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Trusting Hearts: Calm Hearts Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, June 24, 2007 This is my last Sunday as your pastor. You know, it didn’t have to end this way. It wasn’t long into my time with you when I realized that this would not be a lasting relationship – at least not much beyond nineteen years. You see it all began to unravel when I asked the session to support a plan to evangelize the rich. They need to hear the good news of God’s love in Jesus, too. In order to accomplish this I asked the session to buy me a membership at Medinah Country Club. At least two session members actually agreed that it was a good idea, but in the end it didn’t even get serious consideration. The nail was driven into the coffin in the mid 1990s when I first heard about the Chicago Bulls paying Michael Jordan $3,000,000 a year not to play basketball. I was intrigued by the notion of someone getting paid not to work. The sports business is so creative. I suggested to the session that if they paid me $3,000,000 a year, I would agree not to preach for Church of the Cross. I did think $3,000,000 might be a little high, but I knew that I could always come down. To my amazement the session wouldn’t even negotiate! It was a woeful lack of imagination! I continued to look for someone who would pay me not to work. Now I finally have found someone - actually two someones: the Social Security Administration and the Board of Pensions. They made me an offer I can’t refuse. On an even less serious note: the first sermon I ever preached to members of Church of the Cross occurred not here but at a neutral pulpit at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Glen Ellyn. I began it with a pretty good joke. It didn’t have much to do with the sermon, but it fit the nerve-wracking occasion of preaching to a Pastor Nominating Committee. (If you want to know the truth, Karen and I weren’t very impressed with the Church of the Cross’ building – we thought it may have been the ugliest church building we’d ever seen. She asked me if I were going to preach poorly so the PNC wouldn’t want me. I told her I would never do that on purpose.) The sermon went fine, and we had a nice lunch and visit afterward. Later when I came back to preach to the entire congregation someone on the PNC suggested that I tell the joke again. I felt like it was a stretch trying to connect it with the “candidating” sermon, but I told it anyway. I am going to tell it to you today – most of you haven’t heard it from me, at least, and I think I can make it fit the sermon. If I can’t, it’s still pretty funny, and what can you do to me now? A young Catholic priest became really nervous whenever he preached. He would lose his place in the sermon, fumble over words and otherwise embarrass himself and confuse the congregation. He was really troubled by this. So he went to his bishop to ask for help. The bishop said that whenever he became nervous preaching he would say to the congregation, “Your bishop is in love with a beautiful woman.” Right away that would get peoples’ attention. When he saw them looking at him, he would add, “Your bishop is so much in love with this woman that he thinks about her night and day.” By then the people were whispering to each other. Then the bishop said, “Your bishop is so much in love with this woman that he can think about nothing else. And her name . . . is the Blessed Virgin Mary.” Hearing that, the congregation would have a good laugh and let out a sigh of relief, and then the bishop felt comfortable with going ahead with his sermon. The bishop told the young priest to try it. The next time he was scheduled to preach he said, “Your bishop is in love with a beautiful woman.” People looked up. Then he added, “You bishop is so much in love with this beautiful woman that he thinks about her night and day.” Sure enough, people started to whisper. Then the young priest went on, “Your bishop is so much in love with this woman that he can’t think about anything else.” By now people were talking openly. The priest added, “And I am so nervous I can’t remember her name.” Now I am not that nervous. Nor, I am sure, are you. But the prospect of leaving you, leaving this church is troubling, to say the least. After all, we have been through a lot together. Together we have done some interesting things. We have paid off at least four mortgages, remodeled the sanctuary, installed new carpeting, replaced the roof, and put down a new parking lot. We have added three staff people, created an outreach ministry to neighborhood children, started a band and a drama ministry, introduced Alpha and Habitat for Humanity, increased our giving to missions and expanded our use of technology. More personally, I have been with many of you at critical moments in your lives: births, baptisms, confirmation, marriages, divorces, sickness and the death of loved ones. And you have been with me at critical moments in my life: Karen’s illness and death, my attempts at being a single parent, my remarriage and it’s failure, my brother’s death – and now this week: a kind of two-for-one: retirement and marriage in the space of seven days. Some of you may be thinking, “I don’t know what we’ll do without you.” I am wondering the same thing: “What will I do without you?” Even though both you and I know what the immediate future holds, the clouds of uncertainty sometimes seem darker than we expected. It’s in times like this that we don’t feel secure. Over the past five weeks I have talked to you about how to face the anxiety that comes with change. I have talked to you about the importance of continuing to discover who you are as the church. I have pointed out that for us Reformed Christians Scripture is key. Scripture leads us to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. It is the root of our faith. But it is a faith born of the Spirit of God who gives us new birth and transforms us into people who can bear credible witness to Jesus Christ. We are also a people shaped by our worship of the Three in One God: committed, on the one hand, to individual integrity and, on the other, equally committed to living in community. Clearly there’s much more to Christian identity, but these are good places to begin. Not only is it important to know who we are as children of the living God, it’s also important to stay connected with one another. I have urged you to discover your gifts for service so you can find your place in the body of Christ. That’s the clearest connection we have as Christians. Last week I spoke to you about Jesus’ command to serve one another – how in the Last Day Jesus won’t ask us how many church votes we won, but how many feet we washed and whose they were. Today in the final sermon in this series I will focus on the need to remain calm. As I have said on other occasions, anxiety is a fact of life; we’ll likely not escape it, but we can be less and less driven by it. Our choices can be shaped more by our faith in Jesus Christ and not so much by our fear of the future. All three lessons focus on living faithfully. Proverbs 3 invites us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. If we acknowledge God in all our ways the Lord will make our paths straight. Trusting God involves letting God know what we’re planning to do. The Interim time is an opportunity to talk to God about what you’ve been doing both individually and as a church. It’s a chance to let God in on your plans and allow God to guide you. As you include God in your plans, then you can be sure that you’ll not be going on any wild goose chases; you won’t be running in circles chasing your tails so to speak; you will walk on straight paths, paths that lead you in the direction God wants you to go. It’s not uncommon these days to want to reduce everything to sociology – that as long as you follow an agreed upon process things will lead inexorably to God’s will. Now I am not saying that there shouldn’t be an agreed upon process or that you shouldn’t follow it. It is to say that in the end it’s not the process but God who promises to lead you in straight paths. This is particularly pertinent for church that is waiting to see how the future will unfold, what directions you will take as a congregation, where God is leading you. Talk to God about your plans. Trust in God. Brothers and sisters, let your hearts remain calm. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus told his disciples not to worry about what they would wear or eat or drink. He told them not to worry about how tall they were or even how long they might live. Worry accomplishes nothing. In fact, it usually makes matters worse. What does help is remembering who feeds the birds and who clothes the grass that is worth so little people use it start fires. God does all that. And if God takes care of birds and grass in such style, when why wouldn’t we think that God would also take care of us? Jesus doesn’t say, "Don’t plan.” Nor does he say, “Don’t work.” He simply says, “Don’t worry.” In other words, we should plan and work hard, but still trust God. Jesus adds, “Seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness and God will see to it that you have everything you need.” This has real bearing on a church that’s facing change. Having enough money to pay the bills is a special concern during this interim period. Jesus’ words ought to be music to the ears of the session. It ought to make the finance committee jump for joy. It should help the stewardship committee breathe a sigh of relief. You see if you seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness then you will have enough to do what God is calling you to do. Again, these words do not constitute permission to goof off or to avoid planning. I once had a married friend who with his wife had a daughter. He decided he needed to learn to trust God more so he quit his job and waited for God to provide for him and his family. I wanted to tell him, “I don’t think that’s what God has in mind. Wanting to trust God more is laudable, but you still have a responsibility to provide for your family.” Jesus’ words are invitations to seek to do God’s will more than anything else, and then trust God to help you fulfill it. Sisters and brothers, let your hearts remain calm. In Philippians 4 Paul encouraged his readers to rejoice in the Lord and not worry about anything. Instead they should pray with thankful hearts, laying all their requests before the Lord. As they did that then the peace of God which is beyond anything we can understand – in other words it’s not a human creation – will guard their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. It’s not just any prayer Paul is talking about. It is prayer with thanksgiving. Writer Anne LaMott has written that there are really only two prayers: “Help” and “Thanks.” Paul tells us to combine them. Ask God for what you need, and then thank God for hearing you. As you do that and keep on doing it, God’s peace will come to protect your hearts and minds. In other words, God will guard you against the negative effects of anxiety and worry. God may not protect you from bad things; they happen to everyone. But as you present your needs to God and are thankful, God will keep you from being overwhelmed by worry and it’s destructive side effects. Two years ago when I was in the hospital because I passed out in the middle of the night – getting older is not for the weak, X-Rays discovered a spot on my lung. A CAT scan of the lung showed nothing, but it picked up a spot on my liver. An ultra sound of my liver was inconclusive, but my doctor suspected something. He ordered a liver biopsy. Needless to say, I was a little worried. I fully expected it to be a malignancy and that I would be dead in six months to a year. During that time I prayed a lot, and what kept coming to my mind was the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism: “What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I belong – body and soul, in life and in death – not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil . . . .” Reminding myself that I belonged body and soul, in life or in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, sustained me in a scary time. Oh, I ended up not having the biopsy. The radiologist, after an initial scan, concluded that it was not a tumor at all. But even the prospect change is often unsettling. You’re moving from something you know to something you don’t know. The next several months will be months of change. Some of the changes may make you happy. Finally, we got what we wanted! Some of the changes may make you unhappy. Why are we doing this? But disappointment is no reason to stop praying. It’s certainly no justification for being ungrateful. Keep on praying. Keep on thanking God. Allow the peace of God to come upon you. Brothers and sisters, let your hearts remain calm. This is my last Sunday as your pastor. My work among you is finished. I urge you to remember who you are: people of the Book, people transformed by God’s Spirit, people reflecting the image of the Three in One God. I urge you to stay connected to each other. Find your place in the Body of Christ and use your gifts for service. Do so with servants’ hearts looking out for others more than you look out for yourselves. And, finally, remain as calm as you can, trusting in Jesus Christ who is your only comfort in life and in death.
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