Community Church Sermons
July 6, 2008
Pentecost
8
Matthew 11:25-30
Listen to this Sermon!
During last Sunday’s services, our wonderful handbell ringers presented a beautiful piece of music called, “Creation Will Be At Peace.” It is based upon that stirring vision of Isaiah 11 of the day when the lion will lay down with the lamb and there will be peace among all of God’s creatures. Creation, the vision tells us, will be at peace.
That song and that prophecy means a lot to me personally because it was represented in one of the last gifts my father gave me before he died. It was a Christmas when we decided to make our holiday more simple and less materialistic. We decided that we would all make gifts for one another rather than buy them. My father drew my name. Now he was not what you would call an artsy or crafty person, and he seemed to labor for weeks just to come up with an idea. Finally, he got one, and on Christmas Day he gave me the gift – a simple but beautiful representation of Isaiah 11 – the lion and the lamb laying down together in peace.
I keep it always on my desk as both a cherished memory of the past and a burning hope for the future to which I am bound through faith in Jesus Christ.
I am a prisoner of hope.
Those are the very words we heard today in our First Reading from the prophet Zechariah. Zechariah was both a prophet and a priest. He had been born in Babylon during the tragic exile of the Jews, and years later – when the people were allowed to return to Jerusalem – Zechariah served as a priest as the Temple was being rebuilt.
But building for the future was a difficult task for the people when the needs of the present were so great. The economy was in shambles. The politicians were divided about what to do. Families were having a hard time making ends meet. Unemployment was high. There was a housing crisis – not a housing bubble, but a housing shortage – because the Babylonian armies had destroyed not only the Temple but the entire city of Jerusalem. There was so much to do just to survive each day! And so each one turned to their own needs, and the rebuilding of the Temple was brought to a virtual standstill.
That was when Zechariah the priest became Zechariah the prophet. He called the people to understand that today always turns into tomorrow – that what we do in the present determines what happens in the future – and that faith is about catching God’s vision of what tomorrow can be and then committing ourselves to living today as prisoners of that hope.
And so Zechariah voices the word
of God to the people and says, “Return to your fortress, O prisoners of
hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.”
Prisoners of hope. Prisoners to God’s vision for the future.
Now this is an interesting image because it suggests that people are always prisoners – in one way or another - to some moment in time.
For example, we can be prisoners to the past, never quite getting over the fact that gas doesn’t cost 15-cents a gallon anymore, that church music has changed, that we are not as young as we once were, and that our “get up and go” has “got up and gone.” We all know people who live in the past.
We can also be prisoners to the present, so caught up in the immediacy of our needs, our wants, our emotions, or our current circumstances that we end up making shortsighted decisions that can be disastrous. A friend of mine experienced the sad tragedy of his wife leaving him for another man. Within weeks, he started dealing with his loss by reconnecting to an old high school flame who lived on the west coast. She decided to move back east to pursue this relationship, and Rick drove out to get her. On the way back through Las Vegas they spotted a wedding chapel. They decided to get married. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But as time went on it became obvious it was a very bad idea. I need not say anymore about that.
But we all know people who cannot see beyond the immediacy of this moment – their problems, their perceived wants and needs. Children are like this. Thank goodness for parents who keep them aimed toward the future. Tony Campolo says that now as an adult he thanks God every day that his parents did not let him go and become a cowboy when he was a little kid.
Prisoners to the past, prisoners to the present…
And then another kind of prisoner – a prisoner to the future.
And in the Bible, this means to become a prisoner of hope.
Every year at this time, people start asking me about the old green Sears water tank at our camp on Highland Lake in New Hampshire. For years now, I’ve been sharing with our congregation the ongoing saga of that tank which holds the water from our artesian well. For those who haven’t heard the tale, it begins probably 8 or 10 years ago when the tank – which at that time was about 25-years old - sprang a leak. I was all ready to get in the car and drive to Concord to buy a new tank when my old friend Bud showed up. Now Bud was a guy who could fix anything, and when I told him the old green Sears water tank had a leak and I was going to go buy a new one, he sort of scoffed at me.
“Why don’t you just fix it?” he asked. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” I said.
“Got any screws?” Bud asked. “Yeah, of course I have screws.” I replied. “Well, get one!” Bud said, “Get one that’s bigger than the leak hole and screw it in!”
So I found a screw bigger than the leak hole, and screwed it in. And lo and behold, it WORKED!
Well, I came home from vacation and told our congregation about this amazing work of healing that had occurred with the old green Sears water tank. But there were doubters in the crowd. You know, we have a few engineers in this church, and some chemists, and some people who just know-it-all. And they all said, “It’s not gonna last! You can’t screw a steel screw into an aluminum tank. It will cause a corrosive chemical reaction and you’ll just get more leaks!”
Well, THAT was a discouraging word! So I called Bud on the phone. “Bud,” I said, “the geniuses in my church are saying you can’t put steel screws into aluminum tanks. It’ll just cause more leaks.”
Bud replied, “Buy more screws!”
And so we did! I don’t know how many screws we ended up putting into that tank, but it lasted another ten years or so. However, I regret to inform you that last Thursday, when our son Peter opened up the camp and turned on the pump, the old green Sears water tank suffered a burst aneurysm or something and blew a hole in itself far too big for a screw to fix. And so we had to lay it to rest, and we celebrated its long 33-plus years of life, and we cherished the memories of all the leaks, and all the screws, and all the toilet flushes, and all the showers – and most especially all the precious moments God gave us with our dear friend Gordon “Bud” Shaftoe who went home to be with the Lord two years ago.
Bud was the kind of guy Zechariah was talking about. Bus was a prisoner of hope!
When everyone else had given up on the future, he did not! When others would discard broken things, he’d take and fix them! Bud had eyes of hope through which he viewed the world. But he was more than a cockeyed optimist. Bud was willing to do the work he had to do to make hope turn into reality.
God wants people like Bud to enlist in the great cause of faith – people who appreciate the past and have learned from it – people who value the present and are responsible about it – and people who know that both the past and the present lead to the future and that we are responsible for shaping it!
The people of Zechariah’s day had more to be responsible for than just remembering the past and living for their own needs in the present. And the Temple of Jerusalem was the symbol of God’s covenant with humanity to build a world where the lion and the lamb will lie down together and all God’s creatures will be at peace!
You see, faith is about MORE than just getting through the day! Faith is about MORE than just meeting your own needs. Faith is about MORE than the past, and MORE than the present.
Faith, more than anything, is about the FUTURE that God is creating – a peaceable kingdom in which the lion lays down with the lamb, and the leopard with the goat, and a little child shall lead them.
We have just celebrated our nation’s Independence Day. What a wonderful townwide celebration we had on Thursday night! Many of us had family cookouts on Friday. Last night, we “rocked the docks” on Ft. Loudon Lake. We were celebrating America – the land of the free, the home of the brave – the nation that arose out of the hard work and sacrifices of men and women who – 232 years ago – committed themselves to a God-given vision of a land where freedom rings.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This was the vision of hope God gave our founding
mothers and fathers. And they became prisoners to that hope, and poured out
their lives for it. The Declaration of Independence concludes with these words:
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”
Prisoners of hope, willingly chained to God’s vision
for the world.
That’s why rebuilding the Temple was important even
in hard economic times, because the Temple drew the community together toward a
loftier vision than just every man for himself.
That’s why the teachings of Jesus are crucial because
they lift us to values that are higher than ourselves.
That’s why its important to build our families on
Christian principles, and to raise our children in a faith that nurtures their
ability to see what’s really important in life.
And so Jesus calls us to build the Temple of God’s
dream for humanity – a beautiful world in which the lion lays down with the
lamb, people are brought together in love and unity, and all God’s creatures
are at peace. So Jesus says to you and me:
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
For I am gentle and humble in heart,
And you will find rest for your souls.”
You see, Jesus himself is a prisoner of hope. And he
invites you and me to chain ourselves to him and to each other, and to walk and
work together, until the Kingdom comes!