November 20, 2011
Money & Stuff Part 6, Everything - Psalm 65
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI took a survey recently of our session, asking them about the possession (obviously not including people or pets) that they valued the most. Or, if their houses were burning down and they could only get one thing, what would it be. The biggest response by far was pictures. One elder said that he has a buffet at home with pictures of his children through the years. He would get that. Another elder said that he had a picture of his mother holding him before his baptism. That’s powerful. I am with them on the pictures. Next on the list were mementos: a grandfather’s handsaw, a grandfather’s whiskey jug, a great grandfather’s pocket watch, a grandmother’s pair of pressed glasses, an aunt’s amethyst brooch, and an old milk bottle. I’m with them on the mementos, too. I have this old Greek New Testament that my great-great aunt, Annie McClain, would study and teach from. She was a Greek scholar and professor at Limestone. It’s the 3rd Edition, Nestle-Almund Greek New Testament, copyrighted 1901. One elder said, even though it sounded corny, that she would take her wedding ring. Glenn Litaker said that even if his house was burning down, he would still have four acres of grass to cut, so he would take his tiger scag 61” deck lawnmower.
There are three similarities that run throughout that entire list. First, for the exception of Glenn’s lawn mower and a wedding ring, nothing on that list is terribly expensive. The second similarity is that everything on it revolves around relationships. I, for example, never knew Annie McClain. She died long before I was born, nor did I know her sister (my great-grandmother), but I certainly knew and loved their children. So it’s not just a Bible. It’s a relationship. Finally, they all represent something about who we are. Take the old milk jug. That particular milk jug came from a farm on which this person was born and raised. It represents part of who she is. That’s true with every one of those mementos.
This Thursday as we gather around our tables with our families and friends, many of us will read the Psalm that John Burgess just read, Psalm 100. “The Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting, and his truth does endure to all generations.” That’s beautiful. Psalm 65 is also beautiful. God is good everywhere, all the time. There is literally no place where God is not. People who live at the earth’s farthest bounds, even they are in awe of God’s goodness. You have to remember that this was written before we had any idea that the earth was even round, much less was one of millions of other planets. The gateways of the morning and evening, all of time, shout for joy. It’s everything. Even in places that don’t make any sense, even in places beyond human habitation, God’s glory abounds. For ancient Jews, the ocean was a terrifying place. It was total chaos, and if you’ve ever been at sea for long, you’ll probably agree. Air craft carriers may be big, but they’re no match for the “tumult of the waves.” God is God of all of it, and God has richly, I mean beyond our wildest imagination, provided for us. Everything.
Maybe the biggest lie that society tells us that is we don’t have very much, so we have to constantly grasp at thing. According to the Psalmist, God has given us everything. There’s this beautiful prayer by an unknown confederate soldier, wherein he reflects on all the things that he has asked from God. He got none of what he asked for, he said. But he got all of what he had hoped for. “I asked for all things that I might enjoy life,” he said. “I got life, that I might enjoy all things.” That is sheer unadulterated grace. We don’t deserve an ounce of that. Yet God gives us all of that. Everything.
Let’s just look at the blinding flash of the obvious. In June, I will have been a pastor for ten years. Never once in that time have I baptized two babies in two weeks. This is a first for me. Denominational gurus partly measure a pastor’s effectiveness on how many babies he baptizes. So I must be doing something right. It’s taken me a while, but I have moved a step in the right direction. Is that true? Am I responsible for Max David’s and Carter McIvor’s baptisms? Am I responsible for the eternal promises that God has made to them? Do their parents really have me to thank for all of that? If I dare to even think affirmatively to any of those questions, then I am a heritic. Now I am clearly responsible for helping to raise them in the faith. We all are. But the baptism itself? It’s grace. It’s everything.
Carter and Beth, what did you do to earn Mr. Mac? I will say, Carter, that you, like me, shamelessly married up. There’s no question about that, but did either of you earn Mac? Is it that you root for the right football team? Carter likes NC State, so evidently not (at least this year). Max’ dad, Michael Tolley, is a runner. I found out last week that he’s fast runner. He could leave me in the dust, easily. But he could never run fast enough to win Max. Have you been outside lately? We got some rain on Wednesday night. We needed it. Did ya’ll earn that? Wachovia has just become Wells Fargo. That’s been pretty tough on Charlotte’s ego, and I guess to soothe things over, Wells Fargo has gone to great lengths recently to show themselves as model citizens. I even saw a plane flying around last Sunday afternoon with a Wells Fargo sign behind it. I guess they also gave us this beautiful canvas of red and yellow leaves? God has given us everything. Maybe the biggest indictment on us as sinners, maybe out biggest, gravest sin is to be blind to God’s grace, to think that we’ve got to go to work to earn something when God has already given us everything.
I’ll have to tell you that I got the idea about asking the session about their favorite possession from somebody else. A friend of mine is a retired history professor at Clemson. He told me recently that his pastor, I believe at Fort Hill Presbyterian, asked his members about their favorite possession in a stewardship program. He said that his most treasured possession is his dining room table. He and his wife bought it right after they got married. It was way too expensive for them and way too big. But they knew they would grow into it. And sure enough, they had children, and then grandchildren. Every Sunday afternoon, he said, his family gathers and eats around that table. He and his wife also decided that if they were going to teach college students, then they would let them in their home. And that’s what they did, for forty years. Every pledge of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and Kappa Delta sorority for the last forty years has eaten at that table. Most of his history classes have eaten at that table. His wife was famous for baking biscuits. She won the “mother of the year” at Clemson one year, and she calculated that over forty years, she has baked something like thirty thousand biscuits for Clemson students. It’s easy, she said. “A dozen for every boy and half dozen for every girl.” I just met this guy not that long ago. I don’t know him all that well, but from that story, he’s led a fine and meaningful life. God has blessed him with everything really, and he knew it. Everything.
I know that life is hard at times. The economy is tight. We face a myriad of problems, both individually and collectively as a Church as a state as a nation and as a world. I don’t belittle those problems at all. They are real and they are not going away. But the good news is that God is not going away. The good news is that God never went anywhere to begin with. This is God’s world and not ours. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. From the east to the west, from morning to mid-night, God is. Our biggest crime may well be that we have forgotten that. And so we get wrapped up with little things. I went to my daughter’s school last week to eat lunch with her on her birthday. As we were eating, one of her classmates had spilled her soup on her seat as she put her tray on the table. So I called the teacher, and she casually walked over to me to see what my problem was. As I pointed out the mess, the girl sat down in it. The teacher said, “it’s funny, isn’t it, how we adults make such big deals out of little messes and children don’t care.” Maybe it’s because children somehow instinctively know what the Psalmist writes. “The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain. They shout and sing together for joy.” Everything… Everything.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
