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Listen
to the Good News. It's from the Book of Ephesians this morning,
Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. This is a favorite
church of Paul. Paul loves this church. I love this
church. This is what Paul says.
"I've
heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards
all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give
thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may
give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to
know him so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened
you may know the hope to which he has called you which are
the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints
and what is the immeasureable greatness of his power for
us who believe."
When you
pray for First United Methodist Church of Birmingham, what
do you pray for? When you think of this church and the people
in it, what she is today, what she's been in the past, what
she's called to be in the future, what do you pray for? My
hope would be that as we pray for each other and for this
church we would frame our prayers in terms of faith. Not to
put aside everything else, but simply to put faith at the
very top of the list of that which we want to be and become.
Did you hear what Paul called the church at Epehesus? A people
of faith. Oh, we can have lots of wonderful things in this
church that we'll be noticed for. Just think of the things
that you know we are noticed for in this community. You can't
drive down Maple Road and not notice this gorgeous building.
You can't come into this beautiful sanctuary and not have
a sense of reverence and spirituality. We can be known for
the wonderful music program like the music that we just had
this morning, that doesn't just add to our worship, it literally
enhances it. We can be known for a top-notch tremendous staff
that I can tell you are just marvelous people to work with.
We can be known for our mission program. We can go on and
on. But if we aren't known for our faith, we'll never be a
great church. And why? Why would we want to be anything less
than a great church? So I ask you again. What do you pray
for when you pray for First Birmingham?
Paul said
to that church he loved, "I have heard of your faith
in Jesus and love for all the saints." Is that what people
know about us? About First Birmingham? It's a tricky business
this being faithful. It's not as easy as it might seem on
the surface because faith goes so much deeper than the surface.
It has to do with things of the heart and not things you can
see on the outside. It's mysterious, isn't it? It's mysterious
because you can't fully articulate it. And some of us are
so much more comfortable when things are fully articulated.
How is it that we want to know everything exactly as it's
going to be. Who can explain some things? Who can explain
red balloons and a tent on the lawn? Who can explain a pig
roasting on a spit or some people sweltering in the heat sleeping
on the floor of a little church in an Indian village in Costa
Rica? Who can explain ice cream and banjoes on the lawn or
sweat and grime on bodies as we're working in a forgotten
church in a desperate part of our city? We can't explain everything
can we? You can't explain what happens in the heart except
you know what happens in the heart. What Paul says
to the church at Ephesus is about the heart and not about
what you can see. It's about the unseen and if you're one
of those who's very confused about the difference between
the seen and the unseen, then you're going to struggle with
all that I have to say this morning. But if you somehow comprehend
and allow the spirit to dwell within your heart inside and
outside, then marvelous things begin to happen and your life
changes. Nobody has to tell you, "Oh you have the heart
of that piece of music," or "you have the heart
of that school child whose never been able to do math,"
or "you have the heart of those forgotten people down
in the Cass corridor." How do you explain it?
Paul says,
"I want you to have the spirit of wisdom and revelation
as you come to know him, that with the eyes of your heart
enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which you've
been called and what are the riches of God's glorious inheritance
among the saints and what is the immeasureable greatness of
God's power to us to believe." Paul says it right there.
If you have faith, this is what you get. If you believe. How
do you measure that up? Joan Benner can't put it on a ledger
sheet and come up with a column with a number at the bottom
that counts. Oh, I know it's important to be able to number
some things. I know people like to know you have money in
the bank. Businesses like to know that. If you ever want to
know if you're really loved or not, just try to miss a few
car payments and see what happens. Some things you can't measure
like that. With the eyes of the heart. How in this
place do we have any sense of vision of who we are, of who
God's calling us to be without looking through the eyes of
our heart?
What does
it mean? My eye doctor, Scott Wilkinson, will be sitting in
this sanctuary in the next service. Would I say, "Scott,
does that mean there's some kind of glasses you put on your
heart that somehow you transpose the wonder of being able
to see with your eyes down to your heart?" No, it's very
different. Seeing with the eyes of the heart, well it's seeing
with your eyes closed. It's not about things you can see.
Kisses are better with the eyes closed. Have you noticed this?
Trust me. I'm a real expert right now. I've been doing a lot
of it. It's much better with your eyes closed. Some things
are better that way. So if you're in a restaurant and you
see some people kissing with their eyes open, you feel free
to just go up, tap them on the shoulder, and say, "What
are you doing?" Kisses aren't what they used to be. I
look around, people are in to pecking. Real kisses are something
different.
But don't
you see, Paul says, "I pray that God may give you a spirit
of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him." It
presupposes that you have a relationship with God and, in
this case, with Jesus Christ, that somehow as you get to know
God and Jesus things are revealed to you that you haven't
known before. Not all at once. What could you do with that?
But gradually God reveals things to you and then your heart
is in God's care. And with your heart enlightened, then you
know what is your hope and your riches and your power. Those
aren't things that are easy to define. In my experiences the
people who try to hold on to things like hope and riches and
power, well they find them pretty slippery. But, if you give
your heart to God and you are in God's grace, Paul says, "This
is yours. It's all yours."
Is that
what you pray for when you pray for the people around you
and this church? How do you see with the eyes of your heart?
How does it happen? How do we culitvate that side of ourselves
so that we are known indeed for the faith of this place and
not for all alone all those wonderful things. You see, most
of the time in the church I think we stop right here in the
scripture. We announce, "OK if you have faith, this is
what you get." It's the benefit column. Forgive me if
you're in the insurance business, but it seems to me we act
sometimes a little bit too much like that's what business
we're in. These are the benefits. These are the benefits and
we can announce them, but does that help people to get them
if we stop right there? I don't think so. I think there'e
a little bit more we need to say. The "how" that
we get those. The benefits are hope and power and riches.
Paul's real clear on that. How do we get them? How do we claim
them for this church so we're a great church? So we're a people
of faith whose hearts have been so transformed that life is
just different? Isn't it what you want? Why would we want
anything else? It's not very hard to look at, but maybe we
can unravel it a little bit together. You see, one of the
first things you do with your heart is you just open it. You
open it. Open the eyes of your heart, don't close them.
Madonna,
bless her heart, finally has a song with some meaning to it.
Now it's much better if you listen to it on the radio and
don't look at her singing because if you look at her you get
all convoluted with asking, "Why are you dressed like
that, or why are you undressed like that?" But her song
is right. Her song is exactly what I'm talking about, and
you're singing it in your head. The lyrics of her song go,
"You're frozen if your heart's not open." She's
right. If the eyes of your heart are closed, you're frozen.
You can't be open to see the possibilities that God has in
the world to offer us. And if we're called to be Christians
in this world, and I think we are, and don't take that for
granted because there are a lot of people who would rather
be Christians in some other universe, but if we're called
to be Christians in this world, we need to open the eyes of
our heart to see God's truth and God's love and we do that
when we walk by faith and not just by sight. If we simply
trust each other and this place and those who would lead it
and we walk, not by having every answer but by taking a lot
of risks, we find out all the possibilities that are out there
for us. But you have to trust each other. You've got to trust
each other in what's in each other's heart. To not know each
other's heart is to not know God. You know we need to be more
like the Hindus who bow before anyone they see to the possibility
of God within that person. And we say in honor and respect
to one another, "God is in me, but God is also in you
as well." We trust the God within us and we trust each
other and that makes us a great church and we walk along by
that faith and not by what we know in fact and see.
You want
an example of walking in faith? Have you read the little book,
"The Gypsy Moth"? It's a fascinating little book.
It's the autobiography of Sir Francis Chichester. He was a
really adventuresome kind of a spirit of a man, and he decided
he wanted to do something no one else had ever done so he
decided he'd be the first one to fly the Atlantic in a little
plane. Well then Charles Lindbergh beat him to that so he
started looking around the world for a new challenge. He looked
to an area of the world that was so rocked by storms with
a body of water that had never been crossed before, the Tasmanian
Sea. He said, "I'm going to do that. I'm going to cross
the Tasmanian Sea in a little airplane. Everyone said, "You
can't do it." No one's ever come out on the other side.
And he said, "I will do it." And so he set off.
He set off in a little airplane that was pretty primitive.
He only had two things in the airplane, it didn't even have
a wheel, it had a stick back then. He had that stick to guide
the airplane, the rudder of the plane, and then he had a sexton,
not even a compass, he had a sexton. You know what that is.
You position with the stars of the universe, all the other
planet bodies and you know your direction by that. And he
set off. He set off on a clear, beautiful day. Off he goes
into the wild blue yonder in this little plane. Only the clouds
came in and it began to get very rough and stormy and he was
in total darkness. And if you've been in a little plane, not
just a jetliner, where you're seeing that darkness all around
you, it's a scary, scary proposition. He does a marvelous
job of telling the terror of living in that and I found myself
reading it saying, "Oh, my gosh, he's not going to make
it." And then I realized the book is an autobiography
so he had to make it. But he tells his own story and says
this is how I did it. He said, "I'd fly along in the
darkness and the blackness of those clouds around me and then
I'd see a little hole in the clouds and a little bit of blue.
I'd fly straight for that. I'd break out of the clouds and
there I'd find the other planets. I would use my sexton, I'd
take my bearings and having set my course I'd fly right back
into the storm." And he did that over and over again
until he successfully came out where he wanted to be. Isn't
it a great illustration? We do that. We set our course clearly
and then we fly, not by sight, but by faith and it's what
being a part of this church body is all about.
You want
another illustration of moving by faith and not by sight?
It comes when you see a church take on a tremendous challenge
like something called 3001 by 2001. Can you take all that
in? All that it might mean for us? I'm not sure I can. There
are people who are working hard on what that may mean for
us in the future and what it even means for who we are today.
And we're going to have to trust that knowing there's a larger
vision of what God is calling this great church to be in the
future. But it's a lot of walking by faith and not by sight.
There are a lot of things we can't know about that. There
are men and women in this church who are working with a sense
of vision. This isn't just about 150 new members in a couple
of years. That's not what it's about. It's about a much larger
vision of who we can be. Do you have to be scared of that?
No. Challenged by it? I hope so. But you want something concrete?
You want a concrete thing that you can see? Yesterday, I was
in a store and my sermon was going on in my mind as it usually
does on a Saturday when I'm preaching the next day and I saw
something and it just clicked. I thought, "That's it.
That's it. That's a concrete visual symbol of what I want
to talk about tomorrow," so I went up to the salesperson
and I said, "I'd like that." And the salesperson
looked at me and he said, "Well, this is a little big
for you." And I said, "Oh, I have a brother who's
really big. That's why I want it." And so I bought it.
I bought these size 18 Nike shoes for my brother, Bill Ritter.
Don't you see? It takes giant leaps of faith to do the kinds
of things we're doing as a church. And we have someone in
leadership here who you can trust. And a lot of other people
you can trust too. But it takes feet that big. Now in that
store they actually had a size 32 pair up on the display.
It's the size that Shaq O'Neal wears but they wouldn't sell
me those. You want something visual? This is what it takes.
This big leap, and it's what's going on in the life of this
church right now.
Seeing
with the eyes of your heart is a risky business. It's like
the man who wrote his own story this way. "Today I had
a near death experience that changed me forever. It all started
when I went horseback riding. Everything was fine when the
horse started bouncing out of control and my cries of 'Whoa'
and pulling back on the reigns went unheeded. I tried with
all my might to hold on, but I was thrown off and just when
I thought things couldn't get any worse my foot got caught
in the stirrup as I was being thrown causing me to fall head
first onto the ground. Unable to free myself, my head bounced
harder and harder as the horse didn't stop or even slow down,
and just as I was about to lose consciousness and give up
all hope, the Wal-Mart manager came and unplugged it."
We live like that, some of us. We live like that because we
forget to open the eyes of our hearts and see a much, much
bigger picture. How is it that as we open our eyes wide, there's
some kind of marvelous wonder that we will see what God is
calling us to be and to do individually and as a church. You
need to open your eyes. See the possibilities and walk by
faith right into the future. And then you need to educate
your eyes after you've opened them. You see, education is
a life-long process. Why is it that we think we can store
it up, that we can learn everything we need to know through
Sunday school until we're age eleven and then we know it all
for the rest of our lives? Education is a learning process
and so you educate your eyes. Sue Ives does a marvelous job
with Christian education for children in this place. We have
a top-notch program, but I want to ask you, what are you doing
in adult Christian education? What are you doing to continue
to learn? The only way this place is going to be a great church
is to be full of persons who are learning at every stage of
life in our room with the cribs and in our senior adult groups
as well. You see, when Jesus was around he said to the disciples,
"I'm now going to open your mind to the scriptures."
Did you know that in Hebrew mind and soul are the very same
word? It's a life-long process. To educate your soul, to know
what it is. That will be what makes this church great and
then once you've opened your eyes, your heart, you've educated
them, you keep them focused.
Bob Arends
could tell us focus is what the eyes do well. When eyes focus
they become like laser beams. They can cut all the fuzziness.
So if it seems fuzzy out there to you, maybe you just aren't
focused on the kinds of things in your life that you ought
to be focused on. And when I pray I see this church as a congregation
that is so focused that it's like laser beams going out in
all different directions so the power of God's love becomes
available to people who aren't in this place and who will
never be in this place but whose lives are touched by the
faith of this congregation and its witness in the world and
they're touched in Birmingham and in Detroit and in Costa
Rica and all around the world.You see, when you focus, not
just on the past as wonderful as that's been for this church,
but when you focus on the present and the future, you begin
to move towards that future, you envision it and you walk
with faith into it and you see it through.
And now
it's time for me to leave. It's time for me to say good-bye
and to move on to a phase of my life that I didn't dream or
imagine was coming. But one that I clearly feel called to.
Four years ago as Bill said a few moments ago I arrived in
Birmingham with some professional ability but with a whoe
lot of personal heartache that made me really ask, "Can
I even do this job?" And I found myself asking over and
over again, "Why me? Why has this happened to me?"
But good fortune would smile on me again. Friends would smile
at me again. Love would smile at me again. God would smile
at me again. And as with the adversities, I can't explain
the good stuff either. "Why me?" is not only something
we cry in the rain. We cry it in the sun as well. I've been
kissed by sunshine. Do I think I got this far on my own efforts
because I was all that gifted? Because I was all that good?
Because I was all that gorgeous? Maybe I'd better acknowledge
that I got this far and did this much because a whole lot
of wonderful people got in my way. I mean literally got in
my way. Or perhaps it's because they were placed in my way.
I mean, you didn't come here by accident, did you? How is
it that you showed up exactly where I needed you and when
I needed you? When I take the long view of history, I see
my life laced with people who showed up just at the right
time and doors that opened when I didn't have any place to
go. Recognize all those words? The sentiment is mine, but
the words are Bill Ritter's. I sat in that liturgist chair
last Sunday and listened to him preach and those words were
right smack in the middle of his sermon, and I said, "That's
my life. He's just said it. I'm going to say his words again
next week." It fits my life exactly and my life also
fits the words in the little book, "The God of Small
Things." It's on the best-seller list right now. Pick
it up. You'll be fascinated by it. The author, Roy Arundhati,
says of the young girl in the story, "Well, everything
is happening because she hasn't learned to control her hopes
yet." And that's my life too. I haven't learned to control
my hopes yet. But the way I haven't learned to control my
hopes the most is about you. I haven't learned to control
my hopes about you at all. Or my prayers either. Both will
go on forever.
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