Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship ·June 12, 2005

 

 

Prayer of the Day

Lord, we come with minds hungry for truth, souls thirsty for forgiveness, wills searching for direction, spirits yearning for power.  In this hour of worship we humbly ask that you feed, refresh, forgive, empower us, and send us on our way rejoicing.  Amen.

 

Scripture
Matthew 9:9-13,18-22

As Jesus went out from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth.  “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples.  When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick.  But go and learn what these word mean: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous, but to call the separated ones, the sinners.”

While he was saying this, a leader of the synagogue came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died.  But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.”  Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.

Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the hem of his garment.  She said to herself, “If I can only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

Jesus turned and saw her.  “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.”  And the woman was healed from that moment on.

 

Message
Making Interruptions Count
Rick Frost

It has been, I think, a season of transitions for many.  The kid graduated from M.U. a couple weeks ago and is now trying to learn to live with her brother as a house-guest at his place in San Francisco.  Can you imagine living with your brother?  Can you imagine living with a sister?

Twenty-five of our Broadway youth graduated from local high schools last weekend.  How wonderful for that. 

Jacob Thorne, our new youth minister, was ordained last Sunday at the Christian Church in St. Joseph.  He is with some of our kids this weekend down at the Camdenton Festival.

Ryan Motter is into his second week this summer as our summer intern.  We are delighted to have Ryan.

All of our young people, of course, will be entering a new grade come September.  I find it humbling to watch as each one of them turns a new page in the next chapter in the story of their life.  They are growing up, folks.  Have you noticed? 

Remember when you were a kid how you couldn’t wait to get there.  You couldn’t wait to grow up – dating, driving, setting your own schedule, holding down a job, balancing your own checkbook, going wherever you wanted to go.  Being a grownup.  Right?  Remember how when you got there, you wondered what all the hype was about?  Of course, some of us never got there, so there is always hope.  But that’s another story.

Do you remember when you were a kid, life seemed like one long stream and string of adventures.  Interruptions were no big deal.  Call waiting was a necessity.  You just grew up with it.  Distractions were welcomed.  You bounced freely and easily from one thing to another.  It didn’t bother you at all.  You looked for novelty and wonder – anything that would draw you away from the task at hand, which usually had been assigned to you by somebody else. 

Do you remember what it was like as a kid to wander along and all of a sudden see a spider weaving a web in the shrubs or maybe in the woodpile, and how it literally stopped you in your tracks?  You had to look at it. 

Do you remember a mud puddle was something you played in?  I still can see the little kid in a mud puddle with nothing but a few pots and pans from the kitchen.  There is something about a mud puddle. 

Do you remember, as a kid, a summer rain shower?  You know what it was for?  You’re supposed to go out in it, and stand under it, and open your mouth, and lay your head back, and reach your hands up to the sky.  You wanted to taste, and feel, and smell, and hear, and touch it. 

So what happened?  What in the world happened?  Somewhere along the line, the spider became a pest.  The mud puddle became a mess to avoid.  The summer rain shower became a nuisance that ruined that freshly-waxed car.  Somewhere along the line, we grew up.  Somewhere along the line, we got busy.  Somewhere along the line, we found the way to get along in this world is to inevitably get into making predictable plans. 

You have to create tight schedules and establish very real routines.  In order to get to where you want to go and need to go, you set goals, you prioritize, you categorize, you calendarize.  We call our day timers “the book.”  A P.D.A. is now a necessity, so that we can more effectively manage our time, stay focused, keep on track, and most of all, do whatever we need to do to avoid distractions.  We must avoid interruptions – anything that keeps us from getting where we’ve decided we want to go.  Of course, the irony is that is exactly where the mystery, the wonder, the enchantment of life resides.  Doesn’t it?  In the distractions and interruptions is where that happens.  Isn’t it interesting?

In our text today, Matthew remembers Jesus running in fast forward.  I tried to communicate that a little bit by the reading today.  He is in his hometown.  He’s teaching.  He’s doing things that are stirring the pot there in that community.  People in that community want to know why he’s hanging out with the people he’s hanging out with.  Why are his disciples not fasting like religious people are supposed to do?  They have all kinds of religious questions for Jesus.  That’s what religious people do.  Isn’t it?  They meet, and they talk about religious matters.  I personally avoid those conversations like the plague, but there are people who like that kind of thing.

Here is Jesus talking it up with the religious types.  He’s telling them what he knows, what he believes, what he thinks, when suddenly, according to Matthew, a leader in the synagogue pokes his head in the meeting and says, “My daughter has just died, but come, lay your hands upon her, and she will live.”

So, according to Matthew, Jesus gets up, slips out of the meeting, debate probably still continuing, and he goes with the man.  On his way to the man’s house, he runs into a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years.  She reaches out, grabs his robe, believing that if she can just touch the hem of his garment, she will be healed.  Isn’t that incredible faith?  According to Matthew, she does.  Jesus pauses.  He wasn’t going in that direction; he was going somewhere else.  But he pauses, and he turns to her, and he says to her, “Your faith has made you well.”  And evidently it has, and she is healed.

Everybody in this room knows about that.  Everybody in this room has been healed of something by something.  We know about healing.  It’s not that strange.

Moments later, Jesus reaches the main house.  He tells the crowd that is planning the little girl’s funeral, “She’s not dead.”  They laugh.  Sure, she’s dead.  But Jesus says, “I want all of you out of this room.”  He goes in by himself, evidently, according to Matthew.  He reaches out his hand.  He takes the hand of the little girl.  Together they come out the front door for everybody to see.

Well, they are very impressed.  They’re overwhelmed, really.  Jesus tells them he would love to stay and visit, but he’s got a meeting to get back to.  Sure enough, on his way back, another interruption.  Two blind men, crying out for mercy, begging for sight.  That’s not where he was going, but in that interruption, in that pause, in that distraction, Jesus touches their eyes.  According to Matthew, they are healed.

Do you see what’s going on here, folks?  Do you see what’s happening in this passage?  Do you ever have those kinds of days, those kinds of weeks, or those kinds of lives where you make a list everyday of all the things you need to get done, only to have interruption after interruption after interruption?  Do you know about that?  So that somehow at the end of the day you haven’t done a thing on that list.  Talk about frustration.  Talk about distraction.  Talk about inconvenience. 

Now I know that “to do” lists are important.  Those things that need to be done don’t go away.  They have to be attended to sooner or later.  We need to work.  We need to be productive.  We need to be efficient and effective.  We need to make a living.  We need and want to accomplish things, but Jesus reminds us that the real stuff of life is not always on the schedule.  It is not always part of the plan.  It’s not always in our work.  Indeed, real life is also in the pauses, in the gaps, in the interruptions that come our way – the things we haven’t planned that just crop up.  Do you know what I’m talking about?

As you know, I am not a scholar, but I read a fair amount.  My books, for me, are my tools.  They are like a mechanic’s toolbox.  My bookshelves have some of the instruments of my work there.  Often when I read I write in the margins.  Do any of you write in the margins?  Yes, there are a few who do that.  I write in the margins little flashes.  I know, you are taught not to write in books, but they’re your books.  You bought them.  You can write in them.  Little memories, little events that take place.  Something that author’s words or images bring to your mind.  Little notes that speak to me.  Maybe just to me, but they speak to me. 

I look out at you today, and I know something of all the work that you do.  You are a very, very busy people.  I know just by looking at you of all the demands other people place upon you.  I know something of all the plans and goals and routines you have established.  That is important.  That is a good thing.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I understand that it helps us get from where we are to where we want and need to be.  But this is what I want to ask you today.  How much margin have you left in your life?  Do you have your life so scheduled that it is from page to page, border to border, or is there some space along the way where God can write in the margin of your life?  Some of the things that God might call you to, or show you, or want for you that just aren’t part of the plan. 

Sometimes, sometimes there is a huge interruption that takes place in people’s lives.  Sometimes there is a major change that takes place, a gigantic turn.  And that is awesome.  There are people in this room who know exactly what I’m talking about. 

But it also might be maybe just setting a week aside in your life to go on a mission trip, maybe float with Dean Berry down the Amazon.  Can you imagine doing that for a week of your life?  Or maybe going to Dallas for a week with Carla and training to be a Bible teacher when you come back.  Or maybe spending three months in training with Keith and Vicky and Tim preparing to be a Stephens Minister in this community.  It might be just that big. 

Fred Craddock reminds us in a little piece he wrote called, “What to Do until the Messiah Comes.”  He says what most of us know, that most days and weeks of our adult life are made up of really rather small events.  It is probably unlikely that anybody in this room is going to have the opportunity to write a book this week, appoint a judge, find a cure for cancer, win a war, dine out with Desmond Tutu, convert a nation, get burned at the stake.  Those things aren’t probably going to happen to too many people here.  But in all likelihood, you and I are going to have some very small wonderful grand doors open to us, because God’s going to give us an opportunity to give a cup of cold water to someone, visit in a nursing home, plan Vacation Bible School.  God’s going to give us an opportunity to write a note, make a telephone call to a lonely person, maybe kiss a child’s skinned knee, go to a choir practice, feed a neighbor’s cat.  You know, it is so easy to overlook the small things. 

Sometimes we are so waiting for God to call us to do something really great for Jesus, when it is the small things, the little unplanned things that come along every single day.  Interruptions, if you will.  God’s interruptions.  Unplanned.  Unscheduled.  But moments to cause a difference and to make a difference.  Now, not only are there those moments, but I suggest to you, there are also moments God gives us where God wants us to pause, to put it on pause. 

Frederick Buechner, theologian and writer, in his little book entitled Listening to My Life, tells of walking into his classroom late one afternoon for one of those late afternoon classes.  All the lights were on.  The students were chattering away as they do.  He had his lecture notes all laid out on the podium.  Everything was ready.  He looked out the window and began to see the beginning of a great, absolutely gorgeous local sunset.  On a sudden impulse, he said, without a word of warning, Fred walked to the wall and snapped off the lights.  When he did, everything in the room disappeared save that burning sunset that he said was spilling through the west-facing window.  A sudden silence fell over the classroom.  Students and teacher paused.  They just watched.  They watched for 20 minutes.  They watched while this extraordinary spectacle faded slowly away.  For 20 minutes, not a word, just watching one day of this life coming to an end.  Twenty minutes, folks.  Unlabeled, unplanned, unallotted, no obligation to make something constructive out of it later, turn it into some useful purpose.  Twenty minutes of communion.  Interruptions.  There’s a time to cause, and there’s a time to pause.

Well…  I don’t know if this is true or not.  Maybe you read it.  I read it not too long ago.  It’s fascinating.  I don’t even know where it came from.  They say that the planet Mars is about to do something spectacular.  Has anybody else heard this?  Evidently in late August, in just a couple of months, the red planet is going to come closer to planet Earth than it has been in 5,000 years.  They say it is probably going to be 60,000 years before it will be this close again.  Indeed, on the morning of August 27, Mars is supposed to look as large as the full moon as it looks to the naked eye in the evening sky.  Something that no human being has ever seen in recorded human history and no person alive today is ever going to see again.  But it is going to happen at 12:30 a.m. on August 27.  Now I have to tell you, that doesn’t fit in to my planned, structured program.  That will be an interruption.  It does not fit into my routine. 

Folks, the real stuff of life, sure, is in our work, is in our plans, is in our schedules.  It is in the causes we support.  It’s the difference we make and ought to make.  Sure.  But, folks, there is also the pauses.  There are the gaps.  There are the margins.  There are the interruptions that are offered to us by God.  They pull us out of the usual routine and show us something of God we hadn’t planned on seeing. 

Jesus took time, folks, to pay attention to the interruptions.  May you and I be so wise, be so fortunate, be so blessed to do the exact same thing.

And we all say together… “Amen.”

 

Benediction

Sweet God of welcome interruptions, thank you for the way you enter into our day.  Help us to move time forward for your cause and to stop time for your voice; to pause and take time to make a difference.  Amen.