"When A Mirror Reveals No Reflection"

Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – January 27, 2013

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 19:7-14; Luke 4:14-22

 

    Have we ever wondered how often we have listened to countless sermons and have found it difficult to pay attention during the entire message?  The answer is, “All the time!” What keeps our attention during a sermon are engaging stories about someone’s faith or about someone’s fabulous accomplishments after surviving a horrible background.  We enjoy hearing about someone’s divine encounters that feature God’s intervention, the appearance of an angel or some mysterious set of circumstances that was much more than mere coincidence.  There is a common theme here – the illustrations are almost always about other people.

    What happens to us, however, when there are no stories that grab us?  What happens when absolutely nothing being said appears to apply to our circumstances?  Often we simply tune out or begin thinking about distracting life-issues that are coming up for us.

    Our scripture lesson today provides us with such a sermon and Jesus was the preacher.  According to Luke, Jesus regularly attended worship at the synagogue in Nazareth.  On this particular Sabbath, he was invited to read the morning Scripture lesson and was handed the scroll of Isaiah.

    Jesus read the following words from Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovery of sight to those that are blind, to set free the oppressed and to announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people.

    After Jesus finished the reading, he handed the scroll back to the attendant and said, “This passage from Isaiah has come true today, as you heard it being read.”  No doubt he said far more than what Luke recorded because many of the people that heard him commented on how eloquent he was. They asked each other, “Isn’t he the son of Joseph?”

    Whatever else Jesus said, it probably sounded like a typical sermon that covered events that happened in their past.   When we think about the passage read for us this morning, we could easily identify with those in the synagogue.  What do we remember about it?

    Jesus’ congregation knew that when he read, “The spirit of God is upon me” that he was referring to Isaiah. They were merely being reminded that God had called Isaiah to do some specific things among the people centuries ago. They also knew that they were not like those to whom Isaiah was sent.  They were not poor, captives, prisoners, blind or oppressed. 

    The unfortunate aspect about preaching sermons is that the majority of us are not aware that the preacher is talking about us. The preacher is trying to hold a mirror in front of us but often we do not see ourselves.  We are unable to personalize many of his or her comments because the preacher is always illustrating from the lives of someone else.

    Think about it.  How often have we felt, “I am honest as they come!  I am generous and forgiving.  Oh, I have my faults, but who doesn’t?  Preachers have a rough time with sermon preparation because they are always preaching to the choir.”  People have said to me, “Could I have a copy of your sermon? It was very helpful. I want to see if it will fix my sister.  I’m sending it to her.”  That sermon went right over that man’s head, after all, he did not see himself.  

    Most of Jesus’ audiences heard his teachings the same way we do.  He attracted large crowds because people were curious and they wanted to see demons being cast out.  They did not realize that Jesus was holding a mirror in front of them.  The problem was that they could not see their reflections.

    Knowing what Jesus later taught, we realize that Jesus was not talking about people that were poor, captives, prisoners, blind or oppressed. When we read the beatitudes, we learn that Jesus praised those who had realized that they were poor in spirit.  He thought people were blessed when they were humble enough to understand that they had missed the mark with their attitudes and lives.  He knew that only those that had suffered losses could experience being comforted.  We have to see ourselves as we really are before we can grow to our full potential.

    Fans of Karen Carpenter really miss her marvelous voice. She had a one-of-a-kind voice that does not come along that often.  However, Karen also evokes pain every time her fans hear one of her songs on the radio.  She died needlessly.   Everyone held mirrors in front of her and she could not see the reflection of who she was.

    For years Karen suffered from Anorexia, an eating disorder that can become so all-consuming that eventually afflicted people begin to digest their own nervous systems.  Karen would not listen to her brother Richard.  She refused to listen to a host of medical professionals who did everything in their power to save her life.  All of them failed because Karen could not see the angel that lived inside of her. She died clutching an image of herself that she could not accept.

    What would cause us to listen to every word of a sermon? Think about this.  What would it take?  That sermon would have to be addressing a subject that was so compelling that we could not escape identifying with the words being spoken. 

    For example, suppose all of you knew that you had terminal cancer and had only weeks or possibly a month to live? You were invited to come to King Edward Memorial Hospital to listen to the foremost authority on a new, non-evasive treatment, a treatment that would result in the immediate and permanent remission for all forms of cancer.   

    You would hang on every word that person said.  You would want to know how soon you could begin the treatment.  You would listen intently because you knew that this new cancer treatment would put an end to the painful episodes of radiation, chemotherapy and the numerous trips associated with such medical protocols.  You would be feeling like those that were listening to John the Baptist as his voice thundered along the bank of the Jordan River. His listeners could hardly wait to get in the river to be baptized.  

    How many of us are being held captive by attitudes that someone taught us when we were children? We are not born with attitudes; we learn them from what others have modeled. How many of us are being held prisoner of responses that we look upon as entitlements.  If we have been insulted, slighted, violated or hurt by others, we often feel perfectly justified to feel the way we do.  We cannot see the image of ourselves in the mirror showing what such attitudes and responses have been doing to us.

    There is a pleasant little village in a rural area of southwest Virginia that has all the symbols of the average small American town.  A Methodist church with its steeple is right off the town square. For the most part, everyone is self-sufficient and takes care of his or her own needs.  Yet, they also are responsive to each other when there is sickness or a death in one of the families.

    At the edge of the town, however, there lived a man that had a reputation for being the meanest person most people had ever met. People stayed away from him.  Few people spoke to him because he was angry at the world.

    When the news began to circulate in the town that the old man had an accident in his barn, few people paid attention.   His leg was in a partial cast and his left hand required 42 stitches.  The prevailing social attitude was that “he had made his bed, now let him sleep in it.”

    It was late in the fall.  Most people had prepared for winter. Sensing that the old man could not do very much for himself, the youth group in that Methodist church hatched a plan. “Wouldn’t it be cool,” they thought, “if we did something to help the old man?” Twenty three kids came together with chainsaws, cut and stacked five cords of seasoned hardwood for the man’s wood-burning stove.  That stove was the only source of heat in his house.  The part of this project that excited the kids the most was plotting how to stack the wood in a convenient place around the house without being caught. 

    Early one Sunday morning at 2:00 a.m. most of the kids left their warm beds and met at a pre-arranged location.  Everyone was ready with their specific tasks. Their goal was to stack at least two cords on the old man’s porch while putting the other three in his wood crib on the blind-side of his house.  When the three cords were in place, they made their final assault on the front porch. The kids almost pulled it off.   One of them, however, misjudged the placement of a log resulting in a noisy land slide of six or seven logs.  No one moved.

    In no time the porch light came on, the front door flung open and there stood the old man with his shotgun.  One girl screamed, “Please don’t shoot us.  We are kids from the Methodist church.  The old man growled, “Go on -- get out of here!”  The group of horrified teenagers scattered and disappeared into the darkness in the blink of an eye.

    Later that morning all of them were in attendance at the morning worship service. It was obvious that the kids had not slept a wink during the night.  Toward the end of the service, the front door of the church opened just before the closing hymn.  It was the old man on his crutch.  His arm was in a sling. 

    The organist saw him and did not begin to play the hymn.  She knew something dramatic was about to happen. The church members knew nothing of what had transpired much earlier that morning.  They had no idea what bought the bitter old man to their church or what he wanted from them as he slowly made his way down the aisle.

    He came to the front, turned around and faced the congregation.  He removed his cap and tried to talk.  His words were hesitant and emotional. Finally, he composed himself and choked out the words, “Last night an army of your kids came to my house in the middle of the night. I chased them away. When I got up this morning, I wanted to see what mischief the kids had gotten into.” 

    He stopped talking and there were more tears. Parents began looking at their teenagers wondering what on earth they had done.  The man continued, “Their mischief turned out to be something else.  They had neatly stacked more than enough firewood to see me through the winter.  That wood is the greatest gift I have ever received in my life. Thank you. I want to become a better neighbor.  Would you allow me to start coming to church here?”  The pastor put his arms around the man in a “welcome home” bear hug.

    This event helped everyone to see their reflection in the mirror. The man saw his bitterness and how quickly he allowed it to melt away when he let go of it. The congregation saw their lack of caring for a long time resident of their community.  The kids saw the man’s bitterness as a call for love and in addition they saw what a little kindness can do to a man who had been held a prisoner by his own hurt feelings and the resulting bitterness.  The kid’s thoughtfulness had set him free.  Everyone was transformed by the gift of five cords of wood. 

    When we are holding on to old grievances, painful memories that we cannot undo, images of inadequacies that evoke our self-doubts, thoughts of growing old so soon, feeling burdened by the losses of close friends and family members – these thoughts and the emotions can be like cancer.  In this sense, Jesus did preach good news to the poor; liberty to captives, sight to those who are blind, and freedom to those oppressed.  His listeners in the synagogue that day were unable to see their reflection in his words.  Today we do.

    Every day we must stay alert for words, thoughts, insights, experiences and perceptive friends that are not afraid to tell us what they think.  To those of us that remain awake, we will see that God uses preachers, acquaintances, friends, neighbors and even awkward and difficult circumstances to guide us to move on, rise above and evolve in spirit just as God intended.