Title: Jars of Caring
Text: II Corinthians 1:3-7
Thesis: We are “Jars of Clay” through whom God works.
We are stewards of the presence of God… we exist so that others may see the glory of God in us and working through us.
We are also stewards of the God’s comfort. We exist to share from our own experiences with others who need to be comforted.
Introduction
An elementary school boy stopped by the super market and asked the lady at the customer service department just inside the entrance where he could find a box of Duz… he said it was for washing his cat. The lady was quick to tell him that he shouldn’t wash his cat with Duz but he would not be deterred.
A couple of days later, he returned to the market on another errand, and when the lady at the customer service counter saw him she asked, “How did the cat washing go?” The boy replied, “Oh, he died.” The lady said, ‘Well son, I warned you not to wash your cat with Duz detergent.” “Naw,” the boy said, “He didn’t die from the Duz, it was the spin cycle that got him.”
I suspect that it is the spin cycle that gets most people. It is the spin cycle that leaves us utterly twisted into knots and wrung dry of our tears.
Our text today is about how God comforts us when we have been spun dry in the spin cycle and how we are then able to comfort others who have been for a bad spin as well.
The first thing our text tells us is that God is the ultimate source of all comfort.
1. God the Father is the ultimate source of comfort.
• All praise to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. II Corinthians 1:3
The word comfort brings two images together. The first is the image of coming alongside someone. And in that coming alongside, we bring fortis or courage. We come alongside another person, to encourage and strengthen that person.
The Nile River is 4,175 miles long. It has two primary tributaries: The White Nile which originates deep in the Nyungwe Forrest in southern Rwanda and the Blue Nile which originates in Ethiopia. The waters come together and flow north until they reach a large delta in Egypt and empty into the Mediterranean Sea. (http://africanhistory.about.com/b/2006/05/26/the-ultimate-source-of-the-nile.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile)
Everything has to have an origin. In a discussion of causality or causation or cause and effect we might cite Aristotle who said, “All causes of things are beginnings…” We say a cause is something that makes something happen and the effect is what happens as a result of the cause. In other words, be they rivers or philosophies or automobiles – everything has an original cause or a beginning.
The bible says that God is the God of all comfort and that God is the source of every mercy. All comfort that comes into our lives originates with God.
Comfort does not originate with Dr. Phil, Abigail Van Buren of the syndicated column Dear Abby or her daughter Jeanne Phillips, who now writes the column. Comfort does not originate with rhetoricians like Winston Churchill who stand to encourage a nation at war or the physician with a great bedside manner. Comfort does not originate with President Bill Clinton who says, “I feel your pain.” Comfort begins with God as it bubbles up from springs and melts from mountain tops and flows north and south and east and west, down through rivulets, creeks, streams, rivers, and deltas of people to us.
However, though it may flow to us, our text reminds us that the comfort of God also flows through us.
2. Caring and comfort is about us… and others.
• He comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others. II Corinthians 1:4a
In verse 4, we are introduced to another word that is translated afflictions or troubles. The word trouble means more than just a bump in the road, a snag, or a minor hardship. The word refers to something that comes into our lives that feels as though it will literally crush us to death.
A survey conducted by the Associated Press and MTV uncovered a surprising insight into youth culture. They found that 73% of young people between the ages of 13 and 24 were happiest when they were spending time with their family. Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed cited their mother as their idol and twenty-one percent cited their father as their idol. After spending time with their family, relationships with friends was the thing most likely to make children happy. (What Makes America’s Youth Happy? Knowledge Networks Inc., April 2007)
It would seem that it is inherent to our nature for people to want to be with
the people we love and care about. Our understanding of the teaching of Jesus expands the loving and caring to include our neighbors in the Great Commandment: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. And equally important, love your neighbors as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-38
Last week, Jim Ditter, who manages the church marquee posted a thought provoking twist to the Golden Rule found in Matthew 7:12, “Do unto others as if you were the others.”
When we understand that as recipients of God’s grace we, as jars of clay, do not content ourselves to simply be containers of God’s gifts. We do not exist as large terracotta, storage container jars of God’s goodness. When we receive grace, we receive it as a pitcher receives a beverage that is poured-out to slake the thirst of others.
On July 23, 1992 the police chief in Beattyville, Kentucky told the Smiths that their teenage sons were killed in an auto accident. Not long after their death Rosemary Smith began a ministry called “Fellow Travelers” as a way she could reach out to comfort other parents who had lost a child.
Everyday she reads the newspaper and searches the internet for child obituaries and then she either calls the family or sends them packets containing books on loss, a music CD, a three-ring notebook of inspirational messages, and more… She currently receives 50 e-mails a day from people requesting one of her packets. She and her husband have assembled and sent out 5,000 packets to grieving parents around the world. She says, “We are here to help other people. It gives me great joy just to think that God is using me to help others.” (Kara Bussabarger, “A Fellow Traveler,” The Southeast Outlook, 12/15/05)
God comforts us so we can comfort others.
Interestingly, our ability to comfort another person is linked to our own experiences.
3. Our ability to commiserate with others is linked to our experience.
• When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. II Corinthians 1:4b
If you have ever checked into a hospital for surgery or for the treatment of an illness, among the many things they give you for your comfort is a pair of non-skid sock slippers and a hospital gown. These are neither fashionable nor custom-made for your comfort. They are your basic, “one size fits all,” solution to slippers and hospital gowns.
Whenever anyone suggests that one size fits all in any category, it just isn’t true. One size does not “fit” all.
No one can give us enough one-liners, adages, or clichés that will be suitable for any and every situation. One experience and one expression of comfort does not translate into a universal ability to comfort others.
That is why God works through so many people who not only are very different but who have had many and varied kinds of experiences. Each of us in uniquely enabled to offer comfort and encouragement to others, based on our own personal experience. The person who has been wise in managing his money and never been in debt cannot understand the despair of a person facing bankruptcy, but someone who has does. Someone who has four healthy children cannot understand what it feels like to not be able to conceive… but some who cannot conceive does. Someone who is married to Mr. or Mrs. Wonderful cannot imagine what it is like to be married to an abusive spouse, but someone who has been abused by a spouse does.
When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort we have received.
Something powerful happens when people share experiences.
4. There is a spiritual solidarity is sharing stories of suffering and endurance.
• So when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your benefit and salvation! When God comforts us, it is so that we in turn, can be an encouragement to you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer. We are confident that as you share in suffering, you will also share God’s comfort. II Corinthians 1:6-7
Solidarity is not a new concept. In my lifetime, however it was not until 1980 that I heard the word. I first heard it after Lec Walesa spearheaded the Gdansk protests where arm-in-arm workers and intellectuals joined together in a march for freedom. It was the first time in post-WWII history that all social groups in Poland met together under the same banner of solidarity. Their cause was freedom.
This week we observed a solidarity moment when on the eve of the New Hampshire caucus race, when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was chatting with a group of women at a coffee shop in Portsmouth. One of the ladies asked her how she got up every day and hit the campaign trail when it’s hard to get up every day and get ready and get out of the house.
“It’s not easy, it’s not easy,” Clinton said shaking her head. Her eyes began to get watery as she finished answering the question, “I couldn’t do it if I didn’t passionately believe it was the right thing to do…” The group of 15 women sitting around the table at the Café Expresso nodded understandingly.(http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/01/breaking_hillary_cries.html)
The Washington Post reported, “Within 24 hours, New Hampshire voters -- especially women -- were streaming to the polls to vote for her, shocking everyone, including the candidate.” (washingtonpost.com, Turning It Around, January 10, 2008)
It is solidarity when people can relate, understand, and care because of commonality of experience be it freedom, passion for a cause, gender identity issues, or the loss of loved ones.
Two days before he was to graduate from high school, Damien Spikereit’s father passed away very suddenly. He found himself in a place he had never been before. The day of the funeral the church was packed. He sat in the front pew with his mother and two younger sisters. After the service everyone came forward and filed past them expressing their condolences.
And then he saw Kim O’Quinn. Kim was his age and they were in the church youth group together. When she got to him she had tears in her eyes, but she didn’t say a word. She simply hugged him and walked on. He said, “In that moment, Kim knew exactly what it meant to be me.”
The whole condolence thing was pretty much a blur in him mind, but he remembers Kim’s tears and Kim’s hug because it was just a few months earlier that he had filed through the condolence line with all the other well-wishers at Kim’s father’s funeral. (Damien Spikereit, The Story Before the Story, 11/25/03)
Conclusion:
So how do we do this comforting thing?
College English professor Jess Decourcy Hinds, of Brooklyn, New York recently lost her father to a painful battle with bone cancer. Following his death, she was bothered by the messages of many of the sympathy cards she received… she felt that many of the cards were trying to talk her out of the grieving process. Some tried to cheer her up or distract her or urge her to keep herself busy.
She said, what I really wanted people to say was, “I’m sorry for your loss.” She did not want to hear from a chirping cheery person. Hinds suggests that we simply begin with, “I’m sorry for your loss.” Then ask the crucial questions: “How are you? How are you feeling?”
She concludes her comments with a look at the behavior of elephants: “How do we support people in mourning (or whatever)? We can learn from the elephants. Elephants are known to grieve in groups. They loop their trunks to support the bereaved. Like elephants we should remain connected and open to a mourner’s sorrow longer than a two-hour memorial service. Grieving is private, but it can be public… we need to look each other in the eye and say, ‘I am so sorry.’” (Jess Decourchy Hinds, “I’m Sorry Shouldn’t Be the Hardest Words,” Newsweek, 5/28/07, p. 20)
We comfort others when we do two things:
• We comfort others when we come alongside them.
• We comfort others when we acknowledge their sadness and say, “I am sorry.”
• We comfort others when we pray for them.
As earthen vessels or jars of clay, we are stewards of God’s comfort. God places his comfort in us, so that we may in turn be of comfort to others.
