Have you ever played the game Three Truths and a Lie? If not, the basic
premise is that a person tells you three true things about themselves, and then they tell one lie; the object is for people
to guess which one is the lie. Let’s give it a try. I am going to narrow the parameters a little, each of the four things will be summer job related.
So the first: I
once spent the summer working in a hotel restaurant with a member of the gang Latin Kings, and we talked religion late in
to the nights. Second statement: I
spent a summer working with a group of other young people, and the nights were spent drinking and other things, my place during
those evenings was to show you could have a good time without substances. The
third statement: I once spent the summer driving my grandmother to receive radiation every day. The fourth statement: I once spent the summer building houses for Habitat.
Now here comes the challenging part - which one
of those is a lie? Hopefully I won’t get in to much trouble for lying in
the pulpit. If you think my first statement about working with a Latin King was
the lie, raise your hands. And those of you who think the second statement about
not partaking in the every night partying? How about those who think the statement
about driving my grandmother is the lie? Finally working for Habitat?
The lie was number four, I have never worked
on a habitat project, and I would like to, but never have. The other three were
truths. I spent one summer working as a waitress with a member of the Latin Kings,
it was definitely a different experience, we spent many nights talking about faith and God.
The summer after that I worked for NYPIRG, an interest group that works on issues college students care about, and
each night everyone else I worked with got drunk among other things, and I often thought about quitting because it really
wasn’t my cup of tea.
But I’m glad I didn’t. I had many late night conversations with other college students about where they saw their lives going,
but most of all I was able to be an example. And the third statement about my
driving my grandmother to radiation everyday for a summer was also true, and was most definitely the hardest of all, but it
was a priceless time that I got to spend with my grandmother talking about life and faith.
Now
the question might be, what in the world does all of this have to do with our scripture today?
Our Corinthians scripture says, “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all,
so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to
win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win
those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law
(though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To
the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save
some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.”
I
used the game in the beginning as an example of this message. That we need to
meet people where they are. If I had given up on that one job, I would have missed
out on the opportunity to share God’s love and Christ’s example with people who really needed to hear it. When I took the job I had no idea what the life implications of it were, I barely
made a dime, but the experiences I took from it will last me a lifetime. I truly
left my comfort zone, I was challenged to reach out to people the same age, from the same basic backgrounds but who were living
lives so different from my own. Paul’s words ask us each to do this. To meet people where they are, to become weak if we are trying to reach the weak,
to live under the law, if those are the people we are trying to reach. Paul calls
us to leave our comfort zones, for not all the people who need to hear about Christ look and live like us.
This
may not be the best example, but I am thinking about the movie Conair, it stars John Malcovich, Steve Busheme, Nicholas Cage,
John Cusack and others. The basic idea of the movie is that Nicholas Cage’s
character is a trained officer and when egged on by some guys and his wife’s honor is at stake he fought back and killed
them. He is sent away to jail and once he is paroled he has to travel back home
on a plane with some of the worst criminals, they are opening a new jail and are transferring all of them together.
Well,
a plan was hatched to take over the plane and escape, Nicholas Cage’s character is traveling with a friend who has diabetes
and needs his shot and he knows if he leaves the plane his friend will die. So
he makes the decision to pretend to be a worse criminal who wants freedom in order to save his friend. By making that decision he ended up not getting off the plane when he had the chance, he manages to alert
the authorities and helps to save the day, all because he wanted to protect his friend.
It
isn’t always easy to follow Paul’s words. It requires us to leave
what we know in order to follow Christ. Our faith isn’t a cookie cutter,
what works for one person won’t always work for another. We are called
to do everything we can to share the love of God with others. Our Psalm today
tells us just that, “Praise the LORD! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is
gracious, and a song of praise is fitting…He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds…his understanding
is beyond measure. The LORD lifts up the downtrodden…His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure
in the speed of a runner; but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.”
As was mentioned last week, God calls us to care for one another, and we are also called to share the good news
of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. We are to be examples of that
love to all we meet. We have opportunities every day, sometimes those opportunities
feel more like interruptions, but how can we be used by God in those moments. In
the book Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen, this idea is made more clear. “But
what if our interruptions are in fact our opportunities, if they are challenges to an inner response by which growth takes
place and through which we come to the fullness of being? What if the events
of our history are molding us as a sculptor molds his clay, and if it is only in careful obedience to these molding hands
that we can discover our real vocation and become mature people?
What if all the unexpected interruptions are in fact the invitations to give up old fashioned and outmoded styles
of living and are opening up new unexplored areas of experience? What if our
history does not prove to be a blind impersonal sequence of events over which we have no control, but rather reveals to us
a guiding hand pointing to a personal encounter in which all our hopes and aspirations will reach their fulfillment? Then our life would indeed be a different life because then fate becomes opportunity,
wounds a warning, and paralysis an invitation to search for deeper sources of vitality.”
Nouwen challenges us as Paul challenges us, to take our lives and let them be used to truly experience other
people, to be people who put others first, who seek to share God’s love with all they meet. We have big opportunities all around us, there are mission trips and service projects that are always looking
for more people. There is a family mission trip and a father son mission trip,
a youth mission trip all through the Presbytery this summer.
There will be mission trips and projects through this church this summer, and the ministry of service is constantly
working on new projects along with the Presbyterian Women who are currently looking in to the upkeep of a space at the Women’s
resource center. Our evening worship service is attempting to reach people in
our community and the Ministry of Church Growth is thinking of new ways to share God’s love. The joyous daring taskforce is seeking to make our buildings a place where the gospel message can be shared
more easily. All around our church there are countless ways we as the church
are trying to follow this call of being all things to all people.
The question remains, what are we as individuals doing? Have you
felt God tugging at your heartstrings to go on a mission trip? Are you handy
with a hammer and nails and have some time to help habitat out. Each of these
areas may not seem like they are spreading Christ’s love, but they are. For
meeting people where they are and truly being ourselves is the perfect way to follow God.
Each of us has gifts and opportunities, it is how we put them to use that matters.
The rest of our scripture today, reminds us of the obligation we have because we have heard the good news and
believe it. “If I proclaim the gospel,
this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For
if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my
reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in
the gospel.”
How
we live our lives is important, showing God’s love is a given, but sometimes we forget how important it is to share
the gifts God has given us. How important it is to use our life experiences to
reach out to people. Take our brokenness and heartache and help others understand
their own. Live outside our comfort zones and encounter experiences we never
even dreamed of. Hang tough to hard situations and see how our faith comes out.
Paul
shows us how to be all things to all people by simply being ourselves. Paul can
say he became a Jew because he had been a Jew, he used his life experiences to reach other people. So go out in to the world being yourself, take your experiences and your courage, be prepared to share
your love and to have your comfort zone pushed aside, be prepared to meet people you never would have dreamed of, be free
to show Christ’s love to everyone you encounter.
And
with one voice, let us begin this journey by standing together and affirming what we believe.
I believe in God the father almighty…
