“Why Our World Needs Different
People” Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – November
19, 2017 Centenary United Methodist Church
Proverbs 3:1-10; Matthew 25:14-30 Our lesson today is another parable that Jesus was using to teach
his listeners that there are two
worlds co-existing in their experience, one that they could perceive
through their five senses and the other that they could not. With all the avenues and venues facing people in the material
world, Jesus spent most of his ministry teaching others how their lives
would be different if they chose attitudes grounded in love from the
world that they cannot see. In this parable, Jesus was teaching that people's preferences are
what make them unique and one-of-a-kind.
Jesus told the story of a man that gave his three servants
different amounts of gold coins.
Each of them received
amounts according to his ability.
He gave five thousand to the first servant, two thousand to the
second one and the third servant received one thousand.
The man left for a lengthy period of time after informing them,
that upon his return, he would settle the accounts. What understanding
can we take away from this parable? When I was in high school, the head football coach of the Keep your dream
alive. Keep your vision in
front of you every day.
Don't invest your lives in
wishful thinking. Work with all your might to make whatever you are
dreaming to come true.
After talking about how healthy it was to keep their dreams
alive, he began discussing the statistics of how many athletes actually
do make it to the professional level.
The percentage of those who achieve their goal was one percent of
one percent. Then he predicted the future.
In 1961, the coach said that one day men will share the stage
with women when their dreams grow beyond careers in the fields of
nursing, teaching and telephone operators. Even though the Bloomer
Girl baseball teams were everywhere in the United States,
the tide did not turn for
female athletes until 29-year old Billy Jean King defeated 55-year old
Bobby Riggs in tennis in Houston's Astrodome in 1973. Once
the flood gates
were opened, women have never looked back.
With a lot of hard work, the
dream of the Suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony or Centenary's own Hilda
Aiken came true. Hilda
became the first woman elected to Today, women are remarkable news anchors, Olympic gold medal
winners, CEOs of major corporations like IBM, chief investment advisors,
astronauts and United Methodist pastors.
It takes
different people to move
cultures toward their futures. Just weeks ago, the
crown prince of Today, many men and women want to rise to the calling of their
own potential. Each
individual is pulled in the direction of their vision that is formed
from their desires. This
vision can actually multiply into fully developed corporations. No matter how large or small a person's contribution, each of us
plays a vital role for the future when we invest our energy in the
treasure we find within ourselves. This was the point of Jesus' parable.
He knew we had different abilities. In every society, however, there are those who have much in
common with the servant that used fear as an excuse to bury his
treasure. People are free to
retreat from the birth pains
of entering into their adult years by choosing the path of partying,
drugs, alcohol, quitting school and remaining content with jobs that
earn for them the minimum wage. They
watch as their friends move on into successful careers.
Wasting their life's energies is not just a temptation among
younger generations; there are older adults who cannot accept
responsibility for managing their lives.
Someone is always to blame for why they feel and think the way
they do. Like
their younger brothers or sisters, they cannot figure out which inner,
wholesome preference has their
name written all over it.
It did not matter how much each servant was given;what mattered
was what they accomplished with it after their master gave them the gold
coins. Each
of us has been given a life filled with
treasure to do whatever we
wish with what we find.
Everyone is needed, from the greatest to the least, to make a
society work. Does punishment await those that never understood anything, never
awakened and never got the point of how or what to create with their
lives? Our
loving Creator would never punish anyone for experiencing their own
poverty in understanding life.
Why would anyone
deserve punishment when they never became aware that
their own individual instruction
manual was inside of them. They
were busy searching for what would serve their self-interest, shore up
their insecurities or have fun with their friends. We can hardly imagine that Michael Jordan was cut from his high
school varsity basketball team.
He was a 5'10" awkward sophomore that lacked the physical skills
to play the game. As he got a little older, he developed a passion
to pursue basketball. Once his
vision was in place, Michael soared to become one of the greatest
basketball players who ever played the game.
In his last season with the Chicago Bulls, Debbi Fields built a 450 million dollar company based on her
recipe for a cookie. This
mother of five had no prior experience in the business community.
She was driven by a vision that her cookies would sell.
Obviously, they did. There are as
many stories like this as there are risk-takers.
A man went to saw mills, collected their sawdust and created logs
for people's fireplaces.
Another individual took wood chips and through a process created a
building material similar to plywood.
His particle board is used in today's home construction. Here in Did you read the booklet in Thursday's
Royal Gazette about D&J
Construction Company celebrating its 50th Anniversary? The co-founder,
Danny Fagundo, left Whitney Institute at the age of 13 to take his first
job at Palm grocery store on
Collector's Hill, which today is
the Apothecary. He never became discouraged or admitted defeat to
anything or anyone. Danny found the blueprints
on how to become a world class
contractor within himself and he and his partner built an excellent
construction company with trial
and error as their best teacher.
With no formal training, at the age of 18, he built his first
house on the Verdmont Estate. After building another home for his
sister, Danny never looked back. These stories are everywhere in today's unfolding marketplace.
Today, we have many
people who are modeling for everyone else why each person should trust
his or her inner instincts, even though there may be no current market
for the dreams and visions they are experiencing.
If a person wants to make a lot of money, they can do that.
If they want to fashion the future, they can do that, too, by
keeping their own personal vision in front of them.
Think about what is happening
today. The founders of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla, and
Amazon have inspired an entire generation of young men and women to
reach for the stars with their own visions that now will serve these
major companies. Who could
have possibly imagined that the Apple corporation, founded on April 1,
1976 has grown so rapidly that its net worth is approaching one
trillion dollars? There were no
role models for the visions of these very different risk-takers.
In our lifetime, what they have done for the world is enormous in
bringing different people together, creating jobs and making our lives
more efficient. Try to imagine what the future holds for the next generation of
people whose dreams and visions are currently unknown to society.
The future needs people who think differently and have learned to
hold on to their inner vision. There are no
other alternatives that will drive our lives any better than when we pay
attention to what makes us different, unique and one-of-a-kind.
Needing to be liked
and accepted by others are the drivers of countless people to conform to
what appears helpful to their self-esteem.
Being different often means that we will have to
sing our solo when we truly
believe that no one is listening. Never
try to measure your own success!
Had Jesus done that he would have felt he had been abandoned by
God and everyone else that he loved.
He remained confident in his vision for every man and woman in
his present time as well as in every generation that will follow in the
future. What is interesting is that no particular
religious beliefs are
required for people to recognize the existence of a world that remains
invisible to our senses.
This
truth is universal and available to everyone who takes the time to
locate the
blueprint for their own inner
vision and the source of their dream. For many
creators, their
greatest gifts
to humanity may never be known during their
lifetime. Do we
honestly believe that anyone living during the days of Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519)
could have imagined that one of
his paintings would sell last Wednesday for 450 million dollars?
How interesting that the painting was of Jesus. Jesus' message for the world was a simple one: Create from what
you have been given no matter how great or small you believe your
treasure is.
When you ignore your fears and
follow your dreams, the future of humanity may expand its understanding
due to something that you left behind.
Remember the widow who put two copper coins into the This is the process of how Jesus' life and teachings have reached
our generation thousands of years later. His contribution did not end at
his crucifixion. His vision continued in the minds of people who have
learned how creative loving energy dramatically influences how they
live. This is how humanity is evolving in its understanding. People need
to give a voice to what makes
them different. Therein
lies their genius. CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER Loving, ever present God, too often we find ourselves struggling with
the tension between our faith and our fear.
We come to you with wishes and often your voice is silent.
We want our adventures and experiences to bring us joy and many
times they do not. How wonderful it is when hindsight brings
understanding and wisdom to why life unfolds as it does. Thank you for
helping us to discover that the bitter pills of life often become
the best medicine.
Thank you for guiding us to understand that our needs will be met when
we invest our energy in helping to make our world a more wholesome place
for men and women to live.
Amen.
PASTOR PRAYER Eternal God, we are so grateful for these moments together.
There are times when our worship experience reminds us that we
are your sons and daughters. We also can be reminded that instant
forgiveness allows us to lay aside so much of what we carry within
ourselves.
Each of us always experiences
stretch marks in our consciousness when we try what we have never
done, when we take challenging steps of faith, when we feel vulnerable
or when we experience the uncertainty of thinking that we do not have
the skills to cope with what is now confronting us. God, thank you for the life and teachings of Jesus.
He inspires us to live more confidently in a realm that often
fills our physical senses and emotions with what obscures
the light of your presence
within us. Thank you for the timeless values he pointed to.
Thank you for what happens to us when we have the courage to hold on to
those values in the midst of today’s overwhelming challenges.
With the season of Thanksgiving upon us, we have so much to
celebrate. Inspire us to make peace our collective
response, particularly during a time when change is rapidly accelerating
all around us.
Let us truly
stitch into our lives the attitudes and responses that Jesus taught us
so that the fabric we create will reveal
the angel that lives within
us. The news-events of our day come and go but all of us have only one
life to perfect during all
the testing that comes with daily living. We pray that the end result of
our lives will always create a sense of community where love for one
another reigns. We pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus, the
Christ, who taught us to say when we pray . . . |