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Life Without Training Wheels; (sermon 11/14/10)
Topic Started: Nov 13 2010, 07:39 PM (165 Views)
Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Luke 21:5-19

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus 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.


=====

Just more than a month from now, we’ll be taking our daughter Erica and a carload of dorm room furnishings off to college. That’s caused me to think about other milestones in her life – like that fateful day when she was about four, that I went out into the garage, unbolted the training wheels from her tiny little bicycle, and slipped them off. I had her fully decked out, fully protected for her first day of life without training wheels – helmet, of course; two pairs of long pants; four sweaters; knee pads; elbow pads. At first, I even strapped two big pillows around her, front and back, for added protection. But then I looked at her and realized how silly that was – she could hardly move, much less operate a bicycle with all that on her. So I took the pillows off. I realized that my desire to plan ahead and do everything that I could think of to protect her was counterproductive. It actually would have made her less safe.

In today’s text, Jesus gave the disciples some instructions about trying to do everything in their own power to protect themselves in difficult or dangerous situations. After he foretold the destruction of the Temple to them, an event that would occur almost 40 years later, he told the disciples that they would suffer terrible persecutions, be put on trial, some of them would even be put to death. But when these things happened, Jesus said, and they were brought before the courts and put on trial, they weren’t supposed to worry about what their defense would be, or what to say. Jesus said that God would give them the right words. Jesus was telling them they would need to trust the great promise that God would provide for them in their hour of need.

When we read Jesus’ words here, it can be a bit unsettling. Was this advice just meant for those disciples, and just for that particular event; or does it also apply to us? And if it does apply to us, in what ways? Is Jesus telling us to not plan or use our own intelligence to protect and provide for ourselves? Are we supposed to just let everything play out by itself, trusting God to take care of everything? Are we not supposed to save for a rainy day, or have health insurance, or hire an attorney to help with legal issues?

When Jesus was having his own moment of crisis – as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane just before he was arrested, praying that he wouldn’t have to go through the brutality that was just hours away – God sent an angel to him, to offer him strength and encouragement to say and do what he had to. We don’t generally have angels ringing our doorbell late at night, offering to come in and, maybe over a cup of coffee, give us the strength and wisdom to navigate all the difficult and dangerous situations we all encounter in our own lives. So we do spend a lot of our time trying to figure things out for ourselves. Trying to figure out for ourselves how not to fall, and trying to create for ourselves a safety net for just in case we do fall. We strap pillows around ourselves, trying to protect ourselves from every sort of vulnerability. But in the process, we end up as vulnerable as Erica was with those pillows strapped around her - because in our trying to do it all on our own, we crowd God out of the picture – we don’t allow God to work in our lives in the way God promised to do. In our attempt to provide entirely for ourselves, we're too distracted to hear the angel ringing the doorbell.

Jesus promised his disciples that God would get them through their tough situations. And we can see examples that this all through the New Testament, where this is exactly what happened when the disciples were being persecuted. God gave them the right words, the right inspiration, at the right moment to achieve God’s will. God showed in those instances that Jesus’ promise to the disciples was true. This promise is made to us, too. God will give us what we need to endure the difficulties in our own lives, whether in moments of extreme crisis or just in the day-to-day stresses that we all have.

The young architect was in trouble. In his desire to land the biggest project yet for his small firm, he ignored all the warning signals, all the red flags that were waving around the potential client. Put bluntly, the client was a crook. But despite the negative gut feelings, the architect took the job. And the client hired a builder who was maybe the only person in the world who was a bigger crook than the client was himself. Naturally, problems began even before the first shovelful of dirt was turned. The project became a nightmare, the client and contractor each tried to get the better of the other. Lawsuits followed. And the architect found himself stuck – caught between a crooked rock and a crooked hard place, and he was dragged into the lawsuits, too – not because he’d done anything particularly wrong, but more because he had an insurance policy that both client and contractor thought they might be able to get a piece of. As the trial date drew near, the architect and his attorney spent long hours preparing, based on the line of argument they’d assumed the other attorney would be making. The architect waded through reams of old paperwork, memorized minute details, rehearsed preplanned answers to questions they were sure the attorney would try to trip him up with. This was probably going to be the most stressful day of his life. And he prayed for strength and guidance.

The night before having to testify, the architect crawled into bed. At around midnight, he had a dream. In the dream, someone asked him a particular question about the project. It was an odd question, about a seemingly unimportant detail about the project. The architect thought about the question, and then remembered the answer to it. As soon as he’d answered the question in the dream, he immediately woke up and sat bolt-upright in bed, as in his head he heard, “Write it down!” “What? Well, okay, but I don’t know why; that doesn’t have anything to do with what the attorney is going to – “ “WRITE IT DOWN!” So, he crawled out of bed, went downstairs to the kitchen, and jotted the answer down on a legal pad that was sitting on the kitchen table. Then he went back to bed. About half an hour later, the same thing happened – another question, another answer, another wakeup jolt, another “Write it down!” Half an hour after that, it happened again, and each time, the architect had gone downstairs and jotted the answer down on the legal pad.

The next morning, as he was eating breakfast, he looked at what he’d scribbled on the pad in the middle of the night. Then, he went to testify.

The attorney began with some small talk, asked a few unimportant initial questions. Then, out of the blue, the attorney asked – verbatim – the first question the architect was asked in his dream the night before. The architect was amazed, but he answered the question with the answer he’d written down on the legal pad. The answer caught the attorney off guard; it wasn’t the answer he was expecting. A few questions later, it happened again – he asked the exact question the architect heard in his second dream, and he gave the attorney the second answer – and again, the attorney was obviously not happy with the answer. Suddenly, the architect saw exactly where the attorney was trying to go with his line of questioning. He wasn’t following the line of argument he and his own attorney had expected at all. He was going down a different path, and the architect saw the whole thing laid out, and knew it was going to fail, because of the answers he’d remembered, and written down, the night before. At this point, the architect felt great comfort, and peace, wash over him. He even smiled. In fact, a few minutes later, when the attorney asked the third question, the architect even giggled, and finished the attorney’s sentence for him before giving him an answer he definitely didn’t want to hear. The attorney’s argument was completely shattered.

It’s natural to be hesitant to let go of control of parts of our own protection and security in life, the way Jesus told his disciples to do. Some people might argue that God wouldn’t want us to just entrust everything up to God; that that’s why we have brains and talents, and guts, and we’re expected to use them all. And that’s true; preparation and planning for our lives will always be a mixture of our work, and God’s. But of all the troubles we might have in life, I suspect there are very, very few of us who have the problem of trusting God *too* much.

God does provide for us, giving us what we need, and when we need it, in order to achieve what God wants for us. When God asks for us to do without the training wheels, without the pillows, it’s for our own good – and the good news for us is that God is always right there, right beside us - and God’s hand is never more than a moment away from grabbing our bicycle seat when we need it.

Thanks be to God.


"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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brenda
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..............
"a young architect" = ?
Anyone we know?
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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Mark
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HOLY CARP!!!
I love this.
___.___
(_]===*
o 0
When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Yeah, you know him, brenda - but he isn't so young anymore. But yes, it really did happen exactly that way.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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brenda
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..............
Dewey
Nov 14 2010, 02:54 PM
Yeah, you know him, brenda - but he isn't so young anymore. But yes, it really did happen exactly that way.
Just checking. :wave:
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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Frank_W
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Resident Misanthrope
Fantastic, Padre. :)
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin."
Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!"
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
At the moment, I have an unusual opportunity - to take the sermon I'd just preached on Sunday, and to preach it again in a class on the following Wednesday. This gives me the chance to make use of lessons learned after having delivered it once, figuring out what was good and what wasn't, what points I'd overstressed and where I needed to do better.

While I wish it was reversed - that I'd preach for the class of six people first, learn the lessons, and then preach it to the congregation, this is still a good exercise. It's also kind of interesting, because the class has just heard a sermon on the exact same text, in the chapel service just before the class meets. I've actually sworn off attending chapel during this class, so I don't get spooked listening to someone else preach something completely different just before I climb into the pulpit.

Anyway, I thought I'd post the "refined" version of this sermon, just for giggles. It really says the same thing, but I like it better. It's more tightly crafted, I think...

===

Just more than a month from now, our older daughter Erica will be leaving home to go to college. As I thought about that milestone approaching, I’ve thought about other milestones in her life - like that fateful day when she was about four, when I went out into the garage, got her tiny little bicycle, and took the training wheels off forever. Erica was about to experience her first day of life without training wheels. I had her fully decked out with protection for the occasion, too - helmet, of course; two pairs of heavy long pants; four sweaters; knee pads; elbow pads. At first, I even strapped two big pillows around her little body, front and back, for added protection. But then I looked at her and realized how silly that was – she could hardly move, much less operate a bicycle with all that on her. So I took the pillows off. I realized that using my wits to do everything I could think of to protect her was counterproductive - it was actually making her less safe.

In today’s text, Jesus talked to the disciples about trying to rely solely on their own intelligence to protect them in difficult or dangerous situations. He told them that they would suffer terrible persecution, be put on trial - some of them would even be put to death. But when these things happened, Jesus said, they weren’t supposed to worry in advance about what their defense would be, what to say, what to do. Jesus said that God would give them the right words - they would need to trust the great promise that God would provide for them in their hour of need.

That probably confused and caused some distress in the minds of the disciples, and reading this story can be just as unsettling to us. Was this advice just meant for those disciples, or does it apply to us, too? And if it does, in what way? Are we supposed to just let everything in life play out by itself, trusting God to take care of everything? Are we not supposed to save for a rainy day, or have health insurance, or use our own wits to get us out of crisis situations?

When Jesus was having his own moment of crisis – as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane just before he was arrested, praying that he wouldn’t have to go through the brutality that he knew was coming – God sent an angel to him, to offer him comfort and the strength to say and do what he had to in the coming hours. We don’t generally seem to have angels coming to us, ringing our doorbell late at night, offering to come in and, maybe over a cup of coffee, give us the strength and wisdom to navigate all of our own difficult situations. So we do, in fact, spend a lot of our time trying to figure out how not to fail - and trying to create a safety net for ourselves in case we do. We use our intelligence and other personal resources as the training wheels for our lives. We find ways to strap pillows of one kind or another around ourselves, trying to avoid all sorts of vulnerability by relying only on ourselves. But in the process, we can end up even more vulnerable - because in our trying to do all that on our own, we can crowd God out of the picture – we don’t allow God to work in our lives in the way that Jesus promised God would do. In our attempt to provide entirely for ourselves, we can get too distracted to hear the angel ringing the doorbell.

Jesus promised his disciples that God would get them through their tough situations. And we can see examples all through the New Testament where this is exactly what happened. God gave them the right words, the right inspiration, at the right moment to achieve God’s will. Jesus’ promise to the disciples was true. And it’s true for us, too. God will give us what we need to endure the difficulties in our own lives, whether in the more routine, day-to-day stresses we encounter, or in those moments of extreme crisis.

The young architect was in trouble. In his desire to land the biggest project yet for his small firm, he ignored all the warning signals, all the red flags that were waving around the potential client. Put bluntly, the client was a crook. Working with the client was excruciating. And when it came time to build the project, the client hired a builder who was quite possibly the only person in the world who was a bigger crook than the client was himself. Problems began immediately. The project became a nightmare. Then came the lawsuits, as the client and contractor each tried to get the better of the other. The architect found caught between a crooked rock and a crookeder hard place, and he was dragged into the lawsuits, too – not because he’d done anything particularly wrong, but more because he had an insurance policy that could be gone after. As the trial date drew near, the architect and his attorney spent long hours preparing, based on the line of argument they’d assumed the other attorney would be making. The architect waded through reams of old paperwork, memorized minute details, rehearsed preplanned answers to questions they were sure the attorney would try to trip him up with. The architect knew he was in the right, but he also knew that being right often isn’t enough in courts of law. The architect’s biggest project had become his biggest moment of crisis. The night before he was to testify, he was beside himself with stress and fear. He prayed for strength and guidance for the next morning. And then he crawled into bed to try to get some sleep.

A few hours later, he had a dream. In the dream, someone asked him a particular question about the project. It was an odd question, about a seemingly unimportant detail about the project, not at all relevant to what everyone thought the next morning’s line of questioning would be. In the dream, the architect thought about the question, and then remembered the answer to it. As soon as he’d given the answer, he immediately woke up and sat bolt-upright in bed, as in his head he heard, “Write it down!” “What? Well, okay, but I don’t know why; that doesn’t have anything to do with what the attorney is going to – “ “WRITE IT DOWN!” So, he crawled out of bed, went downstairs to the kitchen, and jotted the answer down on a legal pad that was sitting on the kitchen table. Then he went back to bed. About half an hour later, the same thing happened – another question, another answer, another wakeup jolt, and another “Write it down!” Half an hour after that, it happened again, a third time, and he jotted the answer down on the legal pad again.

The next morning, as the architect was eating breakfast, he looked at what he’d scribbled on the pad in the middle of the night. Then, he went to testify.

The attorney began questioning the architect with a few unimportant initial questions. Then, out of the blue, the attorney asked – verbatim – the first question the architect was asked in his dream the night before. The architect was surprised at the coincidence, but he was able to answer the question because of the dream he’d had. The answer seemed to catch the attorney off guard; it wasn’t the answer he was expecting. A few questions later, it happened again – the attorney asked the exact question the architect had been asked in his second dream, and he gave the attorney the second answer – and again, the attorney was visibly annoyed with the answer. Suddenly, the architect saw exactly where the attorney was trying to go with his line of questioning. He wasn’t following the line of argument he and his own attorney had expected at all. He was going down a completely different path, and the architect saw the whole thing laid out – and he knew it was going to fail, because of the answers to the three questions he’d dreamt. In that moment, the architect felt great comfort, and peace, wash over him. He smiled. In fact, a few minutes later, he even laughed, as he was able to actually finish the attorney’s sentence for him, as he asked the third question. And with the answer to that question, the attorney’s whole line of argument was shattered. He had to retreat and come up with another line of attack.

It’s natural to want to control our own destiny, and to be nervous about trusting God in the way Jesus says in this passage. And some people might argue that God doesn’t want us to just entrust everything to God. That our brains and talents and guts are gifts from God, and that we’re intended to use them. And they would be right in that argument. Our lives will always be a balance between trusting n ourselves, and trusting in God. But as we try to understand where that balance is, where we draw the line, I suspect there are very, very few of us who have the problem of relying on God *too* much.

Still, God promises when that when we live lives of faith in Christ, and we do give up the training wheels of our own making, God is always right there - running alongside us, never more than a moment away from grabbing our bicycle seat whenever we need a hand.

Thanks be to God.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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brenda
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..............
Dewey, I hope you keep a notepad beside the bed now. It should save you those trips to the kitchen in the middle of the night.
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
I remember that night so vividly. In fact, I shared that experience with some people here when it happened. This is the first time I've included it in a sermon, but I think of it every time I read this particular passage of Luke.

But part of that memory is remembering that after going downstairs for the third time, I trudged back up to bed thinking, I am NOT getting up again! ^_^
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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