"Being Ready For Whatever Comes"

Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – August 11, 2013

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 67; Luke 12:32-40

 

    For centuries, the faithful have been warned of the coming of the Son of Man on a day that people least expect it.  Part of our Gospel lesson this morning reminds us of this theme.  For over two thousand years, pastors have asked their people: “Are you ready for this event?”  This morning we are going to explore this question that can be quite disturbing for a number of people.

    Sometimes Christians greet this topic with confusion as if there is something they need to do in order to receive God’s understanding and love.  I once read a bumper sticker that said, “Jesus is coming soon and boy is he mad!”  Warnings like this come from a theology that instructs people that they had better get their act together or they may not survive what will come like a thief in the night.

    Just living on this planet gives us plenty of things to fret about and we do not need to worry that God is so fed-up with our ignorance that one day Jesus will come for us when we least expect it. For years, I have told people that God would be insane to allow something as important as the reality of our eternal destiny to remain in our hands.  

    Some of us may get lost trying to find our way to the home of Charlie and Renee this Saturday for the church barbecue.  Think of how challenging it would be to become enlightened about all the secrets of the universe in just one lifetime. Think about how three quarters of the world’s population are expending lots of energy just trying to survive day to day. They do not have time or the inclination to ask questions about the meaning of their lives. 

    Obviously, I am not a pastor that subscribes to the lost and found theology that many clerics use as a cautionary tool to enhance greater faithfulness among their people.  I subscribe to the understanding that God loves us and as each of us transitions from our physical forms, we will realize that there are plenty more experiences yet to come and a lot more lessons still in store for us to learn.  

          In other words, the grace of God is far more compelling and in keeping with Jesus’ message than the number of teachings that appeal to our fears.  There have been countless Christians who have said to me, “Dick, what about this scripture or that scripture?  These passages make it quite clear that Jesus said that we have to be ready.”   My answer has been the same, “What would prevent Jesus, who loved sinners during his ministry, from continuing to do so with all of us later on?”  No answers to that question have ever come.

    We need to think about those particular texts in the light of what we experience every day. For example, is a bride or groom ready for the challenges that life is going to bring to them? Are a thirteen-year old and a nine-year old ready to cope with the news that their parents were just killed in a car accident five blocks from their home?  Are young teenage entertainers ready to deal with the psychological impact of earning 27-million dollars a year? 

    Most of us realize that we are students of life.  What we have learned has come from our experiences of on-the-job-training.  We have learned to cope with the changes of life from the friendships of others, from our many mistakes and from experiencing the confidence that comes from a number of our successes. 

    In spite of how unprepared we are for many of life’s new experiences, we have also learned that God has equipped us with flexibility, resiliency and the ability to adjust to any environment or circumstance.  God who loves us here on earth, even with our limited awareness, will not suddenly lose our file once we shed our solid forms.

    We enter this life like a rough diamond.  As our unique diamond is cut by the sharp edges of life’s numerous uncertainties, new facets appear.  Facets are what give diamonds their brilliant sparkle, not the purity of the mineral.  As we polish our own stones, we develop confidence that allows us to face almost any dragon that comes our way.  Once we learn that there is a powerful angel living under our skin, we are more than ready to greet whatever comes in our direction.

    What is interesting is that while the Gospels admonish believers to be ready, the writers never define what that means.  Do we really know what being ready means or what it looks like?   This morning we are going to look at some characteristics of being ready.

    Let us begin by looking at how we enter this world.  Most of us have watched toddlers at play. They are curious about everything.  They are not aware that boundaries exist.  They can sit on the floor with bright and colorful toys as they amaze us with their imaginations.  What they pick up, they have to taste.  Sometimes they engage in uncontrollable laughter.  They never hesitate to take risks. They have entered our world from the other side of the curtain with all these built-in abilities at their command. 

    Shortly after lunch one day, Lois and I could not find our son, Steven, anywhere in the house.  We looked for him behind sofas, under the dining room table, in a closet that had its door ajar.  When we did find him we were amazed at what he had accomplished.  We had no idea that he had the ability to reason to the extent that he did.

    He had climbed the stairs to the second floor, an activity he was just learning to do. He had crawled into his bedroom, pushed a small toy chest next to his bed, crawled up on it and got into his crib to take a nap.  It was as if he had thought, “I’m not waiting around for Mom and Dad to put me in my bed.  It’s my nap time, I am very tired and I will get there myself.”

    We come into our world with curiosity, imagination, risk taking abilities, wanting to reach our goals, knowing how to be creative and during this process we know how to fill our days with lots of laughter.  When we combine these qualities and learn how to put them to work to make the world a better place to live, we are ready.

    A childhood friend of mine will not retire from his job until his group discovers a cure for Cystic Fibrosis.  He is not motivated by wealth or fame; he is after a cure for a disease that afflicts an untold number of children. 

    All over the world there are people working very hard to find the answers to some of life’s riddles.  They are unselfish, wholesome and fun to be around. A number of them will not stop until they find ways of getting cancer growths to give up their secrets of what causes them to go rogue and become destructive.   

    It is only when other people teach us different attitudes and behaviors that we lose our way in life.  We find it safer to follow the paths that others have walked.  We conform to the values of our community.  We believe what our pastors tell us.  We often stop thinking, searching, asking and pushing against boundaries for ourselves.  We often surrender our uniqueness because, as teenagers, we wanted more than anything else to be popular enough to fit in and be accepted by our friends. 

    By the time people enter life as a wage-earner, countless numbers of them have lost the memories they brought into our world.   When people come into contact with Jesus, they learn that he taught his listeners to remember themselves as they were when they were born.  Jesus said, “It is like being born again.”  He was telling Nicodemus that he had to unlearn what the material world had instilled in him.  Seeing life’s processes in this light, we may understand why Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) 

    Remember, infants entered our world untainted, filled with curiosity, imagination and ignorance of boundaries.  The real creators of any society have always been willing to violate the known and accepted boundaries.   Jesus was violating boundaries constantly by setting aside the Laws of his ancestors throughout his ministry. (Matthew 5:38f)  He knew that when love propels a person forward, boundaries shatter.  (Mark 2:16f)

    Think about the shattered boundaries that were once thought to be unshakable in recent memory:   “If God would have meant for people to fly, God would have given us wings.”  “Travel to the Moon!  Are you kidding me?” “A Dick Tracy wristwatch that is also a telephone -- Impossible!” “Sending a movie through the air so we can watch it in our homes – Impossible!”  “Replacing body parts with mechanical devices – Impossible!”  “Taking photographs on Mars?  Pure fantasy!”  We are very tired of hearing the comment, “People need to think outside the box.”  Jesus was saying the same thing while doing it.   

    The consciousness of humankind is evolving.  Our Creator designed us to be ready for whatever comes.  We may be surprised, shocked, dismayed, disappointed or ecstatic with what comes, but we will get through it and adjust.

    We are spirit-beings that came here to learn from our responses when we experience limitations like fear, rejection, resentment, loss and abandonment. There are people that experience tremendous stress and anxiety because of their vast responsibilities, personal power, fame and obscene wealth.    

    Just because we do not perform well in dealing with life’s numerous responsibilities, that does not mean that we are damaged goods and will not be ready to be in the presence of God when the last grains of sand travel through our hourglass.  We may not realize it now, but we have always been in the presence of God since we were born. 

    Heaven is not a place; it is an awareness of what has been present throughout our lives. People of faith have realized that they have kept all the attributes of children that we have mentioned.  They are also aware that they are living in the same environment as the people that have remained confused.  The only difference between the two is the results each receives from their orientation toward life.

    The confused remain in a wasteland where they have not yet learned a purpose for their lives, they have not learned to access and use the tools with which they were born and they have missed the benefits of being a follower of Jesus Christ.   

    We are ready for whatever comes when we find ourselves reaching for the stars for as long as we can.  Our desire is to create a world that is becoming a more wholesome and loving place for men and women to live.  Our purpose is to live creatively the love that we know so that others might find life more satisfying by doing the same.