November 1, 2009
Giving Ourselves Up - 2 Corinthians 4:7-18
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadAs a pastor, I spend a fair amount of time visiting people in hospitals. Just for the record, I am part of the official picture of your healthcare, literally. In both hospital systems in Charlotte (Presbyterian & Carolinas Medical), I have an identification badge with my beautiful picture on it that I clip on my lapel when I go there. Other than free parking, I’m not sure what that badge is worth, but it must be worth something or neither of those hospitals would have issued it. Your full health-care picture looks something like this: there’s you (we often forget about you), the poor patient with that gown that doesn’t button in the back. There’s your doctor who — if you are lucky — you see for ten minutes every day. There’s your nurse who you see more often who administers your medicine and carries out the doctor’s orders. There’s your nursing assistant who often does the dirty work like cleaning your bedpans and changing your sheets. Then, there’s me, your pastor. What do I do? Those other positions have specific roles, you see, that require training and schooling and expertise. But what good do I do in the whole healthcare picture?
Let me tell you what I do not do. I do not offer any medical advice. I cannot diagnose your illness, much less treat it. I cannot administer your drugs, or carry out the doctor’s orders, and my stomach can’t handle the dirty work. Most of the time, I don’t do much at all other than show up. I remember one time in Matthews that I was visiting a 95-year-old man who had just suffered a stroke. The stroke had destroyed his mind, but he was as physically tough as he had always been. The medication they had given him to calm him down had the opposite effect. It made him crazy and even violent. He even started running up and down the halls taking his clothes off. They finally had to strap him down in a chair in what essentially was a straight-jacket. All we could do was to wait until that medicine wore off. The doctor, of course, was gone. His poor, frail wife just sat in the room crying at what had happened to her husband of seventy years. The nurse was beside herself trying to restrain him. I specifically remember her looking over at me in exasperation and yelling at me, “You do something!” And yet there was nothing at all that I could do.
Every time that I go in a hospital room, I am reminded of just how different our faith in God is from conventional wisdom. What matters, you see, from my perspective is not so much physical at all. It’s not that the physical is meaningless. God cares very much about your physical ailments. It is very hard to worship God when you’re in pain. I am there, though, to remind you that what really matters, even in the midst of your pain, is Jesus. I have learned enough to know that you might get well, and the surgery might be a success, but it might not be. If nothing else, I believe that my presence in a hospital room says that there is another reality beyond medicine, beyond what is obvious, beyond what is visible that is very important. Unlike medicine, I cannot prove that reality. I simply cannot put on one of those nice, white coats, and hang a stethoscope around my neck and come up with some formula to prove that there really is a God, a Savior of the world, named Jesus Christ who is greater even than death, or life, or anything in between or beyond. I believe that, and even when the doctor tells you that there is no hope, I say that there is hope. Now if Jesus is not real and if we Christians are wrong, then my presence in that hospital room (or here for that matter) really is useless. But if we’re right, then Jesus is everything.
Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthian Church in part to address both his and their suffering. We often view Paul as the epitome of success, when in fact he was in many ways a total failure. People were not being converted, at least not initially, and those who were converted often behaved like they were not. Paul had become a minority of a minority. Jews despised him and Gentiles doubted him. And what’s more, the few people who did convert were not fairing any better either. So what’s the deal, the people were asking. If your God is all that, then why is your life such a miserable wreck? Why were you laid off last week? Why has the bank foreclosed on your house? Why is your doctor’s report so bad? Where is your God in all this turmoil and pain?
Paul reminds his critics in 2 Corinthians that he is indeed a failure. Paul refers to himself as a clay jar, which is fragile and destined to fall off and break. But even though he himself is a clay jar, he has this treasure and this treasure is named Jesus. This treasure that is in Jesus is made perfect in this weak, clay jar. So yes, Paul said, he is “afflicted, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible.” One of the earliest criticisms of Christians was that the Christian God was crucified. God was supposed to be on a throne somewhere living high and mighty, not on a cross like the lowliest of criminals. Jesus was executed, Paul said, and there was a reason for that, but he was also raised to new life. And what’s more, I think Paul would say, even though we are being persecuted now, even though we have given ourselves over to death now, even though we have given ourselves — all of ourselves — up, even though we may be the exact opposite of prosperous, we, like Jesus, will be raised to new life, too. Our hope is not now, but later. We can start living our salvation now, but the real hope for us is later. This pain that we feel today, in fact everything that we feel today, is temporary. It’s obvious that things are not always rosy. Anybody can see that. We all have very specific, concrete worries. But what matters most is not what can be seen and is so obvious, but what cannot be seen. What ultimately matters in a hospital room is not what the doctors say, or that the slit in the back of your gown won’t button, or that the cancer is malignant and terminal. What matters is Jesus.
This is the last sermon in a series of sermons on stewardship. You will be getting a letter in the mail next week about Commitment Sunday, which is next Sunday, where we will present our financial commitments to church for the next year. I’m going to do something that I have never done before. I’m going to leave this pulpit and come down and talk with you as one of you, because I am, especially in financial matters, one of you. Leah and I have spent lots of money this fall. I blew a tire out on Sandy Porter Road recently and had to get four new ones. Tires on tahoes are much more expensive than on regular cars. My invisible fence broke a couple of weeks ago. I even preached a sermon on that thing last week and it still isn’t working. I got a speeding ticket on I-77 a few weeks ago. The speed limit is 55 through there, which is a racket because it’s 65 everywhere else. Everybody speeds through there, but that particular day they had a speed trap. And then last, but certainly not least, we’ve got our third baby coming in about six months. We are more than excited about that news, but I’ll have to tell you that babies are expensive, especially when they grow up and go to college.
I say all of that not to garner your sympathy, but just to confess to you that in my family, our money has us more than we have it. I think that’s true for most all of us. I have heard that if every Presbyterian family was on welfare and tithed 10% of their income, then our church would have more than double the resources that we have now. We’ll give our time, our talents, our prayers, our thoughts, but our money is the last thing to go, and for obvious reasons. We work very hard for our money and we need it to stay in our houses, to put food on our tables, to educated our children, to retire, to maintain and hopefully improve our standard of living. Let’s face it: it’s much more fun to climb up the socio-economic ladder than to climb down it. For the church to tell us to give 10% of our money away, which amounts to almost six weeks out of the year, is hard to swallow.
I cannot give you any reason to give anything to the church, much less your money, other than the fact that Jesus lives. If that’s not true, then it’s a waste. But if it is true, if Jesus really is Lord, and if God really did become one with us in Jesus Christ, and lived among us and laughed among, and even suffered and died among us and for us, and if he rose for us and sits and God’s right hand for us and even prays for us, if Jesus really is the head of this Church, and if there something about this Church that’s eternal, if there really is such a thing as a saint and if that saint really does meet us at that Table because there is something about that Table that is eternal, well then, there is no better place in all the world to spend your money. There is no better place to spend your time and talents and efforts. There is no better place to spend your very selves than in the Church and the Church’s mission. “For this slight moment of affliction (these bills that we’ve got, this illness that’s eating us up, our family problems, our job that we don’t like, our unemployment, our problems), all are preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not and what can been seen, but at what cannot be seen. What can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” Paul is tell us, and I am urging us to focus not so much on the obvious, but on the not so obvious, on the eternal. That is what’s really important.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
