|
As I was preparing for today’s sermon, I remembered a story that a friend of mine has posted on his church’s web site. As the pastor of a church that focuses on healing, he uses this story as a reminder of what our priorities in the Church universal is suppose to be. The story goes like this:
A Crude Lifesaving Station
by Theodore Wedel
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and their money and their effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.
Now some of the members of the lifesaving station became unhappy, in time, however, because the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable, suitable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. And so they replaced the emergency cots with beds, and they put better furniture in the now enlarged building, so that now the lifesaving station actually became a popular gathering place for its members. They took great care in decorating it beautifully and furnishing it exquisitely, for they found new uses for it in the context of a sort of club. But fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, and so they hired lifesaving crews to do this work on their behalf, and in their stead. Now, don’t misunderstand, the lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decoration and symbols — there was a liturgical lifeboat (symbolic rather than fully functional) in the room where the club initiations were held, for example — so the changes did not necessarily mean that the original purposes were totally lost.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold and wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty people and they were sick people, some of them with black skin, some with yellow skin. The beautiful new club, as you might imagine, was thrown into chaos, so that the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where these recent victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside the main clubhouse.
At the very next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities for being so unpleasant, as well as for being a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose, pointing out that, indeed, they were still called a lifesaving station. But these few were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. And so, they did just that.
Now as the years passed, the new station down the coast came to experience the very same changes that had occurred in the older, initial station. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station had to be founded to restore the original purpose.
Well, history continued to repeat itself, so that if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a great number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown!”
As Christians, we have all been called to rescue the lost and fallen in this world, but it goes even beyond the action of rescuing. The motivation for this action as St. Paul tells us in his beloved poem in his letter to the Corinthians known as the Love Chapter that love must be at the heart of the matter.
No matter how good or impressive the deed maybe that we do, St. Paul teaches that it is worthless unless the good deed flows from a heart of love. He writes,
“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.”
In today’s economy too many folks are now living in the reality of bankruptcy. Being bankrupt changes one’s opportunities as to what a person can and cannot buy or even if a person can obtain a loan from a financial institution. Many of us already understand the significance of financial bankruptcy and the hardship it can bring, but I wonder how many of us ever stopped to contemplate what it means to be bankrupt of love as St. Paul writes in Peterson’s The Message.
A person who does good deeds for reasons other than love, St. Paul warns us is living a life of emotional bankruptcy, because when all else is said and done only love will last. The love St. Paul is referring to is the Greek word agape, which is described as the unconditional love of God as shown to us in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our salvation. God’s love returns evil with good. We see this love summed up beginning with the familiar verse of John 3:16 and reading through 18 from The Message,
“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.”
Jesus is God’s solution to the mess we as humans made for ourselves through our own disobedience against our Creator. In fact, it is because of God’s love for us that God even went to the trouble to help us. By sending His Son, Jesus of Nazareth to atone for our sins through His death and sacrifice, the love of God was seen and made clear to all. Even Satan was surprised that God would love us mere mortals so much that He would sacrifice His own Son for our sake. It is this love of which St. Paul is writing. The love of God manifested in Jesus Christ for us. It is this gift of love that we as Christians have to give to the world.
This is what separates Christianity from other religions, because we do not do good works for our own salvation. Instead, we do good works as evidence of God’s love for all in Jesus Christ. It is because of the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross that we go the extra mile in returning evil with good.
St. Paul describes this love with these words,
“Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.”
When we look at this description of love, we may ask ourselves how anyone could ever live a life of love. Yet, Jesus did. He is our example for us to follow. A few years ago, there was a popular saying among the Christian youth, which was ‘What would Jesus do?’
If each of us would make this saying our motto in our everyday life, I believe that we would begin to see a change in our lives and in others around us. It is scientifically proven that an action whether good or bad causes a reaction. As Christians we have already been given the reactions that God would have us to make. What we need to do is to begin living lives grounded in the love of Christ. If we as the Church are willing to base all of our decisions on God’s love, then we will not forget why we are here. We will also begin to see an increase in attendance and in funding, simply because of the love of God in our hearts for all peoples. As St. Paul reminds us the love of God never fails.
|
