Medition Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – December 24, 2019
Centenary United Methodist Church
A Service of Lessons and Carols Many of us are familiar with the hymn Pass It
On that can be found in our hymnal.
Just in case visitors to our service have never heard of this
hymn, I will recite the first verse and everyone will be on the same
page with the hymn's theme: It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon
all those around can warm up to its glowing.
That's how it is with God's love.
Once you've experience it, you spread his love to everyone; you
want to pass it on. Love in all of its many forms is magical.
Sometimes love comes in an unanswered prayer.
There are other times when love comes in a form of a painful
experience. Jesus called
that "pruning." (John 15:2) Tonight, we celebrate the birth of a baby born in
the town of Bethlehem who grew up, had an enormous spiritually
transforming awakening at his baptism., and began to teach different
variations of The Golden Rule:
"Do to others what you would like others to do to you."
Once we have experience God's love, we want to pass it on. There was a high school senior who had experienced
a miracle as a young girl.
A series of events took place that could only be defined as a God
Thing. What happened was
absolutely impossible to consider, but it happened. As a five- year old,
she had only days to live due to a congenital heart defect. The only
doctor who had performed the corrective surgery successfully numerous
times was at Boston's Childrens Hospital.
The surgeon was unavailable due to the Christmas holiday.
During a series of remarkable events, the doctor
from Boston's children had gone to visit her sister in a small hospital
in South Carolina where she was about to deliver a Christmas baby.
The doctor overheard two physicians talking about this child who
was dying. The only doctor
who could do the surgery and the dying child were in the same hospital
in South Carolina. The short version of this event was that the surgeon
and Rebecca were united.
The surgery was successful.
That five-year old grew up and as a result of this God Thing, she
dedicated her life to being in service to others.
She was passing on God's love.
Rebecca was now a senior in high school when she
hatched a plan. There was a
bitter old man living just outside of her town.
He appeared to hate everybody.
Naturally, everyone stayed clear of him.
Word came from a nurse who attended Rebecca's church that the old
man had a terrible accident with his chainsaw.
The nurse was asking for prayers for Mr. Taylor.
A team of doctors were able to save his leg but it would be
months for him to regain the full use of his leg.
Rebecca invited her youth fellowship at her
Methodist church to gather.
She recruited the kids from the Presbyterian and Baptist churches in
town. At their meeting, her
proposal was to cut enough fire wood for the old man until he was able
to do this for himself. He heated his home with a wood-burning stove.
He was in the process of cutting his wood when the accident
occurred. She was greeted with a host of negative responses.
No one wanted to help that old man. He had been rude and ugly to
so many people. She said: Look!
Shut up and listen to me! I
will not take "No" for an answer from any of you.
We are going to do this. We can meet after school, cut, and split
enough fire wood to help this man to get through the winter. This will
be our Christmas gift to him.
No, he has never done anything for us or for our town, but we
cannot talk about how meaningful Christmas is for us if we cannot help
someone who we think is undeserving. How
many of us deserves God's love but that love comes anyway?
Tim, put your hand down.
Who are you kidding?
Seriously, not one of us is worthy of God's love.
We can gather early one morning around 3:00 a.m.,
sneak out of our houses, and meet at the site where we cut wood.
Together, we will stack the wood on a side of his house under the
cover of darkness. The teenagers really got into her plan and they
pulled it off. It was one
of the neatest things that many of the kids had ever done.
They gathered and quietly moved the wood.
This army of youth stacked a number of cords in his wood cribs
alongside of his home. The
trickiest task was to stack the final wood on his front porch in the
darkness where there was no wood crib. Their task had almost
succeeded when the wood gave way and came crashing down on the porch. The resulting noise and vibration awakened the old
man. His lights came on and
he appeared on his front porch with his shot gun. He yelled, "Get off my
property you rascals!" The kids scattered except Rebecca.
She said to him, "Mr. Taylor, we love you and the stacking of
your wood was done by three youth groups from our churches.
We wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and this was our gift to
you." The old man looked at the wood and shouted, "Get out of here!
I don't need anyone's help!" Rebecca
lowered her gaze and said, "Very well, I will leave." The three churches held one Christmas Eve service.
It was the Methodists' turn to be the host church. The service had just
started. After the first hymn, in came the old man with his shot gun.
Everyone froze. There were murmurs of "What is he doing here?
What's with his shot gun?" Mr. Taylor slowly and painfully made
his way down the center aisle using his cane.
He pointed to the three pastors
and motioned for them to come down and meet him in front of the chancel. The pastors came down and to their surprise, he
handed them his shot gun and began to cry.
Then he turned and faced the congregation and began to tell them
what their teenagers had done for him.
He had not responded well to them and quickly apologized. His
words came as a total shock to the teenagers' families who knew nothing
about the activity of their sons and daughters.
He asked the pastors if he could stay for the
service. In the daylight,
he saw the neatly stacked cords of seasoned oak and was overwhelmed
emotionally. The deed of
kindness by those teenagers transformed his seething anger to gratitude.
Their extending love in spite of his perpetual bitter attitudes became
powerful medicine for a man who had been hurting inside for the
last forty years. His anger was kindled when his wife was struck and
killed by an intoxicated driver. On that Christmas Eve, he confessed
that a ton of raw emotions had been lifted from his life by
receiving love that he knew he did not deserve. Celebrating Jesus' birth is also an invitation.
Like what happened to Rebecca, once we have experienced God's
love, it became her turn to pass it on. Think about what happened that
Christmas. No one but God
knows what giving one gift of kindness can do.
Rebecca influenced three groups of teenagers, three
congregations, and a bitter old man.
Not bad for a group of loving rascals! Now, in the
present time and on into the New Year, can each of us be a spark to get
the fire of kindness going?
Amen.
PASTORAL PRAYER
Eternal God, very few of us can come to a Christmas Eve service
completely free from the distractions that come from our day to day
living. We confess that our thoughts and feelings are seldom free even
though our last theme of Advent was the possibility of experiencing
sustained Peace. No matter where we are in life, nothing could be any
more complicated and stressful than what happened to an expectant mother
traveling on a donkey very close to her due date, to register for the
taxes Rome intended to levy on everyone.
This Christmas Eve we are united in the celebration of that baby's
birth. Many of us are filled with gratitude for who that baby grew
up to be. Not everyone understands the blueprint-for-living that the
former carpenter was pointing to with his words.
Even so, we are grateful for how much expressing loving-energy
gives to our lives when we give without considering the cost.
Jesus taught that your love is so powerful as an energy-field that there
is nothing powerful enough, not our beliefs or disbeliefs, not our
attitudes or our decisions to dilute the strength of that love. If
the scales of disbelief cover our vision that is our choice. So
often we build barriers that prevent love from shining through the
windowpanes of our lives. We pray that as we leave our service
tonight, that we will not be strangers to the peace that loving energy
can provide to us and others every day. We pray these thoughts through
the spirit of Jesus, the Christ, who taught his followers to say when
they prayed . . . |