The other day I was hauling in a load of stuff from my car. I came in the Aspen Street entrance to the building, the entrance nearest my office.
For some reason, as I was carrying things through the door, I looked up above my head, probably to implore the Lord to give me an extra ounce of muscle to get all that stuff dragged in here. And when I looked up I saw a powerful image.
Up above that door, in the stonework, there is a little niche. It’s less than three feet tall and just a few inches wide. It has a little platform at the bottom and an arched covering at the top. If you know anything about church architecture, you recognize what it is. It’s a niche made for a statue. For a saint. In the medieval church or in contemporary Catholic churches, you would likely find in a niche like that the statue of some saint considered worthy of a place of honor in God’s church.
Now, of course, being Baptist, we’ve never been much on saints. We don’t get around to canonizing people. And we don’t play around with saint statues. In fact, a couple of years ago, when the Divinity School at Howard University moved into a building which had originally housed a Roman Catholic seminary, Dean Crawford asked me one day, "Would you like a saint? We don’t quite know what to do with all the saint statues that came along with this building!"
Well, I had to remind him that we Baptist folk would not know either how to store six feet of St. Francis. We don’t put saints in niches in our churches; and yet, for some unknown reason, we’ve got the niche, ready, waiting, and empty.
However, on this morning, as I looked up at it, the niche was not empty. The niche was occupied, or at least showed signs of very recent and very lively occupation. For there, up in the cap of the niche, underneath the arched cover, I guess right about where the saint’s golden crown ought to be, there was a hornet’s nest. Bold and brassy and ugly, happily no longer occupied, but right there, lurking above your heads as you have walked through that door, a hornet’s nest.
In other words, we didn’t put a saint there, but we did get a sting.
We good Christian folks would not have permitted a statue of a saint. But our failure to do so let in a sting instead.
And thereby hangs a parable. Thereby a truth is told. When you are unwilling to be a saint, you just may experience instead a sting, a powerful punishment. If there is a void in your life that could have been filled with godliness, with sainthood, but you never filled it, well, you are likely to get a sting. You are likely to feel gypped and cheated. You are more than likely to come to the end of it all with a feeling that it has been meaningless, empty, void, just a cheat, just a sting.
Either you choose sainthood or you end up knowing that you have been stung, cheated of what life could have been.
The apostle Paul saw that issue and met it head-on. In a classic passage, which I have read and used many times, but usually at the graveside, the apostle reminds us of what the choices are, what the consequences of the wrong choice may be, and, above all, what the outcome of the right choice will be.
I Corinthians 15:51-58
Let me enhance Paul’s brave words to us and flesh them out with the powerful and frightening words of Jesus, who in Luke’s gospel issues a tremendous warning about what could happen to us at the end of it all:
Luke 12:4-7
Remember my thesis this morning: if you do not go for sainthood, you are likely to get a sting instead. If you do not choose the highest and the best that our God has to offer, then when death comes and life is over, you are inevitably going to feel cheated, stung.
I
What Paul calls the sting of death, which he identifies as sin, comes in lots of different ways for different people. The sting of death, this sin sting, might show up for someone as a grinding, gnawing feeling of meaninglessness. To arrive at the end of your days and feel as though your life had no meaning … that, to me, would be a sting of death. And it would have meant sin, if I could not show that my life made a difference.
This might have to do with your everyday work. I confess that it is hard, sometimes, to see real meaning in work. What some folks are called on to do every day seems shallow, useless, uncreative, even destructive. I feel certain that some of you have been in jobs or maybe are in jobs that feel meaningless.
It’s kind of like the fellow who worked on an assembly line in the auto factory. He said, "You know, all I do every day is turn this nut right here on each car body that comes by me. And I tell you, if I have to turn one more nut, I think I’ll be the next nut."
Some of you are what the rest of us taxpayers so glibly call bureaucrats. You don’t make anything, you work for the government. You have to endure the taunts of the rest of us, "Well, that’s good enough for government work." You have to struggle with the gnawing feeling that some days all you do is to produce more documents for supervisors who will not read them and a Congress which will not heed them and a public which does not need them. And there’s a sting in that!
Paul says to you and to me, though, that there is something beyond that. There is something beyond this smell of death and this foreboding of sin that lingers around our work. We do not have to choose the sting; there is sainthood.
"My beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." Your labor is not in vain; if it is the work of the Lord, in the Lord your labor is not a sting. Not if you have chosen to work in the Lord, not if you have chosen sainthood.
II
But let’s go a little deeper. It’s not only that when we come to the end of life, we may very well count it all up and feel as though our work has been meaningless. It’s not only that we may add up our years of hard work and find that the sum total is a zero, and that would be an awful sting. It is also possible that we may discover that we were afraid to choose sainthood because we were intimidated. We let ourselves be frightened off, we lost our courage, and now, because we did not choose sainthood, we did not choose Gods way, we feel stung. There is a huge "ouch" at the end of some folks’ lives, and it has the smell of sin and death about it.
Because we were intimidated.
We are intimidated by imaginary enemies. We are scared off from being what God wants us to be by imaginary, bogus, enemies.
But they might as well be real enemies, because we let them get control over us. If something intimidates you, it doesn’t have to be real. It controls you just by suggesting dire consequences. And you back off. And you get the sting of death.
Let me illustrate. I hope you will understand my personal reflections here.
I’ve been thinking about my father this week, because, had he lived, he would have been 87 years old this past Tuesday. My father was a bright man, an honest man, a loving man, but he was also an intimidated man. He served for years in the postal service, carrying the mail from house to house until he was 68 years old. Over and over again they offered him supervisory positions, because they recognized his ability. But he would not accept. He just would not accept. Now he would tell his superiors that he preferred to stay in an outdoors job; but when he came home, he would tell his family that he just didn’t want the responsibility. He just didn’t like being in charge. He just felt intimidated by what might happen and what someone might say to him and what someone might expect of him.
Do you see what happened to him? It was not, you see, that he messed up his work; he did not. It was that he refused to put himself on the line. He was intimidated.
There’s a sting in that. There’s a sting of death in that. Because it means that in our weakness, in our lack of confidence, we are not trusting our Lord to help us with the challenges out there. We are not choosing to be his saints. And we get stung by sheer intimidation.
The Lord Jesus has a word, a powerful and an awesome word for us, about that. "I tell you, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear; fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell." Fear the seducer, you see, who plants in our ears the notion that we aren’t worth much. Fear the destroyer, not because he can hurt you physically or financially or can damage your reputation; fear the destroyer because he can tell you so much about what you cannot do that you will believe it, you will be cast into a hell of self-destruction, and you will feel only the sting of death and disappointment.
Oh, listen to the good news of our God. Listen to this good news. You are of value. God loves you. He who cannot see a sparrow fall without knowing of it ... you are of more value than many such sparrows. Trust God and trust yourself. As the old poster put it, “God don’t make no junk.”
Let me continue the personal reflections a moment. Some of you are pretty perceptive; the others I will let in on a little secret. When I get up here on Sunday morning about 50% of me is my father’s son, and I’d rather not be here. I am afraid of the responsibility; I feel a little intimidated by the awesome responsibility of this place.
There are plenty of Sundays when I would just as soon sit out there with you and let somebody else do the preaching.
But can I say without sounding egotistical … there is only one way a born introvert like me can stand here Sunday after Sunday and say anything that has punch and conviction to it. It is believing and understanding that the Living God, who cares about both me and you, has brought us, you and me, into this relationship. And He will not let us fail, if we choose to be His, if we choose to be His saints. And in spite of my fears, I find myself saying with Paul, "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel".
I’ve said to the rest of the church staff … and they know I was preaching to myself as well … this church needs us, this church wants us here, these folks are not out to get us. But the moment we begin to think that they are, we have lost out. The intimidation factor will do us in.
Do you see? The sting of death is sin; and this is our sin, that we are afraid of those who are not really going to do anything to us, not anything that really matters. Hear the Lord again, "Do not fear those who may even kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear; fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; fear not, you are of value. Fear not, you are of value." You are one of God’s saints. Choose to be His saint, or else there will be a sting.
"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."
III
But I need to go deeper yet. We are not finished with this whole thing, because both of these Scriptures use language that penetrates down to the very end and rock bottom of life. They speak of death. The sting of death. These scriptures recognize that the ultimate sting is death. The ultimate cheat is death, or it might be, again, if we have not chosen to go for sainthood.
For every one of us who, in the poet’s words, thinks he was not born to die, there is somebody else who sees life as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
For every one of us who wants to leave some sort of legacy behind and feel as though we have made a difference, there is someone else who decides that such a thing is impossible, that when you die, you die, and that’s it.
And I suppose if I believed that, if I believed that life was life and death was death and that’s that, I wouldn’t choose to be one of God’s saints either. If I felt there was nothing beyond this life, nothing that somehow settles accounts, then I don’t suppose I’d feel any need to live life with any thought beyond this moment. Might as well live it up right now. Might as well take and enjoy and have it all; read the reviews of football player/actor Jim Brown’s new autobiography. Take, take, take … with no thought of consequences.
But, my friends, you and I have seen Christ. You and I have seen the risen Christ. One whose body knew death, one whose life was destroyed for a time, but in whom the power of God was at work. And the life he lived, the ways he taught, the person that he was … it was all vindicated. It was declared to be victory by a great and powerful God.
And so we take death seriously but we also laugh in the face of death.
We take death seriously because we know that there is something beyond this life, and that it does matter how you live here and now.
But we can also laugh in the face of death, we can spit at death, because we know that the something beyond this life is no sting. It is no cheat; it is no gyp. It is life, it is Christ, it is victory.
"The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. Then shall come to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ O death, where is thy victory, O death, where is thy sting? But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
I am astounded when I meet people who seem to be able to meet dangerous situations without batting an eye. A police officer who moves in on a crime scene and takes charge. An airline pilot who whips a balky 747 into shape. A Jesse Jackson who can stand before the largest crowd and mesmerize them with his rhetoric. I am astounded by them, but I do know what makes them tick: they know their competence, they are practiced in their skills, and most of all, they simply know that they are where they belong. They are in the right place, for them.
They know who they are.
And you and I when we know that we are the saints of God, His beloved, His chosen, His children … when we know who we are and that we are where God wants us to be and we are doing what God wants us to do, then we need fear nothing, not even death itself. Because we have chosen to be saints, not stings.
Christ is alive. God has won. And I want to be one of his saints, not just the victim of a sting.
Christ has risen, God is victorious, and we are not going to live afraid of anything, not meaninglessness, not intimidation, not even death itself, because we are going to claim our saint niches. For us, no sting.
