Community Church Sermons
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C – May 13, 2001
"Resurrection Destiny””
Revelation 21: 1-6
The late Erma Bombeck once wrote:
When the Good Lord was creating mothers,
He was into his sixth day of "overtime" when an angel appeared and
said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And
the Lord said, "Have you read the specs on this order?
“She has to be completely washable, but
not plastic; have 180 movable parts... all replaceable; run on black coffee and
leftovers; have a lap that disappears when she stands up; a kiss that can cure
anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; and six pairs of
hands.”
The angel shook her head slowly and said,
"Six pairs of hands... no way!"
"It's not the hands that are causing
me problems," said the Lord. "It's the three pairs of eyes that
mothers have to have."
"That's on the standard model?"
asked the angel. The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees through closed
doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already
knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but
what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a
child when he goofs up and say, 'I understand and I love you' without so much
as uttering a word."
"Lord," said the angel,
touching His sleeve gently, "Go to bed. Tomorrow..."
"I can't," said the Lord,
"I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one
who heals herself when she is sick... can feed a family of six on one pound of
hamburger... and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower."
The angel circled the model of a mother
very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed. "But she's
tough!" said the Lord excitedly. "You cannot imagine what this mother
can do or endure."
"Can it think?" "Not
only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her
finger across the cheek. "There's a leak," she pronounced. "I
told You that You were trying to push too much into this model."
"It's not a leak," said the
Lord. "It's a tear." "What's it for?"
"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and
pride."
"You are a genius," said the
angel.
The Lord looked somber. "I didn't
put it there," He said.
Well, here’s to one of God’s most amazing
miracles! Happy Mother’s Day, mom…happy Mother’s Day, moms…and happy Mother’s
Day, one and all!!
And as we gather on this special
occasion, it is good for us to remember that touching description written by
Erma Bombeck because it contains a great spiritual truth: there are some things
in life – like mothers – that illustrate God’s beautiful ability to take
something of heaven and bring it to earth – something divine that touches our
humanity – something sacred that kisses the secular and makes it good and holy.
You know, there are some people who
mistakenly believe that God’s great plan for the world is to get us out of it
and into heaven. But it’s not. God’s plan is not to get us into heaven,
but to get heaven into us!
That’s why one of the final scenes of the
Bible, in the 21st chapter of Revelation, describes the ultimate
working-out in history of the resurrection – our destiny as a world that is
loved by God – as the emergence of a new heaven and earth from the old. In his
vision, John sees it this way:
“Then
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth
had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…”
Now some mistakenly interpret this
passage as meaning that God is going to destroy our world. After all, it says
the present heaven and the present earth will pass away. But this is the same
language Paul uses in Corinthians when he says “…if anyone is in Christ, he
or she is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come!” This
is the language of transformation. You see, our resurrection destiny –
the place where God is leading us – is not about a world destroyed by divine
wrath, but a world that has been transformed and recreated by heaven coming to
earth. And so John continues:
“See,
the home of God is among people, He will dwell with them as their God; they
will be his people, and God himself will be with them.”
This is an amazing statement, when you
consider it. You know, a good many of us are people who have come to this
community from other places. One of the things I very much enjoy when I’m out
visiting people is finding out how they happened to end up in Tellico Village,
or Rarity Bay, or Lenoir City, or someplace else in the county. And a sizeable
number of you – not all, but many -
tell me a similar story: as you approached the latter years of your
career in the corporate world, you started thinking about where you wanted to
spend your retirement years. Many traveled all over the country, looking for
just the right place to live. And there were many considerations – proximity to
children, good golf courses, some wanted a lake, others wanted mountains,
moderate temperatures, no snow…especially no snow!
And as you explored all the many places
you could move to – either to work or to retire – you chose this area! What a
compliment to East Tennessee and its people! Lee Rhinemiller – our Council
Chair – says he used to have a sign on his desk that read, “I wasn’t born in
Tennessee, but I got here as fast as I could!”
Of all the places in the world we could
choose to live, we chose here!
And in the same way, according to
Revelation, of all the places in the universe where God could buy a lot and
build a house and play some golf and enjoy life, God has chosen this planet – this
world. And of all God’s creatures – great and small - who could be God’s
closest neighbors, God chose you and me – God chose humanity!
“He
will dwell with them as their God; they will be his people; and God himself
will dwell with them…”
So the next time the moving van pulls
into your neighborhood, look closely to see who it is!
This is not a vision of some distant
heaven. This is God’s vision for the world in which we live.
Yes, this world – the one in which
we sometimes experience such unbearable pain. The one in which cancer, and
heart disease, and tragic accidents bruise our lives. The one in which children
are – more often than we can bear to think - abused – physically and sexually.
The world which divides itself into have’s and have nots, successes and failures,
free and slave. The one in which many are treated as less than human and are
labeled with adjectives intended to demean and deny their humanity. The one
that finds all sorts of justifiable reasons to murder people, just as it once
found a justifiable reason to put Jesus to death on a Roman cross. This
world, dripping in the blood of its own inhumanity.
God chooses to come and live here
in this world!
Why would God want to do such a thing?
Because he loves us! That’s the simple answer that Jesus offered. Because God loves you – and God loves me - as goofy and misguided and confused and as flawed and as sinful as we are. God loves us – even though we have screwed up this world so badly that black people can’t get a fair shake, thousands of people die of hunger while others have food left over in their refrigerators, the number of poor people in the world gets larger and larger, and people even blow each other up over cities they believe are holy.
Yet, God loves us even so. He wants to come and make his home among us.
And what John is telling us today is that what God wants to do for us is to transform us – and our world – into the most beautiful life imaginable! That’s the destiny of resurrection.
But how does it work? How is God going to pull this thing off?
Well, first, by putting heaven into you and me.
When I was young, my brother, sister, father and I used to tease my mother about being a religious fanatic. She was the only source of religious enthusiasm in the whole bunch. My mother, after all, as I have told you before, was a Baptist. The rest of us were – well, I’m not sure what we were, but we definitely were not interested in things religious. While my mother very much wanted to go to church every week, the rest of us preferred to meditate on Sunday mornings at our lady of the mattress. While the rest of us were perfectly content to live life entirely on our own steam, my mother relied heavily upon prayer. And she used to urge us to pray, too. For everything! Have a problem at school? Pray about it. Girlfriend break up with you? Pray about it. Batting average dip below .200. Pray about it!
Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray. That word was constantly on my mother’s lips! So we used to call her a religious fanatic, and give her a hard time about it. But I’ll tell you a little secret. Whenever my batting average did fall – which was often - I prayed! Whenever I ran into a difficult time in life, I prayed! When my grandfather died, I prayed. When it came time to make decisions about college, I prayed. And when I was in college and came to a moment when my life was at a crossroads, and I didn’t know which way to go, I prayed – and the road I took led me here in the ministry.
Now I will tell you something about prayer. Seldom has prayer changed the outward circumstances of my life. When I begged for my grandfather to live, he died. When I flunked Physics during my Junior year in high school, I stayed flunked until I went to summer school. When my batting average started to fall and I prayed, it kept falling! Prayer has seldom changed the outward circumstances of my life.
But there has never been a prayer I’ve offered to God that has not given me inner strength to face my difficulties, deeper wisdom to make hard decisions, and immense spiritual resources – like hope in the face of despair, and love in the face of hatred, courage in the face of fear, and joy in the face of sorrow.
There has never been a prayer I’ve prayed in which some drop of heaven has not fallen into my life, providing me the resources I needed to face the moment!
This is why Jesus taught us to pray. So that heaven can touch our lives when we’re trying to find our way through illness, and confusion, and depression, and losses, and character flaws, and mistakes we’ve made.
Praying. Meditating on Scripture,
and applying it to our circumstances. Worshiping God. Sharing with other
Christians. These probably will not change the diagnosis, or the problem you
face, or the temptation that comes, but they will change YOU and provide
what you need to live life fully, and make it through the darkness to the dawn
of a new day!
How is God going to transform our world into a new world? By touching your life and my life with bits and pieces of heaven that – over time – change us into the people God created us to be!
What are you going through today? Where are the challenges you face? What are the problems? Who are the people you’re in conflict with?
Give yourself to prayer. To Scripture. To worship. To talking with other Christians. Open the doors of your life so the winds of heaven can blow in. That’s the first way God is going to remake this world.
The second, is by planting a model of heaven in the world that will touch others with heaven, too.
Today, we receive the one thousandth member of our church. That’s quite a milestone. And yet, what does it benefit the world if a thousand people simply get together week after week to sing some hymns, and pray some prayers, and simply touch each other with heaven?
I heard the other day about a mother who awakened on Mother’s Day morning to the gleeful sounds of her three children crashing through the door of her bedroom, and jumping onto her bed.
The mother was delighted! What a precious gift! And so the children left the room, and went to the kitchen. She could hear their giggles, along with the clanging of pots and pans. After a while, she could smell the aroma of bacon frying. What a beautiful thing her children were doing.
Five minutes went by. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Where was her breakfast? Things were quiet in the kitchen now, and she became concerned about the kids. So she got up out of bed, put on her robe and slippers, and scurried to the kitchen.
And there they were. All three of the children, sitting around the breakfast table, eating scrambled eggs and bacon. They hadn’t made breakfast for her! They had made breakfast for themselves!
One thousand members.
I hope we’re not just a thousand people making breakfast for ourselves.
Because there is a world all around us that desperately needs to see a model of what God’s kingdom is like. What neighbor-love is all about. What forgiveness can do. What faith can accomplish. How peace can be won.
One thousand members who feed themselves only? Or a thousand members who leave the sanctuary every Sunday to go and bring a touch of heaven into the lives of the people all around us! One thousand people whose lives have been touched by heaven, and who now make it their mission to spread heaven everywhere they can!
I dare say, if we would give ourselves to that mission, this old world will be transformed into something new – and the resurrection of Jesus will reach its final destination!