New Love,
New Mercy
Because
of the LORD'S great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never
fail.
They are new every morning; great
is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:21-24
Today, we remember those who serve in the armed forces and in particular
those who lost their lives in these conflicts over the years. It is a fitting
way to begin a series on stewardship. Sometimes stewardship means giving everything.
Stewardship really means our response to God for the great love and mercy
which we have received. We in turn offer our lives, remembering that all
we are, all we have, all that we will become are gifts from God. If you are
a plant lover you know that when you bring a plant indoors and put it near
a widow that the stem and the leaves grow toward the light. In a way this
is at the heart of our response to God. Our lives are to grow toward the
light, but unlike a plant which does so automatically, we need to be taught,
and more importantly, shown by example what it means to grow in our love
toward God.
The scripture passage that I am using this morning is from Lamentations
chapter 3. The book of Lamentations is just what it sounds like. It is called
the Lamentations of Jeremiah. It is his book of sorrows reflecting on the
suffering of Judah because of the punishment of God upon them. And it is
his own personal litany of sorrows. God called him to be a prophet to his
people in their most difficult moments. God had Jeremiah tell them things
that no one wanted to hear and then witness their destruction when they rejected
everything he said to them. But Jeremiah shared their destruction. He was
imprisoned by his own people, beaten, left for dead in a pit. He was ridiculed
and made a laughing stock for doing nothing more than being faithful to God.
And in the process, Jeremiah lost everything worldly. God promised to spare
his life, but no more. He lost it all and in the end was taken captive by
refugees fleeing Jerusalem for Egypt, a place he told them not to go. But
through it all he knew he was still in the center of God's love and mercy.
Love and mercy do not mean getting your way, they mean knowing the love of
God in spite of the suffering we have to endure at times.
Hear what Jeremiah says about his situation:
He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver.
I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day
long.
He has filled me with bitter herbs and sated me with gall.
He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.
I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.
So I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.”
I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD'S great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
Stewardship is not about paying back to God a portion of what God has given
to us.
That is mechanical and legalistic. It is a good practice, but that is not
what it means.
It is about the flower that just naturally turns itself toward the source
of its life.
Sometimes that means offering thanks and joy for the bounty that God has
given us.
But sometimes it means offering our thanks and praise to God even while
we see our world crumbling around us.
Offering thanks because we know that in spite of our hardships and sorrows,
God's love and mercy to us are new every morning. Or as the Lord said to Paul
when he prayed about a painful situation in his life: "My grace is sufficient"
And it is.
To know God, to really know God,
is to touch the source of life itself and to know there, and only there, is
there any hope.
When you know that deep down in your bones then you can weather any storm.
In the insert in this morning's bulletin conerns a woman we know only as
Lorie.
She is in ministry and has suffered from mulitple cancers. Eleven in nine
years with all the tests, surgeries and cancer treatments.
Apparently she has almost no lung tissue left and her prognosis is not
good. But hear what she says:
"This is a new call to ministry, even though
it may be that my hospital bed becomes my pulpit. If I have only six months
to live, I will devote it to living my faith and inviting others to share
it. I am fighting a disease. I am not fighting death."
For Lorrie, stewardship means offering what she has--her dying body and
her hospital bed--to God as an offering, not out of despair, but out of faith.
Thanking God for providing for her needs in the midst of disease, she proclaims,
"Great is Thy faithfulness."
In October 2006, in the Amish community near Nickle Mines Pennsylvania,
Charles Roberts, an embittered and warped man entered the school house of
an Amish community with the intent of killing and raping the girls. Two sisters
Marian Fisher, age 13, and her sister Barbie, age 11 asked to be shot first
hoping the younger ones would be spared. Roberts shot them both. Marian died
of her wounds along with four other girls. The community came together and
along with the parents offered forgiveness to Roberts who took his own life
in the schoolhouse.
That is a pretty extreme example of what stewardship means.
One person would look at the brief life of the girl and say, "what a waste".
In on way, of course is was a terrible waste of life.
But was Marian's life wasted?
Thirteen is too young to die, but thirteen year olds and younger, do die.
So what constitutes a life well lived and one that is a waste?
It is hard to imagine the courage that it would take to do what those girls
did, but I suspect that when Marian was welcomed into the presence of Jesus,
the last thing that he would be saying to her is "what a waste".
I suspect that for people who unselfishly give of themselves in stewardship
to God, nothing that is given is ever wasted.
That goes right to the small acts of kindness along with the larger offerings
that really cost us something.
Teaching Sunday School costs you time and energy.
Visiting at a senior's complex costs you gasoline and effort, when it might
be just as nice to stay home and stay warm.
Being a tither costs you something, when you might put the extra cash toward
something that brings you direct material benefit.
Stewardship of a life may a change in attitude about something we wish were
different.
Can we offer our disappointments and feelings of loss to God in faith and
even though we feel the loss, give thanks to God through it.
Is your bedside or kitchen table a pulpit for proclaiming the faithfulness
of God.
Can you say with conviction that his mercies are new every morning?
If not, begin every morning in thanks to God and determine to practice stewardship
with what you have. Not what you don't have.
It's easy for me to say, if I had a million dollars, I would buy a church
for this congregation.
But I don't and God asks me to do what I can with what I do have.
At the end of the road, those who practice good stewardship will indeed
be singing, "Great is thy faithfulness".
Join us. It really is worth it.
Preached November 8, 2009
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Return to Main Sermon Page
Email Harold McNabb