“Interpreting Our Personal Journey”

Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – June 5, 2016

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 146:1-10; Galatians 1:11-24

 

    Our lesson today provides us with some interesting insights for dealing with our past.  As many of you know, the times when Lois and I visit the United States are built around two family reunions, one in the Springtime and the other in the Fall.  During our recent Stetler reunion, my brother and I were sharing some of our exploits and misadventures during our more youthful years. We wondered quite seriously how we ever survived to reach the present day.  I can count at least six times in my life when death missed me by inches.

    While sharing experiences of our past that were quite dangerous and frightening when they happened, my brother and I found our listeners howling with laughter. What happened to those misadventures that transformed them from being serious mistakes in judgment into episodes that created side-splitting laughter during the retelling of them sixty plus years later?

    If there is a common theme that presents itself to numerous therapists, counselors and pastors, it comes from people who are living with regrets that haunt them in their latter years.  We hear stories of missed opportunities, of parents that are being perceived as loving other siblings more than they and of climbing the ladder of success only to find that it was leaning against the wrong wall.  People had married partners that were viewed as heavy maintenance, demanding and controlling. Their memories of these times seldom produce laughter.  

    The list of issues and episodes that can scream at us from our past while holding us prisoners can just as easily inspire many responses that will propel us toward the future with happiness and peace. The more we energize events in our background, the larger they become.  They can poison our future or cause us to give thanks to God that we have been strengthened by them.  The results we create will always depend on how we interpret our memories.

    There are two realities that immediately arise from sheer common sense.  First, we cannot revise our script or change anything that occurred years ago.  Secondly, we cannot move toward any destination by looking in a rear-view mirror that is filled with regrets. What we can do is change our regrets into celebrations by realizing what we have learned from each of them.

    Our Bible study recently concluded with examining the life of Joseph, the son of Jacob. Each personal trial of being sold into slavery by his half-brothers and of being put into prison for a crime he did not commit could have been interpreted by him as gross injustices over which he had no control.  While experiencing these frightening episodes, Joseph did not allow any of them to create years of smoldering, bitter resentments filled with regrets. 

    Joseph had learned early as a young teenager that all life-experiences need to be negotiated by seeking the lessons that each one was teaching.  By understanding events in this light, instead of sabotaging his life, Joseph learned numerous skills that would later serve him.  

    Joseph built his life by using present experiences as a staircase to his future.  By bringing his best to each phase of his life, he learned that he was being molded in ways he could never have planned. (Genesis 45:5-8)  His storyline became an amazing testimony of what is possible under impossible circumstances.  His responses provided people in the future with an ideal model for reframing their own journeys.  The result always depends on the meaning we give to what took place in our past.

    In stark contrast to the experiences of Joseph, the Apostle Paul began to review his past in a letter he wrote to the Christians living in the Greek city Galatia, a city that is located in the middle of modern day Turkey.  As we read his words, we learn that he reached every goal that he had hoped to achieve.

    Paul came from a very privileged background. He was born into wealth.  His education stimulated the development of a brilliant mind.  His father purchased Roman citizenship for him, a station in life that was unheard of for a Jew.  He had mastered the written and oral languages that were spoken by the people in his world.  He had become a Pharisee that knew the Torah better than most teachers of the Law.  

    In most respects Paul's life-experiences had inspired him to become a one-of-a-kind personality and spirit.  He knew that there was nothing that would stand in his way of becoming the most informed Hebrew scholar in the world. 

    An unforeseen event took place that would forever change his life.  As he was holding the garments of high-ranking officials of the Sanhedrin, Paul watched the first Christian martyr being stoned to death after he shared his faith journey with those that had been questioning him.  As the stones struck Stephen's body, he weakened and slumped into a pool of his own blood. His dying words were these, "God, please forgive these men for being blind to what they are doing."  (Acts 7:60)

    Something stirred in Paul as he watched and listened  We can only speculate what took place within him by knowing what happened later. Paul may have asked himself, "What did Stephen have that enabled him to forgive those who were killing him?  I could never have said those words."  

    These thoughts kept building within Paul until they erupted with an intensity he had never experienced.  He had a breakthrough in his consciousness that was akin to what Moses experienced at the burning bush. (Acts 9:3f)   This experience so changed his life that he carried the spiritual technology found in Christianity to the Greek and Roman worlds.  In a sense, Paul became for the future of Christianity what Moses became for the future of the Hebrews.

    How can we use these two role models to influence our own lives? There are many ways that we can interpret what is happening to us each day.  Countless people do not understand how to play the hand of cards that they have been dealt.  Joseph and Paul provided us with a classic illustration how two people became key players in history, one a peasant and the other an intellect.  Neither one needed a recognized intervention by God nor did they need a string of academic degrees for them to become healers of humanity.   

    Each one of us is alone with the task of reframing the events that have brought us to the present moment.  No one can do this for us.  Each of us must use the building blocks that we can recognize. A major reality that most people do not grasp is that there are no failures among us.  We cannot fail at anything.  Failure is a judgment and a label that we use to describe our delay in learning a lesson.  Countless people stay with the label.

    The lesson that becomes quite clear through the lives of Joseph and Paul is that helping the world's vast population to become more civilized, more compassionate and caring is totally dependent on the spirit by which they lived.   The same thing could be said about Jesus.

    Jesus had no way of imagining that he would change the world with a small group of illiterate men who possessed only a practical education that their fathers had taught them.  Jesus had no knowledge of the people that lived in the Americas nor knew much about the populations of India and China.  He never ventured beyond a 90 miles radius from where he was born. 

    No matter what people believe, what is amazing is that after three years of teaching, Jesus gave the world a message that has helped people to move away from the savagery that has dominated cultures from the very beginning of human history.  We are no closer to such a healing environment, but some of us get the message while others continue to engage in delay.

    The people who share this vision live in every culture, every vocational field and every level of life.  This vision is not gender-specific, it has nothing to do with power, manipulation, or the persuading of vast numbers of people to conform to a particular point of view.  Our mission has to do with helping people willfully to choose to create a world that becomes a more compassionate place to live.  We do this by teaching people one person at a time.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson once expressed this same vision very simply when he wrote:

To laugh everyday, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived.  This is to have succeeded.

    All of us are capable of holding on to this state-of-mind everyday.  We have to let it show more often than we do.  God will multiply our smiles and enthusiasm thousands of times.  One day the world's people will collectively wake up, understand the message and because of necessity, begin to live it.