Worship
Sermon Teachings
Proverbs 3:1-10
Good friend, don't forget all I've taught you; take to heart my commands. They'll help you live a long, long time, a long life lived full and well. Don't lose your grip on Love and Loyalty. Tie them around your neck; carve their initials on your heart. Earn a reputation for living well in God's eyes and in the eyes of the people. Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don't try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; God is the one who will keep you on track. Don't assume that you know it all. Run to God! Turn from evil! Your body will glow with health, your very bones will vibrate with life! Honor God with everything you own; give God the first and the best.
Philippians 4: 1, 4-9
My dear, dear friends! I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don't waver. Stay on track, steady in God.
Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in God! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you are on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!
Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It is wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you will do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into the most excellent harmonies.
TEACHING/REFLECTION
The growing up years of Jeannette Walls included one transition after another after another. She tells of her life with a colorful artist mother and brilliant but alcoholic father in her best-selling memoir, The Glass Castle. From living in a trailer park in southern Arizona, to nights under the stars in the family's old Plymouth, the Blue Goose, to shacks in mining towns from Arizona to Nevada to California, her future was always uncertain. She and her brother and sister were never sure what gambling debt or financial bind of their father's would lead them late at night to pack quickly and get out of town. They struggled with school transitions since they rarely carried records with them when loading the car for what their father called “doing the skedaddle.” Finally, in her early teen years, they found themselves living in her grandparent's coal town of Welsh, West Virginia. It was there, in the seventh grade when she searched for a place where she could feel she belonged and found the school newspaper and its faculty advisor, Miss Bivens. Not only was the newsroom warm and dry, unlike her home, but it had an organized, purposeful atmosphere. As she learned about the news business, the work and the content, she felt like she was “being handed the missing pieces to the puzzle, and the world began to make a little more sense.”1 More importantly, Miss Bivens recognized talents in Jeannette that she didn't know she had, encouraged her and opened a door for Jeannette that eventually led her to Barnard College and to become a columnist for CNN, MSNBC and a full-time published writer. Before that could happen, though, she had to transition away from home. During her junior year in Welch High School, she made plans to join her older sister in New York City. As soon as school was out in June, she packed her bag to leave by bus early the next morning. Her father, who in his own way loved her very much, walked to the station with her. He called her by his pet name, “Mountain Goat, life in New York may not be as easy as you think it's going to be.” “I can handle it,” she told him. “If things don't work out, you can always come home,” he said. “I'll be here for you. You know that, don't you?” She knew in his way he would but she also knew she would never be coming back.2
Life is full of transitions whether our childhood is complicated and confusing or simple and happy. Some changes we welcome and others we try to avoid, some we have a hand in and others are out of our control. One thing we can manage is the way we respond to those changes…but that is not always easy. Are you the type of person who welcomes change jumps in with both feet and runs with it or do you feel more comfortable putting on the breaks moving slowly and are more secure keeping things the way they are?
Today we honor Westminster's High School graduates. They are very different today than four years ago when they entered their school for the first time and searched nervously for the classrooms on their ninth grade schedule. My guess is that they wouldn't now want to go back to being freshmen again and the youngest in their schools. Not only have they changed in many ways in the past four years but their world and our world has changed in ways that impact all of us. Just to mention a few, first, we celebrate new advances in stem cell research and its ability to stop disease or heal in so many areas. Second, regardless of our political parties those of us who were alive in the 1960s, felt pride that our nation had moved a giant step forward in breaking down barriers by electing a bi-racial president. Third, social networking has exploded leaving many of us dizzy – smart phones, iphones, ipads, facebook, twitter, texting – but our graduates know all about it and will participate in and maybe even help develop the changes that will come in the next four years. There are also changes that worry us leaving many of us feeling uncertain about the future and unsure of how to respond. The recent recession and mortgage market crisis caused us to hold our breath, review our investments, question our life-styles, and hopefully reach out to those who needed a hand held or a hand up. A few wise ones anticipated this financial crisis but most of us did not and are still hoping for the employment figures and the stock market to rebound. During the last four years scientists have made new discoveries about the accelerated environmental changes in our world that are impacted by the way we live. The events of the past 50 days in the Gulf of Mexico have left us vacillating between anger and tears. So the world in which we all live is not the same as it was four years ago. In what ways has your own life changed since 2006? How have you reacted to transitions that you could control and those you could not control? Is there advice that you would give to our graduates as they move into adulthood?
Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness says that it is not actually the prospect of a more modest future than the one we have now (less money, less vacation, less good health) that makes us unhappy. It is an uncertain future that worries us. So how do we handle those unexpected changes and transitions in our lives whether we are recent high school grads or celebrating our fiftieth reunion? Those wise old sages in the wisdom literature of Proverbs had plenty to say. “Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don't try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go…Don't assume that you know it all. Hold on to Love and Loyalty; carve their initials on your heart. Honor God with everything you own. Give God the first and the best.” The writer was encouraging the Israelites and us today to relax into God, to trust in the divine promises in knowledge that you gain not just from books but from life experiences and observations of creation. The people in the early church in Philippi must have had similar uncertainties as Paul picked up on the theme. “Celebrate God. Stay alert but not anxious. Let your needs and praises shape your worries into prayers. Let God know your concerns. God's wholeness and peace will come and settle you down. Christ will displace the worry at the center of your life. Do all this and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into the most excellent harmonies.” Uncertainty makes us nervous but these Biblical writers advise, “Don't be victims of it. Use it to create beautiful life music! Improvise your way to new solutions.” The jazz musician Charlie Parker put it this way, “Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget all that…and just play!” Be you!
Our world needs people of all ages who can trust into God, not be frozen by uncertainty but approach the transitions ahead of us with a burst of new life improvising solutions in new ways. And, don't forget, harmonies are not Johnny one-note – “to work you into excellent harmonies” means sharing the load, working with others.
Our high school graduates have been readying themselves for changes in their own lives and changes in our world by preparing and serving hot meals at Glide Memorial Church and at the Westminster Winter Shelter - not only serving but also listening and talking with those who are served, learning about the causes of homelessness and thinking about solutions. They have worked as a team in Tijuana, New Orleans, inner city Chicago and downtown Los Angeles helping children read and sing and adults muck out, build and repair homes. They have learned about Coast Guard helicopter rescue operations during Hurricane Katrina and personal experiences from victims of the storm and levee break. They have had opportunities in high school through the church, the schools, their teams, music and extra programs that have helped them begin to know themselves, their talents and their passions as they prepare for the next transition in their lives. And they have plans….to get broad educations, to learn more about music, drama, dancing, singing, to study business and medicine, serve the community by being a lawyer, a nurse practitioner in a neo-natal unit or a psychiatrist developing a residential treatment program. A Harvard Medical School professor has said that medicine is fundamentally uncertain and demands creative choices and informed innovation. He advises that those who go into medicine or public health be “positive deviants,” be people who ask “unscripted questions” and embrace change.
That is our hope for our all the high school graduates today. As they transition into the next phase of their lives, whatever that may be, that they celebrate uncertainty as a chance for new discoveries, they ask “unscripted questions” and embrace change all the while trusting God from the bottom of their hearts to be walking with them, encouraging them to use all the intelligence, talent and experience that they have been given to care for others and improvise solutions to issues that will be part of our world tomorrow. As Jeannette Walls did when she left Welch, West Virginia and as Confucius said, “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
Walls, Jeannette, The Glass Castle: A Memoir, page 205
Walls, page 240
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