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"Learning To Use God’s Greatest Gift" Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler
– December 9, 2012 Centenary United
Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6 This morning we
lighted the Second Advent Candle of Love.
The experience of love appears to be the easiest to discuss
because all of us have participated in giving and receiving it. Love is
in our music, our poetry and our feelings about doing something
worthwhile. People tell us,
“I love working in my garden.”
“I love making quilts.”
“I love being a nurse.”
We love the thoughts and feelings that fill us with happiness.
The writer of our
Gospel lesson this morning quoted Isaiah when the prophet was writing
about how to prepare for God’s coming.
Isaiah’s idea of love was more demanding.
Someone is shouting
in the desert: ‘Get the
road ready for the Lord; make a straight path for him to travel!
Every valley must be filled up, every hill and mountain leveled
off. The winding roads must be
made straight and the rough paths made smooth.
The whole human race will see God’s salvation.’
(Luke 3:4-6) We need to look at his
written thoughts as saying something quite different from what the words
appear to communicate; otherwise they make no sense. We would not have
to geologically modify the earth to get ourselves ready for the arrival
of God. Most certainly, the
author is talking about preparing ourselves to be open to experiencing
God’s presence. Isaiah
knew that people were created with
a gift of being able to
change the direction of their lives.
He was suggesting how radical
many of those changes needed to be. Who among us, for
example, is prepared to sense God’s love when we are in the painful
valleys of despair?
Who among us is capable of being grateful when we are
surrounded by the twisted and crooked roads of our neediness when others
fail to make us happy? Who
among us can sense God’s presence when the sharp, jagged edges of our
attitudes have caused us to remain bitter after being hurt? Seen in this light,
we can better understand what Isaiah was saying.
Isaiah knew that in order to be ready to sense God’s presence,
people needed to purify their thoughts and emotions.
If people are not aware that they have this ability, it is quite
possible that their self-absorption will blind them for the rest of
their lives. They may feel victimized by anything and everyone. Last week when we
lighted the Candle of Hope, Isaiah provided us with these words: It is as though you have hidden yourself from us and have abandoned us. Our love of the things of this world has given us spiritual blindness. We can no longer sense your presence. Help us to become aware that you are the potter and we are the clay . (Isaiah 64:1f) Years ago, I had a
very perceptive and articulate 16-year old girl come to my office to
talk. This is how she began
our conversation: Dick, I hate my
parents. They don’t let me
do anything. They monitor
everything I do. They read
my mail, snoop in my stuff and tell me what to wear. I am sick of it!
They seldom let me have the car.
I get nothing from them but lectures, chores and restrictions.
They also try to pick my friends.
Can you imagine this?
Do you know what?
They don’t know a thing about me.
They don’t try to understand me.
They want to put me in a
box so I am protected from
the horrors of the world. There
are times I wish they were dead. I am serious!
Finally, I would be free from
being a prisoner in my own home. Such words
represented only the tip of the iceberg of her resentment.
Obviously, substantive communication between Karen and her
parents had broken down just a tad.
With a hand on her hip she asked, “Okay, oh
wise one, what should I do?” I invited her to
sit down and then I said, “So, you are admitting how fragile you are?
She said, “Fragile? What do
you mean? I’m not fragile! ”
I said, “Yes you are.
You cannot accept boundaries?
You have a problem with authority?
You cannot recognize love when it is coming to you in a form that
requires something from you.”
She said, “Love?!! You
call what my parents are doing -- love?” I held up my hand because it
was my turn to talk. I reminded her that
she was the only captain of her ship that she was ever going to have.
Part of the skill of any ship’s captain is being able to relax and enjoy
the summer breezes while the ship cruises in water that is as smooth as
glass. The other skill is having full command of the ship when a
perfect storm threatens to
sink it. She was bright and
my words found their mark!
She did not like hearing what I said but she admitted that she could not
be happy when she felt no one loved her.
She felt alone, misunderstood and abandoned.
I told her that such times would come again when she was an
adult. Also, I told her
that life cuddles no one and that right now she had the opportunity to
master numerous skills she had not developed. Seen in this light,
Isaiah’s words make sense.
She first had to reframe completely the perception she had of her
parents. She needed to begin filling in her valleys with healing
thoughts. She needed to level
off her mountainous emotions
that were creating frustration and anger.
She needed to smooth away the jagged edges of her attitudes.
Only she could do that. Her understanding
of what love should be was actually preventing her from
experiencing it. It is easy to
enjoy being loved. We
become unhappy when love comes in a form that forces us to go where we
do not want to go, to face issues from which we would like to run and to
have our values and character qualities thoroughly tested. A wonderful gift
that God gives to people when they are born is a spirit that has the
potential and the ability to interpret life in such a way that every
experience causes them to evolve into God’s likeness.
When we do not recognize
that we have this gift, this
inner gyroscope that keeps us balanced, we develop responses just
like Karen’s. We have all
encountered adults that are stuck where Karen was stuck. The interpretation we give to our experiences is what damages us, not the event. Our judgments are what blind us. Struggles are nothing more than opportunities to exercise this gift from God. When we miss this invitation to evolve, we walk around blind, lost and angry. There is
great magic
that takes place in our living the minute we discover that we have this
gift that Isaiah described.
This
gift allows us to understand life radically different from those who
cannot recognize what is happening to them.
Those who find this gift experience their coping skills growing
by leaps and bounds. Other
people only respond to challenges with feelings that will plunge them
into valleys that Isaiah
described. We tend to think of
Mary and Joseph’s experience in such ideal terms.
Pay attention to the words in the Christmas Carols we will be
singing during Advent. “The
cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he
makes.” “What child is this
who laid to rest on Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are
keeping?” Think about the
Christmas Story! Mary was
unmarried and pregnant. Do
we think the trip to What was the ingredient that kept Mary and Joseph focused on God’s presence rather than feeling alone and abandoned by an unsympathetic world? The answer is that they knew that God had a purpose for their lives. That acute awareness helped them to see the unfolding of events quite differently from what appeared abundantly clear from their circumstances. Their gift enabled
them to know God was there during their journey. They experienced that
journey from a vastly different vantage point.
When we use this same gift, it allows us to transform
life-reversals into rungs in a ladder that carry us to our next
destination. Losses are
looked upon as stones that we can stand on as we cross a stream.
Abandonment weans us from dependency, an act that allows our
self-reliance and confidence to bloom.
The discovery of this
mysterious gift
even helps us to understand emotional pain as a source of guidance.
Emotional pain can be viewed as a warning that we are not
interpreting an event in our lives as wholesomely as we could.
Pain is an invitation to let go of something we want to embrace
in order for a new attitude to develop that moves us forward and perhaps
in another direction. One of
Aesop’s Fables illustrates
this point.
The wisdom of this fable invites
readers never to judge anything until they see where it leads them.
One day a farmer’s
horse went through a break in his fence and ran away.
The neighbors surrounded him with comfort because that horse was
his transportation and his partner in pulling the plow on his farm.
The farmer said, “I don’t know if his leaving is good or bad.”
Two days later the horse
returned with three others horses.
Again, the town’s people surrounded him with joy, “What good
fortune you have! You have
been richly blessed!”
Again, the farmer replied, “I don’t know if having four horses is good
or bad.” The farmer’s son was trying to tame one of the new horses when
he was thrown to the ground where he suffered a broken leg. Once again
his neighbors came to express their sympathies and his reply was the
same. Their country went to
war and the army came to the village and made all the young men leave
their farms and join them, but they left the farmer’s son because of his
broken leg.
The story could have gone on and on.
Our fortunes can change in the blink of an eye.
When we understand that God has
given us the ability to recognize that our circumstances are never what
they seem and that they have the potential to carry us to a place where
we can bloom, our spirits become
willing servants of God.
What an enormous power we have when we can greet life’s changes
with peace and understanding. Jesus described
this power to his listeners one day when he declared that they would
have the ability to tell a mountain to be cast into the sea and it would
be done. (Matthew 21:21)
Again, Jesus and Isaiah were not talking about altering the geological
landscape. They were
talking about how God has equipped each of us with the ability to adjust
lovingly and creatively to anything confronting us.
When the Apostle Paul finally understood this gift, he wrote, “This remarkable gift within us produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control.” (Galatians 5:22) Today the Candle of Love was lighted in celebration of this gift. Love allows us to interpret everything differently from the responses other people use when they are upset. This is what angels do. This gift allows us to become a guide for others. (Matthew 28:19) |