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June 27, 2004
Faithfulness
Faithfulness
Psalm 32 / I Samuel 12: 19-25
Romans 9: 1-5
June 27th, 2004
We look around this morning and see reminders of another very happy week of Vacation Bible School. Every year since before I arrived as pastor, this congregation has offered its children and others an intense time of learning Bible-truth lovingly and with great imagination. This year VBS was led by three of our young people who enjoyed VBS as children. The next generation has stepped up to the plate. And I am very grateful. They dun good.
How suitable that on a Sunday when the theme before us is faithfulness, that we should have taken part once again faithfully in a ministry to our children—with our children, now grown, leading the way. Faithfulness is something that takes place in small bites. It unravels slowly against the tests of time. The folk who have led it for years have gray heads now, and they haven’t quite the energy they had before. But we found new strength to keep on. Faithfulness unfolds over generations, and it grows in moments when what we want to do comes up against what we ought to do, and what we ought to do wins.
This morning I hope I may stir you to remember that though faithfulness costs us something, it is worth it. Faithfulness is as necessary to our well being as water is to fish. As a fish out of water dies so we die a slow death if we are removed from an environment of faithfulness. Faithfulness provides an environment that we must help build. We trust in the faithfulness of God. His faithfulness rubs off on us, and our faithfulness rubs off too. We are happiest when we are faithful. Faithfulness builds strong friendships, strong homes, strong churches. Faithfulness is good air to breathe.
We have been following the story of I Samuel over the past few months. And we have lingered for some weeks on the theme of Israel’s rejecting God as their king, whose will was mediated through Samuel. They wanted to be like other nations that had a king. Samuel took it hard. It felt like they had rejected him. What had he done wrong by them? He wondered. Actually nothing. Their desire for a king to be like every other neighboring country was like other quibbles they had with previous leaders and with God. Discontent displaced gratitude.
A bit later in I Samuel we read, “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as iniquity as idolatry.” Israel spun out a story of discontent. The effects of a discontented spirit are like black magic, contaminating everything. To discontented people nothing is right. Even what is obviously good is given a sorry twist by someone who is discontented. The story of Israel as it unfolds is like a chain where the links are moments of discontent, where even what was good was made to seem bad. “You brought us out of bondage in Egypt only to starve us to death in the desert.” Rebellion against God grew in small moments of well- rehearsed discontent.
This week our children learned of Israel’s complaining when water was not instantaneously available when they were thirsty as Moses led them through the desert. They complained when they were hungry. Though I suspect we are hard on Israel because we would no doubt have found life in the desert daunting too. But it is not beside the point that God had cared for them in every instance of their need. Each time they faced a need they might have remembered that God had supplied their need before—and in remarkable ways. But they didn’t remember. So they complained. Waiting is a hard game to play.
The desire for immediate gratification is not a new thing, an American thing. Sure it was tough living in the desert, but they knew a Promised Land awaited them. And it was worth keeping on to get.
You and I who make it through the ordeals of a long educational grind see before us a career, a way of earning a living congenial to us, so we keep on going. Israel faced a like gauntlet of tests, but with a terrific goal ahead of them. God was testing them, not just to see if they had stamina, but to build in them the character they would need to live well in the Promised Land. Forgetfulness replaced faithfulness.
They forgot so soon the literally miraculous way God got them out of slavery in Egypt. God unleashed ten plagues, unusual scourges accompanying Moses’ insistent plea to the king, “Let my people go.” Israel saw these plagues hit Israel and knew they were by special act of God.
We haven’t time to go over the whole story of their discontent. But this morning we have come to a moment when Israel realized that their rebellion against God and Samuel had reached a danger point. We read that “all the people said to Samuel, ‘Pray for your servants . . . that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king’.”
I imagine some leader emerged from the people who realized that the common-sense thing to do, to have a king as the Ammonites and Moabites did, and the Egyptians, and all the other nations, was a violation of their relationship with God. Perhaps he drew together a caucus of the leaders. He told them, “Look fellows, at what this means. It means we’re rejecting that whole way of life that began with Abraham, and grew stronger with Moses. It seems right but it’s wrong.”
So this leader of the rebellious movement came to Samuel, surrounded by other leaders in front of hundreds of people they had persuaded to think again. “Pray for us, Samuel, that we don’t die.” Because asking for a king was taking the first big step in the direction of death as a nation. Asking for a king was a giant step of faithlessness, rejecting God’s leadership, rejecting the leadership of good men like Samuel, as they had fought against all the other judges God had raised up for them.
They fought the way children sometimes fight against mom and dad in the home. God’s way was boring. Face it, faithfulness has always required a little boredom. Faithfulness is probably the least exciting way of life imaginable.
But God was not so bored with Israel’s faithlessness that he could no longer be faithful to Israel. Samuel said to this assembly of people who had come to him fearfully, realizing what they had done in asking for a king, “Don’t be afraid for the Lord will not cast away his people. Why? For his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.”
Faithfulness does not work if it is only offered in exchange. When you and I live by a principle that we will be faithful if the conditions are right, that’s not faithfulness. Faithfulness requires an element of “in spite of” to keep on. God said to Israel, I’ll be faithful because that’s my way, not because you earned it.
God remained faithful.
So did Samuel. Samuel said to this embassy that came to him in fear, “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. I will instruct you in the good and the right way.” Samuel might well have given up on this discontented people. “Let God care for them, but I’ve had it.” But Samuel was faithful to his task of leading Israel on, despite their antagonistic response to him. He kept on, day after day, overcoming his disappointment. This is faithfulness, keeping on, no matter what.
Yet in the story of God’s unfolding faithfulness a very scary moment came. In Exodus 32 we read of a moment when God had about had it with Israel. After Moses’ brother made them a golden calf as a focus for their worship, the Lord told Moses, “I have seen this stiff-necked people; now therefore let me alone, that I may consume them, but of you I will make a great nation.” This means that God was going to give up on Israel and start again with Moses.
It was quite an opportunity for Moses personally. Opportunity not only knocked for him to make it big, but it was God who did the knocking. It was a chance for Moses to become the leader of a new wave. God’s people would no longer be called Israelites but Moses-ites. But Moses refused this honor, even though God offered it to him. In utterest faithfulness, remembering that God had made a covenant with Israel, and that God does not forsake his covenants no matter what, Moses defended God’s honor and Israel’s future. He stood up to God and said, “NO.” He pleaded with God, putting himself on the line. “If you will not forgive their sin, blot me out of your book which you have written.”
Moses was saying, “Send me to hell, but don’t forsake your people.” That’s faithfulness, folks. He was faithful to his people even to the point of sacrificing his eternal destiny for them.
Faithfulness works itself out when we feel like quitting. God felt like quitting, giving up on Israel. It sounds almost blasphemous to say, but how else can we read this story. Because Moses was faithful, God resumed his faithfulness to the covenant with Israel. The Lord replied to Moses, “Go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you.” In other words, I’ll keep on being their God. They survived this test of God’s patience. God remained faithful in this moment of severe testing. We can hardly imagine what a momentous decision weighed in the balance that day.
Faithfulness is the acid test of love. Faithfulness requires self-sacrifice over and over again. Faithfulness mimics God’s ways. Faithfulness creates an environment in which we can thrive. It reproduces in human society the ways of God.
One of my favorite hymns is “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” I expect many of you would claim this too.
It is based on a brief remark in the otherwise very gloomy Book of Lamentations. Jeremiah the weeping prophet, looking at the precipitous fall of his country, enemies waiting to destroy the beloved Temple and lead his people away into exile, writes:
“Remember my affliction and my bitterness, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.
A Methodist pastor from Kentucky, Thomas Chisholm, pondered this passage from lamentations and wrote these words. Pastor Chisholm died in 1960 after serving small churches in the Lexington area. What a gift to us this hymn is.
He breaks down God’s faithfulness into categories. “All I have needed Thy hand has provided.” “Summer and winter and spring time and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness to Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.” “Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,” “Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide.” On we sing of the details of God’s faithfulness. Few of us can sing this without feeling strong emotions rising inside.
Why? Because when we think of God’s faithfulness it is the capstone of the whole environment in which we learned to trust. God has built into the fabric of our being an expectation of faithfulness.
Very soon after we were born you and I began to learn to trust our parents faithfulness to us. First there was that soft, warm form with a familiar face that smiled and spoke gently and tenderly as she nurtured you from her own body. You learned of faithfulness first from her. In order to faithfully care for you, your mother endured sleepless nights, keeping on when she was very, very tired. You didn’t know about the tiredness. All you knew was you could trust that person to care for you.
The school of faithfulness has other teachers. If you were born into a loving home where the parents were integrally involved in a local church, you discovered you were surrounded by people that you could trust. I see that one of the most important gifts we offer the next generation is the interest and support we give as a congregation. Faithfully you greeted my children and spoke with them as they grew up here and they learned that the people of God provide an environment very congenial and warm. A faithful congregation teaches faithfulness over the years.
But in every one of us there is a collision between our longing for faithfulness and our ability to be faithful. We struggle against the “realities” of life. The realities of life include weariness, disappointment, disagreements, disillusionments, discontent, and a host of other “dishes.” The burdens of life are so varied. When our burdens get heavy we are tempted to give up.
We turn to God and in our hymns praise his faithfulness. But we need reminders faithfulness from people too. God has graciously, patiently provided a school for faithfulness that allows the risk of disappointed, discontented people participating in the teaching. It is a delicate task God has given us, to be faithful. But if you want to be deeply happy, be deeply faithful. If you want to breed in the coming generation ways that lead them to happiness, be faithful. If you want to finish your course with joy, so that at the end of your life you can hear the gentle voice of your own conscience echoing God’s approval, be faithful.
I am thankful for those whose faithfulness taught me faithfulness. I am thankful for those here whose faithfulness provided a haven for my children to come to think of God and God’s people as faithful. I am glad we can have a part in God’s on-going work, displaying his faithfulness, nurturing faithfulness in us too.
Let us pray: O faithful Lord God, when we are tired or disappointed, it is hard to be faithful. Give to us your Holy Spirit to lead us to do what you have surely taught us is right, and that pleases us best, to live faithfully. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2004
The Plight of Our Humanity
The Plight of Our Humanity
I Samuel 12: 6-12 / Hebrews 10: 19-25
June 20th, 2004
One of our favorite miracles Jesus performed was to take a shepherd boy’s lunch of five small barley pita breads and two small fish and feed five thousand men plus women and children. More was left after Jesus fed this huge crowd than what he had to begin with. Philip had asked Jesus, “What are these when we must feed so many?” Jesus said, “Just watch!’
We all love it when we see small abilities turn into magnificent achievement in a person. Ben Carson was an African American born in a Baltimore tenement housing project. Like everyone else there, his family was poor. It was a typically rough neighborhood where boys entertained themselves with petty crime. Violence could and did erupt on the spur of the moment. He nearly killed another boy who made him mad, but the knife blade was deflected by the boy’s belt buckle. Immediately he realized what he’d almost done to his friend, and it was the start of his change of life. Carson might have gone to prison as a murderer. Instead, he is now chief of pediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. He is in demand around the world to separate Siamese twins joined in complicated ways. How much he made of so little. We love stories like this.
We become more thoughtful and quiet when we read the opposite kind of story. Someone born into a good home, great parents, every opportunity, good education, takes a path that leads to homelessness. He finds himself on the streets eating the husks of life. Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son tells of this kind of life. And in this story the younger son, in coming to the Father is returning not only to a decent way of life, but also to God who is the very image of the welcoming Father.
We little realize the scope of the problem that the great 17th century French mathematician and earnest Christian, Blaise Pascal, called “the misery and grandeur of man.” What is it about our species that can move either from circumstances of great misery to high success and goodness, or from great opportunity to the depths of misery? It is a bi-polar tendency that operates on more than one level. We are apt to notice some levels better than others.
You who teach school notice it when a student with great ability wastes it. This distresses you no end. The semester started well but ended badly. What a waste, you thought. Conversely, you see students with modest ability that through hard work, excel. I had such a student in Hebrew who enters seminary this year after learning more about the Hebrew Bible than I think any other student I’ve had. He did not stand out to me early on. He gradually caught my attention.
We notice it when great promise is squandered in the financial arena. I know someone who literally squandered more than a million dollars on frivolous spending so that this person went from financial security to barely scraping along, and it had nothing to do with the volatile stock market.
We watch with rapt attention when men and women with great business leadership ability tumble from richly paid CEOs, living in luxury into prisoners. Deceitful financial decisions prompted by greed send them off not into the sunset in comfort, but off to prison in handcuffs. Tabloid and newspaper photographers capture their misery eagerly and editors splash the story on the front pages. I am intrigued why people delight to see the fall of others from high positions of various kinds into misery.
The Scriptures before us this morning remind us that there is another level on which this squandering of riches may and often does happen.
Christians love to take comfort in looking at the history of Israel, which illustrates this kind of fall.
In our Old Testament reading we see the old prophet Samuel looking at this people God claimed for his own, He scratches his head in bewilderment. “God brought you out of bondage in Egypt. He cared for you, fed you, fought for you, and then you said, ‘It never happened’. So God treated you briefly as though He was not part of your life, and you got into big trouble with powerful neighbors beating up on you. You cried to God, “Help!” And God helped. Then you repeated the cycle. You got tired of God being your special King and asked for an ordinary king. God gave you a king, even though this meant you rejected Him from being your King.
But that was not the end of Samuel’s words—on the threshold of old age. Even though he was crestfallen with a sense of being personally rejected by people whom he had served faithfully and well, he reminded them of the goodness of God. “Now, if you will fear the Lord and serve him, all will still go well. But if not, then watch out, the hand of the Lord will be against you.”
I wonder if you have tried to picture in your mind’s eye how the story of Israel might have spun out. God wrote Israel’s constitution. How opposite everything might have turned out, leading somehow naturally to the coming of the Messiah who was the blessing to the world promised to Abraham. Might they have skipped over periods of exile, their Temple destroyed? Might they never have lived under foreign nations’ control? No Babylon, no Persia, no Greeks, no Romans over them? Samuel envisioned how it might have been. He offered his people a deal. “If you will fear the Lord and serve him and hearken to his voice . . . it will be well.” They still had a chance. Their history could have taken another course.
Let us turn our thoughts to our own situation. We know that there was a close connection between Israel’s political and national fortunes and their spiritual condition. The “spiritual” aspect of life, the relationship we have with God, is a basic factor in our fortunes too. But it is harder for us to recognize because somehow things have gone so well for us in this land. Our prosperity and apparent security give us a kind of confidence that minimizes the importance of matters spiritual.
We read together from the Epistle to the Hebrews some delicately given counsel to our early Christian forbears. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” This refers to the beginning of life as a follower of Jesus at Baptism. He goes on to say, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering . . . let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
We stopped reading at that point. But in the lines that follow the author of this letter goes on to say some startling things that may well give us pause—who live in a day when we stress so much freedom to choose whether or not we will be faithful.
“For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth there remains no longer a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment.” I’ll stop reading there, but you can check it out for yourself.
Already when the Church was very young a drift was underway that was much like the story of Israel. Great beginnings with Jesus, but forgetfulness, little realizing what was going on inside the heart.
A downward drift begins in moments they didn’t notice. How did faith start to be dissociated from works? How did it happen that rich Christians, who called poor Christians “brother and sister,” thought that it was enough to say, “Have a nice day,” but left them without food to eat, while their own refrigerators and freezers were packed full? How did faith ever get separated from doing what Jesus said his followers do? How did they forget Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats in which he taught that caring for the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, and the sick was caring for him? A drift began that made “faith” turn into mere “belief.”
Paul, and James, and John wrote to remind Christians that faith was not only something that happens unseen in the heart. Paul as well as Jesus’ brother James reminded Christians that how we live, how we behave, what we do, is an inseparable part of faith. What is “dead faith?” Is “dead faith” alive? If not, well, what is it?
The author of Hebrews put a punch to the connection between faith and what we do that remembered some of the stronger things Jesus said. He asked if it is possible after falling away to be restored because in falling away it is like saying Jesus’ death on the cross for us didn’t matter. Falling away? What did that mean? Well, I think it had something to do with behavior as well as what a person said he believed. There was a kind of falling away, which said the wrong things about Jesus—which he never really came as a man. And there was a falling away that looked like luke-warmness, a tepid, so-so kind of drifting, and scarcely noticeable way of life. It was claiming the name, “Christian,” with nothing about the life that suggested being a Christian was following Jesus.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that such a life, claiming to be a Christian but acting like whatever is like crucifying the Son of God afresh. How? I think he means that in treating lightly how Jesus told his followers to live means that Jesus doesn’t really matter. He’s just a religious idea. As the story of the Church unfolded this was a kind of slipping that took place often.
This tendency to slip away from Jesus is a theme Jonathan Edwards amplified in a famous sermon that he actually preached on an Old Testament text, Deuteronomy 32: 35, “Their foot shall slide in due time.” At Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741, he calmly set forth the theme of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The panic he stirred among those who listened to him spread so that there was a noticeable effect in our country referred to by the term “the great awakenings.” But emotional explosions never last.
Now there is something in human nature that responds, at least for the moment, more to fear than to gentle encouragement. Such gentle and kindly encouragement we read in Hebrews, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” It sounds so reasonable, such a good idea. Of course, let us positively re-enforce all that is best in one another. It is good counsel.
But there is so little punch to the good counsel. And we dread any punch at all coming to the counsel given to us either in Scripture or from the institution of the Church. Abuse riddles the story of the Church as it has often exercised spiritual authority in tragic ways. As a consequence, mistrust of the abuse of authority has led to an opposite kind of problem. Faithfulness is entirely an optional thing.
A matter I wrestle with is how we escape the predicament that we have slipped into that we call Jesus “Lord,” but feel no sense of imperative from his authority.
In the second century a devout Christian whom we know as Hermas, wrote a story that raised the question, “How many times can we sin after we are baptized and still be saved?” This story revealed how seriously this fellow took Jesus’ words, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” Whereas we treat Baptism as a public rite of acceptance into the Church, our early Christian forebears thought it was a lot more than that. Baptism meant a deliberate new way of life.
We have an opposite outlook. Martin Luther’s collision with the corrupt medieval church centered on Paul’s application of the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk. We are justified totally by faith, not of works. We cannot ever boast before God that we were good enough.
But what has become of this doctrine of justification by faith? How has it lulled us into the point of view that we don’t even have to try very hard to follow Jesus? We are saved by faith. Faith is something that goes on unseen in the heart, isn’t it? All that needs to happen is something inside our hearts, to which we are asked to give acknowledgement with a public statement, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” God does the rest.
Can you see as I think I do how in this use of Scripture we have slipped away from Jesus’ intentions for us? A process is always at work like the process that made Israel forget God’s care for them, his commandments to them, and the blessed way of life that made them distinct from other nations.
One of my favorite hymns was written by a man who realized that his life had slipped from the days he first realized the goodness of God in sending us Jesus. Perhaps it is the resemblance of his name to mine that keeps in mind that Robert Robinson was pleading to God when he wrote, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” His life had wandered far from his original devotion, so that he was in the bondage of alcohol. I wish our hymnbook had not discarded his plaintive lines:
Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come,
And I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.
He to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood.
But I have read that he didn’t make it back, but remained far away. Those lines were a confession, “
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.
So he implored God, “
Here’s my heart, O takes and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
We are apt to think God will take our hearts and seal them for his courts above as though this is God’s finest intention for us. Our theology gets in the way of our obedience to our Lord Jesus. Justification as God’s sole sovereign act in our behalf is easily misconstrued.
As the Church has disintegrated into many competing churches we may have lost sight of where we could be in Christ. We have emphasized pride in good theology, in thinking better about God and Jesus and the Bible than others think. We have emphasized where our behavior is unlike the errant behavior of others. We have complimented ourselves on our outstanding citizenship cum Christianity. And in all of these self-congratulations we have slipped from the way of Jesus—and don’t realize it.
Something we struggle with in church leadership is realizing that church growth and keeping our people depends providing the goods and services that people expect from the church. We ask, “What can the church do for me?” when the whole foundation of our faith is gratitude for what Jesus has done for us—that results in the question, “How can I give thanks for all the things He has done for me, things so undeserved?” And gratitude leads us to a life of service that does not ask how much or how long or for whom.
Perhaps you recognize a drift in your own life. You know that if all Christians were as you are, there would be some pretty serious problems with the Church. It is not evident that you are grateful to God, a gratitude that leads you to a life of steadfast devotion and selfless service. What should you do?
Rome was not built in a day, the old adage says. Nor is a life of gratitude. A life of gratitude to Jesus begins with the first step and continues with the second, third, etc. It is important to begin. It is important to continue. As I see the Christian life it centers on full confidence in the grace of God lavished on us in Jesus Christ. As recipients of the love of God lavished on us in Christ, it is our privilege; it is my privilege, to give my life, our lives to an expression of gratitude to God. Now how does gratitude act?
This is a question you must answer and I must answer. The hymn we sometimes sing says to God, “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee. Take my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise.” The hymn goes on to itemize how fully we want to give ourselves to God. “Take my hands . . . take my feet . . . take my voice . . . take my lips . . . take my silver and my gold . . . take my will . . . take my heart . . . take my love . . . take myself and I will be ever, only, all for thee.”
I’m hesitant to sing this because it is a very personal prayer of devotion. To sing this without meaning it is to walk on a spiritual banana peel. It is to treat devotion and gratitude as matters of words and not matters of life.
God said to ancient Israel that he wanted their hearts, not their sacrifices. Jesus said, “If you love me do the things that I say.” You and I expect of one another, “If you care for me, show it, and don’t just talk about it.”
How wonderful to know that God accepts us just the way we are, and offers to make us from what we are to what we can be. But he will never do this against our will, without placing our selves deliberately in his hands. I hope that in gratitude to God, thankful for Jesus, you may make your way of life a life of deliberate outworking of gratitude. May the thank you for our lips be coordinate with the thank you of our way of life.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we bless you for this rich gift of life, and for all that you offer us in it. We bless you for your ceaseless love for us and this world you created. Now give to us your Holy Spirit so we may receive and use your gifts to your glory and our joy. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2004
How to Build a Worthy Legacy
How to Build a Worthy Legacy
Psalm 20 / I Samuel 12: 1-5
II Corinthians 7: 2-10
June 13th, 2004
This past week all of us were drawn to remember the life and presidency of Ronald Reagan. The moving ceremonies at the National Cathedral and at the presidential library eclipsed our recollection of the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Normandy Beach.
Twenty years ago, on June 6th, 1984 President Reagan's voice faltered as he said, “The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right . . . faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead—or on the next.” Twenty years later we commemorate the death of a president whose name will linger and we remember the men of Normandy whose names are mostly forgotten.
As I watched the magnificent funeral of President Reagan in our National Cathedral, and heard the eloquent, heart-felt words of Margaret Thatcher, President Reagan’s children, and so many others, I thought about the young men to whom Julia Ward Howe referred in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” “As He [that is, Jesus Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” The men of Normandy Beach once sang those words not realizing they would fulfill the last line.
Often in watching President Reagan’s funeral I felt very proud to be an American. He made it seem a very good thing to be an American. Even President Gorbochov was there to celebrate the life of this great American. In the Book of Proverbs we read: "When a man's ways please the Lord, he wakes even his enemies to be at peace with him." I also found my heart aching and very grateful to the young people of our country who have fought for our freedom, and who still risk their lives to bring hope and decency to this horrendously troubled world.
It is good that we stop in the mad whirl of life and think on these things periodically, because you and I too are leaving a legacy of one kind or another. Have you pondered how you will be remembered? More to the point, have you pondered the impact of your life whether or not your name will be remembered?
I had no idea that the attention of the world would be drawn to President Reagan and Normandy beach when I chose the Scriptures before us this morning, or the topic, “How to Build a Worthy Legacy.” Instead, it was what Samuel and the Apostle Paul said of themselves in these two moving passages. They both left a worthy legacy.
Before reminding us all of Samuel’s and Paul’s legacy I need to remind us all that this business of legacies has not only to do with “great people,” presidents, prime ministers, prophets, and apostles. The legacies that make a family, or a church, or a university, or a nation great exercise their influence more quietly.
People yet unborn need a legacy that is now gathering in the young folk in this church—in you who are in grade school, high school, and college. I hope we foster greatness of soul here. We need a legacy developing in faithful grown-ups who are not well known, unmarried folk, married folk—parents, husbands who love their wives, wives who love their husbands, homes that exist for others as well as for their own good.
We associate fame and publicity with the idea of a legacy. The various media, in particular television have created the word “celebrity” that refers to a new category of demigod. Publicity has become confused with legacy. We have several halls of fame, which athletes and actors aspire to know they belong to before they die.
Our day is preoccupied with the moment, with quick as possible everything, including fame. But what kind of legacy is this leaving?
What does “legacy” mean? My Oxford Unabridged Dictionary gives a number of meanings, of course. But it begins by relating it to the function of a “delegate,” a person who is sent on a mission. It refers to the message or business committed to a delegate or deputy. A legacy is a gift, something that will benefit, enrich, and make better the lives of those who receive it.
With this in mind let’s look at what the old man Samuel said to Israel and the weary Paul said to the church at Corinth.
Samuel reminded Israel, “I have listened to everything you said, and I made a king over you. Now you’ve got a king and I am old and gray. “ Though King Saul was a good man when Samuel chose him, that Israel should have a king was a tragedy. It meant they wanted to be like every one else. It meant they were not content with God’s historic way of leading them. He said, “I have walked before you since I was a little boy. Tell me, have I ever taken anyone’s property? Have I used my authority to oppress anyone? From whom have I ever taken a bribe?” He asked this because in his role he had great opportunity to milk the public for personal gain.
The people replied, “You have not defrauded us or oppressed us or taken anything from any man’s hand.” Then Samuel went on to speak to them of the really important matters. He reminded them how God appointed Moses and Aaron to bring their forebears out of Egypt and saved them often from danger, and gave them a land. But they forgot the Lord.
This last is the only thing he said that seems to refer to the Law God gave them. They forgot the Lord means that they were distracted from following the ways of the Lord. In fact, as the story of this day unfolds for us we discover that Samuel had to remind them that this legacy of forgetfulness reaped a painful harvest for them.
It was the time for harvesting wheat, when every farmer hopes for sunny skies. Samuel used a severe lesson to bring his people to their senses. He said, “I will call upon the Lord, that he may send thunder and rain; and you shall know and see that your wickedness is great which you have done in the sight of the Lord in asking for a king.”
So Samuel called on God, and the rain fell in buckets. You and I know what it’s like to have rainfall in buckets, don’t we. It rained then like it rained here in the past few days. And the people begged Samuel to pray for God’s forgiveness. He did. He also reminded them, “Only fear the Lord, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you.”
Samuel never got caught up in the grandeur that accompanied the coming of royalty to Israel. He never forgot how God called him in the night as a little boy. His life unfolded according to the principle of his prayer that night, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” He never outgrew seeing himself as a servant. This prompts me to wonder how do you and I see ourselves?
The contrast between Samuel’s steady, faithful life and the busy, bustling, forgetful-of-God ways that took over Israel is striking. So Israel remembered the legacy of Samuel as a bit of seasoning by which they recalled their roots. But they kept forming the same kind of legacy as their forebears to pass along to their children. This led to being destroyed as a nation, the Temple burned, and exile.
Many years later the Apostle Paul spoke to a church that so soon had forgotten what is the stuff of being the church. Paul pleaded with them, “Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” And then he opened his heart to them.
“Open your hearts to us; we have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one.” He asked this because he might have used his immense prestige to personal advantage. And when he wrote severely to them it was with loving purpose. Because he grieved them, they changed their ways. “For you felt a godly grief . . . godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret.”
As this letter of Paul to Corinth moves along we read of his awkwardness, humanly speaking, before them. He had not even taken a salary for his work. But rather than admiring him for such devotion without compensation, they despised him for it. What costs us little may seem of little value to us.
When we think of the legacy of Paul we remember his groundbreaking teaching, the doctrines of justification by faith, the fruit of the Holy Spirit—and all of that. We remember the nature of his life itself. He had a temper, apparently, that made him collide with Barnabas, his first missionary companion over Mark, the nephew of Barnabas. But that rift was reconciled. We have the example of his life, chronicled for us by Luke in the Book of Acts and in his letters NOT because he found his own life of such interest but because his message was inseparable from his life. What he believed and taught and what he lived synchronized so regularly before other people that his Gospel and his life were inseparable.
This is the legacy of Paul, not just his doctrine. Paul, who taught us that “by grace are you saved through faith, not of works lest anyone should boast,” displayed a life of such diligent works that he left no impression that the faith he taught was only a head and heart kind of thing.
So we go back to thinking not only of the teachings of Samuel to Israel and Paul to the early Church, but of the legacies they left in the outworking of their lives of faith. Because their lives were the books people read most clearly.
It is this that my heart tells me we need to remember as we are even now shaping the legacy we will offer the next generation. Say what we want; our live are the books other people read.
Are we leaving behind a Christianity that so stresses believing the right things, teaching the doctrines that have been refined since the Reformation in an atmosphere of controversy, so that we leave the impression that the Christian faith is mostly a matter of saying, believing—and today, with the emphasis on evoking strong feelings, feeling strongly?
I hope that you and I are preparing a heritage of right beliefs. I hope as well that you and I are leaving a legacy of faithfulness that works its way in steady goodness, steady obedience to the loving commands of Jesus. It is easier to die for our country on a battlefield or for our faith in a moment of testing than to live out a life of faithfulness.
Christianity does not find its greatest usefulness in extreme moments when we are called to do or die, but in the shaping of lives to the glory of God and to the blessing of others.
Perhaps one of the reasons why the death of President Reagan eclipsed the great sacrifice of life for freedom that happened on Normandy Beach is that over the course of his eight years in the presidency he earned an increasing admiration. He was more beloved at the end than at the beginning of his presidency. The young men who died at Normandy gave the sacrifice of their lives instantly, and we mourn their deaths before they could enjoy the fruits of their sacrifice. But Ronald Reagan had the chance to let his character evolve before us. We saw as well as heard him.
It was far from beside the point that Jesus Christ preceded Nancy in his affections to the point that he not only showed us how he loved his wife, but showed us how he loved people, and not just American people. We wonder how his faith in Jesus forged his love of people.
But I cannot leave you this morning thinking only about the legacy left to us by a beloved president, by brave young men at Normandy, or by Samuel and Paul. Life moves on not just on the momentum of great legacies bequeathed by good people, whether in high visibility or in countless homes and communities beloved to a few.
The grace of God has continually intervened to hold all things together. Jesus left a kind of legacy no other person could leave. When He died to make men holy, He poured out a lavish gift without which the finest legacies of the best people would be fruitless. Jesus’ death that we celebrate this morning poured out on us the mercy of God. What a legacy that is!!
Any of us who rightly realizes this cannot help but feel what Charles Wesley felt, expressed in that great hymn, “And can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood? Died he for me who caused His pain? For me, who him to death pursued? Amazing love, how can it be that Thou my God should’st die for me?”
I am unspeakably grateful for the good legacy of every good person. I pray God may enable you and me to leave a legacy to the next generation that will bless them.
But nothing any of the best of our kind can leave can compare with the love of God that is our legacy in Jesus Christ. Turn your eyes on Him and the other good legacies find their explanation. Jesus is our only hope, our only sure guide, our only salvation.
This morning we take the Eucharist, the “Thanksgiving,” the holy feast of Jesus. As you take that bread and wine, let your hearts soak in gratitude. And go from this place to live out your gratitude to Jesus. And if and when you and I do this, we are forging the legacy that can serve best our generation and that to come.
Let us pray: O Lord, we thank you for all those good and great people who have left us a goodly heritage. But we thank you most for Jesus, whose legacy is life itself. Help us to follow Him, and following Him to draw along others to his train. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)