Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – August 4, 2019

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 107:1-9; Luke 12:13-21

Our text this morning from Luke is one of Jesus's frequent lessons that often becomes lost in our spiritual inventory. He wanted his listeners to distinguish between our material world and the invisible world that governs the spirit by which we live. Luke wrote:

Watch out and guard yourselves from pursuing symbols that only attach you to the standards of this world. Your true life is not made up of the things that you own, no matter how accomplished you are in acquiring them. Consider first what your assets and accomplishments are in strengthening your inner world of spirit. What makes you wealthy are the skills that you develop that make you one with the spirit of God. (Luke 12:15f)

What makes our choice between the two worlds so challenging to remember is that all of us have incarnated in the first world to see what we can do with our lives. Somewhere in our maturing into adulthood, we become aware that our future has no guarantees and is far from certain. We are leaving the only real security we knew as children, the safe harbor of our family.

Following our formal education, we begin thinking about what we want to do with our lives. Will what we find pay us enough money to care for the needs of our household? Will we have enough to support us during the years after our retirement?

Something has to happen in our lives to awaken us to the second world that we cannot see. According to Jesus, this world is far more important even though no one is teaching much about it. This second, invisible world governs our emotions, our moods, our attitudes, our inspiration, and many of our other responses. The urge to love others is a learned response that is not automatic.

The time came in my relationship with Lois when she invited me to spend the weekend with her. (Don't get ahead of me here.) She took me home to meet her family. I was immediately drawn to her father who was an excellent auto-mechanic. He possessed skills to which I had never been exposed. He could repair almost everything that had worn out.

I had an awakening that weekend. I decided that no matter what I did to earn a living, more than anything I wanted every person I met to become my personal trainer. Such people would teach me qualities of life that cannot be learned by any other means. My invisible world needed training. Some of you know the many times this theme has found its way into my sermons.

During the early days of my ministry, I subscribed to a business magazine printed by Malcolm Forbes. One article influenced me in a very dramatic and unexpected way. It was the story of a university professor at an Ivy League University who had earned two PhDs. He was a department head and earning a remarkable income. He had written several books on the value of preserving antiquity.

He chose to give up his tenured professorship to become a trash collector in Manhattan, New York City. Why would a man with two doctoral degrees be drawn to trash collecting? His reason was that he was not happy with the academic setting or with the people with whom he had to work.

He had developed a well-trained eye for antiques, a sideline that had made him wealthy in a material sense. In his new job he could spot a gem from among the junk that the younger generations were discarding in their hast to move into their million-dollar brownstone houses that they were purchasing.

He grew to truly enjoy his new friends because they were men who were very different from his snooty, intellectual colleagues at the university who were consumed with ambition and competition for various department-heads. His new friends were not complicated and his stress level had dropped considerably.

The quality of his life that had become the most compelling was to leave the streets of Manhattan clean of trash and debris. He could see the results of his efforts when the teaching profession rarely revealed such results. He taught his new associates to perform their duties to such a degree of perfection that no one could come behind them and do a better job.

This former professor had an enormous effect on his new friends. He became their hero, particularly when they learned what he had given up to become one of them. Jesus had done the same thing. (Philippians 2:7)

He also began teaching his associates why someone's trash often became someone else's gold. He showed them how certain pieces of furniture were extremely valuable because they were not being made anymore. They were created out of hard wood by master craftsmen. Such pieces were being replaced by veneered particleboard that better fits the needs of the new throw-away society.

That article was life-changing for me. That former professor had learned not to take himself too seriously because of his academic accomplishments. He was a maverick who did not care what other people were thinking about his life-style.

A personal growth-experience happened in my first church due to this professor's story. Our custodians at Cheverly were in their 80s and needed help. The trustees of the church offered me the opportunity to earn a little more money by becoming their assistant. I gladly accepted. I did it all, e.g., mopping the floors, cleaning toilets, and running the vacuum cleaner. I was learning why it is important to store my ego in the basement next to where the professor stored his.

I was buffing the floor of the fellowship hall one Saturday morning before setting up our round tables for a wedding reception later that afternoon. The mother of the bride came in and began giving me specific instructions on how she wanted the tables arranged. Because of how she was speaking to me, I realized that I was being treated as someone who was way beneath her social status. Life was teaching me the importance of allowing her to be whoever she wanted to be without evoking any unpleasant responses within me.

At 2:00 p.m. that afternoon, I was standing in the chancel performing the wedding ceremony for her daughter. At the reception, the bride's mother could not bring herself to even look in my direction. I made the overture of approaching her with smiles and she could not have been kinder and more complimentary. Earlier, she treated me differently because I was wearing the uniform of a custodian.

Part of our personal riches, stored in our invisible world, come as a result of our on-the-job-training from anyone who enters our path. When we stay aware of our choice to remain students, our identities encounter countless opportunities to keep growing until we graduate from this life.

How do we sense that a new lesson is about to confront us? The earliest signs are negative emotions. All of us have had moments during our lives when we have struggled with our feelings. Instead of our energy flowing away from us in some form of service, we choose to feel judged, disrespected, inferior, and unloved.

This is precisely the point where we are allowing a very painful experience to affect our identity by draining our energy and our self-esteem. We have surrendered control of our identity to someone else or some unpleasant experience. Often, we do not realize what is happening to us because of a teaching that we have misplaced or forgotten.

Every rough patch becomes an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves. Life is offering us an opportunity to acquire riches in the world that no one can see. This wealth accumulates the more we instantly let go of our hurt feelings, extend instant forgiveness to others, and develop understanding as we regain control over who we are.

In our lesson, Jesus used an illustration about a wealthy person who tore down his barns in order to build larger ones. After accomplishing his goal, he said to himself, "Take life easy, eat, drink, and enjoy yourself." Jesus reported what God had to say to this man:

You have acted very foolishly. Tonight, you are going to die. What is going to happen with all your material possessions? Your life has been all about you acquiring what you valued. What have you given away?

There was another occasion where Jesus taught a similar lesson. He said,

Do not store for yourselves treasures on earth, instead store riches for yourselves in Heaven. Where your riches are will tell you in which world your treasures are stored. (Matthew 6:19f)

Think about Jesus' death for a moment. Can you imagine what the public thought when they found that Jesus had been crucified between two thieves? The optics of such a thing for the local people had to be very disturbing. Many passersby may not have known anything about Jesus. They had grown accustomed to seeing people who had been found guilty of a capital crime against Rome. They may have assumed that Jesus was one more that Rome had caught. Who could have imagined that the religious authorities were killing God's son? No one.

Every unpleasant, unsettling experience is trying to teach us to love even when the attitudes of others are driving nails through our wrists to a cross when they treat us as an inferior failure.

A lesson that is often misplaced by most of us is that such a designation belongs to each of us as well, an identity that no one has the power to take away from us. We also are God's sons and daughters. It may take a kind, supportive friend, a magazine article, or a sermon to remind us who we really are.

Hopefully, if we have remained a student-in-training who enjoys on-the-job-training, as painful as it often is, our authentic identity as God's daughter or son maintains our lives built on a rock. The identity of being an angel-in-the-flesh is what has made us very rich with what truly matters to both worlds.

Keep your identity taped on the corner of your mirror so that you can read it every morning. Do not misplace your identity when you become exposed to the insane craziness of the material world. The world needs more angels who never misplace who they are and the role they need to play in fashioning the future. We have been called to fill the vacuum created by those who have lost their orientation in life. Let us all join our spiritual musculature and remain the shepherds whom Jesus invited us to become.

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

Loving God, thank you for giving us such a remarkable world. We are surrounded by many experiences that challenge us to refine our character. We have learned that kindness is not mere goodness, it is a power; that forgiveness is not a weakness, it is a skill, and that peace is not withdrawal, it is a choice. We know that our earthly treasures do have their place as tools for living. We have learned that forming our identities around them is a mistake. Teach us to define ourselves by what we give away rather than what we keep for a rainy day. Encourage us to live with fresh attitudes by allowing our lives to give form to your will, guidance, and design. Amen.

PASTORAL PRAYER

Always loving God, each time we collectively gather in our church, the opportunity presents itself for us to become transformed. Hymns often carry us back to memories of another day. Coming to the chancel for communion helps us to recall how Jesus wanted to be remembered through our breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. The spoken word helps us to revisit the attitudes we use and the goals we set for ourselves.

Each of us is well aware that we are a work in progress. We have experienced events that call on skills we fear we do not have. We recognize that it does not take much stimulation for angry and hostile thoughts to enter our minds demanding that we respond. We know how easy it is to turn our heads to small compromises, to wink at what we call white lies, and to walk away from opportunities to lighten someone else’s load.

How freeing it is, O God, to know that we can let go of people, attitudes, and offending experiences when we understand who we are and who it is Jesus called us to be. Help us to be the sponge that absorbs hurts, tears, frustrations, and disappointments that other people share with us. You have been our teacher, O God. We cannot count the number of times you have absorbed what we have shared with you. With grateful hearts for your patient presence in our lives, we pray the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to say when they prayed . . .