Precious Lord, take our hand,
Lead us on, help us stand
Through the storm, through the night
Lead us on to the light.
Precious Lord, take our hand, lead us home.
In the spirit of Jesus our brother and our friend, Amen.
If it is true, as some have suggested, that powerful passages of Scripture are the foundation for a strong sermon, then we are in good shape this morning, for we have marvelous texts today. The words of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians: “Do not be weary in doing what is right.” The words of our Lord as he tells the disciples of the trials and tribulations which lie ahead for them and then says, “By your endurance you will be saved.”
Then there are those intriguing words from the letter to the Hebrews: “We must pay more careful attention to what we have heard that we do not drift away.” Isn’t that a wonderful word, “drift?” The word has many meanings and wide usage. The word is often used in a nautical sense. A boat not carefully moored or tied to the dock will drift away with the tide. As a life that is not carefully anchored, which is not fastened to something solid and secure will eventually drift away.
New Testament scholar William Barclay translates these words from the book of Hebrews to reflect this: “Therefore, we must the more eagerly anchor our lives to the things that we have been taught, lest the ship of life drift past the harbor and be wrecked.”
Drifting happens all the time in life! Something vital, important, meaningful, simply slips away. One day it is there, the next it is gone. Drifted away and lost. It is often imperceptible. It is hardly noticeable. It is like a tire with a slow leak. One morning you go out to go to work and discover it is flat.
Here is a person who decides to work a few extra hours at the office. Saturday morning was the original intention. But then it gets to be all day, with work brought home for Sunday. Days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years, and those who should be the nearest and dearest to you have become strangers. Hardly noticed, but something precious has become lost – gradually drifted away.
It can also happen in your relationship with God.
Someone has defined secularism as “organizing life as if God did not exist.” There are not too many people I know who sit down and say, “I think I will distance myself from God.” It happens more gradually, slowly. You become centered on self, absorbed by your own interests. You drift away. The presence of God in your life becomes less and less important. Attendance at worship and daily prayer become less frequent. Soon there is a sort of vague, generalized religious feeling and then one day no spiritual impulse or pulse at all. You slipped your spiritual moorings and drifted away with the tide. It happens, this drifting away.
It happened in the early church. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us: “We must pay more careful attention therefore to what we have heard that we do not drift away.” As I read those words my pastor’s heart tells me that folks were drifting away there in the early church.
I remember a man who stopped coming to the church I served. When he had health crisis he always called me and I always responded, because I cared deeply for him. He had been my daughter’s basketball coach and was a wonderful, gentle person. One day he asked, “When I die I want you to have my funeral. Will you do that for me?” “Yes I will, but there is still time for you to come back, to draw closer to God. You need to do this for yourself.” “Yes, I guess I do,” he said. He had drifted away. Busy with other things?
It happens all the time. We pursue the wrong values, think we are getting somewhere when we are just circling the harbor, and like a poorly anchored boat we drift away. We drift out where the water is deep and the currents are treacherous. Where we have fewer and fewer resources to meet the challenges of life. Then we come upon days when it is easier to drift than it is to resist the current. For you see, the tide that pulls us away never ceases, never rests.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews urges us to pay more careful attention to what we have heard, that we do not drift. I take that to mean that we are to pay closer attention to the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now there is an urgency about all this: were you listening when the Gospel was read earlier in the service? Our Lord says, “When you hear of wars. . .do not be terrified. . .nation will rise against nation. . .sounds like this morning’s headlines and we are terrified – anxious, apprehensive.
As our nation stands on the brink of war, as we brace ourselves for possible terrorist attacks which may come in reprisal – all of this on top of the anxiety and concerns we all struggle with daily. How can we lay hold of the strength and courage, which we will desperately need to endure in the days ahead? Endurance for the Christian is a fruit of our faith. Faith is not the opposite of doubt –doubt is the opposite of belief. Faith is the opposite of fear. As in those well-known words: “Fear knocked on the door, faith answered, no one was there.”
We encourage each other therefore, to pay closer attention to the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and through regular worship, study and prayer send your roots down into the rich soil of the Biblical faith. Use these days of Lent to grow in faith and in faithfulness so that when the storms of life come you are not swept away, but have an anchor and find the strength and courage to endure in whatever may lie ahead, not left to aimlessly drift.
Now that is the short answer! So we might well sing the closing hymn and go home. But I don’t want you to feel cheated by a short sermon. Let us look at some ways we might flesh out the simple but profound truth that fear knocked at the door, faith answered, and no one was there.
How can we lay hold of the power not only to endure, but to live radiant and victorious lives to the glory of God? We can begin by recovering the language of faith, rather than using the language of therapy, which has become so popular. Some have called it “the triumph of the therapeutic,” by which they mean that the language which is appropriate for therapy has become the language of society.
For example, the emphasis on feelings: “How do you feel about this?” As if your feelings were the final arbiter of what is right and wrong. In a therapy session you are encouraged to get your feelings out. You are encouraged to “go with your feelings” and to “get in touch with your feelings.” This is important in therapy. The most recent term to come from therapy is the word “comfortable,” as in, “Are you comfortable with this?”
There are situations when this is an appropriate question, as when someone sits in your family room and you ask “Are you comfortable on the sofa and would you rather have a chair?” Feelings and comfort are important therapy concepts, but they are not the language of faith.
I have not read anywhere in the Gospels where Jesus ever asked his disciples, “We are going to Jerusalem, how do you feel about that? Are you comfortable with it?” No, Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”
The language of faith is about sin, not re-inventing yourself – which is so popular today. The language of faith is about redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation. The language of faith is about God’s love and grace. The language of faith is about discipline and, yes, service and sacrifice, and losing your life to find it. The language of faith puts us in closer touch with each other and the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ and is the foundation upon which endurance is built.
There have been ominous warnings recently from the Homeland Security Office as to what we ought to do to prepare for a disaster. It all seems a bit too much for me. But it causes me to think about what I have control over and what I cannot do anything about. Nuclear weapons on North Korea or biological weapons in Iraq, I cannot do anything about. I can do very little to prevent war with Iraq, other than expressing my opposition to preemptive military action. What I can do is to be still and remember that I am God’s child. I can remember when it comes to power there is another player on the field, the God whose love seeks never to overpower, but always to empower.
In the days ahead we are going to need much more than duct tape, flashlights, drinking water and some emergency cash. We cannot run here and there and everywhere with our anxieties. We will want to be together as a people of faith and keep reminding each other that God is God, and by speaking to one another in the language of faith get in ever closer touch with the ultimate realities which undergird human life and history. Simply put, we will want to be more and more people of prayer. Lenten Wednesday evenings around bread and cup in the chapel. Sunday mornings here in the sanctuary. And in our own homes. Turn off the answering machine, turn off the computer, sit at the table, hold hands, place the little community of those you love into the great and trustworthy hands of Almighty God. And ask God to give you the faith and courage to endure, no matter what lies ahead!
We at Old South are especially blessed, for we have this majestic sanctuary. When you walk in here you are captured immediately by its beauty and peace and holiness. Our souls are steadied and our spirits soar. Our hearts are lifted up. “Lift up your hearts to the Lord,” we say. It is almost impossible to be small, mean or hard-hearted or scared in this place. As we are reminded that God is God and that nothing in life or death can ever separate us from God’s love and care made known in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Before you leave here, say a little prayer that if war comes we will not give in to indifference to the suffering and death war will create on all sides. Did you see the reprint in last Sunday’s TIMES of Senator Byrd’s speech – half of the population of Iraq is under the age of fifteen. Let us never forget that these people are God’s children also, our sisters and brothers. They and we are members of God’s richly diverse family, loved by God as you are loved by God.
Well, thank God we have a choice! Life is filled with choices! You drift for a while, but at some point you have to choose to continue to drift. You do not have to do a thing to drift. Just go with the flow.
Most of the time our drifting is downward. We drift away from God. We drift away from relationships to which we once promised we would be faithful. We fail to light the lamps which will illumine our pathway and before we know it, it is dark. Use these days of Lent to draw closer to God, grow in faith and in faithfulness. Don’t drift.
A woman was trapped in an elevator of a large building. It was night and an electrical failure made it all the darker. A rescuer called out to her, “Are you alone in there?” She responded calmly, “I am by myself, but I am not alone.”
When we discover the truth that we are not alone, we have each other and God in Christ is with us, we will then know the strength and courage, not only to endure, but to live radiant and victorious lives, to the glory of God. In the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Scripture Readings
II Thessalonians 3: 6-18
Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we are not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.
Take note of those who do not obey what we say in this letter; have nothing to do with them, so that they may be ashamed. Do not regard them as enemies, but warn them as believers.
Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways. The Lord be with all of you.
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you.
Luke 21: 5-19
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.
“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls. . .”