Heroes<title> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../../sermon.css"> <style fprolloverstyle>A:hover {color: #FF0000} </style> <style type="text/css"> p { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify; } cite { font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller; } </style> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../2002/sermon.css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" vlink="#0000FF"> <table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 > <tr VALIGN=BASELINE BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#000080"> <b> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  Heroes </span> </font> </b> <font color="#FFFFFF"><br>A Sermon based on </font> <a target="_blank" href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NIV&passage=John+15:9-17"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">John 15:9-17</span></font></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN="2" width="640">  <p>At 8:42 a.m. Eastern Time on September 11, 2001, forty-four passengers and crew boarded United Flight 93 at the Newark International Airport. Little did they know, as we know now, that four among them were terrorists intent on hijacking the plane and crashing it into the United States Capitol. We now know the story of how those people became aware, through their telephone conversations with friends and loved ones, of what was going on with other hijacked planes and how they chose to respond to what must have been a living nightmare. None of those people could have possibly imagined what it was like just to board a flight thinking it was another normal day only to discover their unimaginable fate. Eighty-one minutes was all it took, from the time they took off until the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. During that time, those brave passengers and crew revolted and attempted to commandeer the plane from the hijackers.</p> <p>In those eighty-one minutes people just like you and me were transformed from just average citizens going about their everyday lives into heroes. Moms and dads, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, people like you and me, were willing to lay down their lives so that others might live. Almost certainly, Jesus' words that we read this morning in John's gospel were read at the funerals of some of those who gave their lives that day. "No one has greater love than this, than that one lays down his life for one's friends."</p> <p>At this point in Jesus' life, his attention and his focus were completely turned toward the cross upon which he was about to die in very short order. He is preparing his disciples for that time when he will no longer be with them. He wants to share some of the last words he can share with them about what it will mean to be a follower of his after he is gone. As a part of that I'm-going-to-be-gone preparation in his life, he says, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love . . .. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." Jesus then goes on to very clearly define what that love looks like. He doesn't leave it in the abstract, in the ethereal, in the difficult to define. In very practical terms, he said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."</p> <p>It's interesting what Jesus did not instruct his disciples to do in preparation for his departure from them. He didn't instruct them to prepare themselves for self-defense and self-preservation in light of what he knew to be very hostile circumstances about to come their way. He knew and warned his disciples that, after he was gone, the world would not be any friendlier to them than it had been to him. Yet, not one word, not one, came out of Jesus' mouth in these last-word moments about the importance of self-preservation. Though the natural inclination would be discussion about fortressing up for self-protection, Jesus instead spent his time talking to his disciples, and through them to us, about loving one another.</p> <p>Specifically, Jesus said that the disciples should love one another in ways that expend their personal resources providing for each other's needs. "This is my commandment . . . that you love one another." If we knowingly choose not to love someone, we have chosen to disobey the Christ who was not willing to put any limits on his love for us.</p> <p>How does Jesus love us, for that matter? How did he love us? Well, we know the answer to that question, don't we? Don't we? Though it's hard for us to imagine, because we weren't there and the only information we have about is it from others who were there, that Jesus loved us by laying down his life, expending the last energy of his life for our preservation. He now says that kind of love is the template, the standard by which we should measure our love for each other. The capstone of that instruction is the affirmation that the greatest standard of love, the gold standard, the Congressional Medal of Honor level of love we can have for each other, is to lay our lives down for each other. To give ourselves away in the service of others.</p> <p>My question is, why do we find it so hard to do that? Why do we find it so hard to expend the resources of our lives for others, instead of fortressing up and making certain that we are taken care of first, and then, out of what's left over, if we can, being charitable. Why do we do that?</p> <p>Well, I can only speak for myself. I remember the time I was swimming in a South Texas river at a youth camp. It was a small river, more like a stream. At one point, I got caught in this tiny place where the water all came together between two rocks and formed some kind of rapids. The water was not deep at all, maybe a foot deep, but it was rushing very, very fast. I was lying on my back, just trying to sit up against the rush of the rapids and I didn't have enough strength. Though I really don't think there was any chance that I could have drowned that day, I did wonder in those split seconds what would happen if I couldn't get up. Though I wanted to stand up, the water kept pushing me down. It was amazing to me how hard it was to swim against the predominant current of that small amount of water.</p> <p>We come to church, and we are challenged and encouraged and, by Jesus, even commanded to lean in the direction of self-sacrificial service for others. Then, during the week, we find ourselves caught in the current of a way of life in the world around us that keeps trying to push us in the other direction. That's why it's so hard to do what Jesus commanded. It's so hard, because it's not the natural thing. The natural flow of life is to take care of ourselves. The natural flow of our own lives is to impress others with how much we can accumulate. The natural flow is to acquire and then, having acquired, to acquire more. Anyone else here willing to make that confession this morning, of what it's like getting caught in the materialistic rapids in which we swim every day?</p> <p>Listen to some other words Jesus spoke. They have, perhaps, more relevance for us today than they have ever had since he first spoke them. "And he said to his disciples, 'Watch out! Be on your guard for all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.' And then he told them a parable. 'The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do? For I have no place to store my crops.' And then he said, 'I'll do this. I'll pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax; eat, drink and be merry." But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night, your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" <cite>(Luke 12:15-21, NIV)</cite>.</p> <p>Jesus defines true foolishness as living every day as though we will have another day to sort out our spiritual affairs. It is the way I am living right now, in this moment, in this very day? You? Not what we've promised ourselves or our God or our friends or my church, but, how we are actually living? It's the way we are living in this very moment, right now, that is the truest measure of our spiritual depth.</p> <p>"Watch out," Jesus said. What he means is nothing more or less than to live thoughtfully. To live intentionally. Not to just walk out of these doors naïve about what we will encounter in the ebb and flow of life. Otherwise, we'll get caught up in the natural flow of things around us and literally be swept away in a sea of narcissistic materialism. Are you watching out? Are you paying attention to what's going on around you? It's kind of frightening to realize that it is possible to be a person who claims with our mouths that we are followers of Jesus, making promises to God we know we'll never keep, and yet to live at the very same time as though we are nothing more than a greedy materialist.</p> <p>Let me be more pointed. Are you, with your resources, not just your money but with all of your resources, are you today fulfilling the commandment of Christ to love one another? You may intend to do that someday, or you promised God. I'm not asking about intentions or promises. I'm asking what are you actually doing right now. Is it possible that we are poor toward others because, frankly, we fail to realize the value of our own soul? We are poor toward others because we do not realize how much being poor toward others impoverishes our own soul. There is more than one kind of poverty.</p> <p>When my grandfather died and my grandmother had to move into an assisted living facility some twenty years ago, she started cleaning out her house and her attic. When we went to visit her again, we asked her where the old sewing machine was. The pedal-pumping Singer sewing machine. She said, "Oh, I just threw it away." That sewing machine was probably 100 years old then. All of us wanted to die. Any of us would have paid good money for it, if she hadn't given it to us. Do you know why my grandmother threw that old sewing machine away? She threw it away because she didn't know how valuable it was.</p> <p>That's too often how we live our lives. We spend our time and our energy and our money in the commerce of everyday life like everyone around us does, not watching out, as Jesus said, because we are unaware that, unless we are living thoughtfully and intentionally in ways that lead us to live for others, we live only for ourselves and impoverish the only soul we will ever have.</p> <p>Flags of Our Fathers, a movie by the same name about the battle of Iwo Jima, came out this week. The book was written by James Bradley, the son of one of the survivors of those who raised the American flag on Iwo's highest point. That picture has become such an icon of American patriotism and heroism. Flags of Our Fathers is a gripping book; I can only imagine how gripping the movie might be. Some of our Cliff Temple folks were heroes of that battle.</p> <p>That one battle lasted for five weeks and, not only did the Marines suffer more casualties than in any other battle in history, more Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded than for any other battle in all of American history as well. Those men who fought and died there and became heroes and won the Congressional Medals of Honor were average people, just like you and me. The only difference was that they were put in a situation where they were made to consciously choose between themselves and others. Put in a situation, heightened by the fear of combat, those men made decisions that you and I cannot even fathom making in the everyday course of life. Combat forced onto them the choice to watch out about how they were living, to choose with intention and thoughtfulness about how they would conduct their lives.</p> <p>Scripture informs us that we, too, are engaged in spiritual combat. The only difference between those who fought on Iwo Jima and the combat in which you and I are engaged is that the enemies that come at us wear the same uniforms we do and carry no obvious weapons meant to destroy us. The enemies that we fight come to us in a form of very appealing billboards and advertisements and lifestyles of others that advertise our own fantasies back to us, often with the promise that it's only $19.95 a month. So, we $19.95 a month ourselves until we have impoverished the only soul we will ever have, living just for ourselves, because we did not live thoughtfully and with intention in self-sacrificial for others.</p> <p>Those people who boarded Flight 93 that day could never have known what would happen to them in the next 81 minutes. The truth is, however, that you and I don't know what's going to happen to us, either, except this. Very few of us in this room will ever be in a position where we will be given the kind of choice those people on Iwo Jima and the people on Flight 93 were given. Very few of us will ever be put in the position where we are actually made to make a choice about dying for someone else and becoming a hero like that.</p> <p>But what I do see in this passage of scripture is the challenge of laying down our lives for each other, not by dying, but by living. Very few of us, if any of us, will ever have the chance to die to become heroes, but all of us in this very room have the chance and the choice to live heroically. You see, a hero is just an average person, like your or me, who makes the choice to give their life for someone else. Some people do that by dying. Most of us will have to make the choice to do it by living. Or, not.</p> <p>All across this room this morning, I see heroes. I see people who have given of themselves all of their lives. Who gave sacrificially. Not just that others might have a stomach full of food and clothes on their back, but that they might know about Jesus.</p> <p>Do you see and feel the place you are sitting right now? Most of us never stop to think about it. But, did you know that the seat you're sitting in, these pews, are the original pews in this sanctuary. This room was built in 1938 at a cost of $250,000. Most of the people who made this room possible have been dead and gone for a long, long time. Years before most of us were even alive, those people gave that we might receive. They really were, in a very difficult time, during the midst of the depression, what I would call heroes. They laid down their living lives for us. Someday, when another crowd of people is gathered in this place or others like it to worship God, will they be able to do that because we lived heroically?</p> <p>We have a choice today. We can impoverish our souls, $19.95 at a time, by living for ourselves. Or, we can live heroically by giving of ourselves, that others might live.</p> <p>Are you a hero? You can be.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Glen Schmucker, Pastor </td> <td> <div align=right>  October 22, 2006 </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN=2> Copyright © 2006, Glen Schmucker </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>