Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship · January 14, 2007
Second Sunday After Epiphany
More Than We Know What To Do With
Rick Frost
This is a fascinating text today. It is one that you and I may have some difficulty, maybe without even knowing it. Jesus miraculously turned water into wine at a wedding reception. John says this was the first of Jesus’ signs.
A sign. What’s a sign? A sign, in the Bible, is the mysterious, the powerful, the kinds of things that happen that most of us simply can’t handle in our day and time. We are not accustomed to signs. We are not accustomed to signs and wonders. That is because most of us are products of living in the modern, North American world. We live, as the scholars say, in somewhat of a flattened world. What that means is, when people use that term, that all of the things that are mysterious in our lives are researched. That is good, but then they get defined. They get explained. They get flattened down. They get narrow, and they get reduced. The movement from what we might call religious to the present-day secular, or the godless world, is a modern prejudice of our day and time. People in our culture may have some trouble with this text today.
We don’t know what to do with a story like this, because it’s a story that beckons, that invites, people like you and me to live in and think about a more expanded, a more abundant, a more uncontainable, unpredictable world than what we are used to.
As I said last week, this is Epiphany, which is a Church word. It is a time when Christians – people like you and me – look for and we celebrate the wonder and the power and the amazing ways that the Spirit of the Living God is with us in Christ Jesus.
The moment Jesus stepped on to the stage, the moment he lived among us, according to John, things began to happen. Things began to break out. Things began to pop, overflow, 180 gallons worth of wine. And not just any wine, according to John. It was really, really good wine. It was a sign, an indicator, a signal about the power and the mysterious, miraculous activity of God in God’s world.
I think we may have trouble with this text, and not just because we are modern people, or because we are sophisticated, or because we think we are so smart. It is because, quite frankly, because we tend to be so careful. We tend to be so cautious, so restrained. We generally are not people who make big moves in our lives. We are people who do not risk overexposure. We tend to stay away from the edge of things, which may explain, by the way, our culture’s fascination with extreme sports, or extreme this, or extreme that. We love to watch others, you see, do what we only fantasize about. No. We are not a people who generally take big steps or make big moves in our lives. Consequently, of course, we don’t tend to ask big things of God. There is a connection there, you see. We don’t tend to ask big things of God.
We keep our prayers, my experience has been, pretty cautious, careful. We ask for things that are attainable, things that are reasonable. I ask people sometimes when we pray together for a variety of reasons, “What would you like to pray about?” Sometimes there is this stunned silence. Because people tend to be very, very hesitant about asking God for specific things, I’ve noticed. We are OK with generalities and those kinds of things, but something specific? Nail it. Ask for it. Something big. I think it is because, maybe, a lot of us think our relationship with God is pretty much a matter of what we think, and what we do, and what we believe, and what we know, and what we feel, and what we think we are capable of doing, and what we think we are capable of receiving. We all know how limited, how frail, how finite that is. Our power, our talent, our time, our ability, our money, our resources. We have our limits.
What if… What if our faith… What if our power… What if our time… What if our money… What if our love, our resources were really a gift to us from God? Not something that we have created. Not something that we have accomplished, but something that came to us, that we receive, at the hand and the grace of God?
What if… What if the Spirit of the Living God, right here, right now, wanted to give you more faith? Wanted to give you more time? Wanted to give you more power? Wanted to give you more money? Wanted to give you more energy to meet the demands and responsibilities of being one of his followers? What if?
What if, in a world where some are asking for more troops and more resources to fight more wars and to achieve our goals, what if we prayed that the Lord might give us a bold love for him, and that we wanted to be focused on his purposes and his goals? What would it be like if we were willing to ask for big things, huge things, and in today’s world, unimaginable things? Things like peace, and justice, education, and health, food, and shelter, and maybe, maybe working toward building a united global community whose goals were focused on improving life in this world? That were focused on the general welfare of all the people? Of trying to find a way to create a sustainable future for this planet that your children, my children, our grandchildren are going to inherit. They are going to inherit what we leave them. Imagine. Just imagine. We call that the “good life.” We call that the “abundant life.” The Bible would call it “life now and life eternal.” What if? What if?
Albert Einstein is said to have said, “We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created those problems.”
Write that one down. “We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created those problems.”
We need a new way to think, folks. In short… What if today’s gospel were true? What if Jesus can give you and me and anybody willing to receive all that any of us might possibly need to celebrate and love this life? But more than just celebrating and loving your life and mine, providing everything, an overabundance of what we could possibly use to be faithful, and to be resourceful disciples and followers of Jesus and his way? Wow!
In a small group meeting, a young couple announced they had decided to adopt the foster child they had been keeping. Her parents had put her up for adoption, and they thought they ought to take her into their home and their family.
“Do you really think that is wise?” several of the members said. “I mean, you already have two children. You’re great parents, but don’t you think there are limits? How much love can you give away?”
“When it comes to love,” she said, “I have not yet found the limits. From my experience, love is a renewable resource. The more love you give, the more you seem to have.”
Lord, thank you for turning that couple’s water into wine.
Rick Warren, of “Purpose Driven” fame, did an interview recently. Some of you may have seen it. He was interviewed by Paul Bradshaw. It was on the web not long ago. It was so good, I thought I would use, because it spoke to me.
Rick said, “ ‘People ask me what’s the purpose of life?’ I replied, ‘In a nutshell, the purpose for life is preparation for eternity. I know that is old fashioned, but I believe it. We were made to last forever. God wants to be with us, not only here, not only now, but in heaven. I know one day my heart is going to stop pumping, and that will be the end of my body, but it will not be the end of me. I believe I may live 60, maybe 80, maybe even 100 years on this earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years, an inestimable amount of time in eternity. I believe this is the warm-up act. That means, for me, that God wants us to practice here on earth what we are going to be doing forever in eternity. We were made by God, and we were made for God. Until you get that squared away, life is not going to make a great deal of sense to you.
“I think life is a series of problems, a series of challenges, a series of experiences and occasions that engage you, and test you, and grow you. Either you are in one of those situations right now, or you are just coming out of one of those, or you are just getting ready to go into one pretty soon. That’s because it seems like the Creator is more interested in your character than in your comfort. More interested in your holiness, meaning your divine purpose, the reason you are here on this earth, than to make your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on this earth, but that is not the goal, not in the Bible. The goal in life is to be and grow in our Christ-likeness.
“This past year,” Rick said, “has been the greatest year in my life. It has also been the toughest with my wife Kay getting cancer. I use to think that life was hills and valleys, that it was ups and downs, that it was good times and bad times, you know, back and forth, back and forth. But I don’t believe that any more. I believe life is sort of like two rails of a railroad track. At all times you have good stuff going on and you have tough stuff going on. No matter how good things get for your life, there is always something tough that needs to be worked on. No matter how tough things get, there is always something good to be thankful for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you are going to be focused on you – your pain, your problems, your issues. I have found that the easiest way to get rid of a lot of pain is to focus, not on me, but on God and on others.
“Kay and I discovered very quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people all over this world, God is not going to heal Kay. In fact, God is not going to make it easy for her. Indeed, it has been very difficult for her, and yet we have seen God strengthen her in ways she has never been, given her a ministry to help other people that she never knew existed, given her a story, a sign, a signal (there’s that word again) of God’s strength and love and compassion. Because somehow in the midst of all that she has been going through, God has drawn Kay closer to God’s self and to other people in ways that she never had before.
“Bad things happen to good people. We know that. You have to learn how to deal with it. Now, sometimes, how you deal with the hard stuff is actually easier than how you deal with the good stuff.
For instance, this past year, the book I wrote sold 15-million copies, and it made me instantly very, very wealthy. It also brought me a whole lot of notoriety that I never had to deal with before. I don’t think God gives you money, and I don’t think God gives you notoriety for your own ego or so that you can live an easier life. So I began to wonder, and I began to ask. I asked God, ‘God, what do you want me to do with this money. I’ve never had this kind of money before. What do you want me to do with this notoriety? People are writing stuff about me. It’s all over the country, all over the world.’ God gave me two different passages to focus on, 2 Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.
(We’re not going to look at those here today, but look at them when you get a chance.)
He said, “Based on that, we made four decisions as a family. The first decision, that in spite of all this money that was coming into our lives, we decided we were not going to change our lifestyle one iota. We have made no major purchases. There is no need to. Secondly, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we have set up foundations to fund an initiative called, “The Peace Plan.” It is a plan designed to plant churches, to equip leaders, to assist the poor, to care for the sick, and to educate the next generation of children that are coming up. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me over the past 24 years since we started that church together, and I gave it all back.
(Now, I’m not going to do that until I get that $15-million. I just want you all to know that. But when I do, you’re going to get it back.)
Rick Warren said, “I can’t tell you how liberating it was to be able to work for God for free.”
Wow!
Folks, we need to ask ourselves what am I going to live for? For what I can get, what I can buy, what I can possess, who I can impress? What is going to drive me? The pressures of the job, guilt, bitterness, the pursuit of happiness? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purpose for my life?
Thank you, Lord, for turning Rick and Kay’s water into wine.
What about us, right here at Broadway? Our discipleship right here in this place? I am going to ask you to pray that God will tempt us as a people, as a congregation to take on large tasks. To take on great ventures. To really jump in on some remarkable feats. Big things. Huge things. Peace, love, justice, Pathways, youth ministry, Love, INC. You’re going to be hearing more and more about that. Take on some big stuff, I mean, really reaching out to this community and really inviting people to come in and to welcome them, to assist the poor, and we are surrounded by them, and to develop a very first-rate ministry for the next generation of children who will be coming up in this congregation. It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be cheap. It’s big. It’s huge.
Indeed, may God change any of our insipid, watered-down, lukewarm faith and turn it into something bubbly, and awesome, and rich, and warm, and deep like wine in our efforts to be disciples of Jesus. May we do it all for the glory of God and for God’s sake, because when we do things for God and do them for Christ and his glory, then it is always right.
And we all say together… “Amen.”
