What We Have Heard and Seen
1 John 1:1-2:2
April 12, 2015
Last week, I spoke to you
about the first responses of Mary Magdalene, Peter and John to the Resurrection,
and I posed the question “Resurrection – Now What?” How are you and I responding to the Resurrection?
After last Sunday’s Easter
celebration, Carol and I had lunch with the family and then we travelled to
Corning, NY for a reunion with friends. Friendships that were formed in the
late 70s and early 80s in Kent, Ohio, where we all met at Kent United Methodist
Church. Janet and Bob, Becky and Milt,
and Carol and I got together for the first time in twenty-five and it felt like
we didn’t miss a beat. We selected Corning—not because of any particular association
with Corning—but because it was relatively midway between Concord, MA,
Cleveland, OH and Palmyra, VA.
We were together from Monday
afternoon through Thursday morning. We
did some touristy things; but mostly we ate and talked and laughed—a lot! We especially
enjoyed a little coffee shop called the Walker Cake Co. and Coffeehouse. You can
recognize it by the floral birdcages in the window, the sign that says,
“Hippies Always Welcome,” and the young woman named Danielle who operates the
store and who was kind enough to put up with our humor! We ate breakfast there on Wednesday and liked
it so much that we returned for more on Thurdsay. On Thursday, I brought my laptop with me and told
our friends that they had the golden opportunity to write today’s sermon. They were all too willing to accommodate! I posed to them a question that is raised by
our scripture lesson this morning: what
have you heard and seen that has influenced you in your faith journey? In so many words, I was asking them how they
have responded to the Resurrection. I
stated the question and then I started typing their responses.
Janet (Bob’s wife) is a
librarian. Janet has lived the life of a
pastor’s wife for over thirty-five years.
She told us that she always has felt and seen God at work in leading her
forward. Janet said, “If I have known in
my heart that I should take a particular direction, but I went in a different
one instead, God has dragged me back.
There was one time in particular that I lost track of where I was on
God’s path. This took place when we moved
to a particular town; the church there was so unfriendly that even my best
friend turned on me. I never heard an
explanation of why. That took me down emotionally
to a point where I had to move on. I eventually
realized that I had given someone else the power to judge me that only should
belong to God. Once I realized that the
only thing I had left was my faith, I was able to carry that knowledge forward with
me each step.”
Bob reflected on the changes
that have taken place in our families, the craziness of all that has happened
in our lives – career changes, and children.
Bob said, “There is a love and a bond that carries us through all the
craziness that life throws at us. This
is the sort of love that other people notice.”
Bob then told a story about young man named Lance, a teenager that Janet
and Bob befriended. Bob and Janet have been active in a spiritual enrichment
program called “Walk to Emmaus.” While attending
a “Walk to Emmaus” event, they heard a choir sing that was made up of inner-city
kids. Lance was one of them. Bob and Janet learned of Lance’s story—that Lance
had no place to live. So, with some
mixed feelings, Janet and Bob took Lance into their own home to live with them
and their own children. Lance has said repeatedly
“I moved in with a family who took me in when I needed it and kept me until I
was able to go to college.” Lance went
on to attend and graduate from Heidelberg College, and he now serves as a Youth
Minister at a United Methodist Church in Cleveland. Bob downplays the importance of what the
Machovec family did for Lance. He says
“Janet and I (Steve and Becky) were just one piece of the journey for Lance and
his coming to know the love of Christ. We just give him a roof over his
head and a bed for a while.” But Janet
and Bob set the example through their own openness and sharing; Lance learned
by their example and now is passing on the love of Christ that Lance learned
from Janet and Bob.
Janet added an additional
note here—she pointed out that we don’t know what a given step in our journey
will lead to. After having served in
parish ministry for more than twelve years, they had moved to Herndon, VA,
where Bob was pursuing a counseling ministry. Janet had thought that her life
as the wife of an itinerant pastor was over, but God seemed to have different
plans for them. They ended up moving
back to the Cleveland area and Bob returned to parish ministry. The move was not easy, on a multitude of
fronts; but, as Janet pointed out, “Our move … was a step on a journey that
ultimately made our relationship with Lance possible.”
It now was Becky’s turn. Becky told us about the major transition she
went through when she moved from the business world into teaching. As a teacher, she felt compelled not only to
teach the assigned subject but also to teach the humanity behind the
subject. She wanted her class to reach
out globally, so Becky gave her class the assignment to read a book entitled Home of the Brave by Katherine
Applegate. This book tells the story of
a boy who was a victim of the civil war in the Sudan. The Sudanese Civil War destroyed many
families, and great journeys were undertaken by thousands of orphaned young
children to find safety. This boy found himself being sent to live in new
circumstances in the United States, having to adjust to a vastly different
world, all the while wondering if his mother had survived. Coincidentally, while teaching this novel,
Becky read an article in the Boston Globe
about Kuol Akuek, a young Sudanese
man whose story was amazingly similar to the story told in the novel. Becky
invited Kuol to speak to her class. Kuol
told the class his story: how he
wandered with other children for twelve years across Sudan to Ethiopia and
Kenya. When he was found by the United Nations he was 19, having wandered since
he was 7. He was airlifted to the states and the transition was monumental. He
had never seen a toilet, used a stove or been in a grocery store. When Becky
met him, he had just graduated from college and was headed back to Sudan in
hopes of finding any family. Kuol spoke movingly about the plight of women in
the Sudan and of his desire to return home to give to young women there the
opportunities for education that he had received during his visit to the US. He told the class, “Because I have met so
many wonderful women who have educated me, I want to take that back to Sudan
and provide opportunity to Sudan.” Meeting
him and hearing his harrowing account of his survival really hit home with my
students. They realized that we are all one people, and we can make a big
difference in someone's life. They held bake sales and raffles to benefit Kuol.
Since teaching the novel and
working with Kuol, Becky also worked with Moses
Ajou of the Sudanese Education Fund here in Boston. She says, “God truly
works in strange ways. I felt that God had put me here to create these
connections with people globally. I
think that is what God wants us to do:
to love one another and do all the good that we can.” Becky recalls Jesus’ commandment to “love one
another” and she says "I feel in a small way that I am trying to fulfill his
commandment.”
Becky mentioned another
example. Her class read about the plight
of the homeless in the Boston area and partnered with an organization to provide
beds for children in the Boston area.
Her class bought twelve beds for these children. Becky says, “When opportunities like that
arise, I think its God speaking. God is
a God of possibilities; the possibilities to help people are all around us.”
Milt, Becky’s husband, then
spoke up. “I have seen God working
through so many people. It’s not a
cliché. You go to church and hear
structured sermons, and it’s all good.
But what has influenced me the most are individuals and how they have
responded to adversity in life.” Milt
recalled Merle Andregg, our Choir Director at Kent United Methodist Church. Merle
was a huge example to us. Music was so
important in his life. He would hold up
a sheet of music and tell us that that piece of music was only ink on paper
until we can all get together and put our voices together to make music. Milt said, “Our Christian journey is like
that.” Milt told us about a man named
Dick. Dick was a very unassuming
person—you would never guess that he had served as an ambassador. His life changed dramatically when his
daughter was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Dick tracked down in prison the man who committed
this terrible crime and used this encounter as an opportunity to form a prison
ministry. Every Christmas, Milt’s church
asks people to donate some basic personal items—such as toothpaste, socks,
notepaper, etc., to this ministry. All
materials are donated; volunteers assemble gift bags. You can’t believe the number of people who
have responded. Their church occasionally
hears convicts tell them that this was the only gift they received in the
year. Milt said, “God is all around us,
but so many of us miss the opportunity to see God working in our lives.”
Milt acknowledged, that
sometimes, we miss those opportunities. He
told of one year, when he served as a Confirmation Class mentor, how he took a
young man he was mentoring to one of the difficult areas in Boston. They encountered a homeless man who said that
he needed a pair of gloves. Milt told us
“I didn’t connect in my head that I had a pair of gloves with me that I could
have given to him. God gives us opportunities;
on this one occasion, I didn’t recognize it.
I felt so guilty for missing that opportunity.” But Milt added, “There are many, many people
that I have been fortunate to know who demonstrate God working through
them. I have become more sensitive as a
result of their example.”
Milt gave us one more example. Milt has served as a volunteer with a program
called Stephen Ministry, which provides intermediate support and care for people
who need someone to talk to. Milt counseled
a man named Charles (not his real name) for quite some time. Charles was the oldest of three boys; but he
always felt inadequate. He flunked out
of three or four colleges before he finally managed to graduate. His dad and his brothers were quite athletic;
Charles was not. The message that Charles
constantly received was, “you’re a loser; you’ll never be anything.” As a result, Charles became delusional. Milt was able to persuade Charles to see a
psychiatrist, who prescribed medication to treat his mental illness. By obtaining the needed professional help, Charles’
life has been changed. By working with
Charles, Milt’s life has changed. Milt
has learned the reward that comes when you make a difference in people’s
lives. Milt says, “Charles may have left
our meetings feeling good; but I left feeling even better!” Milt’s story about Charles is just one more
example of the ways God can be seen at work through people.
By this time, our breakfast
was over. The six friends had to part
company and return to our various lives in Boston, Cleveland and Palmyra.
Six friends. Six ordinary people, telling their
stories. telling, “what they have heard,
what they have seen with their eyes, what they have looked at and touched with
their hands, concerning the word of life…” (Paraphrasing 1 John 1:1). What is their
message? It is their response to
Resurrection—a response that is made not only in words but also in every-day living. It is the same message that John, the
evangelist proclaimed, “if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another…” (1 John 1:7).
Our Christian journey is a
journey of faithfulness; a journey of walking with God and in fellowship with
each other. When we take this journey,
we discover the truth that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at
all.” (1 John 1:6).
You now have heard our
friends’ response to the Resurrection.
But there is yet another question to be answered. What about you? How will you respond to the Risen Christ?
Tom Frost
No comments:
Post a Comment