Sermon Preached on Sunday, September 24, 2006
“Head Start the Right Start”
Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.4 Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy,5 for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now.6 And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.7 So it is right that I should feel as I do about all of you, for you have a special place in my heart. You share with me the special favor of God, both in my imprisonment and in defending and confirming the truth of the Good News.8 God knows how much I love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus.9 I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.10 For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.11 May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ —for this will bring much glory and praise to God.
Phil 1:3-11 (NLT)
One of the most misused phases in organizational development is “where there is no vision the people perish.” The reason why it is misused is that people are not able to differentiate a vision from a mirage. A mirage is an illusion. It appears to be grounded in reality but when you seek to put your hands on it, you find it has no substance. Its fool’s gold and when you get it you find out very quickly that all that glitters is not gold.
For example city leaders long ago had a vision of an east west expressway called Interstate 40. They displaced West Baltimore’s African American homeowner community, destroyed three churches, dug-up all the utilities and underground systems and today the highway goes nowhere. That was not a vision, but a mirage.
A true vision, on the other hand, is a God inspired perspective of the world as it should be. Its reality is grounded in God’s will. It promotes the best in the human spirit and its end is to create God’s beloved community.
When religious and political leaders came together to develop a national program for insuring that children and families regardless of income would have an early childhood experience that would equip for academic success as they continued their educational careers: that was not a mirage, but a vision.
Therefore, we can say with pride today: Head Start is the Right Start.
From a program perspective there are three purposes we must bind ourselves to:
1. Fidelity to the reality that every individual has value and that they are rooted in their culture. Education has been a cultural value of African American people since the beginning of time. We have sought academic excellence. We have fought for academic opportunity. Through education we have brought our creative energies to the improvement of the quality of life.
2. Fellowship that enhances families and creates positive space for human interaction. The quest for all humanity is to seek a place of peace. A place where the lion lays down with the lamb. There is something in the human spirit that seeks solitude, serenity and safety.
3. Furthering the right for each child to acquire the skills needed to function effectively in our society.
4. These three ideas are crucial to us insuring that Head Start is the Right Start.
These are the ideas we must be dedicated to: fidelity to the cultural value of every child; fellowship that creates community; and furthering a program that has proven its worth throughout the almost 40 years of its existence.
There should be no doubt that Head Start is the Right Start.
There is a threat to these ideas. We have government interests that place more value on rules, than relationship. They want performance measures and to insure compliance. Those rules have merit but they are quantitative in nature. Relationship which is far more important is qualitative. How do you measure a friendly smile in the morning? How do you measure a warm embrace? How do you measure love that seeks to help a child discover the God that is in them? How do you measure values being instilled in a child that will make them a more productive adult?
We are facing a governmental era where rules have more importance than relationship.
Thank God we have talented personnel and a dedicated child care board who are wise as serpents, but harmless as doves. Sometimes! They know who to work within the rules without displacing the value of relationships.
We can be assured that Head Start is the Right Start.
Our text this morning provides for us a biblical and theological basis for proclaiming that Head Start is the Right Start.
Paul is writing from his jail cell to the church of Philippi. He was in trouble with the city leaders because he had messed up one of their money making schemes. They had a young girl who was possessed by a demon going around getting paid for telling peoples future. Almost like reading tarot cards, palm reading, or astrology. People would come to her and pay her to foretell to them the luck that they would have in the future.
When Paul encounters the girl his spirit is grieved and he commands the spirit to come out of the girl. From then on she is not able to operate as a fortune teller and her masters become terribly upset. They bring Paul and Silas who was with him to the magistrates and charge them with being trouble makers and teaching customs that Romans shouldn’t observe. After hearing that the magistrates have there clothes ripped off, have they beaten, placed in leg irons, and thrown into prison. While there Paul writes this letter to the Church in Philippi.
We wrote to them to remind them that God had begun a good work in them and that they where to continue the work, not until Paul returns, but until Jesus Christ returns.
In other words he prayed that they would have a fidelity to the work begun.
He prayed for them to continue the fellowship that was rooted in love.
Lastly, he prayed for them to further the Gospel by living pure and blameless.
Paul had a vision in his confinement for the people’s refinement. That’s when you head start has the right start when its purpose is to make people better. When your efforts and energy is directed towards insuring that the work of bringing people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ is unhampered by your situation or circumstances. It’s when the forces against you seem to weight you down, but you press on against them because you are pressing towards the mark of the high calling which is in Jesus Christ.
That one of the problems of today’s times: we don’t know how to press. To press against that which is outside of us that would seek to destroy us. To press against impossible odds. To press against impenetrable forces. To press against unyielding spirits.
We have problems with pressing because we have problems with praying.
I told you earlier that Paul wrote this letter from the jail at Philippi. What I didn’t tell you was what happened around midnight. Paul and Silas were in the jail praising and praying to God. Not to be released from their situation, but to experience the joy of the Lord in their situation. Sometimes God has you in a situation, not to be relieved from but for you to press through. Because when you have to press, your faith is strengthened. After the press and you have met the test, you have a testimony. Somebody here has a testimony that is a result of pressing through something. The doctor could understand what was happening in your body, but you pressed through. Your parents didn’t understand the power of the peer pressure, but you pressed through. Your classmates didn’t understand the confusion in your mind, but you pressed through. Somebody knows what it means to press through a situation.
Acts 16 tells us that while Paul and Silas were pressing through their situation a great earthquake came broke the chains off their feet. Their jailer thought they had fled and was about to kill himself; when Paul cries out that they where still there. Immediately the jailer asks, what must I do to be saved?
That question still burns in people’s hearts today: what must I do to be saved?
Its first understanding that the salvation process was begun in each one of you when you where in your mother’s womb. That the genius of knowing that head start is the right start. No person is an accident. Every purpose has purpose.
God wants us to have fidelity to his purpose, be his partners in spreading the Good News.
God wants us to have fidelity to prayer, be in constant communication with him.
God wants us to create fellowship: first with God, then with ourselves, and then others. This is his design for communal living. Paul says for love to overflow.
Biblically and theologically for head start to be the right start: we must have fidelity to God’s word; we must seek the fellowship of all people; and we must further the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Let me close by telling you this. When you discover the child in you, by loving the children of the world; that’s when you get a piece of heaven.
When you learn how to love unconditionally;
when you learn how to trust in spite of difficulty;
when you learn how to smile in the midst of confusion;
when you learn the essence of peace is to experience the joy that surpasses all understanding:
when you understand that the kingdom of God is made up of His children;
then you will know that head start is the right start.
