“It Only Takes A Spark”


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 . . .