This Week's Light Service Sermon

Light Service Sermons for the Month
Waking Up or Snoozing: It's Your Call
Wake Up Calls
DATE: July 23, 2000
TEXT: John 1:43-51

When her husband died after 50 years of married life, May just would not accept it. She retreated from the world and sank into a depression that lasted nearly five years. One day her granddaughter paid her a visit. Instead of finding the normally withdrawn woman sitting in her wheelchair, Alice found her grandmother beaming. After a few minutes May said to her granddaughter, "Don't you want to know why I'm so happy? Aren't you even curious? Aren't you even curious?"
"Of course, Grandmother," she apologized. "Forgive me for not saying anything. Tell me, why are you so happy? Why this new disposition?"
"Because last night I got an answer," she declared. "I finally know why God took your grandfather and left me behind to live without him."
Then, as if imparting the greatest secret in the world, May lowered her voice, leaned forward in her wheelchair and confided quietly, "Your grandfather knew that the secret of life is love, and he lived it every day. He had become unconditional love in action. I have known about unconditional love, but I haven't fully lived it. That's why he got to go first, and I had to stay behind."
She went on, "All this time I thought I was being punished for something, but last night I found out that I was left behind as a gift from God. He let me stay so that I too could turn my life into love. You see," she continued, pointing a finger to the sky, "last night I was shown that you can't learn the lesson out there. Love has to be lived here on earth. Once you leave, it's too late. So I was given the gift of life so that I can learn to love here and now. You'll never guess what I did this morning?"
When Alice said she didn't have a clue, May went on. "Well, this morning your uncle was upset and angry with me over something I had done. I didn't even flinch! I received his anger, wrapped it in love and returned in with joy." Her eyes twinkled as she added, "It was even kind of fun and his anger dissolved."
Throughout our life we experience many "Wake-Up Calls," calls that provide, even force upon us lessons to be learned if we are but open to them. When we act on one of these wake-up calls we can discover a new level of awareness. With fresh insight, life's breakthrough moments can be converted into positive learning and growing experiences.
Each of us has "stuff" to work through in life. Facing our stuff can sometimes be too great, and we attempt to postpone reality. On the other hand, rather than responding to the breakthrough moment and taking appropriate action, we may choose to sleep through life's wake-up calls. We fight the learning by hitting our internal snooze alarm! As God attempts to deliver a message, we resist by staying asleep and in our comfort zone. But God has a way of repeating the same message over and over until we get the learning.
Let me say first, that activating our snooze alarm can temporarily assist us as a coping mechanism. Chronic sleepwalking, on the other hand, leads to major problems in our career, relationships, and life in general as teachable moments are locked out. Some of us merely go through the motions of life with our body in an upright position and our minds asleep to what is going on around us. Joining the ranks of the walking dead is a costly and unfulfilling way to experience life.
Every situation presents us with an opportunity to automatically react or consciously respond: lets call it "a choice point." The more aware we are, the more choices we have; the less aware, the fewer choices. By hearing, seeing, and feeling the many wake-up calls calling for attention, our work and home lives will be far more complete.
Life provides us with many situations and corresponding choice points. We are a product of our choices, not of our circumstances. Given that, these messages will focus our life strategies in such a way they will enhance our awareness and assist us in making more accountable choices. By taking charge of our life at a higher level, we will experience more personal and spiritual fulfillment. So this morning and in the next two weeks, I would like to look at the Bible and see what it has to say to us about embracing with God's help our future. But before we do that, let us pray together…
(PRAYER)
Many of us are not as awake as we can be. Yet the process of wakening, of learning, of discovering, is partially what life's about. Wake-up calls come in many different forms, yet have one thing in common: They momentarily force us to interrupt the thought and behavioral patterns we normally practice. And those awareness shifts can lead to transformation. How then do we increase this awareness? At the risk of oversimplifying, there are two strategies of awaking: the traumatic and the conscious commitment.
A significant emotional event or traumatic wake-up call can persuade us to view things differently--if we are paying attention. A divorce, getting fired, a major illness, losing a key client, flunking an important examination--these are the more traumatic methods of calling attention to important issues. We might be tempted to think of these "wake-up calls" as negative. Yet each contains a gift, if we are open to the learning. Take for example, suddenly going blind.
Probably the best example in scripture of a traumatic wake-up call is the call of the devoted Pharisee Saul while he was on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus. Saul was a zealous Jew of the first century. As such he was among those wanted to put a stop to the new Christian heresy that was spreading through parts of Judaism, the heresy of Jesus. While on his way to Damascus, Saul encountered the risen Jesus with such force that it blinded him. "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" came the voice out of the light. For three days, Saul sat in darkness. Imagine what might have been going through his mind those three days.
What did I ever do to deserve going blind? Boy have I been backing the wrong horse! How am I going to survive? The only way blind people survive in my day is begging. For three days, Saul wondered what was to become of him. On the third day a new Christian by the name of Ananias came to him and prayed with him. In that prayer, Saul experienced a wake-up call like no other and his life was changed.
An old story goes that a farmer began his early morning chores only to discover that his prize horse had run away through a broken fence. A neighbor said to him later, "It's too bad that your prize horse ran away." The farmer replied, "Too bad? How do I know that the loss of the horse is a bad experience?"
Several days later, the prize horse returned--but not alone. With him were nearly a dozen of the finest wild horses that roamed the plains. Seeing the return of the prize horse together with the other horses, the neighbor came over and said to the farmer, "What good fortune you have experienced?" The farmer again replied, "Good fortune? How do I know that having all these horses is good fortune?"
The farmer's young adult son, obviously pleased with the new horses, selected one for his own. On his first attempt to ride bareback, however, the horse bucked violently, throwing the young man off and breaking his leg. Learning of the situation, the neighbor came over and said to the farmer, "What a terrible experience to have happened to your son." The farmer replied, "Terrible experience? How do I know that the breaking of my son's leg is a terrible experience?"
A week later, a vicious warlord came storming through the countryside, conscripting every able-bodied young man to fight in his bloody battles. The farmer's son was passed over. And so it goes.
How many times has something "bad" happened to your life that later turned out to be a springboard to greater learning? Saul's blindness literally transformed a world. By looking beyond immediate circumstances and being open to even more significant discovery, we can let God be a resource for transformation learning.
The second strategy is making a commitment to lifelong learning. Those who invest significantly in lifelong learning generally experience much higher levels of life and career fulfillment than those who merely wait for learning opportunities to occur. As a conscious process, growth is accelerated when we are awake, aware, open and willing to risk when confronted with a choice point.
Life is a learning and experimental process challenging you to apply your talents and sending wake-up calls when you don't. When your earthly life comes to a close, God will ask you three important questions:
How much did you love?
What did you learn?
As a result of your being here, how is the world a better place?
How would you answer these questions? What would you learn if you were to take these questions seriously? What is your life's purpose? What do you want to accomplish in life? What do you want to master? How do you want to relate to others? How do you want to be remembered?
Jesus exhibited some relatively simple and clearly transferable strategies for living. Here are some of his more obvious patterns:
1) He was committed to a very clear mission and set of goals;
2) He was committed to lifelong growth and learning;
3) He had a balance between his head and his heart
4) He was not afraid of change;
5) He had a desire to give more to life than take;
6) He empowered others rather than expecting other to empower him;
7) He not only had a healthy sense of self but also cultivated a interpersonal relationships;
8) He had a commitment to integrity;
9) He expected positive results;
10) He lived life to the fullest;
11) He enjoyed a personal relationship with his heavenly father;
Jesus greatest opposition was from those who found themselves stuck, stuck in their stuff. Jesus' greatest opposition was from those who no longer wanted to learn, who were immobilized, caught in strategies that no longer worked. Ian Mclver wrote, "When you are in a hole, stop digging." One definition of mental illness is "doing something over and over again but expecting different results." I have been caught in that cycle myself from time to time. It was about ten years ago that I decided that it was about time for me to begin the process of reinventing myself. That's when I entered a degree program at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus. As anyone in education knows, a lot of what you study includes working out your own personal stuff, stuff in which you might be stuck.
We have the power to choose our response to any situation. Yet that choice is heavily influenced by how we view the world. Two types of choice-point filters have a profound impact on our response: those within and those outside of our control. Some choice influencers such as gender and age are outside of our control. Others, such as value and education, are within our control. Through conscious intention, we can empower and augment the elements that are within our control while minimizing the impact of those outside our control. How we view the world through our filters and how we respond at the choice point shares both our present experience and our future options.
Let's explore the "stuck-state cycle." "Where I am now," the starting point, is a function of many factors, some of which we control, some of which are beyond our control. As in the saying, "you cannot step in the same river twice," we constantly experience a new set of life conditions. New choice points, which we either control or delegate to external forces, continually become available.
Sometimes, however, we save up garbage from the past and allow it to influence and shape our present. As time progresses, our gunnysack of old garbage gets bigger and heavier, yet we continue to add new stuff. Hanging on to the neck of the gunnysack, we throw it over our shoulder, drag old garbage into the present and make out of the present--our past. By not letting go of the past, we recreate it and become stuck in our stuff. We recycle our old garbage.
Our text today describes how Philip went to his friend Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus, Son of Joseph from Nazareth." What was Nathanael's reaction? Prejudice! "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
In a stuck state, our automatic, unconscious behaviors and attitudes position us to react rather than respond to current choice points. As a result, history and odd behaviors repeat. "Where I am now" merely recycles where I was before, and things start becoming very familiar! When we recycle our internal garbage, the heap gets larger and spills over into other areas of our life.
What would have happened if Nathanael had accepted his prejudice and decided not to follow Philip? He would have missed the greatest single life-transforming event of his life. If he had remained in his "stuck-state" cycle, he would have been cheated of growing by automatically reacting at the choice point as he always had. So that we aren't that hard on him, don't we all repeat behaviors that historically have not worked, yet expect a different outcome. Lacking the courage to respond to the call of Jesus, we often empower external forces to take charge of our lives. By letting those powers of the devil and the world take control, we ignore the inner world of our spirit that requires attention. As a result, we end up where we started--and the cycle repeats.
The next time you find yourself receiving a wake-up call from God, ask yourselves these questions:
1) What is the worst that could happen if I worked on my own stuff?
2) What is the best that could happen if I worked on my own stuff?
3) What if I don't work on my own stuff?
4) What do I gain or lose by continuing to sleepwalk?
5) What is God trying to help me learn?
Every wake-up call from God moves us toward Him while at the same time draws us away from those things, those patterns, that stuck-state, that keep us from being the free, spiritual beings God created us to be. The decision to address your state-stuck issues is a decision to be set free. You are the chooser, and now is the time. Hear the call of Jesus!

AMEN