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Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Larry
Gerber
Sermon: "The Age of Extremity"
Scripture: Jeremiah 1:4-10
PP1. Mae Koscheski reads her medical bills closely, even those pesky surcharges
that are tucked into the invoice and easily overlooked.
It’’s a good thing she does, because one of her bills recently included
a surcharge of $70 for —— ““extreme age.””
Getting old is bad enough. Hospital bills. Prescription drug charges. The cost
of assisted living, nursing home and life-care facilities.
But paying an ““extreme age”” tax on your hospital bill!
That’’s salt in the wound.
Mae is 73. That’’s old, but not ““extremely old.””
Granted, there are days when taking the extreme age exemption might be worth
it. We’’d like to pull the covers over our heads, stay in bed, and
skip the round of meetings that day.
As many of you know, I just spent 14 hours in a hospital in Grand Rapids, MI.
I know that they took my birthday as well as my birthdate. I was nearly 60 on
that fateful day. They took a ct scan, EKG, spinal tap, and who knows what else.
I am not extremely old, but that big 0 was just a few days away. I wonder what
surprises I will have when they send me the bill for: almost 60, out of state,
wife in room with me, family coming to visit, Pastor of a large church in an
active adult comunity,etc. etc.......
PP2 In any case, extreme age is not what is bothering the young Jeremiah in
today’s text. Rather than claiming an extreme age exemption, he falls back
on the youth exemption. “I am only a boy” (1:6).
God doesn’t buy it. In fact, questions of service, mission and discipleship
have no relation to age issues, or gender issues. God doesn’t seem to be
limited at all by the categories that we think are important: Age. Race. Gender.
Education. Disability. Economic status.
As for retirement, it’s hard to find the notion of retirement in the Bible,
and Tony Campolo says somewhere in his voluminous writings, that retirement
is unbiblical.
Jeremiah wants to retire before he’s hired or tired. Wants to stop before
he goes; to quit before he starts; to sit down before he stands up.
Not Dorothy Day. When Day was only 8 years old, something happened that would
shape the rest of her life. She didn’t know it then (she was only a child),
that she was experiencing an earthquake. Her brass bed was rolling across the
floor and the earth was shaking. It was April 18, 1906, and the great earthquake
of the century had hit San Francisco.
It was many years later when she described her experience in her autobiography.
By then, she was known by many as a living saint, “the prioress of the
Bowery” and the founder of Hospitality Houses all over the country where
she, and her movement of Catholic workers, cared for the poorest of the poor.
They still care for them. It all began when this girl was very young. She could
have said to God, as the prophet Jeremiah did, “Not me, I am but a child.”
But she didn’’t.
PP 3 According to her biographer, Paul Elie, she had frequent nightmares of
God as a young child. And that night of the earthquake was no exception. Either
a nightmare or dream, “a great noise became louder and louder and approached
nearer and nearer to me, until I woke up sweating, screaming for my mother.”
In her mind, it was all linked up with God’s call upon her and the call
was fierce, haunting and not at all friendly. The earthquake only lasted 140
seconds. But the city was devastated, in smoky ruins, rubble everywhere. Day,
haunted by God’s presence in nightly visits, went out to see the wreckage
on the streets. She saw people from all walks of life helping others, women
cooking, men offering spare clothes, tents being raised in the rubble. What
she felt as she watched became a vision of the calling that would last the rest
of her life.
“While the crisis lasted, people loved each other,” she wrote. “It
was as though they were united in Christian solidarity. It makes one think of
how people could, if they would, care for each other in times of stress, unjudgingly
in pity and love.” Elie notes, “A whole life is prefigured in that
one episode. In a moment of history, Dorothy Day felt the fear of God and witnessed
elemental, biblical charity, the remedy for human loneliness.”
The rest of her life, 88 years, she would work out that calling that occurred
when she was but a young child. At 8 years old, the pattern of her life began
to unfold ever so slowly.
No earthquake for Jeremiah when God spoke to him. But the young man clearly
did not feel ready for the task. “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly, I do not know how
to speak, for I am only a boy.” Jeremiah’s demur is understandable;
after all, he is being called to speak God’s word to nations in rebellion.
The Word spoken from the mouth of Jeremiah will have the power to “pluck
up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant”
(v. 10).
The calling of God is serious and important, but if we are going to offer an
excuse to avoid service, it can’t be linked to age.
Of this, Paul reminds Timothy: “Let no one despise your youth, but set
the believers an example ...,”was the advice he gave Timothy, his young
friend and coworker in the ministry (1 Timothy 4:12).
So when young Jeremiah cries out, “I am only a boy,” we understand
and might even agree. But God will have nothing to do with our age limitations.
In a rather firm, clear voice the Lord responded to Jeremiah, “Do not say,
‘I am only a boy’’... for I am with you to deliver you”(v.
7).
What’’s the take-home message here? God will guide, support and deliver
those whom God calls and God calls anyone whom he chooses, regardless of age,
status or other perceived limitations.
And we can’t say that we aren’t smart enough to service God because
the Bible says, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many
of you were wise by human standards .... But God chose what is foolish in the
world to shame the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:26-27).
We can’t say that we’re not powerful and connected, because God says
“not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth ... but God chose
what is foolish ...”
We can’t say that we’re not strong enough, because God choose “what
is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).
We can’t say that we’re not respectable enough because “God chose
what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing
things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:28).
We can’t say that we’re lousy public speakers because the apostle
Paul himself admits: “And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in
much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words
of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your
faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God” (1 Corinthians
2:3-5).
So why does a Jeremiah, or a Moses, or a Samuel, or a David, or a Dorothy Day,
or any of the rest of us accept God’s call to service?
Three G’s: so that God Gets the Glory!
PP4. Paul writes: “God chose what is low and despised in the world ...
so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your
life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the
one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:28-31).
It’s all about GOD. Living in the new millennium, we’re used to a
human-centric world where everyone who’’s selling anything assures
us that it is all about me, or you. It’s not.
PP5. It’s all about what God GETS. We’re the ones who spend, who acquire,
who waste, who gather, who accumulate, who build, who take in —— and
while we understand the notion of giving back, or charity, of putting some cash
in the collection plate —— God doesn’t want a part of us; God
wants it all!
PP6. It’s all about God getting the GLORY! Praise and worship of God fills
all of Scripture. When history is concluded, the faithful from every time and
era will gather to give praise to God.
This is what the call of God is about: living and serving in a way that directs
the glory and the praise to God.
PP.7 The good news is found in Jeremiah 1:8. We give our lives to God’s
service —— whatever that may be —— and God says: “I
am with you to deliver you.”
God’’s Presence and Protection. What more do we need? We certainly
don’t need to claim our youth or extreme age as excuses.
Gordon Crosby didn’t. After he returned from military service as an Army
chaplain, Crosby founded the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., in 1946.
Widely recognized as one of the most innovative models of church in this country,
over 50 years later the Church of the Savior is still doing creative ministry
through 12 small mission congregations.
Gordon, at age 85, still preaches every Sunday, makes his daily pastoral rounds
in the inner city of Washington, D.C., and is asking challenging questions of
himself and his community about the wineskins that are necessary to best communicate
the gospel. The good news?
Retirement is a false myth in the economy of God’s call. God calls anyone,
without regard to human limitations.
Extreme age —— or youth —— never creates extra charges,
according to God.
Only extra opportunities.
As I stated earlier, a week ago 'Thusday, I ended up in the hospital overnight.
I had collapsed at the dinner table in a restaurant in front of 7 of my grandchildren,
among several other on lookers. After the event was over, and I was able to
go home on Friday,Jane and my daughters allowed the grandchildren to visit me
in the bed room.
PP8. My 1 1/2 year old granddaughter, Ella, came into my bedroom and handed
me her favorite dolly. She gently laid it in my arms, looked at me lovingly
and quietly. She then provided a blanket for the dolly, and said Goodnight Grandpa.,
as she tucked the dolly into my arms. She knew all would be ok. She did not
know that she was too young to minister to someone. She provided me the comfort
she would have needed and wanted.
PP9. Two older grandchildren, Cora and Cassandra, brought me some candy, and
laid it in the bed stand. They had been given the candy at the restaurant, where
all the action had begun. They saw that I was sleeping, so they quietly put
the candy on the stand. I vaguely remember them saying, “Here is some candy
for when you wake up Grandpa.” They wanted to share the gift they had been
given to them through the traumatic night when they had seen me lying on the
restaurant floor, and then taken away in an ambulance. They did not know that
they were too young to comfort their Grandpa, so they just did it.
Those gifts were precious beyond words. They ministered to, and healed me in
so many ways.
No matter our age, we "know" what we have to do, in order to help
others in time of need. Not because we want to be heroes, but because we know
anothers needs. Weather we are a Dorothy Day, or a Gordon Crosby; a 1 1/2 year
old grandchhild, or a 6 and 8 year old, God uses us for special reasons, at
special times.
The prayers and concerns, the e-mails, and the cards, from each of you touched
me deeply as well. Humbling? Yes. But, more importantly, healing and comforting.
The age of extremety knows no biological age. We care for each other in times
of stress and despair; in times of fear and anxiety. God's care and protecton
comes to us through little children, middle age persons, and older people like
Gordon.
What you do for others, in the name of God, is done out of his love working
in you. The next time a need arises, will you think: I am too young; I am too
old; I am not capable.........or will you do what needs to be done, because
God put you there at a particular time, for a particular meaning.......Let us
pray
Source:
Elie, Paul. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2003.
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766