Comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who passed away earlier this month at age 82, made his living playing the part of someone chronically depressed and making fun of himself because he “got no respect.” He would complain to his audiences with lines like: “I tell ya I get no respect from anyone. I bought a cemetery plot. The guy said, ‘There goes the neighborhood ’” “I come from a stupid family. During the Civil War my great uncle fought for the West.” “Last week I told my psychiatrist, ‘I keep thinking about suicide.’ He told me to pay in advance.” “My uncle’s dying wish, he wanted me on his lap. He was in the electric chair.” “I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.” “I remember I was so depressed I was going to jump out a window on the tenth floor, so they sent a priest to talk to me. He said, “On your mark. …” “My wife made me join a bridge club. I jump off next Tuesday.”
Dangerfield was actually making fun of the self-absorbed despair which seems to be in vogue in our culture. Take a look at the television programs which are based on despair and packed with stories based on violence, cruelty and inhumanity. Where are the happy stories and shows about really good people? There are a few, but they are often so sappy, syrupy and poorly acted that you can’t stand to watch them. I would love to be entertained by something other than violence complete with dismembered corpses and dissection tables. We have a problem in this culture, and the problem is that we have drifted away from God — and in the process we have drifted away from joy. I believe that Jesus Christ came to set hearts free and give us deep down joy. Last week we talked about the kingdom of God because it is important to understand that we are secure in the love and power of God which will answer injustice and usher in a kingdom of joy. The Bible says, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire’” (Hebrews 12:28-29). The world is shaking and those who place their trust in this world are losing hope, but those who place their confidence in the unshakable kingdom of God dare to hope, to dream and to be happy.
If Jesus came to set us free, he came to free us from our sin. He came to free us from our guilt. But our sin drove a wedge not only between us and God, but between us and life. Americans, in spite of their affluence, do not seem to be enjoying life very much. I want to say today that Jesus Christ came to free us from the results of our sin, and the first point is: Jesus Christ came to free us from cynicism. Tony Campolo was at the Nazarene University this week and told about lecturing at UCLA last year. While he was speaking, his heart felt heavy because the privileged students at this University in California were so cynical. At one point he said to the students: “I’m 70-years-old and you are 23, and I am younger than you are, because people are as young as their dreams and their visions, and as old as their cynicism. You are cynical and I’m still dreaming and having visions, because the Holy Spirit is alive in my life.”
Do you remember what happened on the day of Pentecost? The Holy Spirit came upon the believers and they were enjoying themselves so much that those around them thought they were drunk. They weren’t used to seeing people that happy. Peter stood up and said, “These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams’” (Acts 2:15-17). That is what happens when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you have an attitude adjustment. Cynicism is turned into trust and faith. You are able to dream great dreams and have vision and hope for the future.
I looked up the definition of cynicism to get a clearer idea of what it meant. The dictionary defined it as, “Peevish. Contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives. Distrustful. A sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity. A dislike of human beings and their society. A gloomy, distrustful view of life.” That describes a lot of people in today’s world. When I see people dragging themselves through life, I wish for them the Jesus that liberates. When I see young people with a permanent pout molded into their expression, I wish for them the Jesus who can set their sights on something other than the passing things of this world. I wish for all of us a faith in the unshakable kingdom of God that can help us to relax and dare to be happy in the wonderful world that God has made — despite the problems that life sometimes brings.
Giving up your cynicism does not mean that you give up good critical thinking skills, or that you never question anything or anyone. It does not mean that you suddenly become naive and get the wool pulled over your eyes all the time. It means that you give up your rotten attitude about life and learn to trust again — in spite of the risks. It means that you give up making life so hard for yourself.
I think about the conversion of the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. He was so bitter and full of anger prior to knowing Christ. He was headed to Damascus in a rage, wanting to kill and imprison as many Christians as he could. He so hated everything they represented that he failed to see the obvious reality that he was going against the very principles of the faith that he thought he was defending. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was fighting God and the truth that had come into the world. Suddenly, God appeared to him and he was knocked to the ground. Lying there, he heard the Lord say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14). Goads were long, sharp sticks which the farmer used to keep their oxen going in the right direction by prodding the back of their legs. The goad did not feel very good when the farmer jabbed the ox, but it really hurt if they rebelled and kicked at the goad. Some stubborn beasts never did learn, and they would keep kicking against the goad until they became injured. Paul was in full rebellion, and his anger and bitter attitude toward people was hurting him badly. He was kicking against God’s goad which was trying to get him to go in the right direction. He was cynical and his heart was hard, but when he came face to face with Jesus, he was given a heart of love for people that changed the whole course of his life. His cynicism was turned to faith.
The second thing that Jesus came to do was: Jesus Christ came to free us from despair. I feel very badly for people without hope. But, honestly, if a person is not a Christian I don’t know where they would find hope. If you are counting on this present world to make you happy, you are in serious trouble. You have to have something bigger than that. If you don’t have Christ and understand what it means to live in his kingdom, you could have an extreme makeover, win the lottery, be selected for an extreme home makeover, not be voted off the island and win on Survivor, be so smart you can’t lose on Jeopardy, and be the lucky one to get the bachelor or bachelorette, but you would still not be happy because you would still have no meaning in your life. There would be no faith that God was guiding your life and had your best in mind.
We do not live in despair, because God has said, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). This is the promise of God. We have a future regardless of how things turn out here. Jesus said in the beatitudes that if we are in mourning, we are blessed because we know we will be comforted. If we are weeping, we are blessed because we know laughter is coming. If we are poor or persecuted, we know we will inherit the kingdom of heaven. We are not in despair because our hope is not in this world. We are people with a future. There are many who only see a hopeless end, but we have an endless hope.
In preparation for talking about despair, I looked up the definition of pessimism in the dictionary. It is defined as: “An inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome. It is the belief that reality is essentially evil, or that evil overbalances happiness in life.” In short, pessimistic people believe that life is not good. That is not a very happy way to live. And the reason people live that way is that they believe a lie. It takes effort to overcome the lies that bombard us on a daily basis.
Sometimes the trials of life weigh us down and it becomes hard to see the light when you are surrounded by darkness. It is hard to hear a message of joy, even when it is true. I remember the story of Moses when God told him to lead the Israelites out of the land of slavery. Moses went to the people and told them that God said: “I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.” But then the Bible says, “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage” (Exodus 6:8-9). There are some who can’t hear God’s word of hope because they can’t get beyond their discouragement.
The Desert Sun, carried the story of a man who was walking his dog on a river-side path in Bedfordshire, England. He found an ancient gold penny. After examining it, coin expert Richard Bishop said, “It is quite simply the most important single coin find for a century. We fell off our chairs when we realized what it was.” The penny is 1,200-years-old and bears the image of Coenwulf, an Anglo-Saxon king whose reign was between 796 and 821AD. Prior to auction, the coin was expected to sell for approximately a quarter of a million dollars. Richard Bishop, the coin expert, said, “There is no way of putting a price on it because one hasn’t ever been found before. It is unique.” Unique it is, for on October 6, 2004, the coin brought $409,000 at auction, making it the most expensive British coin in history. The money will be divided between the landowner, Fen Reavers, and the man who found it. But it was no accident that this man found the coin. He is an amateur metal detector enthusiast. He has an eye for metal and coins on the ground. He is always looking and waving his metal detector over the ground, even while walking his dog. There must have been hundreds or thousands of people who walked right over that coin and never found it.
The point of the story is that you can’t have a pessimistic attitude toward life believing that nothing is ever going to work out. If you don’t purposely look for good things, you will never find them. It takes effort. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven was like a treasure hidden in a field or a pearl of great price. You have to be looking to find treasure which is hidden. You have to open a lot of oysters to find a special pearl. It is not likely that oysters are going to fall from heaven. Optimism takes the time and trouble to find the good in the world, and in spite of the trouble we may face, believe in God’s ultimate triumph over the evil in the world. The writer of Proverbs said: “When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have a refuge” (Proverbs 14:32).
But Jesus Christ frees us from despair by planting his hope in our hearts. The Bible says, “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5). It says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19).
The third point is that: Jesus Christ came to free us from self. Here is the source of so many of our problems and dysfunctions — a preoccupation with ourselves. Part of our great heritage as Methodists is our historic emphasis on the importance of dying to ourselves. In other words, we stop making ourselves the center of our lives. We find a new center. We die to selfish ambition and the demand that this world meet all our needs. Our will and our affection become centered on God and his will for us and the world. When we are freed from our self-centeredness we are free to love other people. Our marriage becomes different. Our work becomes different. Our world becomes different, because our outlook has become different.
Here is how Paul put it: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Our self-centeredness is placed on the cross, and now we live for God and others. And the only way we can do that is living by faith in the Son of God who selflessly gave himself for us.
What I have really been talking about is what Paul said were the three most lasting things in the world: faith, hope and love. When you are cynical, you cannot have faith. When you are in despair, you have no hope. When you are centered in yourself, you have no love. Let’s see, should I choose cynicism, despair and self-centeredness, or will I allow Jesus Christ to free me from these and live by faith, hope and love?
Stanley Grenz tells of the time he was lost in his thoughts, stressing over a situation in his life. But his fretting was interrupted by the obnoxious cawing of two crows. Eventually, he saw what the problem was: a third crow was in the field jumping and flapping about, trying to fly, but he had somehow gotten his left wing caught in a plastic grocery bag. Stanley walked away from the noise with his mind still on his own troubles when the thought came to him: “Unless I do something, this hapless bird is going to die.” He turned in his tracks and walked cautiously toward the trapped crow. The bird fluttered and flopped trying to get away from him. Stanley tried to speak softly to him: “Trust me I can help you.” He realized it was probably a fruitless gesture, but he asked himself: “How else could I assure the crow, not only that I intended him no harm, but also that I was his only hope for survival?” When he got close, he repeated softly, “Trust me I can help you.” Then he reached out with both hands and carefully tore the plastic and pulled it off him, setting him free. As Stanley walked away, his mind once more became filled with the concerns that had weighed him down before. But his thoughts were interrupted by the cawing of crows overhead. Suddenly, the words he had spoken before came back into his mind: “Trust me I can help you.” This time they were not spoken by him, but to him.
Stanley finishes the story by saying, “I continued my morning walk, musing about how often our loving heavenly Father speaks to us in the midst of difficulties, and about the response — faith — that his words are designed to engender in us. And I was quick to draw the obvious lesson: Just as the hapless creature needed to admit the hopelessness of his plight, cease struggling, and trust me unconditionally to receive my assistance, so also we must entrust ourselves to God. As important as this connection is, it was not God’s message for me that crisp fall day. My musings took me to a deeper question: Why did the bird exercise faith? Only then did I glimpse what stands at the heart of the great mystery of trust: The crow had realized in his own way what we are called to realize. We only become willing to risk all and take the bold step of genuine faith — of entrusting ourselves to God fully, completely, unreservedly, for good or for ill — when we see in this particular situation that God is our last and only hope.”
Rodney J. Buchanan
October 31, 2004
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
Setting Hearts Free
(Questions for October 31, 2004)
1. Why do you think there is such cynicism and despair in this culture of affluence?
2. The opposite of cynicism is trust and faith. How does our faith in Christ free us from despair?
3. Why does cynicism make life harder?
4. Read Jeremiah 29:11. How does this promise work out in our day to day lives?
5. Read Exodus 6:8-9. When have you felt like the Israelites?
6. Review the definition of cynicism and pessimism given in the sermon. Do you observe this in people you know? Are some of them Christians?
7. Why are Christians sometimes cynical and negative?
8. How do we embrace the freedom Christ wants to give us?
9. Why is a self-centered life a self-destructive life?
10. Read Proverbs 14:32. Where is our real hope?
