Legacy Left Behind

1 Samuel 3:1-10

John 1:43-51

Feel free to reference the links above. The message has little to do with the Scripture passages, they simply exemplify God's calling.

All of us seek purpose, meaning, significance for our lives. We all would like to leave something behind after we’re gone. Something unavoidable that we hope everybody in the world will recognize we accomplished in our short time on this earth. For some the building of that legacy may occur through writing a book, for others achieving the status of Dr., for others many years of faithful service to a prestigious organization, for others discovering something grand that will help the people of the world, and for still others perhaps by having children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. Whatever it happens to be, all of us in some way would enjoy it if future generations would look at our accomplishments and be impressed.

One problem many of us have is getting started. I mean, what field could I really leave my mark in? Well, I can’t make it as a professional athlete and I’m not good enough at science things to cure any diseases, hmmph. Where to even begin? Many of us start on one path and end up on multiple others before we find one that we can excel at and feel comfortable in and good about.

As I looked at the readings posted above, I saw people being called away from their lives to a new life, dedicated to serving the Lord and following Jesus. Perhaps a similar change has happened in your life?

While I’m not old enough to worry about not leaving a legacy behind quite yet, I think it is similar to the teenage angst of thinking I am never going to amount to anything.

I am well versed enough in television to see both of these as major concerns to many people. Can’t you just hear a high-schooler almost yelling I’m never going to amount to anything? Perhaps you’ve heard it from your kids, or perhaps you’ve yelled it yourself. This is a recurring theme on my newest craze of a TV show Lost. Indeed I could probably find a moment where every single character truly wondered if they would ever amount to anything great.

Perhaps some of you are sitting there saying, well, I achieved something great, I’ve left a decent legacy, so then another question becomes what do I do after I’ve achieved that great thing, after I’ve left my legacy. Do I promote the great thing? Do I try to do something even greater? Do I sit back, relax and revel in my accomplishment?

Well, for an example of this, we’ll have to look to another TV show of a different genre than Lost, my all-time favorite show, Seinfeld. This episode is called: the Frogger. In it, George (the stocky balding man with a temper) rediscovers his one truly great accomplishment, a high score on the arcade game Frogger from his old high-school hang out spot. Upon realizing that this record has stood for better than 20 years, and knowing that the place where it sits will soon be shut down, George decides his legacy must live on. He decides to buy the Frogger machine and keep it for himself. He soon realizes (thanks to Jerry) that he won’t be able to simply take it home, once he unplugs the machine, the scores will all be lost and his legacy deleted. So George comes up with this crazy ingenious plan to move the Frogger machine without losing power. And that’s where we begin the clip.

Seinfeld Season 9 - The Frogger 18:45-20:32

Despite all of George’s plans things go wrong, the battery is dying. But he sees the road and the machine and realizes that his entire life has been leading to this one moment. He was born to do this. He had been called to do it. And he fails. His Frogger machine, his pride, and his legacy are all destroyed by that truck and George is left with nothing.

Have you ever felt that way about something you felt called to do? Like it had been destroyed? Perhaps its destruction was a good thing.

It reminds me how the disciples must have felt after Jesus death, before his resurrection. They go back to fishing, what they knew before. Their legacy with Christ, they’re great thing gone. Their leader crucified. They’re left with nothing. But Jesus, unlike George’s Frogger machine isn’t destroyed. Death could not hold our Savior. He rose to life again. And His legacy lives on unto eternity. Amen.

No Soup For You!

Reference: Romans 11:1-32

Today we’re going to focus on the first few words from Romans 11 “I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means!”

The word reject struck me as the most intense and vigorous word in this reading, I will be hovering around that word quite a bit.

In Greek it is Aposato – to thrust away, to push back, to push off, to reject.

Reference the Greek

When the question comes “did God reject his people?” It seems there is an understanding there that perhaps he should have, but he didn’t. Perhaps rejection was deserved, but it didn’t come. While at the same time, the emphatic “By no means” stands to say, are you crazy? God is God, he is not a God of rejection. He is a God who welcomes, a God who accepts, a God who pardons.

Rejection, as I see it, is something that we tend to fear from our fellow human beings. We fear that our applications to grad school or a new job will be rejected. We fear that a paper we’ve written will be rejected and given back to us for more work. We fear our spouses and significant others will reject us for our callous, selfish behavior.

Anyone who has ever played basketball or volleyball can tell that being blocked or “rejected” is one of the worst feelings in any sport. It is being denied something that you thought was a sure bet. Something you were confident in, something perhaps that had worked before, but now has failed utterly and completely. Rejection is active. A person needs to go out of their way to reject something. A center in basketball in order to reject another player, must make great effort and have precise timing to successfully reject an opposing player.

However, very often we tend not to so much fear of God rejecting us, rather we fear the possibility of him forsaking us. We know we’re not capable of making it on our own and we need God, that is why it is so comforting that he tells us that he will never leave us, nor forsake us.

Forsaking something is passive. All one has to do is nothing. When aid is asked for it is not given. It is turning away from someone when they are most in need of help.

The text today deals with rejection, not forsaking, so for an example of Rejection today, we turn to a man who is known throughout the world as a rejecter. A man who can refuse any one at any time for any reason he chooses. Of course I’m talking about the Soup Nazi.

Clip…

3:27-4:19 – George and Jerry
7:43-8:50 – George and Elaine

The Soup Nazi accepts and rejects his customers based on how well they follow his ordering procedure. When you walk in, move immediately to the right, step to the counter, state the soup you want loudly and clearly, put the money on the counter, move to the left, receive, leave, no compliments, no questions, no other words.

Sound like God’s Law to anyone else? A set of rules that you must follow perfectly to attain your goal. In the case of the Soup Nazi, this is a mulligatawny, crab bisque or jambalaya, in the case of God it is heaven. Somehow people managed to actually get soup from time to time from the Soup Nazi. In the case of God’s Law, none of us are so fortunate and how terrifying when the stakes are so much higher than soup, even if it is the best soup in the world. We fail on a daily basis to keep God’s Law and deserve to be rejected by him for such errors, but God sends his only Son Jesus Christ into the world, to keep that Law that we so miserably fail to keep. Moreover, Jesus Christ offers himself up to be rejected by us undeservedly forsaken in our place, as he cries out to his Father from the cross, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

The people of earth rejected Jesus. We did not believe he was God and actively rejected him so aggressively that we killed him. And God stood by doing nothing to stop us from rejecting Jesus and he forsook his only Son.
How tragic that they only person of earth who deserved to be accepted by humankind was rejected and the same person, being the only one who deserved to be saved from death by God is the only one truly forsaken.

Indeed since Christ was forsaken by God, we no longer are under that sentence of being forsaken. Christ took that punishment of being forsaken away from us, on the cross and now when we face death, we know that it is not a permanent death, but rather a death that leads to the resurrection through our Savior Jesus.

But I Don't Want To...

Delivered May 30, 2008

Reference Jonah 1

Jonah isn’t exactly anybody’s favorite Bible story character is he? Well maybe for the humor involved, but in all reality, isn’t Jonah just a whiney little brat. God tells him to go to Nineveh, he says no and runs in the other direction. He’s swallowed by a great fish, he’s spit out onto the shore. He finally does what God tells him to and then he gets mad at God for not smiting the Ninevites and wants to die. He’s just a bit over dramatic don’t you think.

For a humorous parallel illustration of Jonah, watch Seinfeld, season 5 episode 3 - The Puffy Shirt.

Watch from 10:11-11:46

So Kramer’s girlfriend is what Seinfeld coins as a low-talker. Somebody that talks at such a low volume that you can’t hear what he or she is saying.
In Jerry’s interest at being pleasant and agreeable, he nods and says sure to whatever the low-talker “says” and He ignorantly agrees to wear the puffy shirt on national TV, which I believe was the first artifact from a television show to be showcased in the Smithsonian institute.
The puffy shirt, the ridiculous ruffled, frilled up, pirate shirt. And in Jerry’s hope to escape, knowing that he’ll be heckled endlessly for wearing this shirt, and being the “First pirate” he utters in desperation, but I don’t want to be a pirate.

Amazingly it would seem that Jerry appears better than Jonah in his actions. Jonah hears the Lord loud and clear and runs the other direction in effect saying, much like Jerry, “But I don’t want to go to Nineveh” while Jerry, doesn’t hear a word the low-talker says, agrees to something not so pleasant and goes through with it.

But this attitude of whining, complaining at what they are supposed to do is very much an underlying theme and problem for many of us today.

I believe a growing attitude in America has become, “I’m only going to do what I want to do.” People don’t want to be encumbered by anything other than their own personal agendas and I would count myself among that crowd. I don’t want to help you with your snow shoveling, I have 9 seasons of Seinfeld to watch, why would I help you?

No matter what we want to do or don’t want to do, Christ does what is right in the lives of his people, regardless of our complaining and whining.

And the Lord is impossible to run from. Which Jonah found out the hard way. What I take away from Jonah’s story is that God will put you where he wants you on this earth, whether you like it or not. You can resist, but to what point and to what end? Resisting God’s will got Jonah swallowed by a great fish. And we know from Scripture that resisting the Holy Spirit can be detrimental to our eternal salvation.

Perhaps the word of the lord doesn’t come as clearly to any of us as it did to Jonah, and then again perhaps it does. But it is comforting on some level to know that while the word of the lord may come and we may not hear it clearly, the Lord doesn’t stop speaking. He is ever persistent with his word. As Christ says in Matthew, Mark, and Luke “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

So it is good to know that while we may miss God’s words from time to time, they will always remain, just as he promises to always remain with us, Amen.

From the Pot Hole

The example comes from my favorite TV show in the world, Seinfeld.
I’m certain you can watch Seinfeld re-runs multiple times throughout the day. I own the DVDs, so I just watch them whenever I want.
Before you watch the clip however, please look at a couple passages from Scripture.

Reference: Psalm 40:1-11
The psalmist depicts how we were in a pit of destruction and how the Lord heard our cries from the pit and rescued us from out of the pit. Keep that in mind, in particular.

Reference: John 12:27-36
From this keep in mind what Jesus says about being lifted up from the earth, and drawing all people to himself.

Now to the clip, you are about to see a series of four clips, you’ll see George Costanza who has lost his keys. On his key chain he has a toy that when you squeeze it, comes the voice of famous New York Yankee announcer Phil Rizooto saying “Holy cow!” George is tracing his steps trying to figure out how he lost his keys and where they might be. You’ll see him trying to get help to get them out, and you’ll see him drilling to get them, and succeeding in getting them, well, sort of. Let’s watch.

Watch Clip (A link to the clips or simply where you can watch them will soon be available.)

Now, let us paint the metaphor. In Psalm 40, we hear that we are or we were in the pit of destruction. In other words, we’re in a pot hole that was sealed up and now we’re stuck.
God hears our cries from the pit and he hears them from the pot hole, much like George heard his key ring chiming “Holy Cow” every time a car runs over the pot hole, so also does God hear us as we cry out in need of help. He knows we’re stuck in the pot hole and he wants to get us out, and he knows how to get us out. He knows how to help us.

And how does he do that? Our heavenly Father sends Christ to bring us out of the pot hole, and how does Christ succeed, by going into the pot hole with us. This pot hole represents our own sin and our own death that is a result of our sin. Christ comes into the world, into our pothole and takes on all of our sin, and through the cross, takes on our death as well.

And then what happens? George comes along with a jackhammer to get his keys out of the pit. To rescue them out of the pothole.
George Costanza is like the Father in this instance, and yes, it happens more than you might ever dream.
George jackhammers down to get his keys out of the pot hole. In the same way, the Father, bursts open the tomb and Christ walks out resurrected, after being in the pot hole with us.
When Christ is lifted up on the cross, we are lifted up with him out of the pit.
When Christ bursts from the tomb, we burst out from our own tombs of death with him.
Because Christ laid down his life, we are lifted up with him.
And now what happens since Christ was lifted up on the cross and then lifted out of the empty tomb. What does the text say, John 12:32 “And I, When I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself” And that’s exactly what Jesus does in his death and resurrection. Christ draws all people to himself and he says come with me into heaven.

George probably drew quite a crowd himself while bursting that water line, but the power of the resurrection is able to draw more than just an angry mob from a New York City street. It is able to draw all people from all ends of the earth, both living and dead, both slave and free, both men and women, both young and old. All people are drawn to Christ and are given the power to come with him as his children and be raised from the dead and spend eternity with their eternal Father in heaven. Amen.

Delivered September 14, 2007