“God, A Disguised First-Responder”


Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – September 15, 2019

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 14; Luke 15:1-7

    The videos of the devastation from hurricane Dorian in the northern islands of the Bahamas are heart-rending.  What touches our spirits are the stories that are surfacing from the survivors.  Everyone has a unique story to tell of how they are processing and coping with the loss of where they worked, their worship center, their home, their medical clinics, their transportation, and some of the members of their family. Where do people begin to pick up the pieces of their lives after a lingering category five hurricane like this?

    When we think that there is little goodness in the world because of the headlines that capture our attention, we need to read the stories of the vast number of first-responders to this tragedy.  People have taken a leave of absence from their employment and temporarily left their families in order to lend their skills to the search and rescue efforts. 

    What is it that causes people to make such sacrifices?  During an interview with a first-responder, a reporter asked, "What motivated you to break away from your daily responsibilities to come here?" The man said,

I don't know how to explain my motivation. However, yesterday we found and rescued a mother and her child buried under what was left of their home. That is payment enough for any sacrifice I have made.  Most of us feel the same way. 

 

Thank you for covering the news of what has happened here. Our being here and helping others is among the most exhilarating experiences anyone can have.  Most of us can go all day without eating and never miss it. These people have nothing left and have not eaten for days. There are still many people out there alive and we have to find them before it is too late.

    In our Scripture lesson this morning, we have an image from Jesus of what is currently taking place in the Bahamas.  Many of us have seen the picture of Jesus walking home with his lost lamb around his neck.  What motivated the shepherd to leave the security of the other sheep to seek the one that was missing?

    Sometimes sheep can wander off.  There are other times when a calamity happens like when a predator pounces on the flock and they scatter.  The shepherd's love for his sheep was the primary urge for him to search until he found the one that was lost.  Frequently, when we find others who have lost everything, who need a friend, or who can no longer help themselves, that is a call for us to become involved in helping.

    This message is nearly identical to the emotions of a father embracing his prodigal son, a young man who finally came home broke and friendless.  He felt the need to experiment with one social dead-end street after another.  Once his inheritance was exhausted on partying, his former friends abandoned him.  He awakened to an insight that life can be more than what he was experiencing so he made his first responsible decision.  He came home. 

    His father saw his son coming and rather than saying, "You made your bed, now you lie in it!" he ran out to meet him exclaiming, "My son who was dead is now alive; he was lost but he has come home."  (Luke 15:24) That moment became a time of celebration for everyone.

    In our lesson today, Jesus was talking to a group of tax collectors and others that were labeled as outcasts.   When he heard Pharisees and Teachers of the Law grumbling about his reaching out to such people, Jesus concluded his parable of the lost sheep with these words:

Let me tell you guys something.  There is more celebration in heaven when one person, who has lost his way, has awakened and changed the direction of his life than there is for ninety-nine people who have learned how to take responsibility for their attitudes as they seek new horizons. (Luke 15:7)

    How do people know that they are lost?  Who wants to admit to themselves or to anyone that they are in trouble with life?  Failing at life is often the hardest thing for people to admit and to change. Many people can live this way for a long time and never realize how different their lives could be by a change in direction. Their lives are no longer fulfilling.  Week after week their lives have been running on empty and all that they experience is a mild form of misery.

    A major clue to being lost is how living day to day makes us feel.  This is where our emotions play a major role in our course corrections. We need to learn to be honest with ourselves. Is life giving us a sense of fulfillment?  

    Our daughter is an executive for AT&T.  The company and many other companies know that people can get stuck and often need to experience a change in their venue.  Employees are encouraged to get involved in some form of community service so they do not get lost.  Fresh faces and new personalities take them to another level of living.  Doing so reverses an employee's energy flow from a major commitment to their work-ethic to one that deals with serving others.

    It is interesting that community service is often a sentence given by a judge to someone who has broken the law.  They have lost their way and the hope is that they will find themselves by making it mandatory to be helpful to others. This is far more redemptive for law-breakers than their remaining in a jail cell.

    Everybody needs something that is new and exciting which takes their mind off the same-old, same-old routines and patterns of living that no longer work for them.  Grandma Moses began painting at the age of 78.  The German poet, Goethe, wrote Faust when he was 80. George Bernard Shaw fractured his leg at 96.  He did it by falling out of a tree that he was pruning. 

    These people never gave-in to the mythology that aging is something that needs to be denied and disguised.  They never underestimated what they could do because of their age.  They stopped blaming others for the way they were feeling.  Unhappiness and feelings of mild depression propelled them to go in a different direction. 

    Many people accept the fact that they are in their sunset years with an attitude, "I've paid my dues and I'm glad that retirement has come. I am going to relax, eat, and drink what I want, and enjoy myself."  There are other seniors who know that they are in their sunrise years, because they recognize that they have a lot of fuel still left in their tanks. They are free to be of service in other arenas that are different from what demanded their attention in their work environment.

    Every happy and well-adjusted person has a story about a time when they were not so spontaneous, not so willing to take risks, and not so desirous of changing the direction of their lives. They found themselves sitting in front of the television night after night. They were playing it safe and had become unhappy in the process.  When they awakened from being a slave to their routines and their poor eating and drinking habits, it was time to celebrate. 

    Jesus was at his baptism when he experienced a voice that caused him to wander in the wilderness for an extended period of time.  We do not know what he was feeling by remaining a carpenter and supporting his mother and his siblings for the rest of his life.  Maybe he was more than ready for something new that would cause him to make a course-correction.

    What happens when we begin searching for answers to feelings that there is more to life than where we are?  God's presence shows up the minute we realize that something has to change in our lives.  Doors will open.  God's loving energy will come in as many forms as there are people who begin searching, wandering, and asking questions. 

    A poster child for me in recent years is the story of Horatio Spafford, that I have shared with you numerous times.  He was a very wealthy attorney, who had experienced the death of his only son.  He gave most of his wealth away to restore the Lake Michigan water-front businesses that were destroyed in Chicago's deadliest fire.  Did his story-line reward him for his generosity and countless acts of kindness?  No, life was not kind to Horatio. 

    While in route to Europe for a well-deserved vacation, his wife and their four daughters experienced their ship being struck by another ship.  Horatio was to join them later in the week.  Their ship sank immediately taking with it their four daughters.  Only his wife narrowly escaped death by being pulled from the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean by alert first-responders.

    Horatio Spafford did not trust that life would be good to him.  He trusted that whatever life threw at him, God was with him constantly. He did not believe this, he knew it! Today, his name is only a footnote.  Most people have never heard of him.  However, that footnote appears in most church hymnals underneath the hymn that he wrote entitled, "It is Well with My Soul."

    What makes such a person to become a light on our path?  Think about this.  It has nothing to do with us but what God does with what we have become.  When we think of how Horatio Spafford overcame his losses, we recognize that we were hard-wired at birth to overcome anything that shows up in our lives.

    Jesus died on a cross in one of the most obscure parts of the world. His disciples had fled.  He left absolutely nothing that would preserve what he taught.  Yet, his life, teachings, death, and resurrection have inspired billions of people over two thousand years to awaken and travel in a new direction with their lives. How did this happen?  God became a disguised first-responder and inspired people to preserve Jesus' legacy.

    Everyone can change the direction of their lives.  We have to realize that something greater than ourselves is waiting for us to ask questions.  Then, we have to trust the answers when they come. We may not like the answers, but come they will, either in the form that happened to the Apostle Paul (Acts 9:3f) or what can happen to us from the guidance of our guardian angels or spirit guides.

    God wears many disguises in her role as a first-responder.   She can come in the voice of a friend, a book someone gives us, or some sacred symbol known only to us. God's love will inspire our spirits to awaken to the fact that nothing in this world will produce the happiness and fulfillment that we seek.  (Matthew 6:21) Jesus' life made a course-correction because his spirit had awakened to teach to the rest of the world what he found while wandering.  Only matters of spirit ignite the fire of our spirits for wanting more of what we already have.  (Matthew 13:11f)

     

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

We thank you God, that your love of us is eternal and changeless.  We thank you for making yourself known to us even when our lives reflect values that do not always reflect love.  Our desire to know your will does not give us the courage to live it.   We know how easy it is to be careless with our opinions.  We know the numerous times we greet conflict with silence and avoidance.  In spite of these qualities, you have called us to represent your presence in the world.  We welcome the challenge to be your hands and feet as we pass on to others the torch of understanding that all of us play a role in making your presence known.  Amen.

      

PASTORAL PRAYER

Loving God, once again the news of our world has made us think that whatever is troubling our lives in Bermuda is small compared to the raging floods and fierce winds that have destroyed a number of islands in the Bahamas as well as several communities in North America.

All of us live in very challenging times, O God.  Some of our challenges have come through the misguided attitudes of people while others have entered our life’s stage simply from our being alive in a dynamic, energetic changing world.  In addition, many of us shoulder our own personal dramas from illness, difficulties in our primary relationships, to wondering why we have to negotiate so many changes.  Every day a new wrinkle appears that must be added to the fabric of our destiny.  Sometimes when we look to you for answers, we find that few come.  That is why we live by trust in your love, even when some events in our world make absolutely no sense.  

Help us to understand the temptation to think only of ourselves when such challenges come.
  Enable us to keep our energy flowing away from us so, that the person we are becoming might add to the light of your presence for others.  Guide us to know how better to serve, how better to interpret life, and how better to use wisely the time we have left in our lives. Help us to become humble in recognizing that we are bristles in the powerful paintbrush with which you create the portrait of humanity.  We pray these thoughts through the loving spirit of Jesus, the Christ, who taught us to say when we pray . . .