Community Church Sermons

Year A

October 23, 2011

Pentecost 19

You Are Dear to Us

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Rev. Martin C. Singley, III

Senior Pastor

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In Walter Isaacson’s new biography on Steve Jobs, the late founder of Apple, we learn that Steve always questioned authority. Even as a young boy he was not afraid to challenge the conventional wisdoms of society and even religion. When Jobs was 13, he saw on the cover of Life magazine a photograph of starving children. The image shocked him. He asked his Sunday School pastor whether or not God knew that would happen to those children. The pastor didn’t really have an answer that satisfied Steve. And so, at 13 years of age, Steve Jobs gave up on Christianity.

I know a lot of people like that. They’ve grown up in a religious culture where God is like a great puppet-master, sitting above the world, pulling the strings of creation, in complete control of everything, sending blessings upon some, curses upon others, hurricanes over here, tornados over there, cancer to some, health to others, and even helping Alabama miraculously squeak by the University of Tennessee football team last night.

That God who runs the universe from a control panel somewhere up in a place called “heaven” is an easy god to believe in – when life is going your way. But when life turns, when tragedy comes, or when you see a photograph of starving children on the cover of a magazine and it stirs something inside you that says, “That’s not right!”, you can’t help but wonder why the man at the controls would do that, or even allow it happen.

Did God know those children on the magazine cover would end up starving? Did God know so many lives would be lost in the Japanese tsunamis? What did God know, and when did He know it, about any of the tragedies we have seen and experienced?

Without an answer to such a question, Steve Jobs – and many others – have given up on Christianity.

I think they’ve made a mistake.

You see, it’s not that Christians don’t have an answer for why bad things happen to good people. The problem is really that we have too many answers – bad answers - simplistic answers - trite answers – like the preacher I once heard who said that since God gave life to people, God has every right to take their life away.

Try arguing that theory in a human court of law defending a parent killing their child. “I gave him life, I can take it away.”

No, you can’t.

No, it’s not that Christianity has no answer to peoples’ suffering, but rather that we sometimes have too many answers and most of them are overly simplistic, blindly nonsensical, and just plain wrong.

So how do we deal with these great questions of human suffering?

Not by placing the blame “up there”, but rather by bringing the cure “down here.”

Jesus is the answer.

Now, I’m not trying to say that believing some theology about Jesus is the answer. I’m saying that if you look closely at Jesus you’ll discover that he is all about making people well. His ministry is not aimed at trying to explain away human suffering, but rather, Jesus spends his life working hard to alleviate human suffering. Jesus is not at all interested in protecting the doctrinal positions of Judaism and defending the conventional wisdom that sees God as the puppet master of the universe. No, Jesus ignores all that and instead jumps into the middle of peoples’ lives to bring about healing and reconciliation.

And those who saw Jesus with their own eyes came to two wonderful conclusions: this is what God is like, and this is the life we are called to live.

And that life of responding to human need and suffering, bringing healing and reconciliation to the world, became a movement of people known in the early years as “The Way”, and eventually was given the name, “Christianity.”

You see, Steve Jobs had it wrong. Christianity is not about finding simple religious answers to life’s most profound questions. Christianity is not an explanation. It is a way of life – an active faith through which we are called to be the presence of Christ where we live, getting involved in healing human suffering, and getting busy transforming the world into a planet of justice and wholeness where ALL God’s children enjoy the fullness of life. Steve Jobs had it wrong because he didn’t understand what Christianity is.

And Steve Jobs had it right. You see, the compassion he felt in his heart toward those starving children in the picture was so right!! His belief that such suffering cannot be ignored and must be cured is so Christ-like. You see, Steve Jobs had the spirit of Jesus in his heart there as a 13-year old boy – whether he knew it or not.

I received a phone call the other night from a couple in our church. It was amazing listening to what they had to say. He had come across a news story on the internet early last week about a little two-year old Chinese girl named Yue-Yue – which means, “Little Joy.” A camera on the street captured what happened when this little toddler wandered out of her parents’ shop one day, got out onto the street, and was struck by a truck. The truck driver did not stop. Over the next several minutes, eighteen others either walked or drove by the tiny child lying there in anguish in the road. Not one of them stopped either. Yue-Yue’s mother finally found her and she was rushed to a hospital. But a few days later, Yue Yue died.

As they told me the story over the phone, I could tell how completely overwrought they were over the suffering of this little girl, and how angry they were that so many people just walked by, not wanting to get involved. Some news reports said this apathy may have been a cultural thing, or perhaps it was motivated by a recent case where a Good Samaritan had actually been sued for helping someone.

But this couple does not buy that, and neither do I.

You can’t witness something like this and not do something about it.

Although these church members live almost 8,000 miles from where it happened, this tragedy struck deep into their hearts. They felt compelled to call and tell me about it the other night because they had to tell SOMEONE. And responding to what is swirling in their hearts, they have written a beautiful essay and created a video slideshow in memory of Yue-Yue. We’ll put that up on the church web site this week for others to read and see. The story is titled, “A Shattered Heart – Apathy, a Deadly Sin of the Soul We Were Never Told About.”

I shared with this couple that I think the Holy Spirit has grabbed hold of them over this, and that the hand of Christ is upon them.

How about you?

What goes on in your heart when you see people suffer?

In today’s reading from the second chapter of First Thessalonians, two verses in particular jump out at me. In verses 7 and 8, Paul writes, “We were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well, because you were so dear to us.”

I’m happy to let other churches and religious institutions work out all the answers, explanations and reasons for why things happen as they do in the world.

But I hope that our church – you and I together – will devote our life to making others dear to us, and caring for them – as a mother caring for her little children.

Now to do this, we’re going to have to work on some things.

First of all, we’re going have to stop looking at others for all that’s wrong with them. And, we’re going to have to stop looking at others for all that’s right about them! The distinctions we make between right and wrong can be so arbitrary and end up doing nothing more than dividing us one from the other. What must become dear to us about others is not what’s wrong, or what’s right, but what is BEAUTIFUL about them! They are God’s children. And they are our brothers and sisters. And they are BEAUTIFUL!

If you were here on Friday night for the benefit dinner for the Smoky Mountain Service Dogs you heard Sam Venable tell some stories about the beauty of the people of East Tennessee. Some of that beauty is in the special-ness of East Tennesseans that Sam likes to humorously write about in his News-Sentinel column. My favorite “Venable-ism” from the other night was, “Where else but in East Tennessee could you see a 30-car funeral procession pull through the Drive-Up window at a Kentucky Fried Chicken?”

And yet that actually happened up in Knoxville!

Isn’t that beautiful? I don’t care who in that group was right and who was wrong. That is just sheer human beauty at work!

Sitting on an airplane a couple years ago, there was a Muslim couple across from me. I looked them over pretty carefully, checking for fuses hanging out of their underwear, or plastic explosives wrapped around their waists. But I didn’t see anything threatening. All they had with them was a little baby who the mother gently cradled. The dad reached over to touch the baby’s hand and the little hand opened to take hold of his daddy’s finger. The mom and dad both smiled and laughed.

Your choice: Right? Wrong? Or…BEAUTIFUL?

“You have become dear to us,” the apostle Paul writes. There is beauty to be discovered in others.

A second thing that will help us make others dear to us is to step into the world in which they live. Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes can give you great insight and understanding into who they are and how dear they are.

Every time I’ve taken a group of kids to work up in the mountains they have come home with a whole different understanding of those who live – often in poverty - up in the mountains. Like the one little girl who said to me at the end of a work week in Roses Creek, “Marty, they’re not poor. They’re rich. I think we’re the ones who are poor!”

Go and sign up to feed the homeless at the Knox Area Rescue Ministry. After a time, those you feed will become dear to you, and you to them. Work with a family on their new Habitat for Humanity house. The day the house is dedicated, tears will come to your eyes as you see their pride. They will have become dear to you.

And something right here in our church on Sunday. Go and sit with someone you don’t know. Maybe they’re all alone, or maybe they’re brand new to these parts. Make friends with them. Invite them to Tellico Joe, or to lunch, or to go for a boat ride on the lake. The next time you see them, you’ll see them differently because by stepping into their world, they are becoming dear to you.

And one other thing. Open your life to Jesus Christ. Let the Holy Spirit come into you and teach you God’s way of seeing the world. Last Wednesday, Pastor Tim brought a wonderful message about one of those 6 dastardly deadly sins that are more deadly than the 7 deadly sins. The title was “Screens” and what Tim meant was TV screens, computer screens, and other windows through which we look out into the world. They so often immerse us in narrative and images about all that’s wrong with people and the world. Have you noticed that? A great deal of what we THINK we understand about other people comes to us through these screens. Maybe it’s time to turn them off, and open the Bible instead. Maybe it’s time to listen to Jesus instead of those who own the airwaves.

Because, you see, people are dear to Jesus – just like the people in Thessalonica were dear to Paul – and just like YOU are dear to us.

Dear friends, dear neighbors…dear Steve Jobs…

…this is Christianity.

Come and live it!