is our relationship with God and being true to our best selves. One of the verses he lives by is quoted in the book: what does it profit a person if they gain the whole world and in the process, lose their soul. Jesus said that.

How do we rediscover our best selves? How do we reconnect with our soul? I have listed some discussion questions and some personal discovery questions in your bulletin insert to help with that. Some of them came from our staff retreat and planning time that we had two weeks ago. They will help you redefine your core values and spiritual principles and reaffirm who you are in your deepest, truest self.

What is a good day for you? When have you felt joy recently? What are you afraid of? What is a disappointment for you? What do you hope to accomplish by the end of your life or the end of your work life? What would you not be willing to compromise about at work or in your personal life? What is YOUR definition of success? How are you pursuing that?

We will take some more time for this discussion the next two Sundays as we look at what it means to be true to ourselves as followers of Christ—not admirers but followers—and how we stay true to that and not water it down. We will be looking at who we are as a community of followers of Christ.

Let me preview those Sundays with a brief story from a Baptist minister in Texas, Gordon Atkinson. He has a web log called Realivepreacher.com. He is a refreshing voice in his honesty and in his high commitment as a follower of Christ. He tells about being approached by a couple wanting to get married. They had found a church building in Dallas that was no longer used by a congregation but had been remodeled and functioned only as a wedding chapel. He calls it a hollowed out church. The couple had no church relationship and wanted none but they wanted a minister to conduct a ceremony and then “go away and not bother anyone”.

They said to him, “We want a nice wedding and all, you know, a classic wedding. But can you tone down the God and Jesus stuff?”

He writes, “Their modern flippancy made me feel primitive.”

He told them, “I’m sorry I can’t do what you are asking. I can’t take God out of the wedding service. It would be a betrayal of my calling. I am not the minister you are looking for.”

He was telling them he could not be true to himself and true to God and do what they wanted.

Will you think and pray with me this week about what it means for you and me to be true to ourselves, to the best in ourselves, and also to be true to God as individuals and as followers of Jesus Christ? Then we’ll talk together about that next week.

Discussion Questions

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