Sermons for the Month
DATE: June 28, 1998
SERVICE: Pentecost IV
TEXT: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Sermons for the Month
A WholeLife Policy
DATE: June 28, 1998
SERVICE: Pentecost IV
TEXT: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14"To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN What kind of investments have you been making this year? How many bought stock in the Cleveland Indians? I'd be careful how you answer that last question. If you bought it at 15, the last I heard it was down to 11 ¼. Whether it's the stock market or the supermarket, commodities or the cookie jar, we all make investment decisions every day of our lives. Some investments pan out better than others -- usually based on the amount of research we pour into the investment decision in the first place. Not all investments show their worth or worthlessness quickly. Sometimes we wait for years to see if the time and energy and resources we have poured into something will actually pay off. Sometimes we're not even sure what kind of "payoff" we're looking for. With a stock portfolio, it's easy to flip to the summary page and check the bottom line. In the real-estate market, you check the appreciation rate of your property and compare it with other properties in the area. In the supermarket, you count the number of grocery bags you come out with to check quantity, and you count the number of chews it takes to get down a bite of supposedly prime-cut steak to check quality. But what kind of payoff do you look for from the investment you make in your children? What kind of payoff do you look for from the investment you make in your spouse? What kind of payoff do you look for from the investment you make in the arts? What kind of payoff do you look for from the investment you make in friends? What kind of payoff do you look for from the investment you make in your church? Sure, you can count diplomas earned, anniversaries celebrated, concerts attended, dinner invitations received, and building expansions completed. But are those the "real" payoffs? Do those tangible, measurable, even countable "returns" reflect the genuine nature of the investment you have made in love and family, or nurturing your soul and mind and body? In today's gospel lesson, Jesus gives some very tough investment advice to some very naive investors. Jesus' words reveal that the authentic nature of discipleship is different than it may first appear. Each of this week's three seekers saw discipling with Jesus as a kind of one-time investment that would bring about some definitive payoff. But to be a follower of Jesus is an investment that takes daily maintenance. It is a commitment that requires -- to use an investment term -- WholeLife Discipleship. The biblical theme of "sojourning" is central to the Bible. Beginning with the Bible's very first sojourner, Abraham, and continuing through Moses and the Exodus, life in Canaan, and the itinerant band of disciples that "sojourned" with Jesus, a dominant metaphor for discipleship is "one of the walk" or "sojourn." No wonder the earliest disciples were known as people of "The Way." According to today's text, the Walk of WholeLife Discipleship involves three components: 1) Walk Along; 2) Walk Away; and 3) Walk On. WALK ALONG (MOVEMENT) -- The first would-be disciple that approaches Jesus today claims he will follow Jesus "wherever you will go!" But before he lets him, Jesus makes it clear that as the Son of Man has "nowhere" to call his permanent home, so, too, must his disciples be committed to, invested in, a life of MOVEMENT. Only by continually moving along, keeping up and in step with the beat of the Spirit, do disciples genuinely "follow" Jesus. There is no final "resting place" on this earth, no mountain top experience, no moment in time when we can say, "I have arrived. I no longer need to grow in my relationship with Jesus. Disciple is forever a journey, not at any final destination. I think all of us would agree that many of the solutions to life's problems that worked in the day of Ozzie and Harriet no longer work in the day of Scully and Mulder. A mechanic well versed in repairing carburetors might have a tough time even finding one in today's automobiles let alone fixing it. And when was the last time you saw an ad in the help-wanted for a typewriter repairman. The most serious problem I can remember facing in high school wasn't whether there were weapons on school grounds but who would go with me to the YMCA dance. Sharks are one of the oldest, most primitive, and most successful vertebrate groups still in existence today. But in order for a shark to keep breathing, keep oxygenating water flowing through its gills, a shark must keep moving all the time. The gill slits on a shark lack the fluttering fins found in the bony fishes that work to constantly direct a stream of water over the gills. Sharks must invest their whole body in order to move oxygen through their system and so stay alive. It's the same with WholeLife Discipleship. Jesus calls us to a "keep walking along" investment that has a guarantee: you will spend your life traversing fresh paths and new roads, working for new solutions to new problems, facing new challenges with anticipation and hope. WALK AWAY (LIFE) -- The second seeker Jesus encounters today indicates he too will follow Jesus. But first he says he must properly "close out" a previous "account" relating to other investments he deems at the moment to be more important than the one Jesus offers. In essence, he asks Jesus to wait until he first buries his father before he can consider investing in any new venture. Jesus' reprimand—let the dead bury the dead—should not be misread or misheard as heaping disrespect on the dead or implying that fulfilling obligations to a deceased parent is a profitless enterprise. In the interest of full disclosure, what Jesus was insisting on from the very beginning is that his disciples be preoccupied with investing in LIFE, whatever the circumstances or situations they found themselves in. As a Jew, Jesus found tradition important. But as the Messiah, he knew that he and his followers must embody a living, vital future, not embrace a dead-to-this-world corpse of legalities, customs and conscription's. WholeLife disciples of Jesus are called to invest in life, and walk away from the dead letter of tradition lived only for tradition's sake. Disciples are called by Jesus to walk away from, and to walk in and toward. WholeLife disciples must both walk away from old rubrics, stale strategies, tired truisms, and also walk in and toward the midst of this world. They are called to be in the midst of politics, in the midst of economics, in the midst of social change, in the midst of health crises, in the midst of generational conflicts, in the midst of the arts, in the midst of scientific breakthroughs, in the midst of the Internet, in the midst of children, in the midst of the aged--in the midst of all that makes up human existence in this time and place. Bodie Thoene, co-author of best-selling Christian fiction such as the Zion Chronicles, once worked for John Wayne as a scriptwriter. In Today's Christian Woman, Thoene tells how that opportunity came about. "By the time I was nineteen, I was commuting to Los Angeles and doing feature articles on different stunt men and other film personalities for magazines. Four years later, an article I co-wrote with John Wayne's stuntman won the attention of the Duke himself. One day he called and invited my husband Brock, and me to come to his house. He talked to us as if we were friends, showing keen interest in us as individuals. From that day on, I began writing for his film company Batjac Productions. Brock helped me with the historical research. "We were awestruck. Here was this man who had been in film for fifty years and he takes a young couple with small children under his wing! Once I asked him, "Why are you doing this? You're so good to us." "He replied, "Because somebody did it for me." WholeLife Discipling with Jesus means investing in life. WALK ON (FUTURE) -- The third potential disciple who approaches Jesus claims he is ready to follow. But he begs permission to go and give his farewells to his family before beginning the discipleship journey. Like the second seeker, this man is concerned with seeing through the other investments he has made in life before road-testing any new venture. Any broker will tell you: one of the riskiest markets anyone can get into is investing in the value of "futures" -- betting on how much the price of certain commodities will rise or fall. But this riskiest, most daredevil investment is exactly what Jesus calls disciples to do with their lives. Even as disciples are called to walk along new paths and walk on the most traveled roads of this world, disciples are called to walk on and out into the unknown future. I think many of us Christians fail because we get scared about the future and so we remain in the past out of fear. On the other hand, a disciple, Jesus says, always keeps eyes forward, fixed on and believing the promises of the kingdom of God. Some say Karl Wallenda was the greatest tightrope walker who ever lived. He was famous for walking high in the air across great distances without a net. What was equally as amazing is that the older he got, the more breathtaking his walks. In his 70s he improved on walks he had done in his 20s and 30s. In 1978, while performing a tightrope walk between two buildings in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he fell to his death. His wife was interviewed on television some weeks after his death. "It was very strange," she said. "For months prior to his last walk, he thought about nothing else. For the first time, he had nightmares about falling." She talked about his hesitancy and his looking back at past successes. Wallenda's wife also revealed that he even checked the installation and construction of the wire himself. "This was the first time," she revealed, "Karl had ever done that." What led to Wallenda's fall? Negative mental images of his walk, hesitation and fear. Franklin Roosevelt, during the war said it this way, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. It the same way, negative mental attitudes are the same things that lead to falls in our spiritual life. A more positive case of confronting personal challenges on an adventure, considering her stature (four feet, nine inches) and culture (Japanese), is Junko Tabei -- the first woman to climb Mount Everest and the first of her gender to break the stranglehold men of her country have had on the practice of exploration. She had been scorned and ridiculed by other mountaineers and forbidden to join their clubs. Still, she persisted and was profoundly changed by her ascent of the world's highest peak. She lost her fear of speaking her mind afterward and was no longer willing to pretend she was weak. She also stopped caring what people said behind her back. All of these personality changes took place as a result of her persistence in conquering not only a mountain but also the prejudices of her own people. Now she is a hero in her own land, a model for other young women who aspire to pursue their own dreams. In the true fashion of a traveler who enjoys the journey as much as the goal, Tabei believes that "climbing the mountain is its own reward." Junko Tabei is a classic example of a person who walked along (she kept moving), walked away (she kept growing) and walked on (she kept believing). Jesus calls us to that same kind of discipleship as we face the mountains in our lives. Walk along with the Savior -- keep moving. The destination is not the thing; the journey itself is the gift. Walk away from the no longer relevant -- keep growing for the only constant is change.. Walk on with conviction -- keep believing in the way, the truth and the life that is Jesus Christ.
AMEN