Community Church Sermons

Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C – October 21, 2001

"Finding The Center”

2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:5

We are now one week into our annual “Trails Through Tellico” stewardship campaign. We are asking those who are members, friends, and supporters of our church’s ministry to prayerfully consider the financial support they can give to continue building, strengthening and extending our common ministry in 2002. There is so much more we can do to share Christ’s love with others, and to help people grow in effective Christian living, and to make our community and world a better place. So this is an important time in our church as we seek to grow in faith and service to God.

During difficult times of life like these in which we live, the value of the church as an institution becomes more and more clear. The church is important to our nation as it seeks to bring healing to the deep wounds of September 11^th, and to find a way to overcome evil with good. The church is important to parents as they negotiate the treacherous landscape of raising children in the world today. The church is important to those who are poor, hungry, lost and without friendship. The church is important to the person facing cancer, or the death of a loved one, or impending surgery, or the challenge of mental illness, or some unexpected frailty of life. From the oldest among us to the youngest, from the community to the individual, the church is a unique institution that can have a powerfully positive effect upon all phases of life.

The church is a gift to the world from God. And you and I are stewards of that part of the gift that’s located here in this place. And that stewardship has to do not only with providing the financial means by which the church can do the work to which God calls us, but also with making use of the tools God has given the church to help the world.

And one of the most important of those tools is the subject of our reading from Second Timothy.

You see, within the gift of the church is to be found a precious treasure that truly has the power to help people. As we try to navigate through all the many challenges of living as human beings in the real world, God has given us a resource that is tried and true. And so a young Christian man named Timothy – living in a world not unlike our own in terms of confusion, injury, difficulty, and war – is given this piece of sage advice:

“Continue in what you have learned…knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through Jesus Christ.”

Timothy is being advised to center himself – to anchor his life as a follower of Christ - in the scriptures. For Timothy, those scriptures were the Law and the Prophets. For us, these sacred writings are collectively known as the Bible.

A cartoon in The New Yorker portrays a man walking up to the customer service desk of a large bookstore. The clerk, peering into her computer screen, says, “The Bible? Let’s see. That would be in the ‘Self Help’ section.”

That cartoon rather wryly suggests one of the problems we face as we attempt to read and understand the Bible as modern Christians. In consumer-driven North America, says Will Willimon, the Bible has become just one more consumer option, one more source of therapeutic advice alongside books on dieting, dating, astrology, and life-strategies for becoming successful people. And because the Bible has become such a consumer-shaped resource, we have to a great extent lost the power of what the Bible has to offer. Not “self-help” to nurture our own private spirituality. But something far more important.

You see, the Bible is the story of God’s work to re-create a world that is drowning in sin.

How are we going to create a new world for ourselves and our children out of a planet that is currently reeling under the influence of terrorists who fly planes into buildings, and send anthrax through the mail? How can we reach into the world of greed and power and injustice, and bring about the eradication of poverty, and hunger, and racism, and nationalistic xenophobia? How can the world be re-made into a community where love reigns, and justice flows, and peace prospers? Isaiah sees it as world in which children are never harmed, old people live active lives and are never left behind, swords are turned into farming tools that produce food and not death, and terrorist camps where hate is taught are turned into schools where love is learned and no one learns war anymore.

The Bible is about working with God to build the kind of beautiful world you want your children and grandchildren to live in. It is about converting this current world of brokenness and sin into a world of healing and life.

And one major way that God plans to accomplish this is by the creation of a group of people – the church – who will tell the world the story of Jesus, and who will dare to model the way of life of this new world for all to see.

We are stewards of the hope of the world!

So what must we do as we face terrorism, and hatred, and bigotry, and oppression, and illness, and frailty, and death?

Well, we must find a center from which we can operate effectively and powerfully. A center that keeps us focused and oriented around the things that are important. A center that provides us the understanding and the resources that we need to help God accomplish his plan of saving the world.

We need to remember the sacred scriptures of our faith! Especially now.

I was watching a news special a few days ago in which a reporter was allowed to visit a school for orphaned children run by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Over and over again, the reporter noted that, along with intensive religious training – ten hours a day of it – the children are taught to hate America and all Americans.

Now, mind you, the stated reason for this hatred is that American foreign policy has oppressed the weak and the poor among the Arabic people of the Middle East. And I’m not going to argue that point. All human beings have the right to cry out when they feel they have been unjustly injured. But what is so striking to me is the belief that the best way - the only way - to throw off the yoke of oppression, is by oppressing in return. Evil is paid back with evil. It is the belief that a better world can be built by flying hijacked airplanes into buildings, and killing as many of your enemies as you can.

This is the myth of redemptive violence. That good can be created out of evil. That love can result from hate. That peace can be won through violence. And on page after page of our sacred scriptures, we learn of the foolishness of that myth. Israel once believed that the way to create a promised land for itself was by killing all those who lived in the land before them. And in the name of Yahweh they tried to do just exactly that. The story is told in chapter after chapter of the Old Testament. Murder. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. All in the vain hope that this is how a better world is created. And because that myth of redemptive violence has been embraced for so long in that particular neighborhood of the world, you and I can watch news video today as machine guns mow down little Palestinian children on the west bank, and as bombs planted in discotheques kill and cripple Israeli teenagers. Still fighting the wars of the Old Testament. And all in the name of God. People continue to embrace this myth of redemptive violence. We embrace it in our own society. We teach it to our children. What do you think the old Popeye cartoons teach? The blood of the myth of redemptive violence is everywhere.

But the Bible tells us it is folly. It will not work. And history confirms it. You cannot overcome evil with evil.

Romans 12:21 tells the Christian community, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good!”

And so in these days of terrible tragedy when evil has so severely struck, it is important for you and me to remind ourselves, and each other, and our neighbors, and our leaders that there is a difference between self-defense and aggression. And there is a great difference between justice and vengeance. Vengeance merely seeks the destruction of another. Tit for tat. Justice seeks to vindicate the victims of evil, and to disarm evil from ever being able to inflict itself on others again, and to replace evil with good, and love, and life. And justice sometimes needs to be fought for, but with great care taken not to become the very evil we deplore.

And we as God’s church are entrusted with this message of the sacred scriptures of our faith. And this is a time when we must speak clearly to the world.

A second important and connected part of the sacred scriptures of our faith is about the trustworthiness of God to accomplish good in our lives and in our world even when it seems as though evil is winning the day.

Two of the happiest occasions I’ve ever been a part of occurred in recent weeks when two members of our church, both of whom had lost spouses to death, were united in marriage – not with each other – but with beautiful people who came into their lives and brought them new joy even when it seemed like the sadness of death would never go away. This widower and widow of ours both thought – at times – that they’d come to the end of joy! But it wasn’t the end! God was at work!

Do you realize that this is the story of sacred scripture? In the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve made a monumental mistake, they thought it was the end! But God refused to let it be the end! And when the rains came for forty days and forty nights and it seemed as if the end of the world had arrived, it didn’t. There was God, helping Noah to build an ark! And when Jesus breathed his last, hanging there on Calvary’s tree, it appeared that it was all over. But then Sunday came!

When you move to the center of our faith and take hold of the sacred writings, you soon learn that the word “end” does not exist in God’s vocabulary. The word “tragedy” is always temporary and never permanent. The word “loss” is always eventually transposed into “gain”. And even death gives way to life!!

And so you see, although it appears that the world is in a terrible mess right now, and that evil has put an end to all hopes of building a good and just world – it is not so! God is not deterred! God is not put off! God will overcome this moment!!! And God is still at work!!

And we in the church are entrusted with this message that, even though this world is filled with racism, God has not given up, and the day will come when all people join hand in hand as brothers and sisters. And despite the fact that there is so much hunger and poverty in our world, God has not given up, and the day will come when no one goes hungry or poor. And despite the fact that a family member of yours seems so lost in life, God has not given up on him, and the day will come when he is found! And despite the fact that an illness has come into your life that has taken away the joy of living, God has not given up on you, and one day, joy will come!

Even facing death, the sacred writings tell us, God does not give up on us! Not even death can stand in the way of God giving us the life he has promised!

This is the message we are to bring to the world! There is a God who loves us, and will be faithful no matter what happens around us! And this is the life of hope we are to live and practice so the world will know that God will bring us through!

I had a wonderful experience recently of God’s faithfulness. I happened to be over at Best Buys picking up a new television. And you know how it goes. As you approach the check out lines, you carefully look and analyze which of the eight or ten lanes is moving fastest. And if you are like me, you identify the one that’s got, say, just one customer ahead of you. And so you rush into that line, only to discover that they have a product without a price tag on it, and someone has to go fetch the price, and by the time they get back, EVERYONE IN THE WORLD has already made it through the other lanes. Well, surprisingly, that didn’t happen to me!

The customer ahead of me picked up his stuff and left, and there I was, stepping up to a young female cashier, showing my license and paying for my TV. As easy as pie. But as she returned my license to me, this young woman looked up and said, “You’re going to think this is a stupid question, but did you ever live in Massachusetts?”

I said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I’m FROM Massachusetts.”

“Well, were you a Reverend up there?” she asked.

I was getting nervous now! “Yes, my name’s Marty Singley,” I said. “I used to be at Greendale People’s Church.”

Well, the face of this young woman instantly brightened and she said, “Oh, my God! YOU MARRIED ME!!!”

Eleven years ago. She and her husband have three children now. They’ve lived in Oak Ridge for a little more than a year. They’re pretty homesick. And lonely. And they’ve been having some problems.

We chatted for a few moments, while the customers in line behind got upset. And as we parted company, she said something interesting. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was something along the line of “Wouldn’t you know that God would find us even so far from home?”

And that’s our message to the world. God will not give up on us. God will bring us the life he has promised. God will overcome even the darkest evil with good!

Friends, center your life here, on the sacred writings that hold so true. Come and learn and live the Bible.

It is the Word the world most needs to hear in times like these!