Sermon

Isaiah 43:1-7

Whose Are You?

Dr. Gilbert W. Bowen

Each year at this season a group of our young people are being confirmed in the Christian faith, making a commitment to follow Jesus in accepting his love and letting it shape their life path. Surely that has already been a part of their story, but this is the day of consciousness raising, a day of explicit commitment. So why do families and community of faith urge such a commitment upon them at this stage of their lives. I dare say it is because of the increasing freedom lying ahead of them and the increasing impact of a culture where such a commitment is difficult to sustain.

We live in a culture, do we not, where the prevailing gospel is: go for the gold, and in every sense of that word. Whatever you want you can have. Wide screen TVs, DVDs, computers, I-pods, microwaves, garage door openers, answering machines, caller IDs, frozen foods, location finders, on and on, the list goes of goods that did not exist when most of us were their age. And it will get larger tomorrow. And not just stuff. Whatever you desire of entertainment, adventure, amusement, travel, we are there to provide it for you. Isn’t that the gospel of commercials and catalogs, life styles of the rich and famous, magazines and malls, all selling. Selling whatever you want. Whatever you need.

And there’s the rub in all this. Nothing wrong with the stuff and amusement, the diversion and entertainment. Nothing wrong, even, with a measure of interest in and desire for all these. The problem is with the confusion of all these desires on the one hand and what we truly need to become truly happy and fulfilled human beings on the other. One man says that in his house, they discovered recently that they cannot live without, guess what, aluminum foil.

Desires are conscious and have to do with gratification of wants and wishes. I want to go to Disney World. I want a new stereo. I want to be popular. I want to have a little fun. Needs are more basic. We may not even be conscious of them, they are so easily obscured by getting and spending. But they have to do with inner fulfillment, purpose, sense of worth, primary relationships, without which we end up empty, miserable, lonely, lifeless, as human beings.

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If it is hard to recognize the difference between wants and needs, it is equally hard to recognize that getting what we want and desire never delivers what it seems to promise, never really brings true satisfaction and happiness. A wise man once said, “God cursed them. He gave them everything they wanted.”

A man dies and passes into the next world. When he opens his eyes he sees laid out before him more beauty and luxury than he ever dreamed possible, more than he ever dared hope for or desire. He found himself in a state of being in which every wish was granted instantly. At the slightest whim, an attendant would appear to see that it was immediately fulfilled. After a time he grew restless, bored. “If only something different would happen,” he said to himself. “If only just once there would be a refusal. If only once I had to struggle for something.” Finally the monotony became unbearable and he summoned the attendant saying, “I want something that I can’t have unless I earn it, unless there is a price, a real discipline.” “Sorry,” the attendant replied, “That’s the one desire we can’t grant here.” “Very well,” the man said, “then let me out of here. I’d rather be in hell.” Whereupon the attendant said, “Sir, where do you think you are.”

It’s true. Dennis Prager, journalist out in California writes, “I have often thought that if Hollywood stars have any God-given role to play in our society it is to teach us that happiness, satisfaction in life, has nothing to do with fun. These rich, beautiful and celebrated individuals do indeed have constant access to what they desire — glamorous parties, fancy cars, expensive homes, luxurious vacations, a steady supply of attractive sex partners, invitations to exciting sporting and theatrical events. And yet in memoir after memoir, many of these celebrities reveal the unhappiness hidden beneath all the fun: depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, broken marriages, troubled children, profound loneliness. We should feel greatly indebted to all the Hollywood stars who have written about their sad lives. If we could only learn from their experiences…”

So if satisfaction of desires does not do it, what does? What do we really need? What do we need to be happy, fulfilled, saved? According to an old word and story, we need a basic attitude toward ourselves and our lives. Prophet and apostle insist that we have got to get one thing straight about ourselves before anything else healthy and happy can happen to us. And that is the fact that we do not belong to ourselves. We are not autonomous creatures at liberty to do whatever we please with our lives and if we try to live that way we pay a terrible price for it. “You are not your own. I have called you by name. You are mine.”

Now I know that is a strange sounding word in the modern world. What do you mean I belong to someone else? I am not my own person. I thought the whole business of growing up and becoming mature meant learning to stand on my own two feet, and live my own life.

Well, this is quite true in relationship to parents and peers, in relationship to immature dependency upon others to take care of us, think for us. But this does not mean that we can just drift along doing whatever we feel like and truly live. For feelings are fickle, desires are dictators, as truly as any tyrant, and to live by these is to end up filled with inner chaos and disorder and destruction.

So the first meaning of these words— “You are not your own. You are mine.” – is this. Real freedom means life by a higher law and vision than what we want or feel like. Real happiness depends first of all upon willingness to listen to and obey the inner voice that has been formed in us by the Biblical faith, the voice of God in Jesus. Those who flagrantly and persistently go against the voice of conscience, of inner constraint, sow the seeds of a destruction of their personhood which can be disastrous. I am not trying to scare, only face us once again with the facts of personal existence. Violate your inner moral code, without remorse or regret, and there is hell to pay, an inner hell. Lie, cheat, steal, mis-treat, be unfaithful, and you do not gain in the long run. You lose immensely.

Arthur Gordon tells of a 4th of July when he found himself listening to a short patriotic address. “The speaker talked of our heritage of freedom, how precious it is, and how jealously we ought to guard it. We applauded when he was through. Suddenly as the applause died away, a voice spoke from the crowd: ‘Why don’t you tell them the whole truth?’ Startled we looked around. The words had come from a young man in a tweed jacket with untidy hair and angry eyes. He might have been a college student, poet, peace corps worker, almost anything. ‘Why don’t you tell them that freedom is the most dangerous gift anyone can receive? Why don’t you tell them that it’s a two-edged sword that will destroy us unless we learn how to use it and soon. Why don’t you make them see that we face a greater challenge than our ancestors ever did. They only had to fight for freedom. We have to live with it.'”

Howard Arnold Walter and his friend Burgess, both fresh out of Princeton, spent their first year teaching at Waseta University, Japan. They set out on a walking tour of Japan. Japan is a walker’s paradise in cherry blossom time, I am told. But the culture was different and the temptations to cast off all restraint and indulge in every sort of desire and impulse was great. But something nagged at young Walter. He sat one evening in a hotel room struggling with his memories of parents and past, his heritage and hometown heroes and he sat down and wrote words you may well know:

“I would be true, for there are those who trust me;
I would be pure, for there are those who care;
I would be strong, for there is much to suffer;
I would be brave, for there is much to dare.”

Our young people are reaching an age of life when they will know more and more freedom. The driver’s license will do it, if nothing else. How will they use it? Will they let whims and desires or the pressures of peers or television culture dominate their lives or will they listen to the inner voice of God’s spirit and follow him.

It may, in part depend on how they see us ordering our lives, on what they sense are the values we hold high, in what they learn are the goals that dominate our hearts.

A legislator indicted in Arizona for accepting bribes on behalf of casinos, says, “I don’t give a blank about issues … there is not an issue in this world that I give a blank about. I do deals … my favorite line is what’s in it for me.” A senator says, “I like the good life, and I’m trying to position myself so that I can live the good life and have more money. I want to die rich. We all have our price.”

A wise old word insists that these attitudes lead ultimately to inner chaos, loneliness and destruction. A recent businessman, who now acknowledges that he sold his soul to achieve unprecedented money and power in a major corporation, comments sadly that he simply “lost his moral compass.”

Jesus as moral compass. That is what these young people are committing to, when they promise not so much to believe some things and follow some rules, but to follow Jesus. But then with following Jesus comes something else also important, his company. You follow somebody and you go with him. Because the life of integrity and moral purpose is not something we can pull off on our own. If the fact that we belong to God means that we are responsible to him, it also means that we are always in his company and care. “Do not fear … I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you….. For I am the Lord your God.”

Even as we do, these young people need to believe deeply that they are truly important, and not just to parents and friends, not just to us, but to a heavenly Father. That he even numbers the hairs on the heads I shall lay a hand on. God in Jesus, is saying to each one of them, “He really knows you, has known you long before you have known him. And whether you find the years ahead frightening or exciting, boring or challenging, despairing or filled with hope, you can trust that he will be there.” It is to be the default position of your heart.

But the experience that we are important, forgiven, loved, is just as much a decision as the decision to be responsible. On that Palm Sunday so long ago, Jesus rode into Jerusalem to rule in human hearts. That’s what that donkey meant, it was the carriage of a Jewish king. But his rule is clearly not coerced, does not proceed by the way of power. His rule and company must be chosen.

Ellen Edwards Kennedy puts it this way. “When I began to take Jesus seriously, I began to look at a particular young woman with scorn. I felt little but contempt for her as I thought of her quick temper, her selfishness, her spiteful gossiping, and the way she took her loving family for granted. Any time she was mentioned, I could think of very little good to say. But one day as I was leafing through an old picture album filled with photos of her, Jesus’ spirit spoke to my spirit and told me, ‘I have always loved her, despite her failings, and I have forgiven her. I want you to forgive and love her, too.

“As I gazed at the young face in the pictures, my heart was filled with compassion for the girl. Along the way in searching for life’s meaning, she had made many mistakes. God gave me a gentle love for her and the ability to forgive her. That moment of healing when I decided to forgive and love her also gave me a new strength and a new freedom to love others as never before… because the young woman in the pictures was me.”

But as with the young, so with you and me. We need to witness to this same sense of worth in whatever way we can, a sense of worth that transcends the importance of this world, of success and popularity, notoriety and power which assigns worth so arbitrarily and unfairly.

A man writes to his grandson, “Many years ago, Karl, a young boy lay in a bed much like yours. Before going to sleep some nights when he was plagued with the worries of a boy and sleep would not come, he would go to the door of the room where his father lay and call out, ‘Father, are you there?’ and the answer always came back, ‘Yes, son, I’m here.’ I remember that boy went back to his bed and went to sleep in peace. Tonight that boy is older now, well into his seventies, and every night before going to sleep he looks up into the face of another Father and says, ‘Father, are you there?’ and the answer always comes back, ‘Yes, son, I’m here.’ And he rolls over and goes to sleep without fear. Karl, I was that boy and I am that man. And I pray for you the same faith. Love. Granddad.

The decision for great responsibility, the decision for great companionship, that’s what the decision to follow Jesus means.

When we speak of him as Lord and Savior, that is what we are talking about. We are saying that the God who comes close in Jesus is both our guide and our strength. He is both the compass which gives our life integrity and focus and the companionship which gives courage and comfort.

And I can only assure you that those who have taken him seriously and have tried to follow in his way, have always found it so. …thus says the Lord, who created you, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Copyright 2006, Gilbert W. Bowen. Used by permission.