This Week's Sermons

Sermons for the Month
"Big Rocks"
DATE: November 22, 1998
SERVICE: Christ the King
TEXT: Luke 23:33-43
"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

[Note: This sermon begins with an interactive experience which requires bringing together some props prior to worship. Needed are a table, a one-gallon pitcher or large, wide-mouthed Mason jar (a bucket will work, but a clear, see-through container is better), about a dozen fist-sized rocks, a bucket of gravel, a bucket of sand and a pitcher of water. It might help to practice this experience prior to the service.]
Tell the congregation that that you're going to give them a "pop quiz." Take out a one-gallon glass pitcher. Now produce about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully place them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar is filled to the top and no more rocks can fit inside, ask your people, "Is this jar full?"
Most likely everyone will say, "Yes." "Really?"
Now reach under the table and pull out a bucket of gravel. Then dump some gravel in and shake the jar, causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks.
Now smile and ask your people once more, "Is the jar full?" By now the congregation will be onto you. "Probably not," one of them is likely to answer.
"Good!" Reach under the table and bring out a bucket of sand. Start dumping the sand in, and it will penetrate the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel.
Once more ask the question, "Is this jar full?"
"No!" the congregation will probably shout.
Once again say "Good!" Then grab a pitcher of water and begin to pour it in until the jar is filled to the brim.
Now look up at the congregation and ask, "What is the point of this animation?"
Someone will probably say something like, "You can always cram more into life." Or "There's always enough time for people in need." Or ... Be polite, but reject those applications in favor of this truth: If you don't put the big rocks in first, you'll never get them in at all. Or, to put it another way, "The Main Thing is to Make the Main Thing the Main Thing." (Thanks to Dan Simpson of Fuller Theological Seminary for alerting me to this experience.)
What are the "Big Rocks" of your life? What are the big rocks in your life? A project that YOU want to accomplish? Time with your loved ones? Your education, your finances? A cause? Teaching or mentoring others? Remember to put these big rocks in first or you'll never get them in at all.
But our Scripture lesson for this morning reminds us that the biggest rock any of us must first fit fully into our lives is the rock of faith in Jesus Christ.
Did you get the willys as the crucifixion text was read to you? Did shivers cascade down your spine as you heard how Jesus was betrayed, rejected, mocked, abused and treated as a criminal? The Messiah ... crucified? In the midst of one of the most horrifying experiences anyone can have, much less the Son of God, Jesus keeps his focus on the main thing: God is still God; God is in control; God expects obedience.
Jesus never lost his head. Jesus never lost his heart. It was only because Jesus kept the main thing the main thing that he could love his enemies - even on the cross; forgive those who put him there - even on the cross; reach out to someone in need - even on the cross.
Jesus practices what he preaches - even on the cross. He does what he has taught his disciples to do - even on the cross. Jesus prays for his abusers - even on the cross. Jesus prays even for his betrayers (even Peter, James, John and his other disciples) - even on the cross. Jesus refuses to do evil that good may come of it - even on an evil cross.
Jesus put the big rocks in the jar first; he kept the main thing the main thing - even on the cross. The people mocked him for not "saving himself." But Jesus did not come to save himself. Jesus came to save others. "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life ... will save it" (9:24).
One of the reasons I believe that this metaphor of "the main thing" has struck such a responsive chord in the business world (second perhaps only to "Thinking Outside the Box") is that it is a "kinder, gentler" way of pleading for moral judgments in a culture afraid to be "judgmental."
Throughout the '80s and '90s, it was deemed inappropriate to be "judgmental." David Gelernter notes in his book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber (New York: The Free Press, 1997) that the disrespectful sense of the term "judgmental" didn't even appear in the dictionary before 1970.
But wait a minute! Who says that we shouldn't be "judgmental"? Who says Christians are not to make decisions, to make comparisons and decide. The Bible says "Judge not." It does not say "Don't make judgments." Unfortunately, we often shy away from our ability to make judgements about what big rocks go in first and what small rocks that fill in the cracks can be put in last.
Last fall The New Yorker carried the story of a Wall Street venture capitalist's last innings of a fight with cancer. The story caught the eye of Samuel T. Lloyd III, senior rector at Trinity Church in the City of Boston, partly because it was Jerome Groopman, an oncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess hospital in Boston, who provided the portrait of this man named Kirk Bains.
As a part of his sermon one Sunday morning (February 15, 1998), Lloyd retold The New Yorker story of Kirk Bains, a driven executive who came to see in the course of his fight with cancer that perhaps he had not done too well at setting priorities, focusing on the main thing, getting the big rocks in first.
He had lived for "the deal." And he had been so successful because he was able to know when to get in quick, ahead of everyone else, and when to get out. "There's a difference between what I do and what you do," he told Groopman. "I couldn't care less about the product ... It can be oil or platinum or software or widgets. It's all a shell game played for big money, and once I win enough, I wave goodbye." (Sounds like some corporate raiders from the 80s we know about here in Akron.) That approach spilled over into his personal life one day. "Are you affiliated with a church?" the doctor asked. "Episcopalian," he said. "I celebrate Christmas ... the music ... giving gifts. That's fun. But the religion - I can't put much stock in a church founded because Henry VIII wanted a younger wife."
Dr. Groopman wasn't convinced, so Bains went on to say more. "Let me put it in my own terms. I'm not a long-term investor. I like quick returns. I don't believe in working for dividends paid only in heaven."
Kirk Bains signed on to be made a guinea pig in a high-risk experimental treatment. For a few months the treatment seemed to work, but then the cancer came back, and the end drew near. And as it did, Bains came to question his life.
He had always read newspapers, he said, but for him they meant nothing but information for deals. "I never really cared about the world's events or its people," he says. "I had no interest in creating something - not a product or a partnership with a person. And now I have no [spiritual] equity. No dividends coming in. Nothing to show in my portfolio." And the he concluded, "I was a self-absorbed, uncaring [jerk]."
It's not too late for us to see what Kirk Bains only came to see in the end: that the judgments we make about what rocks to put in first determine what kind of lives we live.
What I am suggesting to you on this Christ the King Sunday, is its never too late to start being decisive about the big rocks and the little rocks of our life. It's never too late to live out 2,000 years of moral wisdom about what is right and wrong and start making judgments. The 20th-century poet Phyllis McGinley says that virtue is humanity's Mount Everest. In fact, it's time we start making heroes of those who climb the highest. It's time to tell this world in no uncertain terms that the biggest rock of all, the rock that goes in first, is Jesus Christ, the Rock of Ages.
If the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, then what is the "main thing"?
The "main thing" is that God loved us so much that faced with the choice between his Son and us, he chose us.
The "main thing" is that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, beating death down for our sake forever.
The "main thing" is that we are called to be his disciples and win others to His kingdom.
The "main thing" is that call will involve struggle. Period. Work for justice? You'll struggle. Work for peace? You'll struggle. Work for truth? You'll struggle. Work to put others above self? You'll struggle. The "main thing" is you'll not struggle alone. God struggles along with you.
The "main thing" is that we are never alone, for there is no place in the universe we can go, there is no sin that we can commit, that will put us out of reach of the grace of Christ's sacrifice, the gift of God's love.
These are the really "big rocks." All the rest is filler.
Is the Big Rock of your life the Rock of Ages? If you haven't been judgmental enough in making the Big Rock the Rock of Ages, will you come back this morning to the Rock on which this church was founded?
Jesus Christ - insulted, mocked, sneered at, beaten, ridiculed, falsely accused, betrayed and abandoned and finally, murdered - is the Big Rock and the First Rock.
Anchor your faith to this Rock, and all the other rocks will fall into place.

AMEN