Some things, once they get started, cannot be stopped. There are just some things, once they get rolling, which cannot be interrupted. It’s just impossible.
You’re a student and have an exam tomorrow. When the morning dawns and the sun begins to rise, no amount of wishing that the day light would not come will keep it from happening. You will have to face the music. It is obviously inevitable. Some things, once they get started, cannot be stopped.
Stand at the seashore at the right time of day and watch the tide begin to rise. If you do not move out of the way, you are going to get wet feet, slowly but surely. The old legend has it that King Canute, a British king back in the eleventh century, so flattered by courtiers and favor-seekers, who would night and day sing his praises and tell him how wonderful he was, took his throne out to the shore, sat down in the throne, and commanded the tides not to roll in. But I do not believe you need to be told that all Canute got for his troubles was a soggy throne and a drowned ego.
Some things, once they get going, cannot be stopped.
When you see a young man falling head over heels in love with a young woman ...or for that matter, when you see him falling into like if not love ... you can forget about giving him advice. You can forget your warnings concerning the wiles of womanhood. He is a lost cause. Some things, once they get going, cannot be stopped.
When you see a government official beginning to use words like "rebuilding the infrastructure", or "providing subsidies and guarantees", or "contracting for human services", well, then, what is coming, as sure as night follows day? You know very well: April 15? Taxes, that’s what. Some things, once they get going, read my lips, cannot be stopped.
But now let me tell you that God works that way too. When God gets going, you are not going to stop Him. You are not going to deter Him from His purposes. And when our God gets something started, watch out, because it is going to keep on going, it is going to pass from person to person, from church to church, from nation to nation ...it is going to keep going until His purposes are accomplished.
The apostle Paul begins his letter to the Corinthian church by telling them of a frightening incident out there in Asia somewhere. We believe it was probably in the city of Ephesus, where the mob got worked up into a frenzy because Paul and his companions challenged the worship of the Greek goddess Diana. The mob scene there was so bad that Paul thought he was about to be killed ...he says, "In our hearts we felt the sentence of death... we despaired of life."
But it was not to be. And the reason is that when God gets something started, there is no stopping it until His purposes are complete. Paul quickly learned why his life had been spared and what it meant that there would be no sentence of death -- listen: "This happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us."
Now do you begin to get the picture? Some things, once they are set in motion, are not going to be stopped. This is one of the rock-bottom, basic ideas of the Christian faith: that God in raising Jesus Christ from the dead has started a life thing that is not going to be stopped. This life thing, this victory thing, this is not going to stop until God is finished. Some things ...God’s things ...once they are under way, are never going to be stopped until the victory is won.
And it is because that is true that we have come today to celebrate the setting aside of men and women for the office of deacon: servants in the Kingdom. Because what our God has started in raising Jesus from the dead signals the future; because what our God has done in delivering Christ from the grave tells us what He is going to do; because, although we do not know all the chapters in-between now and then, we do know how the mystery will be solved ... we do know "who done it" ... because of all that, we come today to set aside servants of Christ who will participate in a task that is already done, who will do a job in a no-lose situation.
Why? Because some things, once they are in motion, cannot be stopped. And because what God is about will be accomplished.
Therefore, what I have to say to those being ordained and to those being reaffirmed ... and in fact what I have to say to all of God’s people gathered here is this: “Whatever you get, pass it on". Whatever you receive from the Spirit of God, pass it on. Whatever you learn from God’s word, pass it on. Whatever you get from the people of God, pass it on.
Why? Because you can’t lose. You cannot lose. You can only make your victory greater, but you cannot lose. You have nothing to fear, you have no chance -- repeat, no chance -- to be on the losing side. You may win small or you may win big ...but you are going to win, and so why not win big?
If the victory of God is for sure, and there is no way you can lose, why not roll up the score and win big with God and for God? Whatever you get, pass it on, so that others may know and may be a part of it all.
If whatever our God has started will push right on through to its final glory, why not witness and serve and teach and share, so that many may know and many may join in?
This afternoon when we gather around our television sets and get out our munchies and watch Super Bowl 24, neither team will have anything less than complete victory on their minds. Neither team will be content with just squeaking by. They want to win and win handily. When one of them gets ahead, they will not politely go into neutral and say, "Well, enough is enough." They will want to press on and do well; they will want to win big.
And so I want to say to those being ordained today, "Whatever you get, pass it on". Be God’s kind of winners -- big winners. In this same passage, Paul praises the God who comforts us and then immediately tells us why God helps us when we have troubles: "Praise be to the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that... so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we have received from God."
What that means is that God has worked a work in you, and He is going to finish it. Pass it on. Make it work for someone else. It’s not good enough to have victory and comfort in your own life. Pass it on. Make the victory of God even bigger as you share it with others.
Today those whom we ordain and those whom we reaffirm will be given, 1 believe, this sense of comfort that Paul talks about. You will receive a peace and a rightness. You will feel special, you will feel set apart. But all this is not given you just for you. All this is not designed just to make you feel good. It is done so that whatever you get, you will pass on and make God’s great victory even greater.
Paul speaks, for instance, of comfort in distress. Today draw upon those occasions when you have been hurt or troubled, and remember what instruments God used to heal you. Remember the gentle word spoken directly to you, as if you were the only person in the world. Remember that arm around the shoulder, recognizing that the human touch is irreplaceable. Remember the basket of fruit or the bowl of food that restored your strength. Whatever you got for your own comfort, now pass it on.
Today you will remember your own conversion. You will remember the day that you said Yes to Christ. And you will remember someone who lovingly, tactfully, carefully showed you how much God loves you... just you ... the whole world, yes, but a world with your name on it. You will remember that in someone’s life and witness you really heard, "For God so loved the world for God so loved Dolores, Gloria, Carroll, Mayme, Lucius... that He gave His only-begotten Son". You will remember that. What else can I say to you than this ... "whatever you get, pass it on."
And today you will receive something else. You will receive the rite of the laying on of hands. Today as members of this congregation walk by you will feel the touch of their hands, and it will be the touch of humanness. Some folks seem to think that the rite of the laying on of hands confers some sort of special powers, that some sort of magic happens here. I don’t think that’s true at all. I don’t believe that’s Biblical or Christian. I believe instead that the purpose of the laying on of hands is simply to symbolize that we, the people of God, are putting our trust in you and we are depending on you for your help.
And so today, as hands are laid on you, you will get all kinds of things... all sorts of gifts. Remember, whatever you get, pass it on. Some hands will grasp you with strength; and you will sense in them the power which God can use in His kingdom. Let those hands give you strength, let the strong hands remind you of the power of God, and whatever you get, pass it on.
But other hands will press you lightly, and you will feel the frailty of age and the tremble of weakness. These hands will remind you, as Paul had to learn when he thought he was about to die, that whatever you do, you do depending on God, and that despite our weakness, His victory is assured. What He has started He will finish. Lay hold of that insight, and pass it on.
Some hands will communicate confidence and certainty. Whatever you get, pass it on in your own life, and be bold. Be confident. Be creative. I even want to say, be brazen, be ridiculous, be a fool for Christ ...what have you got to lose? You are not going to be on the losing side.
But other hands will touch you quietly, tentatively; you will feel a distance and an uncertainty. Again, whatever you get, pass it through the filter of your life. You will do your best when people can identify with you, when they sense that you understand their doubts and their fears. And if you should by chance discover that some hands feel pain when they reach out to touch you, then take that too as a gift to be passed on, for you will be doing nothing more than responding to the hands nail-scarred and torn by a Cross ...but finally raised up and made whole and given life.
Whatever you get today, pass it on. Because you have enlisted as servants of the Lord whose kingdom has no end and whose victory is limitless. Expect great things from God but attempt great things for God.
And hear the Apostle’s heart: "Praise be to the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received …this happens so that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead... On Him we have set our hope."
