“The Art of Achieving Balance” Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – October
22, 2017 Centenary United Methodist Church
Galatians 5:16-26; Matthew 22:15-22 Today we are going to consider an age-old question of how to live
when there appears to be a tension within each of us between the desires
of the flesh and the desires
of the spirit.
We all grew up knowing the
tension between these two worlds
and the numerous ways we have chosen to perceive each of them. This morning
we will learn what Jesus had to say about this tension.
We are amazing creatures caught in the predictable mishaps
and mistakes of our own evolutionary process. We will see if we can
untangle this tension so that we can better understand our
life-experiences. In our first lesson from Galatians, the Apostle Paul
paints a fairly grim
portrait of our
human nature:
What human nature
does is quite plain. It
shows itself in immoral, filthy and indecent actions.
People worship idols and engage in witchcraft.
People become enemies and fight; they become jealous, angry, and
ambitious. They separate
into parties and groups; they are envious, get drunk, have orgies, and
indulge in all kinds of other indecent activities.
As I have warned you before, such people who dwell on such
pursuits will never come into contact with
the Very few of us need to hear a lecture about all the ways our
human nature can cause mishaps and mistakes in our judgment.
What did God have in mind by
creating us with two different emotional attractions within our species? Societies try their best to help us cope more creatively with
many of our natural urges.
Our groceries have a listing of their ingredients that tell us how much
cholesterol and calories are in each serving.
We find advertisements for various products that will prevent
pregnancies. We may get a
new tax in Many of the newspaper columnists who offer advice to the weary,
suggest that our natural desires can easily lead us down the paths of
over-indulgence as we search for comfort from the stresses of living.
Some of us, however, have learned to push back on the idea that we are
victims of our unbridled hunger for pleasures.
We have learned that we
do not need to judge our natural urges by their abuse.
On Friday, I listened to Kim Wilson as she spoke to the members
of Parliament. She was
addressing our national problem of obesity.
Among her words were these, "Take a minute right now and look
around at each other. The
only person who can stop obesity is the person looking back at you in
the mirror." Ken Langone, one of the three founders of Home Depot, said last
week that we need to experience a little hunger between meals.
If we walk around satiated all day, we are probably snacking -- a
sure way to add pounds to our bodies.
A
self-correcting aspect of people is that there are internal and external
consequences to every thought, feeling and response that we make.
We can surrender
to many of our urges or use them to grow beyond their demands.
We are the driver of our lives
and not of our urges!
We are the only ones who are
responsible for who and what we are becoming.
No one else is to blame. We do not need a side order of gravy for our meat and potatoes
when we eat in a restaurant. We do not need to indulge in a habit of
salting our food before we taste it.
We do not need to remain addicted to staring at our cell-phones
throughout the day. We do
not need to beg our physicians for medications each time
an inconvenient illness takes
up a temporary residency in
our bodies. In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus provided a very
different message from Paul's initial words about the condition of our
human nature. Jesus said,
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things
that are God's." (Matthew 22:21)
Basically, Jesus was saying "Give to the world what it needs
to grow and prosper but do so with attitudes that reflect God's
nature."
Jesus was teaching that the
desires for the things of this
world and the desire for developing of our spiritual nature can work
together for balancing our lives.
Jesus was providing the reason why human DNA came packaged
with the tension we are discussing this morning. Today, we are fortunate enough to be living in a cycle of human
evolution where we can choose to remain creatures of this world like all
other species of animals or we can make a leap that takes us
beyond our animal urges and instincts.
A distinct division is slowly taking place within people that is
as profound as what separated the more advanced Cro-Magnon people from
their cousins known as the Neanderthals.
If we return again to the words of Paul, he described qualities of consciousness that quite literally separate people from the animal instincts he described earlier in our passage. He wrote: "Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control. There is no law against such as these." (Galatians 5:22) We do not have to choose one value system over the other.
Jesus was not talking about two different individuals.
He was talking about each person having the potential to engage
fully in the various pursuits available to us in our physical world and
at the same time to grow spiritually. We
can take the next leap when compassion, kindness and instant forgiveness
become part of our natural desires. However, we need to understand that none of our qualities of
spirit alone can create massive cultural centers, advanced medical
facilities or devices that can instantly translate the English language
into the languages of other cultures. We
create through a balance of the tension we experience. Paul was teaching that by harnessing the qualities of spirit, our
species can clearly discriminate between our animal nature and our
possibilities to live as highly innovative creators that can end
poverty, feed the hungry hordes in the world and create cars loaded with
artificial intelligence that makes them far safer than having to depend
on our highly distracted eye/hand coordination.
Curiosity, intuition, imagination, fantasy and dreaming all have
played a role in fueling the human desire to give to humanity new ways
for improving our lives. Think
of what has happened during the last one hundred years.
If you want to read something
humorous, look at the New Year's predictions for the future made fifty
years ago. Most have fallen short of the transformative levels we
experience today. Who knew that the contents of our file cabinet could
be put on a thumb drive that we can carry in our pocket.
When I was having my eyes examined last week, I asked my
ophthalmologist what was in the
future pipeline of his profession.
He said, We are literally
going to see miracles happen in the next couple of years.
Blind people will receive their sight because we are learning how
to introduce a patient's own stem cells into their dormant retinas.
All the animals with whom we share our world have the same drives
as we have, i.e., to hold on to and control the quality of their lives,
to propagate their species by having babies and to pursue aggressively
their desire to control their
environment.
Many people have tapped into their spiritual desires to create a
culture that helps people to achieve their greatest potential, that
wants to protect human life from those who wish to disrupt, hurt and
destroy our societies, to protect our planet and to advance human
progress in almost every field of life from A to Z, e.g., Agriculture
to Zoology.
Jesus gave humanity the answer.
Human beings were created with the potential to harness both
worlds as we become master-creators of societies that benefit all who
fully participate in our mutual growth.
People who remain loyal and faithful to the gospel of violence and destruction never built a hospital, never gave scholarships to students who want to further their education, never launched a space vehicle carrying valuable cargo to the International Space Station, never became excited about finding cures for dreaded diseases, and never glowed with enthusiasm at giving the world a new technology that will make life easier and more efficient for everyone. Jesus taught that the
wheat and the weeds, that
strikingly look like wheat,
must grow together. Only
the wheat will prove to be
useful to our world. (Matthew 13:24f) With his words, Jesus
was teaching his detractors, who were trying to trick him, "Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are
God's." Jesus' answer was
that we can live creatively with the tension from
both aspects of our inner world.
Those of us who follow him have
learned to live his message of love with vigorous enthusiasm.
One of the lessons that I learned while working at the White
House came as quite a surprise to me. In
order to pay for my seminary education, I worked there from the end of
my classes until midnight.
Early one evening I decided to leave the office and walk over to the
West Wing where the machines were to buy a cup of coffee.
As I was leaving, I asked if anyone else needed something -- my
treat. I took a couple of orders and left.
When I returned, a woman said to me, "Thank you, Dick. I want you to know that I have worked the night shift in this office for 18 years and you are the first person to ask our group if anyone wanted anything from the machines." I could not imagine this happening. Can
we imagine what our world would be like if people made visible the
spirit of kindness and generosity every day to the people around them?
She had worked for 18 years and no one ever offered to buy her a
cup of coffee! I went home
believing that I had chosen the right profession. I knew I would never
grow up to become a profound theologian, but I could at least teach
people the value and power of love as it is being expressed through
kindness, compassion and generosity. A struggle that many of us may have is to, "Give to the world
what it needs to grow and prosper but do so with attitudes
that reflect God's nature." What
would happen to our world if more people gave up protesting and being
offended by so many things because
they are too busy being kind, generous and compassionate?
Think of it.
The Kingdom of God is
here, but a good number of people may be too busy keeping alive their
own unhappiness to live in it.
CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER Merciful God, we thank you for loving us while also being flexible in
allowing us to mature in spirit when we are ready to do so.
In your wisdom, you allow us to struggle with what we value. You
gave us the ability to question what we believe in order to develop a
storyline of faith that works
for us. You gave us our church family so that we might support each
other’s spiritual journey. So often our community of faith helps us to
remember who we are by keeping us focused on our mission.
Help us to carry ourselves as people of hope whose trust in you
enables us to share a
vision of the world that
was designed for all people to enjoy.
Amen. PASTORAL
PRAYER
We thank you,
God, for the opportunity to renew ourselves each week as we come
together for worship. We are aware of how easy it is to neglect our
calling to be the ray of sunshine during someone’s cloudy day.
Spare us from questioning our effectiveness among others. We have
no idea who we are influencing as instruments of your presence. Thankfully, our
faith has changed how we view our relationships.
Faith calls us to a greater faithfulness when we have strayed.
Faith lifts us when our obvious flaws influence our attitudes.
Even though many of us fail at doing our best, we are
nevertheless confident that together we can make a difference toward the
healing of our community and world.
Help us to remember that you have the ability to work miracles by
using our smallest deeds. We do not know
how to assign a value to kindness that we extended to someone.
We do not know the value of a smile effortlessly given to a
stranger. We do not know why it is that a sermon, a prayer or a hymn on
Sunday morning appears like a direct message from you to us, but it
happens.
Teach us to be
attentive to the needs of your Kingdom here on earth so that one day
your loving will for all of us will find expression everywhere.
We pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus, the Christ,
who taught us to say when we pray . . . |