Living Life to the Fullest Without Living It to Its Worst

Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21; Hosea 11:1-11

Hosea 11:1-11

{11:1} When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

² The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.

³ Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. ⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

⁵ They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. ⁶ The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. ⁷ My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.

⁸ How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. ⁹ I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

¹⁰ They shall go after the Lord , who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. ¹¹ They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord .

Luke 12:13-21

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” ¹⁴ But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵ And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” ¹⁶ Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷ And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ ¹⁸ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ ²⁰ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Colossians 3:1-11

{3:1} So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, ³ for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

⁵ Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). ⁶ On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. ⁷ These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.

⁸ But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. ⁹ Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. ¹¹ In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

The Sermon

Will you bow with me, and let us pray a prayer of Ted Loder:

Lord, grant me your peace,

for I have made peace

with what does not give peace,

and I am afraid.

Drive me deep, now,

to face myself so I may see

that what I truly need to fear is

my capacity to deceive

and willingness to be deceived,

my loving of things

and using of people,

my struggle for power

and shrinking of soul,

my addiction to comfort

and sedation of conscience,

my readiness to criticize

and reluctance to create,

my clamor for privilege

and silence at injustice,

my seeking for security

and forsaking the kingdom.

Lord, grant me your peace.

Instill in me such fear of you

as will begin to make me wise,

and such quiet courage

as will enable me to begin

to make hope visible,

forgiving delightful,

loving contagious,

faith liberating,

peace-making joyful

and myself open

and present

to other people

and your kingdom. [1] Amen.

As English Literature majors and other masochists will remember, Virginia Woolf was a writer who was born in 1882 and became a literary artist of extraordinary talent during the first half of the last century. A few years ago there was a movie called The Hours that was based on a novel of hers called “Mrs. Dalloway.”

One of the people who made the movie said, “Here’s what it’s about: A middle aged woman runs some errands; has a conversation with a man she might have married, but didn’t; takes a nap; and gives a boring party. That’s the story.”

You can see why Hollywood would just eat that up; it just sounds like it would make a really exciting movie.

But, said the commentator, “By the end of [it] you understand that everything you need to know about human life is actually contained in every day of every human life.”

So let’s humor the filmmaker and imagine that he’s right, or that Virginia Woolf is right: that everything you need to know about what it is to be human—what it is to be you—is contained in every day of your life.

What was your day like yesterday? Or perhaps more to the point: what will your day be like today?

What kinds of thoughts will you have about yourself, and the world, and the people around you?

What are your dreams? What do you think about? What do you want?

What worries will drive you to distraction today—or concerns, or problems, or issues?

I think it’s an interesting idea: that everything you need to know about human life is contained in every day of every human life. Because I am not convinced that I would like what I saw of myself, on any given day, enough to want that observation to tell me something about all of my life, much less about all of human life.

If I looked at my life in the microcosm of any one day, would I see anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language? And if I did, is that ultimately what I stand for?

No, I know; what we stand for is what we carefully construct and articulate: some grand statement about God being above all, and life being about truth and beauty, and pursuing our highest dreams and our noblest ideals.

But if someone took my average, unplanned, everyday life, or yours—would they see a reflection of that grand idea? Or would they see petty jealousies, whispers and irritabilities, impatience with people, a scratching, scraping need not only to keep our heads above water, but to build a pile of money and a deep favor bank so as always to keep pushing ahead?

Someone asked Jesus, “Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” That sounds like common fairness now, but the one who was asking Jesus presumably had no claim and no right to the inheritance. By law and custom, the whole estate was supposed to be passed on to the firstborn; that's how family estates were to be preserved.

And so Jesus said, “Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And then he turned to all the people and said to them, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

And he said, in one of his bluntest statements in Luke: If, this very night, your life was demanded of you, the things you have prepared—whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.

“The problem is I want to be rich toward God, but I know who I am. I know my impurities, my evil desires, my greed. I am a flawed, mortal human being. And I don’t know that I am capable of being richer toward God than I am toward myself.”

So perhaps we can look for inspiration to the great Biblical annals of illustrious women and men, the living embodiments of faithfulness, true human reflections of God’s grandeur and majesty.

You have two people—the first two people—who lived the most simplistic life possible, they only had three rules to live by, and they still managed to botch the whole thing—and then, they taught themselves, right off the bat, to lie about it. And Adam even learned, without being taught, to blame the woman! Beautiful!

You have Abraham, the founder of the three great monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—who, as far as I can tell in reading and re-reading Genesis (and I have), has nothing at all, not one single characteristic, that suggests any reason whatsoever why he would have been in any way “worthy” of being chosen to be the ancestor of all of those religions. Nothing.

You have Jacob, who took advantage of his dying, blind father; mercilessly ripped off his older brother; conned his father-in-law out of his earthly possessions and a couple of daughters.

You have a philandering, self-serving brat who became the greatest ruler of Israel, King David.

You have a murderous thug who changed his name from Saul to Paul and is credited with writing most of what today we call the New Testament, including the passage from Colossians about putting away that which is evil.

From the beginning of human interaction with God, the Good News has not depended on entirely flawless people to deliver it. And deeply flawed people have experienced something that made them say, "Not today. Today, I will put away all of that. Today I will put away the slander, the malice, the spitefulness, the arrogance, the self-serving, empty gratifications."

In the annals of the histories—particularly the unwritten histories—of local churches, you will find churches that have served thousands and thousands of worshipers, and untold numbers of bedridden people, street people, mentally ill people, dying people; and made God’s grace real for generation after generation. Behind those church histories, you will find among the men and women who have served as their pastors a small but significant number who have been drunk drivers, adulterers, embezzlers, and I suppose we could go on and on.

I know what you’re thinking. “Thank heaven I have a minister who has no personal flaws whatsoever.”

We are capable of all those things. But we are not made for them. We don’t have to be like that.

We are made to dream.

We are created to glorify God and enjoy God forever.

We’re capable of hope, and aspiration, and exaltation.

We’re capable of overcoming the distances and the differences between human beings—even between societies—even between enemies.

We’re capable of expressing the most profound truths.

We’re capable of incredible generosity, extraordinary empathy; astounding levels of achievement in science and philosophy.

We were not made for impurity, passion, greed , wrath, malice, slander, abuse, and lies. We are capable of those things, but we are not captive to them.

And so, with the Biblical witness behind us, and the knowledge of who we are and what we are capable of, let us all say, “Not today. Today, I will put away all of that.”

Let us be stripped of the old self with its practices and clothed with the new self, which is being renewed in the image of our Maker.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

August 5, 2007

[1] Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace. LuraMedia, 1985.