“Is
Summer School Necessary?” Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler –
September 17, 2017 Centenary United Methodist Church
Proverbs 9:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35
In last Sunday's sermon, the thought of attending
summer school was mentioned
for people who remain uncertain or unconvinced that a spiritual
awakening is a necessary rung on the ladder of their education.
However, summer school
was never defined. In the classical sense, summer school is required if students
want to overcome a failing grade in one or more of their subjects. No
one has to attend these classes. Attending
is only mandatory if students wish to advance toward graduation.
Have we ever taken the time to consider how our spiritual growth
occurs? Is it an automatic response that happens when we creatively
interact with issues in our world or do we have to acquire certain
skills like learning our ABCs?
The only aspect of our training that separates academic education
from our spiritual learning is the content. Both require a desire to
know more than we do at the present moment.
There are people that have a tremendous drive to understand the
meaning of life; others plateau where they are and still others quietly
suffer with their life experiences, mystified why such moments continue
to happen to them. For
the purposes of this message,
summer school
refers to the necessity of all of us to continue learning until we take
our last breath in this world. All of us have faced occasions when we were unhappy.
When we label the cause of what
we think is causing our unhappiness, most often we will name some set of
circumstances, some episode or some person that is responsible for our
emotional downward spiral. How
would we respond
if Jesus appeared to
us in a vision
and gave us a much different method of understanding our life
experiences?
Rather than
empathizing with us, Jesus said: Your unhappiness is
a sign that all the systems of your body are working exactly as they
were designed to do. Your
emotions are telling you, 'Stop beating up on yourself. Choose different
attitudes. Change your responses. Experiment with different feelings and
thoughts.' No one and no
circumstance is making you feel unhappy.
Learn that you are creating your feelings from the judgments you
are making. When you
convert your judgments into doors,
they will open and lead you forward in your learning. All
unhappy people need a semester of
summer school.
There are people who feel abandoned and forsaken by God.
Again, could such an experience be the result of expecting God to
do what God has no intention of doing?
Non-believers have identical experiences.
Just because our Creator is not
part of their pantheon of gods does not mean that they are given a pass
from having to go to summer
school. If they stop
learning, they are telling themselves they have arrived on
Mt. Olympus when they have
not. Elon Musk is the creator of an electric car called
Tesla.
When these cars come off the assembly line, they are like our
bodies that come through the birth canal of our mothers. Elon Musk has
designed these cars so that they work with extreme efficiency.
When there is a malfunction, there is an on-board computer that
lets the owner of the car know where the problem lies from a gauge on
the dashboard. Tesla owners do not
have any expectations that Mr. Musk will come to their rescue if there
is a failure with the car. That
would be absurd and ridiculous. Yet, when it comes to our lives, somehow
our expectations of God are different.
We reason that since God is love, God will hear our prayers and
will come to our aid. We
have all known believers who say, "I trust God so completely that He
will guide me to fulfill His perfect will for how my life unfolds."
Really? When
our faith
has replaced our need to take responsibility for the direction of our
lives, it is like God has finally taken off the training wheels from our
bicycle and we refuse to learn the art of sound decision-making.
When nothing is happening in our lives, God's lack of attention
shows up as a light on our dashboard.
If we understand the light properly, it is telling us that the
malfunction is not with God but with us. Christians have been trained to believe that God is our constant
companion, a very present help in trouble, and
the Shepherd who seeks for a
lost sheep until it is found. While these statements are of great
comfort to us, there is no mention that God will take responsibility for
the direction of our lives. Like
a wise parent, God is present, but God does not intervene in our lives
to the extent that we no longer have our own homework assignments to
complete. Why
are we here if God's intent was to direct our lives for us?
Our
dashboard lights are telling us to grow up and emotionally move
beyond the dependent responses of our childhood.
Our Scripture lesson this morning is a detailed story of a man
who sought forgiveness from his king.
He said, "Please be patient with me and I will pay back
everything that I owe you." The king felt sorry for him and forgave the
entire debt. (Matthew 18:26f) When it came time for that servant to forgive a fellow servant
for the same thing, he did not respond with the generous, forgiving
spirit as the king had expressed to him.
That servant got caught by the king for not showing mercy to his
fellow servant and was imprisoned until he could pay back everything
that he owed his master. Jesus concluded his parable with these words: "This is how my
Father in heaven will treat everyone of you unless you forgive your
brother from your heart."
(Matthew 18:35) What is Jesus teaching about God's nature?
Had God forgotten Jesus' instructions to Peter to forgive 70
times 7? (Matthew 18:21-22) Since we create every notion, every feeling
and every response in our lives, what was Jesus teaching?
God
created for us a body that is perfectly outfitted with everything we
need to diagnose and cope with issues of life.
Jesus was teaching people that when they cannot forgive, they
need a semester of Love 101
in summer school. When we
cannot forgive and let go, a warning light becomes visible on
our spiritual
dashboard that a
short-circuit has occurred in our wiring.
God does not have to do anything to us to punish us.
We build our own emotional prisons by what is consuming us.
God does not tie our life
into knots. We do that
all by ourselves. A friend of mine is a well-respected physician at one of the
major research hospitals in Washington, D.C.
Some years ago, she destroyed
two engines in her new car.
She had to go to summer school
to learn the consequences that are automatic each time the owner of
any car fails to check the level of oil in the engine.
She did not heed the warning
that appeared on her dashboard.
She drove her car without giving any thought of how to maintain
it. She never had her oil
changed. Her
owner's manual remained
unopened in the glove compartment. God knows that
we are all
superhuman and that nothing
can hurt or destroy the spirit that lives inside our vehicle.
(Romans 8:38)) This is why God does not need to throw us
a life line each time we feel
inadequate or insecure. God knows
everything about the sophisticated
biological machine
that houses us and how many of
its capabilities remain unused.
The psychiatric community is well aware that many adults have not
moved beyond their emotional dependency on the stabilizing forces
supplied their parents, friends, a marriage partner and God. What is the
role of God in our lives?
Are we saying that God never
offers divine guidance? Not at all.
There is a difference between having mature relationships with
the Creator of the universe from the relationships that are defined by
people who choose to remain dependent and needy.
Christians need to wean themselves away from a desire that God
will come running with extra energy and more refined attitudes each time
they feel emotionally overwhelmed and depleted. Most parents have been with their children when they experience
an emotional meltdown in the most inconvenient times and places.
One articulate five-year old said to her mother in my presence,
"Mother, I just want you to know that I do not love you and,
furthermore, I never have!"
The frustrated child had her hands on her hips and her one foot was
going up and down. She
abruptly turned around and stomped upstairs to her bedroom.
Upon entering her room, she slammed the door.
As she was going upstairs her mother said, "That's okay honey,
dinner will still be at 6:00."
God allows us to thrash around, cry out in desperation and scream
bloody murder when God refuses to jump through the hoops we hold up.
A semester of
summer school would teach us
that our expectations of God
are the cause of our unhappiness and not the lack of God's love of us.
God's love for each of us is never in question. However, doing
our inner homework for us, opening doors for us, climbing ladders for
us, opening our eyes to greater truths for us is not
love.
Such divine intervention would be rewarding and encouraging even
more dependency. The more we learn, the more our vision clears.
The more information we have, the more we understand how God
wired us. God is our
partner, our co-pilot. God is not our pilot. We are in our solid
forms to see what we can do with our creativity.
We live in remarkable vehicles.
When we understand this, our lives will fall into a meaningful pattern
that leads to a mature, spiritually rewarding destiny. CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER We
are grateful, O God, that you are always near to us. Each time a sparrow
falls, you know.
Each time
someone expresses his or her pain or gratitude, you understand.
Each time someone feels alone and forsaken, you are present.
How many times do the
hurricanes,
earthquakes, and
fires of life try to convince us otherwise?
How many times the unexpected has evoked our frustration
because our plans were spoiled? How many times have our worries chased
smiles from our faces? Thank you for helping us to remember that we
belong to you and that living in our constantly changing world is not
our final destination.
Amen.
PASTORAL PRAYER
Loving and
ever-present God, in the quiet and hush of these moments, we ask that
you still our spirits with feelings of peace.
How grateful we are that, regardless of who we have become, or
what rules we have broken, or what unloving thoughts we have held, you
accept us just as we are.
Regardless of our age, all of us are in the process of growing and
maturing in spirit and we tend to judge ourselves with little confidence
that we are able to see ourselves as you do.
Our faith tells
us that there will always be a silver lining to our clouds, that pain is
never permanent and that vacuums created from our losses are always
filled with unexpected surprises. And yet the journey to that day
often seems long and exhausting. May the challenging realities
that so many of us face help to bring a different perspective to our
lives.
There are times when
we are tempted to find fault, blame and complain, believing that our
happiness has been eroded by others.
We are often blind to our many blessings because of the number of
distractions that block our view.
Today help us to
find healing for our spirits. May those of us who are worried,
anxious and feeling alone leave this service reassured that you are our
life-partners forever. Rather than believing that we have such a long
distance to grow before we feel whole, inspire us to take what we have,
as humble as that may be, and use it to make your Kingdom more visible.
Inspire us to realize that we are whole from the day we are born. We
pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus, the Christ, who taught
us to say when we pray . . . |