Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler –
September 22, 2019
Centenary United Methodist Church
Ecclesiastes 3:9-15; Luke 16:1-8
This morning our Gospel lesson's conclusion is very different
from any story Jesus told. In this story, a wealthy man had a manager
whose embezzling practices earned him the termination of his employment.
Immediately, the manager located everyone who was
in debt to his master. He had these clients settle their accounts by
steeply discounting what each one owed.
When the wealthy man realized what his manager was doing, he
praised him for his shrewdness!
The servant was gathering friends for himself so that after he
left his position, he would have people who owed him favors.
The point that Jesus was making is found in the
last verse, "The people of this world are much better equipped and
skillful in managing their affairs than are the people who belong to
the light." (Luke 16:8)
Most of us would agree that Jesus' point was correct even two thousand
years later. This is an accurate assessment of people who even
have great faith. When it comes to their decision-making, often
their emotions and logic are focused on getting an education, finding
employment, locating a compatible mate, and supporting their families.
This formula for people has been in place for generations.
Whatever their beliefs and faith have given them, in most cases, such
qualities remain a secondary consideration. Historically, the survival of people was a primary
responsibility. For
instance, it took centuries before food supplies became consistent
enough to be available every day.
Today, nations engage in trade.
The availability of a large supply and variety of food was
unheard of centuries ago. When there is a shortage somewhere, the
suppliers of food will find other vendors from their network of clients.
We have little perspective on how our ancestors had to
struggle to get what we take for granted.
The abundant flow of goods and services is a
relatively new experience in recent generations.
Once the arrival of every kind of
creature-comfort became consistently available, people began to expect
instant gratification for their every desire.
Today, we have far more leisure
time and less worries about meeting our physical needs than at any time
in history. Years ago, a friend of mine was hosting two women
from the former Soviet Union who were coming to the U.S. as resource
people for a scientific conference.
On the way home from picking them up at the airport, Mimi stopped
by a grocery store to pick up a few snack items.
When the three of them entered
the store, the two visitors stood frozen as they stared at the
abundance of fresh vegetables, fruit, all kinds of freshly butchered
meat, an enormous variety of breads, and frozen food. They said: Do you Americans know what you have? You have no idea how long it
takes for us to buy our groceries in our home town.
We stand in long lines just to
buy bread. Here, everything
is readily available in one place. How
can this be? No one back home will believe us. We thoroughly understand how right Jesus was when
he said, "The people of this world are much better equipped and skillful
in managing their affairs than are the people who belong to the light."
We remember that Jesus said, "You marvel at seeing the things
that I do, but a time will come when you will do even greater things."
(John 14:12) Jesus' observation was based on knowledge that he
could not share with his disciples. Once Jesus said, "I have so much
that I would like to tell you, but now it would be too difficult for you
to understand." (John 16:12)
All that he could do during this
time in history was to remind them that there was another aspect of
their lives that they were ignoring even if they were being obedient to
the Laws of Moses. Today, many people in highly developed societies
are surrounded with the abundance of their achievements.
Just think of it.
During our lifetime, astronauts have walked on the moon. We can read
books on our wireless tablets.
All the information we need is at our fingertips from our
computers rather than from encyclopedias. We can go on Google World
and travel anywhere in the world without leaving our homes.
The newer cars are highly computerized. We are moving toward a
time when cars will safely drive themselves to our desired destinations. Yet, there are cracks in our patterns of
living in the midst of our abundance. Now that we have more time to
devote to other things, many of us are showing signs of spiritual
malnutrition. Very few people recognize this as a problem. The people
who readily see what is happening to people are pastors, doctors,
psychiatrists and therapists of every variety.
We find headlines announcing that people who have
everything that money can buy are found unresponsive from a drug
overdose in their luxurious condos.
There are countless people who are struggling with their diets,
constipation, stress and anxiety attacks, loneliness, frustration,
aggressive domestic disputes, addictions, side-effects of prescription
drugs, and mental illnesses. When people were struggling to feed their families
during former times, many of these signs of spiritual malnutrition were
absent. Jesus' words have caught
up with many survivors of the golden age so there is hope that
people will find a way to nourish an aspect of themselves that has
long-since been forgotten by the masses. Once again, consequences are telling the world's
populations that they need to get their lives more emotionally and
intellectually balanced and stabilized.
Abundance of everything cannot deliver what people need.
People are still searching for
peace, satisfaction, fulfillment, a sense of wonder, and being loved.
Each of us wants our lives to be
free of fear. What did Jesus know that he could not discuss with
his disciples? Think about this.
What was Jesus communicating when he said, "As you have done it
to one of the least of these, you have done it unto me." (Matthew
25:40f) We have memorized this verse without knowing what it means. Jesus was telling his listeners that everyone was
like him. What made Jesus
stand out as one-of-a-kind, or an incarnation of God was his level of
awareness. Like Jesus,
all of us have come from the same environment but, due to the
amnesia that occurs during our birth, only a few people understand
this. How could the
disciples have absorbed this information?
All of us are living on different levels of awareness and
understanding. (John 10:34)
People appear very different from each other but underneath the hood,
we have the same powers and abilities that Jesus had. We come here and assume these very limited
forms to see what direction our preferences
will take us.
(Ephesians 4:11-13) Each of us must discover how to
manage and take responsibility for our lives.
Depending on how we use what we
find, some of us will become saviors while others will decide to become
tyrants and dictators.
Who we are inside will surface through the choices we make?
When our life-energies become exhausted and we
graduate from our earthly experiences, all of us will return to the
environment from whence we came. There
we will understand ourselves with clarity. We will either be at peace by
the decisions we made, or become deeply and regretfully disappointed
with how we performed. All of us
will have more homework to do while on our way to becoming
loving creators. In other words, our world is nothing more than a
simulator that tests the quality of our desired pursuits. (John
14:2) St. Francis had awakened spiritually to a more
refined level of understanding while living in the midst of this
illusionary world. He
figured out where he was, discovered for himself why God created such an
environment, and began to reflect the very qualities of the Creator that
Jesus reflected. He defined those responses in his well-known prayer as
follows: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it
is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are
born to eternal life. When Hurricane Humberto
struck Bermuda last week, we were warned of its coming days in advance.
We were instructed how to prepare. During the storm, people were
contacting each other to check on them. Following the storm, our
regiment was dispatched to aid in the restoration of our cluttered
roads. Belco crews worked feverishly to restore our electricity.
In short, many people pulled together to serve each other.
BUT, once our drill of, "love one another as I have
loved you" is behind us, it will not take long for many of us to revert
back to our partisan ways. For those of us who do understand like St. Francis
did, we have learned that no one needs to fix the world.
The world is perfect just as it is for what our
environment was designed to do.
We can only refine ourselves by choosing to serve one another as
Jesus understood. We are
all like Jesus but we are not as spiritually awake as he was.
(Ecclesiastes 1:9) While this understanding is a challenge to believe,
our beliefs about this process do not matter. What we are experiencing
has nothing to do with any particular religion.
Beliefs can never govern how the
universe was created to be for all of us.
We all have the same abilities as spirit-beings. What
activates those abilities is our choice to do so. We can practice every day to act our age. The
reality is that all of us are the same age.
Knowing that each of us is an
infinite spirit-being living with amnesia in these limited bodies. Jesus
showed us how to live while we learn to wake up to our magnificence.
Like Jesus, St. Francis and others have figured out what is really
happening on planet earth.
Once we join them in our understanding, we will be better equipped to
teach others that we have nothing in this life of which to be afraid.
CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER
We thank you God, for
the many forms in which love comes to bring healing to our lives.
An illness has a way of teaching us the value of our health.
A failure teaches us humility and patience.
A "yes" to a new responsibility often gives us a skill to be
refined. Our increased
financial generosity helps us to give hands and feet
to helping others less fortunate.
Teach us to greet change with open arms.
Help us to understand that to resist change often leads us to
choose blindness over insight, security over growth, and death over
life. Guide us, O God, to be
at peace with the joy of being alive.
Amen. PASTORAL PRAYER
Always faithful God, we enter our place where we
commune together to find the peace that has the power to still our
spirits, even though many on our island are still without electrical
power. The power you give to
us is never in short supply.
The highways within our minds are often clogged with the traffic of
worries and fears of our own creation. Always it appears as though
the little things are the most troubling and disruptive.
How often, O God, our lack of understanding is what causes us to
stand in our own shadow.
There are moments when we look with dread upon responsibilities that are
clearly ours to perform. Yet, we marvel at the many forms in which your
spirit comes to us. How
often during a moment of doubt, we have heard you whisper to us, "Trust
me, we can do this together"?
How many times have we found ourselves in the midst of a fragile
moment, when someone appeared who gave us the insight that inspired our
courage to face the numerous hurricanes of life?
How many times have we learned that when we move away from our
own preoccupations, your guidance is clear?
Your love of each of us is without parallel. We have found this week, countless examples of
neighbors helping neighbors, of emergency personnel very busy stitching
up people injured during their clean-up efforts, and of the skills of
electricians going non-stop at their task of restoring our island's
electricity. It took our island's community working together to get the
job done in time for the arrival of Hurricane Jerry on Tuesday. And,
then the process must be repeated in as many times as needed.
Jesus taught that this could become our new normal if most
of us joined in making heaven visible here on earth. With
grateful hearts, we thank Jesus for what he gave us as he taught us to
say when we pray . . . |