TAKING CARE OF LIFE
Romans 12:1-2
Thankful for our blessings,
we commit ourselves to God.
A sermon preached by
Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves
First United Methodist Church
Hot Springs, Arkansas
November 20, 2011
When the great American author Mark Twain was at the peak of his writing career, it was said that his magazine and journal articles were worth $5 a word—a great sum of money in those days. One enterprising Harvard graduate student sent Mark Twain a letter:
"Dear Mr. Twain:Enclosed please find $5. Please send me your best word."
A few days later, the student received a telegram with this single word response: "Thanks!"[1]
That’s our word for today, and it may be the best one—thanks! We have much to be thankful for, don’t we? Today several experiences come together to make me truly thankful. It is Thanksgiving Sunday, and we are about to celebrate our national day of Thanksgiving. What a blessing it is to call The United States of America our home; what a privilege it is to be a citizen of the greatest nation on earth by any standard of measurement. I would also argue that it is a blessing to be a resident of Arkansas and Garland County. Even with the problems we face in our world today, all things considered, we are so blessed.
I am thankful today that we have had a chance over the last few weeks to thoroughly examine the concept of stewardship in the Christian life. Some of you could answer the question, “What is a steward?” Repeat after me: “A servant entrusted with the property of the Master.” I hope you have learned that all of life is stewardship, from creation itself to time to money to church. It’s all a trust. Living life as a steward has meaning, purpose, direction, excitement. This is a great life God has called us to live, and I’m thankful!
Specifically, I’d like to share with you four great spiritual truths that make me grateful today.
I’m thankful today because we can’t outgive God. No matter how much we give back, how much we sacrifice, how much we serve, God will out-do us by a mile. He’s the Master, the Owner of the operation. As one writer said, God’s always got the bigger shovel.
Here’s a story that dates me. Do you remember the old neighborhood grocery stores that were always run by a kindly old “Mom and Pop”? It was in one of these stores thata young boy and his mother went shopping. The shop ownerpassed him a large jar of suckers and invited him to help himself to a handful. Uncharacteristically, the boy held back. So the shop owner pulled out a handful for him.
Outside the store, the boy's mother asked why he had suddenly been so shy and wouldn't take a handful of suckers when offered.
The boy replied, "Because I could see his hand was bigger than mine!"[2]
God’s hand is bigger than ours can ever hope to be. It’s all about grace. And the best response to grace is gratitude. That’s one of the marks of stewardship—living with gratitude. Pastor and writer Warren Wiersbe said, “Some people are appreciative by nature, but some are not; and it is these latter people who especially need God's power to express thanksgiving. We should remember that every good gift comes from God and that He is (as the theologians put it) ‘the Source, Support, and End of all things.’ The very breath in our mouths is the free gift of God. Thankfulness is the opposite of selfishness. The selfish person says, ‘I deserve what comes to me! Other people ought to make me happy.’ But the mature Christian realizes that life is a gift from God, and that the blessings of life come only from His bountiful hand.”[3]
I’m thankful today because the greatest gift God gives us is salvation. Talk about what to get the person who has everything! Everything we have is not equal to this one gift, this ultimate grace, this eternal present. We stand condemned in our sins, unable to be perfect, incapable of relating in healthy ways to God, inept at relating to others—stuck, stopped, and stymied in our self-made attempts to be somebody. Then we find out that 2,000 years ago God made provision for us to remove the stain of sin by the blood that was shed on the cross so we could be reconciled and come home to him forever: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[4] And it comes to us so simply. All we have to do is to accept the gift by faith: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”[5]
So much of our society is based on accomplishment. You get what you earn; there is a direct relationship between what you can do and what you receive. Our self-worth is based on what we do. Some vocations are prestigious and powerful; others are hard and humble. We get paid according to our cultural scale of value, and that’s what we’re “worth.” In fact, every religious system in the world teaches that our status before God depends on our efforts—what we have to do to get in God’s good graces. All except for one.
Christianity teaches that salvation is a gift. When you put your trust in Christ and accept him as the Master of your life, you begin to understand that he loves you unconditionally. He promises the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. He claims you as his own. It’s all grace; it’s all a gift. And I’m thankful.
I’m thankful today that God never lets go of us. There is no trial we face,no trouble we endure, no tribulation that afflicts us, where God is not there. We can lose our health, lose our wealth, lose our job, lose our enthusiasm, lose our marriage, lose our loved ones, even lose our own life, but we will not be lost to God. He will not abandon us in the day of trouble.
As Moses told the children of Israel: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”[6] Or as David sang in the 23rd Psalm, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.”[7] God will never let us go.
Over my years as a pastor, I have seen God hold on to people at every stage of life. A couple of weeks ago, Bill Skaggs and I went down to see Heather Clawitter, who was an intern at our church, got married here, and is now the pastor at Bismarck. Just a week prior to that she texted me all excited because her pregnancy test was positive. She and Dustin were going to be parents. She was letting the world know.
Then a week later, she had a miscarriage. It was painful physically, emotionally and spiritually. All the joy and anticipation and hope for that unborn life dashed to pieces. She asked me to come down and talk through the issues, because that’s what Heather does. She processes everything.
So Bill and I went down and visited, and it was tough, deep, theological conversation. But at the end, Heather made this incredible affirmation of faith. She said, “This is hard, and it is sad. But through it all I have had this incredible sense of being held in God’s hand. I have a wonderful husband. I have an amazing family. My church has been so supportive. I know we can conceive, so we can try again. I know that God is with me now, like he has always been. I am so blessed!” That’s gratitude!
I am thankful today because we can’t outgive God, because salvation is a gift, and because God never lets us go. Finally, I’m thankful today because we can make a significant response to the grace of God. We can be servants of the Kingdom. We can be good stewards of life.
If you are not doing something important and challenging for God, if your faith is not being stretched beyond your capability to perform, so that you have to depend on the power of God to work through you, then you are missing the greatest blessing in life. I have a dream that one day every believer in Jesus would become a disciple of Jesus. What if every person who acknowledges the Lordship of Christ with his or her lips would put their faith into action and find out what it means to be on fire for God, fully devoted, sold out for Jesus! That’s when your life gets transformed into an act of worship. That’s true stewardship.
Listen hard to these words from Paul to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[8] Highlight those verses in your Bible. Turn down that page. Make that your rule of life.
That is my appeal to you today: make your life an act of worship; be transformed, not conformed; follow the will of God for your life. Be stewards. Be blessed, and be thankful.
The late Mstislav Rostropovichis universally recognized as one of the world's greatest cellists. He died in 2007. During the height of the Cold War, Rostropovich and his wife (the soprano Galina Vishneyskaya) spoke out on behalf of human rights and artistic freedoms. The Soviet Union was trying to shut up physicists like Andrei Sakharov and writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In fact, Rostropovich sheltered the banned novelist Solzhenitsyn at their home outside Moscow and wrote an open letter to the Soviet premier Brezhnev protesting Soviet human rights violations.
The reprisals they faced were significant. Their concerts were canceled. Their foreign tours were canceled. Their recording projects were canceled. The state-run media imposed a black-out of their names and activities. Finally in 1974 the state gave them an exit visa to perform in Paris, but then refused to let them back in, stripping them of citizenship and informing Rostropovich that he could never return to Russia again.
They were without a home. All their friends, belongings, musical compositions, instruments—all they had was left behind. They lived in exile until 1989.
On November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The Berlin Wall was the symbol of communist oppression. When Rostropovich heard the Wall was coming down, and the communist regime in East Germany was coming apart, his heart was full of gratitude. He knew that the whole Eastern European communist bloc was coming unglued, and that his exile from his native homeland would soon be over.
So how to express his gratitude and thanksgiving?
Rostropovich took his cello, caught the first plane to Berlin, jumped a cab, and told the driver to take him to the wall. When he arrived, he realized that he had to worry about something he had never had to worry about: a chair. You can't play a cello without a chair. The chair was always ready for him. Never before in his life did he have to worry about the chair.
But now he had to find a chair.
He began knocking on doors of homes close to where he was let off. One German family produced a small kitchen chair. So to offer his joy and gratitude to God for the gift of freedom and homecoming, Rostrapovich sat down on the chair in front of the crumbling wall and played his cello unaccompanied.
And what did the greatest cellist in the world play on his cello when he picked up his bow? Something he had never recorded before. He played a Bach cello suite. Later, Rostrapovich explained, "I chose Bach to say thank you to the great God.”
Rostropovich knew what it meant to have the foundations of life crumble. He had been an outcast from his home. He had spoken up for human rights and had been persecuted for it. He had seen his friends exiled, imprisoned, and killed. Through it all God had been with him. And he was grateful.[9]
(Pull out chair.)
This has not been an easy year. Our country is still at war, and young men and women are still losing their lives to terrorism. The economies of the world are distressed, and people are still without jobs and struggling to make ends meet. Natural disasters have claimed hundreds of lives. Our church has been through some unprecedented administrative problems. In your personal lives, many of you have experienced things this past year none of you could have predicted or anticipated—death, disease, divorce. I know these things. I'm your pastor.
Yet this morning we come here to thank God, to celebrate a God who never lets us go. God keeps on giving us strength and comfort and hope in the midst of trouble. God gives us life. God gives us salvation. Nothing in all creation can separate us from his love.
So this is what I am going to ask you to do: I want you to be Rostropovich this morning. I want you to imagine yourself in this chair, facing the wall of whatever it is that is against you in life. In front of that wall, name what it is that you are thankful for today. Name what it is that keeps you going, that keeps you fighting, that gives meaning and purpose to your life. What would you say to give thanks this morning to a great God?
[ConneXion: Then if you feel led, I want to invite you to come here, sit in this chair, and say thank you to God. Maybe a wall has come down in your life this year. Maybe you have a special blessing that has come your way. Maybe your life has taken a turn for the better. As we get ready for Thanksgiving, what are you especially thankful for?][10]
One of the concrete, practical, and meaningful ways we can say thank-you to God is to support our church financially. Today is the day that we make our estimates of giving for the coming year. It is an act of worship, thanksgiving, and stewardship.
(Invite to commitment time)
[1]Bill Bouknight, “One Good Word—Thanks!” sermons.com.
[2] PreachingToday.com.
[3]Warren W. Wiersbe, A Time To Be Renewed. In Christianity Today, Vol. 32, no. 17.
[4] Romans 6:23.
[5] Ephesians 2:8-9.
[6] Deuteronomy 33:27 KJV.
[7] Psalm 23:4.
[8] Romans 12:1-2.
[9]This portion of the story comes from a personal conversation between Rostropovich and John M. Buchanan, as recounted in "Glory," Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois, 17 December 2000.
[10] Leonard Sweet, “The Chair,” sermons.com.