"What Really Divides Us” Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – July 20,
2014 Centenary United
Romans 8:12-17, Matthew 13:24-30 Our lesson today is an extension of what we discussed last week.
Once again, Jesus was using agricultural imagery to illustrate
the differences between people. He
was teaching that not everything in life is as it appears.
Jesus constantly amazes us with how timeless his illustrations
were. They clearly make
visible the same choices we face in the 21st Century.
A farmer planted a crop of wheat, and someone, who wanted to sabotage his efforts, sowed the same field with seeds of a weed. When the wheat and weeds sprouted, they looked identical. The farm workers came to the owner of the field and reported their discovery. The farmer instructed them to allow the wheat and the weeds to grow together until the harvest. When we look at what is presently happening all over the world,
most of us understand what Jesus was teaching.
One of the key points
Jesus was making is that the world is filled with constructive and
destructive people that must
live together.
Sometimes people are not what they appear to be.
A major Christian denomination has its headquarters in One day law enforcement officers came to his office and arrested
him. Over the years of his
tenure as the CFO, he had systematically embezzled over three hundred
thousand dollars from the church’s reserve fund.
When these revelations were made public, the members of the
congregation were absolutely devastated.
No one could believe it! To become the pastor of this same church was an honor and
privilege. Word began to
spread that certain members of the congregation had copies of his sermon
prior to its delivery on Sunday morning.
Those with manuscripts could sit in their pews and follow every
word that he spoke. The
issue that surfaced in a
Washington Post article was that the sermons had been plagiarized.
The name of another pastor, that had actually written the sermon,
was at the top under the sermon’s title.
The church’s pastor always distributed the sermons the following
week and they bore his name.
This was yet another scandal to rock the church.
We are like the farmhands -- we recognize that there are
differences between the values of people, but we do not know enough
about them to evaluate their lives.
Making judgments about others is often a mistake. People can
learn a lot from their mistakes and what they learn can cause them to
make different choices as they move toward their futures. Most of us can remember the story that was read to us when we were children about the little boy who called “wolf, wolf!” Everyone came running to his aid until they learned that he simply wanted attention. When a wolf did come and he cried out, no one bothered to help him. This story came to mind several times during the World Cup
competition. A player would get
tangled up with an opponent, fall to the ground and begin writhing in
what appeared to be excruciating pain.
A medical team was immediately dispatched to his side and we
watched as a miraculous healing
took place within seconds. Soon, the player jumped to his feet and
rushed off to resume his position on the playing field.
If there was any remaining pain on his face, it had more to do
with the failure of a referee to penalize his opponent with a yellow
card. Can we really tell what is bogus and what is authentic?
The answer is, “No.” We have great respect for the wisdom of the
farmer that had his farmhands wait until the harvest to separate the two
plants.
While the growing plants looked
identical, only one would produce kernels of wheat.
At the harvest, there
would be no doubt which plant had value.
Jesus taught that it is easy to distinguish between the people of light and the people of darkness. He said, “You will know them by what their lives produce.” (Matthew 7:16f) Still, we have to wait until the end of their lives to tell the difference. Try to imagine what might take place as various spirit-beings are
discussing what they accomplished during their lives on earth.
“I made a lot of money in
human trafficking.” “I
shot down the Malaysian airline that was filled with 298
passengers.” I walked
into a marketplace wired with explosives and martyred myself for
Allah by killing 68 men,
women and their children.”
I made a fortune by
borrowing other people’s identities.”
The larger lesson in
Jesus’ parable came from teaching his listeners that they will grow up
in a world filled with every conceivable opportunity to follow their
desires.
What Jesus did during his ministry was to provide
a road map,
a strategy, or
a game plan for making life
on earth a wonderful, creative adventure.
(John 18:37) A major
challenge that comes with living on earth is that all of us must respond
to what comes up for us in our individual circumstances.
There is never a level
playing field for any of us. We
come from different environments, different social groups, and different
economic levels. For example, in all of our churches, Lois and I have always
greeted people at the front door following our worship services. During
our first Sunday in a church to which I had just been appointed, we were
greeting people in this manner.
A mother introduced her two daughters to us by saying, “This one
is our straight-A student.
This one is the dumb one in our family.”
We watched as the older daughter emotionally wilted from hearing
a label that she had probably heard repeated many times.
I put my arms around her and
whispered that she would always be just fine in
my book.
This episode is a small example of what can happen to people when
they start out in life in a home environment that imprints them with
definitions of themselves that are completely false.
Children have not been trained to look inside themselves where
their treasure lies. Adults
are there to guide them and many parents do not understand this as their
responsibility. The truth
is that we all need guidance during every phase of our lives. When our world came into being, our Creator gave people
free will to choose how they
want to spend their limited time while living in their physical forms.
There is so much in the material world that attracts us.
That is the point.
That is the purpose for our being in the material world.
If we are here to see how
we do with our creative powers, we need a wide range of choices.
When millions of people believe that this life is all there is, they
tend to desire what produces wealth, glamour and fame. There is nothing wrong with such a motivation.
We remember the merchant in Jesus’ parable that gave his servants
enormous wealth to care for while he went to another country.
In his absence, two of them
doubled their assets while the third did nothing with his share.
He buried it in the ground.
Jesus’ point was that the spirit in how we manage what we have is
what divides people. Many wealthy people have grown businesses that have given people
jobs. Leland and Jane
Stanford built a university in Jesus knew how easily people can get stuck in life from either
wealth or poverty. This is
why he said, “The gate to understanding life is narrow and the way that
leads to it is difficult to locate and there are very few people who
ever find it.” (Matthew
7:14) This kind of teaching
can cause us to ask, “What is the point of all the human drama that we
encounter? Why do the rich
get richer and the poor get poorer even while on their spiritual
journeys?” The answer is that all of us –
the weeds and
the wheat -- are creators.
We can create lots of fruit that benefits others because of our
desire to leave our world a better place for men and women to live.
We can also create what will enhance only the quality of our
personal lives. Jesus always stressed that it is the spirit in which we live that
distinguishes the wheat from
the weeds.
He taught that when we
love others in the same way that we love ourselves, we are creating what
brings happiness and peace.
“For people who have prospered in this manner,” Jesus said, “even
more will come to them and they will have more than enough.
However, the people who have not prospered with what they have,
even the little they have will be taken away from them.”
(Matthew 25:29) For example, we all have an imagination.
Some of us use it and others do not.
We all have the ability to let go of words that hurt us.
Some of us do that immediately and others choose to hold on to
what was said and begin nursing a grudge that can last for decades.
We all have the ability to invest our money beginning with our
first paycheck. Some of us do that and others spend what they earn as
though the flow of their financial resources will never end.
The aspect of life that divides
us comes from the choices that we make.
Several years before
we came to Bermuda, we replaced the pavers on the front porch of our
home in Bowie. I was
appalled by what these expert
craftsmen were doing.
They jack hammered the existing surface and were cutting the pavers, a
process that created clouds of dust so thick that one could hardly see
the workers. I called the
owner of the company whom I knew and said, “Please give your men
respirators. They are breathing stone dust and it has the potential to
destroy their lungs.” He
said, Dick, I can assure
you that state-of-the-art respirators are in their trucks.
I have lectured and lectured these men until I am blue in the
face. They will not wear
them. There is a pride
thing going on with these guys that is attached to their manhood. I
cannot convince them to protect their lungs even though I have made
wearing them mandatory. This is life! We
make choices and those decisions have consequences.
Jesus came to guide us through the maze of alternatives that are
available to us so that we might have life in abundance.
By keeping our desires focused on others, we are producing fruit
that will provide us with peace and happiness. Wheat produces an array
of products that can keep people from starving.
Whether or not we follow Jesus’ guidance is yet another choice
that each of us must continue to make.
Those who do make that choice are immediately faced with
countless unintended consequences that they could not have foreseen or
anticipated. It is though
blessings have magically appeared in our lives.
The truth is that
magic had nothing to do with
it. The blessings
materialized because of our choices to create from a spirit that desires
to be helpful, one that desires to make the world a better place to
live. |