I hate waste. I despise it when I find out I have wasted something valuable – time or money or effort. Don’t you? Doesn’t it just frustrate you immensely if all your good work goes down the tubes?
When I first learned to use a computer, I didn’t know you could set a word processor on auto-save. Auto-save means that you can instruct your computer to save your work every few minutes or so, and that way if something happens, like a power outage or a miscue, at least you don’t lose everything. But before I knew how to do that, there were a few bitter Saturday nights, when I thought I had the sermon almost written, only to find out that I had pushed “Delete” instead of “Save”, and lost it all. So much work for next to nothing! (However, when I rewrote a couple of those sermons, I think the second version turned out better than the first; there’s a lesson in there somewhere!). But I hate to waste time and energy.
I hate to waste money too. I come from a family that didn’t have a whole lot. My father was born in 1902 in rural Indiana. He went one year to college, but ran out of money. He was the fifth of six children, and there were just more kids than cash. So from him, I expect, a got a frugal attitude. It destroys me when I buy something and it doesn’t work. It pains me when I spend my money on something and it isn’t satisfactory.
Several years ago I bit on an ad that said for $5.00 I could buy a device that would increase the gas mileage on my car. When it came it was a block of metal with a pipe in over here and another pipe out over there, and the instructions were that I should cut an inch or two out of the gasoline line running to the carburetor on my car, and install this gizmo. Well, with fear and trembling I got out my hacksaw and performed the installation. I drove it around a couple of days and didn’t really notice anything in particular. But then my wife drove on the highway, with our then small son strapped in, and when she got home, did she have a tale to tell! The car had stalled out on the road … she managed to get it to a garage … and the mechanic said, “You are one lucky lady; whatever that thing is in there was leaking, and you almost had a fire!”. Well, I was scared – I could have killed my family; I was embarrassed, because I hadn’t told my wife what I was doing; and – you got it – I was angry to be out five whole dollars for a nothing deal, plus the cost of the mechanic to put it right! I hate waste.
And so did Paul. Paul hated spiritual waste and emotional garbage. It troubled him greatly that the people in whom he had invested so much had apparently forgotten it all. He was bothered at the thought of so much energy spent on a people who promptly forgot everything. It reminds me of one student I tried to teach a year or two ago; I saw him in another setting a month after class was over, and something came up that we had covered in class. When I reminded him that we had touched on that subject, he said, “Oh, that was last semester. I’m not into that anymore.” Pity the poor church that calls him as pastor! I hate to waste my breath on people who have no intention of learning anything!
But more than the waste of his own energies, I think Paul is disturbed at the forgetfulness and the distortions that the Galatian Christians exhibit. They have been taught the Gospel. They have been led to understand the meaning of Christ and His cross. They have even felt the presence of the Holy Spirit of God. But … but … Paul cries out, “Did you experience so much for nothing?” Have you wasted and thrown away everything that has been invested in you?
Tonight, we’re going to explore this idea of spiritual waste. Emotional garbage. We’re going to ask ourselves Paul’s question, “Did you experience so much for nothing?” I’m going to pose a series of questions to you, and encourage you to respond. I’ll try to build on what you have to say, and together we’ll create this message. The best messages, after all, are not those spoken by a single speaker orating from on high; the most important messages are those we share with each other. I can tell you I come a lot closer to remembering things I have learned in conversation with others than I do in recalling things taught in the classroom. I guess I am a bit like that student I mentioned! But together, let’s explore Paul’s important question, “Did you experience so much for nothing?”
I
First of all, can you tell me about some experience you had – whether religious or not – where you felt, after a while, that it was all a waste of time and energy and money? Maybe a job that you started around your home … maybe a class you tried to take ... maybe an attempt to help somebody that needed assistance. Tell me about some such experience, and tell me how it made you feel.
Angry? At whom?
What did you resolve to do about it? Cut your losses and run? Throw good money/time after bad?
How about going back to old ways and old habits? Did you ever just decide it wasn’t worth it to try something new … you would just keep on with the old way?
I hope the fashion police are not here tonight … but I have to tell you my history with slacks! Years ago, all slacks came with pleats, right up to the belt. That is what I grew up on, that is what I wore, and when they started putting out pleatless slacks, flat fronts, I didn’t like them. I went to extra lengths to find pleated pants. I remember ordering some from the Sears catalog, because I could no longer find them in the stores. But of course, eventually I had to give up and wear the flat front panel slacks. I got used to those … and behold, what has happened in the last few years? Pleats are back. Here a pleat, there a pleat, everywhere a pleat, pleat. And I no longer like them. I want to wear flat fronts. I cannot find flat fronts. I cannot even get them from the Sears catalog anymore. I have to give up and go back to the pleats and learn to like them all over again.
What’s the point? That some of us are inclined to stay with things that were comfortable for us, and to stay too long. To stay so long it no longer makes any sense.
Spiritually, we can do the same thing, can’t we? You can stay with an understanding of the Bible, even when your pastor or a trained scholar shows you something different. You can stay with a stale prayer life, endlessly reciting “Now I lay me down to sleep” type prayers, but it’s what you know, and you do it, even though you know it means very little. You can stay with an expectation of church that made sense once upon a time, but does not any longer, just because there is a warm and fuzzy feeling attached to that.
I probably shouldn’t tell you this story, since we are in a revival meeting, but I have a friend in Maryland who started a church a number of years ago, and grew it on the basis of what people needed and would respond to in the Maryland suburbs around Washington, DC. Not a very traditional place, in many ways. Well, among the things he was sure would not work there were revival meetings. He just knew that nobody, but nobody, would turn up for a revival in that high-powered, super-sophisticated neighborhood. And he went on that way for more than thirty years! Imagine his surprise when some of his people began to complain; some of them said, “Why don’t we have revivals, like we used to when I was growing up in Mississippi?” “Why don’t we sing gospel hymns, like we did in my home church in Kentucky?” And the one that really got to my friend: “Why do we have scattered folding chairs in our church instead of nice, straight wooden pews like a real church?” My friend and his congregation just about parted ways over that one! So what do you hear in that story? What was going on with those people?
Several things, actually. Some of them were rebelling against their leader. Just the same thing that Paul felt from the Galatian Christians. “Did you experience so much for nothing?” “Did I work so hard here only to have it crumble around me?” Rebellion – there are some of us who have a hard time accepting leadership. We are reluctant to admit that there may be someone who has studied and prayed and trained and knows their way around the faith better than we do. That’s one thing that’s going on.
Something else is going on, too: religion is inherently conservative. Religious folks look backwards for guidance most of the time, and do not always read the signs of the times. The Bible is an ancient book, after all, and the church has been around for two thousand years, and so who are we to think maybe we have a better idea? But at the same time, we want fulfillment, don’t we? We want to feel something. We want to know we have experienced something. Living the life of faith is not just agreement with a bunch of religious ideas. Living the life of faith is experiencing God – I know Pastor Vallerie has led you in the discipleship course by that name – living the life of faith is experiencing God. It is touching the very Presence. And so if you lose that – if you cannot feel the power and the presence of God as you once did – you go back to some other time, some other experience, some other technique.
To that Paul raises the issue, again, “Did you experience so much for nothing?” Have you started with the Spirit, but now you are going back to “the flesh” – that means, are you going back to doing what feels good instead of listening to God in the here and now? I am focusing this week on God’s wanting to give us His presence, now. Not on remembering what it used to be like or vainly hoping that someday we will know Him – but God wants to give you an experience now. Feel Him, soak in His love, look for His work, listen for His word. God works His work now. Look for it.
II
Second question: can you tell me something about how your faith has grown over time? Can you share some story that might help us get an understanding of what sorts of things make faith become more mature? Paul says that before faith came, we were … “guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.” He speaks of having a disciplinarian until Christ came. Who disciplined you to do the right things until you learned to do them on your own? Who or what led you from a little tiny mustard seed faith to a larger faith?
It might have been a parent who made you tithe your allowance until you got to the point where you wanted to tithe, without supervision. It might have been a Sunday School teacher who forced you to learn Bible verses when you would much rather have been outside playing. It might have been a pastor who preached a hard-line on behavior – you know, the old don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do routine. But these things channeled you into a more mature faith. Or did they? Let’s hear your experiences.
So here is Paul’s question again, “Did you experience so much for nothing?” And then he adds a little tail end – “If it was for nothing.” If it was for nothing. Brothers and sisters, the disciplines we go through are not for nothing. It’s true that good works will not save us. It’s true that memorizing Bible verses will not get us into heaven – the devil, they say, can cite Scripture for his purpose. It’s true that going to church and listening to sermons will not necessarily make us better people. But I tell you, if you will expose yourself to some discipline, you will have the foundations on which you can build. If you will invest in fundamental spiritual exercises, even when you don’t feel like it, it will help you become something more mature.
I had a friend, now deceased, who lost his wife to cancer at a fairly early age. His name was Weaver Doyle. Weaver was a man of great faith, mature faith. A few months after Betty’s death Weaver talked with me about how he dealt with his loss. He said, “In that terrible time of stress, I found that Scriptures I had memorized years before and thought I had forgotten came flooding back into my mind, just the right ones, to comfort me.” So, brother Paul, if you ask us, “Did you experience so much for nothing … if it was for nothing?”, we will tell you that some of the things we gave ourselves to helped us grow. And even if we are still not what we ought to be or can be, spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible study and worship and sharing will help prepare us for the day when we need full faith. Thank God for lessons taught and lessons even faintly learned. They will help us.
III
Third and final question: if you think of your faith as a mature faith .. if you believe you have made a lot of progress as a Christian … what difference has it made in your relationships? If you have experienced Christ, and you know it, has that experience shaped the way you feel about others, especially those who are different?
Let me get specific here. In our time we talk about racism, classism, and sexism. I’ll unpack those isms. Racism means feeling that a person who is a different color, or from a different language group or culture, is inferior. Or just makes us feel uncomfortable. Racism means having a negative attitude to someone else just because he or she is different, and it usually implies that we feel they aren’t as good as we are.
Then there’s classism. Classism is a tricky one. But classism means that you feel there is a social distance between you and the folks down the road who went to different schools or who have different tastes or whose speech patterns include some strange sounds. A few weeks ago there passed by here, not but a few yards away, Mr. and Mrs. Mountbatten-Windsor. You know, Phil and Betty. Except that they are better known as Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Queen Elizabeth II, by the grace of God queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Head of the Commonwealth of her other realms and territories, Defender of the Faith, and so on. Classism says that these folks are different from you and me. Never mind that they are born and get sick and grow old and will die, like the rest of us – classism says they are better than we are.
Racism, classism, and then sexism. Sexism means feeling, if you are a man, that those sweet little ladies are pretty and good cooks and all that, but they can’t think. They can’t do the tough stuff like we men can. Or sexism means, if you are a woman, that you are convinced that all men are animals at heart, always hungry, generally sloppy, and in need of a good bath! Oh, I’m poking a little fun here, but I suspect you know what I mean. Sexism means that we think some of us are born to lord it over the others, and that’s that.
Now – my question to you is: if you live in Christ, have you found your feelings about race and class and gender changing? Have you discovered that you are more understanding and more loving? Or would Paul have to ask you, “Did you experience so much for nothing?”
“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” No longer Jew or Greek – that wipes out racism. No longer slave or free – that puts the stop to classism. No longer male or female – no room for classism. Have we grown in this areas, or “did you experience so much for nothing?”
Like many of you, I grew up in the South, or at least borderline South – Louisville, KY. I grew up in segregated America, and as a child I thought about that very little. I do recall asking my aunt one day, as we rode the old streetcars, why some people had to go stand in the back of the streetcar, while we stood up front. I do remember being astonished when my railroading grandfather told me about the K&I bridge – the Kentucky and Indiana Terminal Railroad bridge, over which passenger trains traveled north to south and south to north. My grandfather informed me that the reason the southbound trains would stop on the bridge is that before they crossed into Kentucky, all the black folks would be required to get up and go into separate cars at the back of the train, because Kentucky law forbade the races to sit together. I remember as well going to a high school where there were no black students and attending a church where there were no black members. All of that without batting an eyelash or thinking twice about it.
But then came 1954. May 17, 1954. Brown vs Board of Education. The Supreme Court decision against segregated schools. If you are of a certain age, you remember all that happened, all the conflict, all the turmoil – some of it in this very state. As a teenager, I became convicted about the plight of my black brothers and sisters. As a young Christian, I knew that what I had grown up with was profoundly unjust and deeply unchristian. I began to make some black friends, particularly when I went to college. I began to study racial issues at college and at seminary. When I graduated and became a campus minister, I tried to reach out to the black students – our Baptist Student Union at Berea College was the first such group in Kentucky to have a black student as its president. When I came to Washington and took on the task of directing campus ministry programs all across the city, I assigned myself the task of organizing a campus ministry at Howard University, the nation’s premiere black college. And I will tell you that if there was any vestige of racism left in me, my experience at Howard washed it out.
One day the chaplains of the various denominations were supposed to conduct a Communion service for a convention that was meeting in Washington. The convention was an organization called the National Conference of Black Churches, and they had invited the chaplains’ group at Howard for this special occasion. On the morning we were supposed to go and conduct this service, I got a phone call from one of my colleagues; he said, “Joe, don’t come. Never mind. It’s been called off. No Communion service today.” Well, I didn’t think anything more of that until the next week when we were holding our regular chaplains’ meeting, and something was said about that service being cancelled. I asked about it … what happened? Why did they cancel out on us at the last moment? The others looked at each other for a moment, and then my Episcopalian colleague, Nat Porter, said, “Well, two of us went to the hotel to set up for the service, and in the course of the conversation it came out that one of the six of us was not black.” The conference leadership said, “We don’t want him. Don’t bring him into this meeting.” And so, Father Porter said, “We told him, if you don’t take all of us, you don’t get any of us.” They refused to participate in a segregated service, on my account! And when I exclaimed, “You did THAT for ME?!”, another of the chaplains reached out, touched my arm, and said, “We love ya, man!”.
I say again, if there was any vestige of racism left in me, that took it out. From there I was called to be the pastor of a church that is almost all-black, and to rejoice in my daughter’s marriage to a wonderful black man. What if I had turned my back on what God wants to do? How impoverished I would have been if I had not let faith take its course!
Tonight it may be that some of us are angry and frustrated, and feel as though the time and energy we’ve put into church is a waste. It may be that we think we just ought to give up trying new things and starting new ventures, and just go back to the way we were. Of us the great Apostle asks, “Did you experience so much for nothing?” and he urges us to listen for God’s word now, to see God at work now. For, you see, we are not looking to stay the same; we are looking toward the new creation. And a new creation is everything.
Tonight it may be that some of us feel as though our faith has stagnated. We’re not growing and we don’t really know what to do about it. Oh, once upon a time we prayed regularly, once upon a time, as kids, we read and memorized Scriptures. We do know that there is such a thing as spiritual disciplines. But we’ve gotten away from that sort of thing. Of us the great Apostle asks, “Did you experience so much for nothing?” And then adds, “If it really was for nothing.” Take up that Bible again. Set aside that time for intense and personal prayer again. Take time to be holy, be oft with thy Lord, spend time in His word. For, you see, we are not looking to stay the same; we are looking toward the new creation. And a new creation is everything!
Tonight it may be that some of us have just not let what we know to be true find its way into every relationship, every nook and cranny of our lives. There are just some people who make us feel uncomfortable, some people we’d rather not associate with. And again, of us the great Apostle asks again, “Did you experience so much for nothing?” Have you been wasting the preaching of your pastor, the teaching of your church, and most of all, have you been wasting the blood of Christ?
Then tonight, open up to Him afresh. Open up every fiber of your being and every aspect of your life, for He wants to work in you a whole new creation. And a new creation is not just a nice thing, not just a good thing; a new creation is everything!
