NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766
Sunday, December 5, 2004
Sermon: “Do You Have the SOULution?
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-10
Reverend Larry Gerber
With the click of a mouse, we can tackle huge scientific problems on a Web site called InnoCentive.com. But to deal with the even more daunting difficulties of life, we need to find salvation at a very different site.
Christopher Columbus believed the world was round when others believed it was flat and that if you traveled far enough you would sail over the edge.
We also know that Columbus reached what we now know as America. While there are still a few who believe Columbus returned to Spain and told Queen Isabella that he had discovered a new world, most believe he told her he had reached India.
If Columbus and the Spanish Court had been able to take advantage of InnoCentive.com, however, there would have been no doubters in his age.
InnoCentive is a huge online think tank where corporations can post intricate questions and problems for the world to ponder, and offer substantial cash awards to the person or persons who can solve the problem. International companies post questions at InnoCentive and pay big money — anywhere between $4,000 and $100,000 — for answers their traditional in-house teams can’t answer in a timely way ... and for a lot less money.
Had InnoCentive been around a thousand years ago, someone might have “sailed the ocean blue” in twelve hundred and ninety two instead of fourteen ninety two, and the Copernican Revolution of the early 16th century might have been exploded in the 13th century instead.
What if Innocentive were readily available to help you? You’ve got yourself an entire planet to look after. It’s all your very own, but there’s trouble, and it’s immediate. Unlike the vision of the peaceful kingdom in today’s passage from Isaiah 11, pesky lions are lunching on your fatlings. Wolf packs are stealing your sheep. Snakes in the grass keep nibbling on your children. There’s no solution you can imagine that’ll fix any of those troubles. On top of all that, the wickedly powerful among your people are picking on your poor and weak folks. Try as you might, you’re not strong enough, or clever enough, or wise enough, or big enough to straighten out the entire mess. You need a serious and quick, permanent solution.
Whatcha gonna do?
While you think about that — here’s what Procter & Gamble did about their much smaller problem. They farmed out their gobbledygook chemical synthesis problem to a global network of scientific guns-for-hire at InnoCentive.com., and got almost instant results.
For thousands of years, governments, charities, companies and individuals have thrown bags of shekels, well-armed soldiers and brilliant diplomats at our global social, cultural, ethnic, religious and racial issues. We’ve deposed fascists and dictators. We’ve tried solving our injustices and inequities with research and development. We’ve invented vaccine programs, mounted public health campaigns, built wells, fed starving nations, increased literacy, ended slavery (for the most part), improved communication and transportation and done a lot of good in many other areas.
Sure, we can say we’ve had a measure of success, but still, huge inequities and injustices remain. It’s still a dangerous planet. Lions stalk us. The poor are still hungry and oppressed. Wolves, big and small, devour the weak. Entire nations live in poverty. Millions and millions of children remain at risk from war, sickness and hunger. There are snakes in the grass. Our solutions just aren’t big enough, or clever enough, to solve all the underlying problems.
The good news is that there is a SOULution for the problems of the world, and it’s Isaiah 11.
Isaiah saw that the earth was suffering terribly — as it was then, so it is now. The poor were judged unfairly. The wicked and powerful took the upper hand. Growling killers were hunting the weak; hungry marauders were prowling at the doors of the oppressed; greedy predators were taking whatever they wanted. The lambs, the kids, the fatlings and the little children of the world were vulnerable, always in danger, always threatened, and always at risk. No global solution was visible.
God answered Isaiah. The answer is in today’s reading, and it’s in the gospels. The answer is the Messiah — the one whose birth we’ll soon celebrate. God’s response to Isaiah is the highest, best and only permanent SOULution to the world’s ongoing and terribly vexing problems.
God’s SOULtion is simple, it’s inexpensive, it’s readily available, and it’s staring us right in the face, in black and white; not only that, it can be written on our hearts, too.
Isaiah took the trouble to write it in a book so we could see God’s answer — that’s the black-and-white part. Isaiah wrote that God will send a Messiah.
God did. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (11:1). Keep in mind, however, that this vision is a vision of a messianic time which is located in the eschaton. It is a “someday” text, not a “today” text.
Now, don’t think that there isn’t a take-away message for us today. There is. But this text points to a millennial experience when: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins” (11:2-5).
A quick glance at the newspapers and other media, of course, dispels any notion that such a world is now in place, or that it is even close to materializing.
But that brings us to the take-away message for today. If this is God’s vision of the future, then that is the vision which we are called upon to work for today.
What other choice do we have? It’s the “InnoCentive SOULution” found in Jesus Christ. We work today to bring about a “realized eschatology,” even if it is accomplished only in part. We pray the Lord’s Prayer and agree that we will struggle to see God’s will done “on earth as it is in heaven.”
It’s not enough to say, “The problem with the world today is the depravity of the human heart, which, if reconciled with God, would result in the amelioration of the world’s problems.”
Our track record is that there have been plenty of people who have confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior, and embraced a personal notion of salvation, but have also lobbied for segregation in the American South and apartheid in South Africa and the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries.
We don’t need a think tank to remind us that Jesus came to show us the way, however imperfectly we might implement “the way.”
A little child in the manger reminds us. And the babe of Bethlehem points to the power of children to simplify, to bring into focus, what’s important and what’s not.
Sadako Sasaki was such a child. She lived in Japan from 1943-1955. She was in Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped.
When she was 11, she developed leukemia and died. During her months in the hospital, she remembered an ancient story which says that the crane is supposed to live for a thousand years. If a sick person folds a thousand paper cranes, the gods will grant his or her wish and make her healthy again.
Sadako’s dream was peace in our world. She held fast to this hope, making as many cranes as her energy would allow her, day after day. The paper origami cranes became her strength and her courage.
When she had made her 654th crane, Sadako died. Sadako’s classmates folded 356, so that 1,000 cranes were buried with her.
After her funeral, Sadako’s class collected her letters and published them in a book that was sent around Japan. Soon, everyone knew about Sadako and the thousand paper cranes.
Her friends began to dream of building a monument to her and all children who died the way she did. Young people throughout the country helped collect money for the project. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in Hiroshima Peace Park. Since that time, people from all around the world have spoken the words which are engraved there. They have kept Sadako’s dream alive: This is our cry; this is our prayer — peace in our world.
The Bethlehem manger points to a future kingdom of peace and justice.
As we go to Holy Communion, as we break bread together, and as we drink from the cup, we must say: “This is our cry; this is our prayer; -peace in our world.
It’s
a future that Jesus the Christ has brought to our souls, and calls us to bring
to pass now for the health and well-being of all God’s children.
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Sources:
Cook, Ashley M. “Never-ending oxymorons.” December 6, 1998, South Congregational Church Web Site, Southchurchhartford.org.
“InnoCentive challenges list.” InnoCentive Web Site, Innocentive.com. RetrievedJune 9, 2004.
Kirkpatrick, David. “Big-league R &D gets its own eBay.” Fortune, May 4, 2004,Innocentive.com/about/media/20040503Fortune.pdf.
Wright,
Laura. “World-wide mind meld: A new Web site offers cash for solutions
to tricky scientific puzzles.” Technology, Discover.com. April 8, 2004.
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766