Sermon - 2013-05-12

I did not actually preach this sermon today but instead shared what was on my mind. 

“16One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 17While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” 18She kept doing this for many days.”  Did you hear it? Did you hear the reason why Paul cast the spirit out of the slave girl?  Paul was very much annoyed with her. Yet she was speaking the truth, she was announcing something that everyone around Paul and Silas should hear.  Yet it was annoying. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do that, to solve your problems and find the solution so easily as simply telling someone to be quiet. Wouldn’t it be nice to able to know that everything in your life that clear.  I am amazed sometimes, that we forget the basics.

I was talking with one of my friends who felt like something was missing.  He was having a great time living life in a new place, he is an engineer and making a lot of money in the process. He enjoyed getting a new apartment that cost about $5000 a month in rent, he got a new BMW to drive around in and his new girlfriend was a model.  He is also slowly making a name for himself in the Ultimate Fighting Clubs within Los Angeles. He thought he had it all and in many regards, we would say that he did. He had the life that many have been striving for, that makes us the envy of other nations.  However, he felt like something was missing.  He thought it was his family.  He left them all back home and really had no family close to him.  With so many changes in his life, he thought it could be anything.  

He felt disconnected from the life that he had been given.  He enjoyed what he was doing, but still something was not right.  As he and I were talking, he said that he thought it was church.  He grew up going to church every so often. So a friend of his invited him and he went to one of those really “hip and stylish” (his words not mine) churches where there was a band, a coffee shop, and even a bookstore in the church. The people were nice, but no one really seemed to care about one another or for that matter Jesus was not really a focus.  He walked away from that church with the message that the church was doing some great services in the community, and people should sign up to be involved with that. Each person was changing this community for the better. He left kind of in shock.  There was no mention of God, Jesus or anything that he thought was important to his faith.

He entered into a Catholic church and it was like something clicked.  He felt like he was a part of the community, like he was with people who actually cared about him and what he was doing with God.  They invited him to be a part of some of the ministries that were going on.  He loved it, but it was not everything he was looking for.  He did not like the Catholic understanding of everything.  It didn’t agree with what he totally believed. He didn’t go back, he still wanted to find just the right place. Weeks went by and we still talked.  He went to church after church, nothing seemed right.  He joked around with me that there was a man with a bull horn who had pamphlets and was shouting that if we did not change our ways, we would end up in hell, suffering for all eternity for the life that we lived here. I asked him why it was funny? He said there were tons of people walking by who he was shouting out at but no one was listening.  

I pointed out, you did.  You noticed him.  You heard his message and even remembered it.  The man was just like John the Baptist, preparing the way for the Lord.  My friend shot back, but John the Baptist had people stop and listen and even get Baptized.  This guy had none of that. I told him to stop and find out more about the man behind the bull horn. Why did he do it? Why was this so important to him?  

He did. Talking to the man, he heard the story of how he grew up in a Christian home, where they were very wealthy but then one day was invited by a friend of his from work to this church.  That invitation changed him.  Here at the church, he encountered God who breathed a new life into him. He saw all the sin that was within his life, how the money that he had strived for was actually separating him from God.  He stands here to bring others to the church to have the same experience.  My friend asked him, so how long have you been doing this and how many people have stopped to talk to you?  He had been doing it for 4 years, given thousands of pamphlets and had 15 people stop and talk to him.  Though most did not want to listen, but only wanted to argue.  

After a few days, he told me about his conversation.  He picked up the material, had gone on websites about what it was this church believed but thought it was all just a bad joke.  Verses from all over the place trying to scare and bring people into their church and understanding.  As my friend and I talked, he asked me why I became a Pastor. I laughed and said to him because I wanted to do the same thing, but in better way.  Yelling at people and telling them that they are wrong is not the way to do things.  It is not the way God does things, and so we should follow that.  God does the work for us, purely out of love, God gathers us into places, into churches where we feel love, community and truly feel God there.  Here God enters into our lives so that we are changed by the love that has been given to us through Jesus Christ, the gift given to us by God.

My friend attends a Catholic church and has even brought his girlfriend there.  He goes there because he cares about the people, loves the messages and truly feels a connection with God in the traditions.  As we talked, I reminded him that the man that he encountered has found the same thing only the community, message, and place were different.  Yet the gift of Jesus Christ was the same.  My friend and I still talk, we have some great conversations about differences between Catholics and Lutherans.  He does not believe everything about the Catholic Church’s teachings.  That doesn’t stop him from being a good Catholic.

What if we did that everyday? What if we did that with our lives? Putting everything and trusting God to take care of things. What if we took a moment to examine and enjoy our lives?  To find out what in our schedules we could remove. (Helpful hint, church is not one of the things you should remove) (joke)  We run from place to place seeking friends, relationships, connections and meaning for our life, but we are rushing through this so much that we do not enjoy life. Since we are in the time of spring and enjoying the new life that is growing around. Now is the perfect time for all of us to examine and enjoy our lives by finding out what truly matters, what gifts we truly have and more importantly who we should be welcoming to join us on that journey of life. Amen.