Community Church Sermons

Year C

November 10, 2013

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Stand Firm!

Second Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Rev. Martin C. Singley, III

Senior Pastor

Like many of those who came home from World War II, my father brought with him a souvenir of the battlefield – something he’d managed to get hold of when he was on Guam or Okinawa or one of the other islands in the South Pacific. It was a parachute – a great big white nylon parachute complete with shroud lines. Why my father got it I’ll never know but as a boy that parachute fascinated me. I used to fantasize about standing in the doorway of a big transport plane waiting for the jumpmaster to slap me on the shoulder. I’d pretend to leap out the door, shouting “Geronimo!” and then gently descend to the earth below. Of course, those of you who have actually done this know there’s really nothing gentle about it. But I was just a kid. What did I know?

And that’s what led me one day up to the peak of the roof of our house. Mr. Carlson, the local carpenter, was building a dormer for us to add some bedroom space to the upstairs of our Cape Cod style house on Calumet Avenue. He had gone home for lunch. And he had left up a ladder. I spotted the ladder. And I saw my opportunity.

So I ran down into the basement of our house and got that big ol’ parachute. I could barely carry it all in my little boy arms, but somehow managed to get it upstairs, out the door, up the ladder, and onto the rooftop.

And there I was, standing in the doorway of the big transport plane, waiting for the jumpmaster to slap my shoulder, and then to shout “Geronimo!” as I leapt out into space and gently descended to the earth below..

And just then, a hand DID slap my shoulder – actually, it GRABBED my shoulder and pulled me backwards.

It was Mr. Carlson who, coming back from lunch, spotted me up on the rooftop getting ready to jump to my death. So he pulled me back from the abyss and picked me up – along with my father’s parachute – and carried us both to the safety of terra firma. I didn’t appreciate his intervention back then, but I do today. I would’ve been a goner!

It occurs to me that life itself is full of danger, ups and downs, victories and tragedies, sorrows and joys – an ever-changing landscape of experiences that are fraught with danger and at the same time overflowing with opportunity. Navigating through the undulating experiences of life is difficult and we can easily become disoriented and overwhelmed!

The little group of Christian people living in Thessalonica knew this to be true. All around them the world was changing. It felt to them like the end of the world was at hand, and in many ways, it WAS the end – but not of history. It was the end of what used to be – of what they thought they knew and were comfortable with.

And it’s the same way with us today.

I’ve been reading a book called Big Data. It’s about how the Internet and World Wide Web have made available to us more information than ever before, and the amount of information increases exponentially with the passing of every day. And in some ways, this is good! For instance, in 2009 the H1N1 flu was spreading like wildfire, morphing into what looked like a possible pandemic. The Center for Disease Control was trying to track the spread of this flu. But relying upon reports from doctors’ offices and hospitals the information they fed into their computers was always a few days late – and the computers only updated the information once a week. So they were always behind in predicting where the flu was and where it was heading.

But thank goodness for GOOGLE!

Do you know that every time you search for something on GOOGLE that information is saved on a computer somewhere? So what GOOGLE did was to figure out what the most popular search terms were for the flu. And they created an algorithm that searched these billions and billions of search terms stored in their computers, and were able to identify the 50 most commonly used keywords and keyphrases people use when they’re searching for things like “flu symptoms” and “over the counter flu medicines.” And crunching all this data and the locations of the people searching for it, GOOGLE was able to pinpoint in real time exactly where the flu was located, and accurately predict where it was heading. And this allowed the CDC and others to preposition flu vaccines and Tamiflu and all that stuff that kept H1N1 from becoming a catastrophic pandemic.

Big Data!

It can be very useful and very good! But big data can also be very dangerous and overwhelming. If you want to build a nuclear bomb, the information is out there. Bad people can steal your identity. Your kids and grandkids can access all sorts of stuff that’s not good or healthy. And now, with this emerging technology called 3-D printing you can even “print” yourself a handgun.

It’s a different world than the one we knew. And beyond the obviously good things and the obviously bad things, there is just a whole lot of new things! The world is smaller than we ever imagined it to be, people are much more diverse, and yet have much more in common, moral values that we grew up with are not necessarily universally held, newspapers have given way to Twitter, and how many of you here have a smartphone?

How many know how to use it?

Now it may seem like the world is coming to an end, and you may have noticed that a lot of people are making a lot of money writing books about the end.

But is it the end of history? Probably not. In any event, I’ll join with the apostle Paul saying that the end will come when it comes. But in the meantime we have to learn to live in the present as the people of God.

This moment in time is certainly the end of what used to be – of what we once thought we knew and were comfortable with.

And now we have to live in this new world.

And here’s how Paul puts it – just like Mr. Carlson put it to me that day long ago – you’ve got to keep your feet on the ground – you’ve got to get back to terra firma – you’ve got to STAND FIRM!

Here in Second Thessalonians 2, the apostle shares with us what I’d describe as the three cornerstones of the Gospel – three rock-solid principles for living life to the fullest no matter what’s going on inside you or outside you.

#1 – you are loved by God. #2 – you are chosen by God for salvation. #3 – you are called by God to share in the glory of Jesus Christ.

If you add up these three things, the sum of them all is GRACE.

Grace is the solid ground of our faith. Grace is where we take our stand.

A Lutheran Pastor by the name of Ross Merkel helps his adult Confirmation students understand grace in these five statements with a little of my own commentary:

· God’s grace is a gift of God’s love that is freely given to us. We can’t earn it or achieve it. We can only try to live in response to it. So when you fail at something it does you no good to think, “If only I can overcome this failure, this sin, this evil thought, this addiction, then God will love and accept me.” A lot of people spend their lives trying to earn their way into God’s good graces. But you can’t. No, the way grace works is the way my friend Kenny said it, “I am an alcoholic, but God loves me. And because God loves me, I’m going to work hard at becoming sober. And when I fail, God will still love me. And God will help me get up and try again.” That, dear friends, is grace at work.

· Life is full of ups and downs, successes and failures. But grace is the promise that when we fall down, God helps us up. We can never forget that the story of our faith is resurrection - that we die and are made new – that we fall and are raised up - all the time – over and over and over again – not just at the end of life but in the middle of life too. God makes all things new – even us – every day. Resurrection is at work IN you right now!

· We are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of both, all the time. Have you ever noticed how you can do or think something really bad, and then in the next instant pick up your little child or grandchild and smother them with love? How do we do that? How do we move so easily from saint to sinner, and from sinner to saint? Well, both dispositions are in us. So grace teaches us not to think we are any different than anyone else in the sin department. We are all sinners! And everyone else has as much potential for saintliness as we do. Grace doesn’t judge others for their failings, but appeals to others to rise up to goodness.

· The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up the Gospel of Jesus Christ – his life and teachings - simply does not have the same authority. This may be helpful to some of you who struggle with Biblical passages that are so opposite of the truth we see in Jesus. So you have to stop turning the Bible into a lawbook and let it become a source that teaches you about Jesus – and in Jesus we discover grace!

· The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us – not us to God. Always. We cannot, through our piety or good deeds, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us.

Those are 5 good ways to think about GRACE. But here is a caution: grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Some of us grew up in traditions that taught that grace is about God relating to us sinful human beings by saying, “Oh, it’s okay! I’ll be a good Guy and forgive you if you do this or believe that or join this church, or pray that prayer.”

But that’s not grace. Grace – on the other hand - is God saying, “I love you too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.”

So how do you live in a changing and disorienting world like ours? How do you live well in a life like yours?

By standing firmly upon the solid ground of God’s amazing grace.

You are loved and accepted by the One who makes all things new and promises to never let you go no matter what. And it doesn’t matter what a crappy person you think you are – or others think you are. You may not be the person your parents wanted you to be, or that your friends think you are, or that society wants, or that some church insisted you needed to be in order to be saved.

Because, you see, the FINAL WORD on your life is GOD’S WORD on your life – I love you, I have chosen you for salvation, and I call you to share in the glory of Jesus Christ.

And standing firmly on THAT GROUND and responding to that GRACE, you and I can go out into the world today and live into the life we have seen in Jesus Christ our Lord.

And that, dear friends, is way better than shouting “Geronimo!” and jumping off a rooftop with a parachute from World War II.