November 2, 2008

Scripture:         1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

Sermon:           “Write Your Own Sermon”

            Let us turn now to the Word of God.  Open the Scriptures with me to Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians.  We are going to read together from chapter 2, verses 9 through 13.  You can find that easily on page   of the New Testament in the Bible provided in the pews if you like.

            Paul once founded a congregation in the city of Thessalonica, which is in Macedonia.  That’s somewhere north of the city of Athens in Greece along the coast of the Aegean Sea.  And you know that Paul is not usually in the habit of writing pleasant letters to the churches he’s founded.  Right?  Usually something has gone dreadfully wrong.  And so he dictates a letter to one of his scribes and tries to set the matters straight.  But, that’s not the case with this one.

            It’s clear that Paul misses these people very much.  And since he could not make it back to them in person, Paul sent his protégé Timothy to visit.  Timothy reported back to Paul that the church was just filled with faithful, good people.  But, they were up against it.  Life as a Christian in the Roman Empire was not an easy thing at all.  This letter appears to be an encouragement to maintain their faith even though they’re being persecuted.

            Now, we’re going to read words from Paul that seem to hold himself up as a kind of example to follow.  And you and I are likely to hear this a bit self-righteously.  We don’t take to well to folks saying, “Look at me.  Look at me.”  But, it didn’t work that way in the ancient world.  So, we have to try to hear it the way those folks would have.  They loved Paul and looked to him for leadership and guidance.  And so that is what we are hearing.

            This is the Word of the Lord…

            You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.  You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers.  As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

            We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.

            There’s a taxi driver over in Lexington that I know.  And he’s got stories you wouldn’t believe.  Folks are in and out of his cab all the time, going here and there.  This is the guy you want to have lunch with because he’ll just keep you going with tales of the craziest circumstances.

            One fellow, you see, called the cab to come and take him to some place.  And he gets in the cab and says that they need to stop at the department store on the way.  So, my friend pulled up to the curb out front, left the meter running, and let the guy out.  Well, he came back out a few minutes later and he’s a little bigger in the waist than before.  Stuffed in his shirt was a jacket that he’d just stolen from the store.

            Then, the guy told my friend to take him to another department store a few miles away.  And that’s where, I’m not kidding you, he got out, returned the jacket for cash, and then returned to pay the taxi driver.  Did you catch that?  He had the cab drive him from store to store where he could steal something and then sell it in order to pay for his trip!

            I assume that the man had business of some sort near the second store because that’s where he left.

            I wonder if our sister church in May’s Lick, Kentucky has ever heard that story.  Their preacher happens to be that taxi driver.  He works full time driving a cab so that he can pastor that little church.  I’ll bet the hear all kinds of stories.

            In my former life, when I worked as a chemist for a drug manufacturer, there was this one guy out on the manufacturing floor.  He was kind of a human anvil.  Just as blunt faced as a bulldog, and really built the same way, too.  Jesse.  And Jesse would use this almost superhuman strength to lift big bags of sugar and whatever was going into the machines making drugs.

            He’d come into the break room and start in about Jesus and being filled with Holy Ghost power.  He’d say, “brother, did you see that big ‘ole barrel I just hoisted up over there?  Holy Ghost power.  Holy Ghost power.  You gotta get some of that Holy Ghost power.”

            I never did take Jesse up on his offer to visit, but when he wasn’t working like a mule at the factory, Jesse was preaching to the folks at a Pentecostal church down the road a ways.

            Now, I would probably not do too well in a Pentecostal church.  But, religion fascinates me to no end and I really wish I’d gone a time or two.  Jesse preached at work all the time, anyhow.  Drove some folks around there mad, I know.  But, I liked him.

            There are a lot of folks in the ministry of the church that have to make ends meet somehow.  You and I fret over the church budget, you know.  We’ve got it pretty good.  Plenty of ministers are what you call bi-vocational.  They work just all the time.  The Lord’s work has to be done, and, well, it doesn’t pay the bills for everybody.

            That’s Paul the apostle.  Bi-vocational.  He’s called of God.  No doubt about that.  Driven.  Focused.  Determined.  But, he’s breaking his back in order to put food on the table and keep the rent paid.  This church-planting business doesn’t have a big bottom line on the balance sheet.  What is it he said there in verse 9 that we read?  “We worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed the gospel of God.”  Night and day they worked.  And that’s how they made ends meet.

            Luke told us in the book of Acts that Paul made tents for a living.  That’s what he did along the way.  He made tents for folks to live in while they traveled from here to there.  He once set up shop in Corinth making tents with Aquila and Priscilla.  The good folks down the road in Philippi were able to pay a salary to Paul.  But, mostly Paul had to work a second job.

            It seems to me that these bi-vocational folks know a thing or two about what life is like for people sitting in the pews.

            It seems to me, also, that folks sitting in the pews might know a thing or two about preaching the good news of Jesus Christ.  After all, y’all are the ones who live life outside of these walls.  Y’all are the ones who rub shoulders with co-workers, family, friends, living out your faith in a world where faith is not at all the way things operate.

            Lester Ringham last week reminded us all that there is a professional minister, one who is supported financially to be the pastor and study the scriptures and preach the sermons on Sunday mornings.  There is one among us for that.  But, we are all ministers.  The Bible says so.  Our bulletin here proclaims it.  And y’all are the ones who preach sermons that reach more people than I ever will.

            Back at the turn of the 13^th century lived a monk in Italy named Francis of Assisi.  He used to say, “Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”  Well, that’s about you.  Some folks hear that and think they don’t ever have to really speak about their faith, which isn’t at all what ‘ole St. Francis meant.  What he meant was that our very lives are a living sermon to people around us.  They way we decide to live for the Lord speaks to others in such profound ways.

            More recently a Quaker named Parker Palmer gave life to this idea of our lives preaching the good news.  He wrote a wonderful little book whose title sums it up very nicely.  Let You Life Speak.  Let your life speak.  You’re the one living between the church and the world.  You are the boundary.  You are the voice of Jesus Christ.  You are his hands.

            It’s like the message that Warren Nash puts on the sign outside every now and then.  “You are the only Bible some people will ever read.”

            That’s what Paul is getting at here with the Thessalonians.  He says, “I know what life is like to live between the church and the world at work.  I’ve lived it.  I’ve worked full time making tents while working part time at the same time guiding the church.  So, listen to me.  I know what I’m talking about.  We’ve got this incredible opportunity to witness to the goodness of God, the justice of God’s kingdom, the righteousness that says there isn’t a single person that’s invisible or too broken or too lost or too hurt.  Let your lives speak.  Let your lives be sermons to the world and write your very own.

            I’ll give you just one example this morning and try to get y’all out for lunch at a decent hour.  The point is probably clear enough.

            I was at a football game one Sunday, which tells you a bit about my priorities at a different time in my life.  Sitting there in the front row of the stadium with my friends, we were all hooping and hollering at the tops of our lungs, making idiots of ourselves.  Our team had driven the ball all the way to the goal line right in front of us.  I mean we could smell the players from where we were.

            At the time there was a big ‘ole running back named Craig Heyward.  He went by the alias of “Ironhead”.  I mean he was a big guy.  Looked more like a lineman and you’d just be stunned at how nimble he was on his feet.  Well, they handed him the ball and he lowered his shoulder towards the goal line.  I saw lesser men crushed to the ground as he bounded his way in for the score.  And then he took the ball high over his head and slammed it into the ground, you know.

            Exciting stuff.  For us.  Certainly for him.  And we were all just cheering and celebrating.  But, ‘ole Ironhead then looked right towards us.  And he started to look around in the end zone.  The ball had come to rest a few yards away and he went over and picked it up.  I’ll never forget it.  He took that ball and ran straight for the stands where he reached up and handed it to a man that was leaning over.  That man took the ball and handed it over next to him to the one person who couldn’t stand up.  It was a boy in a wheelchair.

            And that ball was something of a loaf of bread, you know.  It was like a cup of wine.  It was like the body and blood of Christ shared in communion.  It was a holy moment in the midst of the mundane.  And there isn’t a soul that saw it and didn’t know that God was alive and well and using regular people like you and me to spread the good news.

            So, you go and write your own sermon now.  I’m going to give you a little extra time to do it.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)