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SUNDAY, JUNE 15, 2008

THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Matthew 9:35-10:8 (Checking our connections)

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TODAY’S SERMON THEME:

The people we are connected to in life, quite literally, will help determine where we GO in life. And if we want to go where the Lord wants us to go, we must be connected to HIM -- body, mind, and spirit.

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1. A few years ago, I bumped into a man who spent most of his time riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Now, I once owned a motorcycle -- not a Harley, but a fuel-efficient Kawasaki 400. And I used to ride it to work, 30 years ago, when I worked for the morning newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee. Anyway, I was impressed with this man's bike, and we spent about 30 minutes sharing biker stories. I told him about the time I rode my bike out to Graceland Mansion in Memphis to interview Vernon Presley, father of Elvis Presley, a couple of months after Elvis' death. (Elvis, as you may remember, was a hard-core devotee of motorcycles.) But my new-found friend had the best biker story of all . . . even though I could tell that it was one of those great apocryphal stories (which contain huge amounts of truth wrapped inside a little bit of fiction). He told me about a huge young old biker with a long red beard who was sitting on his Harley in a small town, stopped at a red light. The man's bike as awesome. It was beautiful. It was expensive. And it was built for speed. Suddenly a little old man on a moped pulled up next to him. The old man commented about the giant Harley. He asked the younger guy if he could touch the leather covering the seat, and the young guy said, "OK." So the old guy leaned over, stroked the seat pad, patted the tail light, smiled broadly, and said: "I'll bet this is the fastest bike in town." To which the young biker said, with great eloquence: "Yep." And then the light changed to green. The Harley roared off at full throttle, leaving the little moped in its dust. A hundred yards down the road, the young biker looked in his rear view mirrors. He was SHOCKED TO SEE THAT THE LITTLE OLD MAN ON THE MOPED WAS GAINING ON HIM. Not only that, the little moped suddenly PASSED THE HARLEY doing close to 100 mph. And then the little moped suddenly reversed direction and came BACK at the Harley at 100 mph. The moped passed so fast that the young biker slowed to a stop and pulled over to catch his breath. He had never seen such speed or agility before. Suddenly, though, the moped came speeding up behind the Harley and crashed into it -- knocking both the young guy and the old man solidly to the ground. The young biker ran quickly to check on the old man, who was lying dazed on the ground. "What can I do to help?" the young man asked. To which, the old man said: "You could do me a BIG FAVOR and unhook my suspenders from your Harley!"

2. OK. I will be forever grateful to my biker friend for giving me the main topic for my words this morning. And here it is: The people we are connected to in life, quite literally, will help determine where we GO in life. And if we want to go where the Lord wants us to go, we must be connected to HIM -- body, mind, and spirit.

3. Connections. Who are we connected to in life? One of my heroes growing up was Yogi Berra, the great catcher for the New York Yankees. Yogi had a great career as a player with the Bronx Bombers, but he is even better known today for his skills (or lack of skills) as a motivational speaker. Yogi has constantly shown himself to be a consummate philosopher -- someone who KNOWS HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO STAY CONNECTED TO LIFE. And staying connected to those who can influence your direction in life. Yogi, of course, was the great orator who delivered these priceless lines:

"Always go to other people's funerals. That way, they'll be sure to come to yours."

"You have to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

"Ninety percent (of the game of baseball) is 50 percent mental."

"I knew I was going to take the wrong train this morning, so I left early."

"If you get hurt and miss work it won't hurt to miss work." (His famous commercial for AFLAC insurance.)

In all he does, Yogi reminds us how important it is to stay CONNECTED to the positive forces in life -- to surround ourselves with people who exert positive influences on us. He knows how important it is to stay connected to those who are making a DIFFERENCE in the lives of others.

4. Everywhere Jesus went, he remained CONNECTED to His Father in heaven AND to the people around Him . . . in particular to the outcasts, the forgotten, and the discarded people in society. By His connection to eternity, Jesus was IN THE WORLD but not OF THE WORLD. His communion and fellowship with His Father sustained and empowered His ministry in this world -- and it led Him to such sayings as: "I and the Father are one." "When you have seen me, you have seen my Father." And, "What the Father has declared to me, I have shown to you." And what the Father showed to Jesus was a world that needed His touch.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, for example, we are told that Jesus went to "all the cities," teaching, preaching, and healing. And then, in Matthew 9:36, we are told this: "When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were helpless and harassed, like sheep without a shepherd." And then He reveals this: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." A couple of important points about these verses:

(1) The compassion that Jesus felt for the crowds was no mere human emotion. The Greek word used here -- splagch'nizomai -- literally means to be moved from the very depths of our inner organs, our very being. The Hebrew word that corresponds to that means, literally, "to love from the womb." Jesus is not just moved in His mind, intellectually, by the crowd; he suffers and hurts BODILY WITH THEM. He feels their condition in His very heart of hearts. And He cannot, and will not, stand by idly while the crowds are in such difficult condition.

(2) And what is the condition of the crowds? We are told that they are "helpless and harassed, like sheep without a shepherd." But, again, the Greek word -- eskul'menoi -- means not just that they are troubled, but that they are literally "cast down," "flayed," "skinned alive." The crowds are, to Jesus, precious children who have been horribly, horribly injured -- left alone and abandoned by the world. And it was to such as these, He explains, that He has been sent. And He will not sit quietly by and watch them suffer.

(3) To continue ministering to the "least" of His children, the Lord has called us. It is to them, specifically, that we have been sent. To the poor. The sick. The friendless. The needy. Those on the margins of society. Those who are forgotten by society. Those who are locked away, cast away, sent away, discarded, abandoned. These were the ones whose conditions moved Jesus to the deepest moments of compassion. And these are the ones whose conditions should move us, too. And spur us into action -- action take in the name of the Lord, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

(4) Because of Jesus' intimate connection with eternity -- with His Father in heaven -- we can say that His love for the least of His children is a love that flows from the very heart of heaven. It is the love He has given to us. "As I have loved you, so you MUST love one another," Jesus said (John 13:34), "for it is by the love you have, one for another, that the world will know that you are MY disciples." It is a love we are to share with the world. We are not to hoard it. Or conceal it. Or bargain with it. We are to give it, as it has been freely given to us. We GIVE freely because we have been given, freely.

5. Perhaps the most troubling part of our Gospel lesson this morning, though, is the statement that the "harvest" is plentiful, but that there are not many laborers who are willing to do the work of the Lord. Notice that in our lesson today Jesus calls to Himself His 12 apostles -- and He gives them specific instructions:(1) He gives them complete authority over the unclean spirits (over the evil powers of this world). He gives them the authority, from Him, to cast out all spirits of evil in this world. And, (2) He gives them power and authority, in His Name, to "heal every dis-ease and infirmity." In other words, Jesus sends His followers to do two things: (1) To address and relieve evil among God's children, and (2) to address and relieve the discomfort and suffering among God's children. But to DO THIS WORK, we must be connected to Him, first, and to the people around us . . . especially the least of His children.

6. All of which brings us back to the CONNECTIONS IN OUR LIVES. To do the Lord's work, we must (1) be connected to Him at the deepest level of our being; and we must (2) be connected to those around us who need a special touch from the Lord. These connections do not happen by default -- or by accident. Our connection to the Lord is His gift to us, through Jesus. And the way we reach out to others -- to connect to them -- is our response to His gift.

So . . . the challenge for us today is actually a question:

Right now, right here, where are our suspenders hooked?