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"Everyone Needs Training” Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – March 15, 2015 Centenary United
Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21 Tuesday afternoon Lois and I received a call from a woman who was
involved during my earliest days as a pastor. She just wanted to chat.
She is 93 and still has fond memories of when her teenagers were
in my youth group. She told
us a cute story about Ruthie, her great-grand daughter, who is three
years old. Ruthie's grandparents belonged to a church that had recently
moved into a new facility.
They were putting away the sound equipment when their granddaughter,
Ruthie, began to explore the large auditorium by herself.
A man noticed that she was alone.
He approached her and said, "Honey, where are you parents?"
Without batting an eye, she looked at him quite confidently and
said, "I did not bring them with me today."
The man burst into laughter as
she introduced herself. She
explained that she was with her grandparents who were elsewhere in the
building. There was a similar episode like this when a family had gone to
dinner with some friends.
They took their two and a half year old daughter with them.
The staff put their daughter into a
booster-seat at their table.
As the server was taking their drink order, she skipped over Mary
Ellen. As she prepared to
walk away, Mary Ellen said, "Excuse me!
I would like to have a small Sprite, please."
The startled waitress stared at Mary Ellen, amazed by her adult
response and apologized for missing her. Most of us have encountered children that we teasingly say, "I
met a four-year-old the other day who thinks she is twenty-five."
What enabled a three year old to respond to a stranger's question
with a sense of humor that was well beyond her years? Her timing was
impeccable. The man could
not stop laughing at her response.
If he had been around her parents, he would have realized where
she learned her poise and sense of humor.
She is quite a character. Mary Ellen did not come through the birth canal with DNA that
gave her the ability to articulate and display the manners of an adult.
If we knew her parents, we would understand where she learned
such polite people skills. When Lois was a teacher at the When we look at what is happening in the lives of a number of
people today, so many of them do not know how to be polite, warm and
civil. Our judgment of
others is often instantaneous: These people are
the nasty! They are rude.
They have no conscience. They live and breathe hostility. I can't stand
even being in the same room with them. What are we seeing when we encounter people that appear to be
totally out of control with their attitudes and values?
Could it be that they lacked the training that Ruthie and Mary
Ellen received from their parents? Perhaps,
but there is another message here that we all need to hear.
During these Lenten
days, we must remind ourselves that all of us need to continue our
training every day of our lives.
A number of us have committed to memory John 3:16-17.
A different translation of John's passage might make Jesus'
message clearer to us. He
was teaching listeners his vision of the kind of relationship he wanted
to have with them. God loved the world
so much, that he sent his son to serve people by guiding them through
the maze of living. Those
who choose to follow his teachings will not die a spiritual death.
Rather they will enjoy an abundant life both now and forever.
God did not send his son to find fault with the behavior and
attitudes of people, but rather to become their teacher, guide and
friend. (John 3:16-17) I remember an incident that took place in the life of a Lutheran
pastor who had just been appointed to a new church.
He and his wife had arrived at their parsonage earlier in the day
of their move. Once they
became somewhat settled, they were anxious to drive over to their new
church and look around the entire facility. After a late supper, they drove over to the church. As they were pulling into the parking lot, they decided to remain in their car. They could not believe what they were seeing. Men and women were entwined in each others arms kissing. Others were laughing, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The group looked like a bunch of good-for-nothings lounging all over the steps of the church. They immediately drove home and considered how to approach the Trustees about their troubling experience. On Sunday morning, the pastor processed down the aisle behind the
choir. Instantly, he
recognized all of them as the group of
good-for-nothings that were
loitering outside of his church.
Their performance during the service was quite remarkable.
In fact, they were the best sounding choir he had encountered in
his career. When he discreetly approached the choir master about what he
experienced earlier in the week, the pastor had to reinterpret what he
and his wife had seen on that fateful Thursday evening.
He learned that the men and women were waiting for the choir
director to arrive so he could let them into the building for their
rehearsal. The music director told him that his choir was a group of people
whose lives had been totally out of control.
He told the pastor that his choir members came from the most
unlikely places to find musicians.
However, he had taught them how to sing in four part harmony.
Many of them had never sung in their lives and never had any
motivation to attend a church. The choir master happened to be a close personal friend with a
judge who had sentenced most of them to serve time in his choir.
These men and women that had broken the law were shocked at their
sentence. If there was a universal response that summarized what most of
them felt, it was, "You want me to sing in a church choir?
You have got to be kidding me!
I have never been in a church in my life."
The gavel of the judge came down
anyway as he said, "Well, it's time that you start."
What surfaced in that Lutheran church you could not make up. This
was one of those God things.
The choir had become a family
and they produced beautiful anthems.
Not only that, but when their friends heard that they had been
sentenced by the judge to serve in a church choir, they started
attending the services to see the result of their sentencing.
They planned on teasing them later on.
Of course, initially, the rather formal congregation was not
happy about this arrangement, but these
uncomfortable Christians were
soon transformed by what was happening in their midst.
The friends of the new choir members were quite pleased by the
quality of music they were experiencing.
The pastor's sermons communicated to these newcomers and they
continued to attend the church. Could it be
that people display poor judgment, tasteless manners, very controlling
personalities and hostile responses because they have never been taught
how to sing
their personal anthems?
They may be living sinful,
decadent lives because that is how others have chosen to interpret what
they were seeing. Obviously
this was the conclusion made by a Lutheran pastor and his wife.
Jesus taught his disciples that living in
the Kingdom is a learned
response from a choice that each person makes. In light of this understanding, let us listen again to John
3:16-17: God loved the world
so much, that he sent his son to serve people by guiding them through
the maze of living. Those
who choose to follow his teachings will not die a spiritual death.
Rather they will enjoy an abundant life both now and forever.
God did not send his son to find fault with the behavior and
attitudes of people, but rather to become their teacher, guide and
friend. (John 3:16-17) There was a time when Jesus was responding to a question raised
by the disciples, "How can anyone get into
Heaven?"
He said, "It is extremely difficult for anyone to enter the In Thursday's Royal
Gazette, there was a quote from Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach
of the Green Bay Packers,
We will not attain perfection but we can learn how to be
angels-in-the-flesh prior to our entering the mysterious realm after
this life. The gifts of spirit
develop as a result of how our experiences in the material world have
trained us to respond when love is our rudder.
Qualities like being humble, patient, confident, understanding,
generous and peaceful are the results from such training.
Just like Ruthie and Mary Ellen learned from their parents, our spirits have to be open in order to absorb what our teachers are teaching. This is also how a group of people that had been judged to be a group of good-for-nothing individuals by a pastor and his wife became transformed into an outstanding choir. On this fourth Sunday in Lent, we need to remember that it is our training and God's love that allows us to become an angel before we leave our physical forms. |