"Rest Points"
Sermon Transcript for July 18, 2004
Scripture Reading: Colossians 1:1-14
By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
Nobody knows the trouble that we’ve seen like Jesus. That’s what Faye sang for you a few minutes ago and that was so nice. Thank you very much. It’s so soothing; I wasn’t sure I had the energy to do the sermon now. But I’m awake and alive now and remembering that nobody knows the stress of our lives like Jesus. There is so much vying for our attention right now isn’t there? There’s so much information bombarding us if you watch CNN or Fox news or whatever, those all news channels, they have something going across the bottom of the screen, they have something going up the side of the screen, they have something in the middle and they have something in the background. And they bombard you with information. You drive down the highway and there are signs everywhere. There is information flying in the sky sometimes. It is everywhere. Now I want to remind you of a very famous poem by Joyce Kilmore. You’ve heard this, I’m sure. Kilmore wrote that poem called “Trees” that says, “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.” And he concludes the poem by saying, “Poems are made by fools like me but only God can make a tree.” Ogden Nash just a few years later said this, “I think that I shall never see a billboard as lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall I’ll never see a tree at all!” That’s really the world that we live in isn’t it? The world we live in is so filled with noise and information. I don’t know about you but there’s a lot of stress in doing ordinary things.
Does anybody else hate driving from here to Greenwood on U.S. 31 as much as I do? Boy is that stressful. I see hands going up. You know, you can drive up that road, stop at every single one of those stop lights and at every single stop light hear thump, thump, thump, thump coming from some teenager or not so young teenager’s car because they have a device in their trunk designed to shake everything within a hundred yards. You can drive that route and you can get cursed at by at least ten people just for minding your own business, I’m sure. You can go up there and visit the various shops and stores and fight for a parking space. Well, you don’t even have to do that. You can go to Wal-Mart and do that! Does anybody else find going to Wal-Mart to be a stressful exercise? Yes? First of all, you’ve got to park. Then once you find a parking spot you have to get in the store without getting run over. Then when you get in there, you find that overnight little elves have rearranged everything. And nothing is where it was the last time you visited. And I have it on good authority they do that on purpose just to make you browse. So you go in to buy a little shampoo or deodorant or something like that and you end up browsing and stressing over something that you thought would be simple.
Information bombards you from every direction. Noise coming at you from every direction. It’s no wonder that a coroner in Birmingham, England ruled that noisy neighbors had driven a guy to his suicidal death. Or that in Pennsylvania a man shot and killed a dirt-biking youngster who was riding on mounds of coal just a couple hundred yards from his house and then went in and shot himself. Noise and stress and antisocial behavior, narcissistic, passive-aggressive neighbors and co-workers and even church friends can drive you right out of your mind. There are a lot of stress points in our lives aren’t there? And many communities have tried to use the power of government to control that. They’ve adopted all sorts of controlling restrictions—noise restrictions, noise abatement barriers and limiting the hours that construction can be done--all those rules and regulations. Did you know that there was a man in Denver last fall who actually tried to put stress on the government’s agenda? He actually introduced a ballot that was going to require the government to use stress reducing techniques and programs to take responsibility on part of the government for stress in people in the community? Sounds bizarre but it actually got some serious consideration. And the question I want to ask is, “Can you legislate stress-lessness? You know, can you really? Wouldn’t it be nice if all you had to do was make a law and there would be no more stress? Wouldn’t that be nice? But that’s not how it works, is it? We can’t do anything external to get rid of the stress.
The question really is, “How do I get rid of the stress in my life and how do I live a life that has peace and fulfillment in it?” In a few minutes we are going to explore how the Apostle Paul remedied that for us. But think about how you’ve dealt with stress. I have a friend that I made in the last few months who has taught me some things while repairing some pain and damage in my back. I have a lot of kind of long term back problems but I developed a new kind of piercing pain in my upper back. Something I’ve never experienced before. And I really was being just crippled by this pain and I couldn’t figure out what it was about. And my friend was able to adjust my back so that it would go away and then it would just come back again. And finally my friend said very casually, “You know it’s stress, don’t you?” And I was a little disturbed by that because I thought I managed my stress pretty well. But the truth is stress comes in many forms and it sneaks up on you. No one ever really knows that they are under a lot of stress day to day. There are stressful situations that we enter in to. But stress has this sort of accumulative effect. And so I realized that the only person who could take care of my stress was me with the Lord’s help. So I began a program of exercise and stretching and also I prayed and pleaded with the Lord to help me rethink how I approach certain parts of my life so that I wouldn’t succumb to the affects of stress quite so easily. Well, I’m happy to say it’s working! And I’m happy to say that without knowing may have stumbled on to some of the truths that we are going to hear from scripture today.
Some people just try to fly away from stress and try to hide from it. You know, Elijah is a good example from the Old Testament. Elijah was hiding from Jezebel. He was hiding from the priest so he went into the desert and he hid under a rock and under a bush. And he didn’t get any answers. It didn’t solve his problem. Running away isn’t the answer. Augustine fled North Africa and Carthage, a place he called the “boiling caldron of lust”, and went to Rome thinking that he could escape all of that stress. And, well, he didn’t find relief in Rome either. Then there’s St. Jerome who was the person that we credit with translating the New Testament into Latin. He fled Rome for the desert and eventually ended up in caves in Bethlehem. I had the privilege of visiting those caves last February in Bethlehem and you will too if you go with me to Israel in January. But Jerome didn’t find escape even in his hole in the ground in Bethlehem because stress is something we carry with us. It is not something you can run away from. So we need personal rest points. We need to find peace that isn’t available because of site but rather our sight. It’s not a matter of geography; it’s a question of spirituality. It’s not an issue of “locationship”; it’s an issue of relationship. So we have to find the vision in us, the Spirit, the power that is in our soul, so that we can have this connection with Christ that will ensure a calm in the storm that we desire.
You’ve heard a lot about John Wesley over the past few weeks and months. And you know that our Pastor, Reverend Mike, is going to be traveling to England with Mickey in just a few days to tour many of the historical sites that connect to our roots as Methodist. And one of the things that he’ll be reminded of is that John Wesley, our founder, traveled with his brother to America to be a missionary to the savages. He believed that he would straighten these savages out by preaching the Gospel to them; and he failed miserably and finally returned to England. And on his return trip legend says that there was terrible storm and the ship was in grave danger and Wesley saw some people called Moravians on the boat who were praying and totally at peace. They were literally experiencing peace; that that was all understanded in the midst of a storm. He craved that. He wanted what they had so much. And eventually he found it in a place called “Aldersgate Street”. And in that place he recalls that he was filled with a strange sense of warmth that gave him the peace that he’d been looking for. All of his knowledge of the Christian things turned in to something internal and it began to make him a new person—a person who could withstand all the stress around him, a person whose vision was focused on what God wanted rather than what the world dictated.
So if we are on a quest for peace, if we are looking for those rest points, we should probably see what the Apostle Paul wants us to see because his letter to the Colossians is a very affirming letter. As you listen to it, he’s saying what saints they are and how really proud he is of their witness. And he has acknowledged that they are doing their job very well. But he is also aware, as historians tell us, that they are under a lot of pressure from the world around them. There’s a new belief system called “gnosticism” that’s arising and this belief system challenges the very core values of what Christians are to be. And the Colossians are young Christians doing everything well but threatened, stressed out you might say, by this tempting belief system that in some ways puts that equality with Christ closer to our reach but also diminishes Christ as something that He has never been—just an ordinary man. So Paul is aware of this as he is writing to them.
And so the first thing Paul does, his first rest point you might say, is to remind them of who they are. Paul knew that it is very helpful to remember who you are. A few years ago I was browsing one of these used record stores and I stumbled on to a title that really intrigued me. I ended up buying the album just to hear the song. But the title was so interesting. It said, “Don’t forget to remember who you are”. That’s what Paul is saying today—“Don’t forget to remember who you are”. Fundamentally we are saints. We are the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. That is, we are set apart. Look up saint in your Christian dictionary and you will find that it is a word that literally means “one who is assured of a place in heaven”. I’m feeling like a saint today. I’m felling that I have a place in heaven because of Christ Jesus. I read something just the over day, in fact I was having conversation about it with the curator of the exhibit I mentioned to you at the start of the service. He mentioned to me that many translations of the Bible will say that it is our faith in Christ that saves us but the truest translations seem to say something slightly different and that is that the faith of Christ saves us. And so you could say that it is our faith in Christ’s faith that assures us of our place in heaven. So Paul reminds us who we are. We are the saints; we are the faithful brothers and sisters. When you are feeling the stress and the pressure of the world around you remind you that you are in this world but you are no longer part of this world. You’ve been set apart by Christ Himself. And Paul says to us then who are the saints, grace and peace from God our Father. That’s the gift you’ve been given because you are saints. You’ve been given grace and peace from God our Father. What more could God give to any of us? The grace that saves and the peace that comes with knowing that all your earthly pursuits need only to please God.
Rest point number two is this—Paul says that we must remember what we have. We have faith, hope, and love. I just said a moment ago that faith could be defined both as a noun and a verb. It is the faith of Christ. It is Jesus’ belief that because He was sent from the Father, is one with the Father, that His reconciling death is the solution to the problem. His faith is that the Father would bring Him to life again and that the Father would restore us all to a relationship with Him through Christ. It is Christ’s faith--the noun--that gives us that promise of hope. And it is our faith in His faith. Now I know a lot of people who say to me over the last couple of years especially, “Oh, I wish I had your faith.” Go get your own! The truth is faith builds faith. Faith is not something that you get, you know, in a large package. It’s something that you get a little bit at a time. It’s a gift from God and it gets bigger as we pile on experiences of faith. Let me say this as literally as I know how—make one leap of faith and then don’t forget it. And that is the founding place for your faith. And each time you have a faith experience you grow in faith. It’s really that simple. And so the only edge that some of us have over others is we’ve just had more practice. So practice! You have faith; you are the saints. You have hope. Oh, hope—when you saw the buildings crashing down a couple of years ago in New York City, I hope you remember your hope. I hope that people never forget that even while human sin and destruction and death seem to reign supreme. There is hope! And if you have ever encountered somebody with severe depression, maybe even somebody on the verge of suicide, a lot of time all it takes to bring them back from the brink is to remind them that tomorrow it will be a little better. Hope is such a precious gift and it has been given to you saints. Hope is the thing you hold on to when nothing else looks like it is going to work out. And your hope is in the promise that Jesus has died for you, paid the debt for you, that Jesus has assured you of your own eternity and that Christ will come again and that all your earthly endeavors count for something in heaven. And that’s why we continue to work out our faith, work out our salvation, continuing to live as people who desire to be like Christ more and more every day. We are not allowed to sit still. That’s part of having hope.
We have love. You know that historians, even non-Christians and Jews, recorded that the people of the early church had a remarkable, extraordinary love for one another. Let’s face it, when you are out there in that stressful world the one thing you don’t feel very often from people around you is love. Well don’t wait for that to happen. You could be waiting a long time. Be a source of love. You are the saints of Christ. Your role in your community, in your place of work, in your world is to love people as Christ loves them to the best of your ability. To extend to them a little bit of the love of Christ through your actions, through your words, through your grace, and through your peace. You know it could be argued that if John Wesley hadn’t witnessed the peace and the grace of those Moravians he might not have moved to the position of having it for himself. And so be a witness; let love be your witness. Let the actions, the deed, the goal and values of your life reflect the love of Christ. Because remember, God is watching us.
Next point, number three, is very simple. Don’t forget what God wants for you. God has spelled it out very plainly in His word and God knows exactly what you need, exactly what you want. The only problem is sometimes we don’t know what we want or what we need. God’s word is vivid in this way; and I would urge you if nothing else to read the words of Jesus regularly. If your Bible’s like mine, the words of Jesus are in red ink. And I find the red ink in my Bible to be terribly reliable. It’s always unquestionably true and faithful. So be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and understand that all wisdom comes from God and that this world and all of its values and all of its pressure to conform is not part of God’s will for your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t participate; it just means that you should seek His will first. The secret to beating the stress is knowing where you are going and whom it is you are trying to please. The secret to beating the stress is to only desire to bring a smile to God’s face with the way that you live your life. And what brings a smile to God’s face is bearing fruit. Be a Christian saint who bears fruit in your own family, in your relationships at work, clubs, here at church, even at Wal-Mart, even going down U.S. 31 on your way to Greenwood. “Be prepared to endure everything in patience,” Paul says, “and then joyfully give thanks to the Father for what you have.” Never forget that it is He who rescues you from the darkness. And when the darkness of the world closes in on you, there’s the light. Walk toward the light.
Paul’s words to the Colossians should help us to refocus, help us to remember who we are, what we have, and what God wants for us. And perhaps grace and peace and restful stress-less living is something that we can vote for. Not on a ballot, but vote for it as an act of our own will to choose to live according to God’s wisdom covered by His grace and filled with His peace. That will be the way to find the rest points along your journey. Let us pray, “Heavenly Father I thank you and I praise you for your word now. Burn it on our hearts as you see fit. Send us forth transformed and changed for your glory. Amen.”
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