Ebenezer
John
14: 1-14 (NRSV)
‘Do
not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are
many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to
prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be
also. And you know
the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you
are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know
my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’
Philip
said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been
with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen
me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am
in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not
speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the
Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of
the works themselves. Very
truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do
and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the
Father. I will do
whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me
for anything, I will do it.
About six months ago I had
the very great privilege of hearing our Bishop, the Rev. Mark Webb, preach at
my alma mater, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. He’s an amazing
preacher. At the beginning of his sermon, he shared with us a story that’s been
making its way around the internet for a while now. I wanted to share this same
story with all of you, because the point of it is something we all need to hear
every once in a while:
A professor was leading a
business class at a college. One day, at the beginning of his lecture, he took
out a big jar, and placed it on the table in front of him. He then took out a
bag of fist-sized rocks, and his class watched him as he placed these big
rocks, one by one, into the jar until they reached the top.
He then spoke to his class
and asked them, “Is this jar full now?” They all agreed it was.
“No, it isn’t!” he said to
his very confused students. He then took out a bag of gravel, and started
pouring that into the jar, shaking it until the gravel was filling in all the
spaces between the big rocks.
He asked his class again,
“Is this jar full now?” With a bit of reservation, most of his students
replied, “Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t!” he said, and then he took out a bag of sand.
He poured the sand into the jar, until it filled in all the spaces between the
gravel and the big rocks, and reached the top of the jar.
He asked his class a third
time, “Is this jar full now?” By this point his students were on to him, and
said “Probably not.”
“No, it isn’t!” the
professor said. Then he took out a bucket of water, and poured it into the jar
until it filled in all the spaces between the big rocks, the gravel, and the
sand, and until the water reached the brim of the jar.
“Now,” he told his students,
“this jar is full. What do you think the lesson behind all of this is?”
One smart-aleck student
raised his hand and said, “that no matter how full our schedules are, we can
still cram more in?”
Everyone laughed. But the
professor said, “No. The point is this—if you don’t put the big rocks in that
jar first, you’ll never get them in.”[i]
If you don’t put the big
rocks in that jar first, you’ll never get them in. The reason why that story
has gotten so popular is the same reason that professor shared that
demonstration with his class—the point is about our priorities. The big rocks
in our lives. The rocks we put in our jars first. The heaviest weight in our lives—or,
if you will, the cornerstones of our foundations. The rocks we build on.
Our Tuesday Bible Study
group found that rocks are really the theme of this Sunday, as far as our Revised
Common Lectionary is concerned—every scripture passage but our Gospel lesson
mentions rocks, stones, and what we do with them. What we build with them. Or,
what we destroy.
The latter is what we see in
this morning’s lesson from the book of Acts—the story of the apostle Stephen’s
death by public stoning. This is a truly amazing story. I can’t imagine a more
powerful way for people to remember me, after my time on this earth has come
and gone, than how we are left to remember Stephen based on this story—this
account of him giving his life over entirely to God, praying for the
forgiveness of those who hate him so much that they would make him die so
gruesomely, and, at last, his peaceful passing into God’s Kingdom. Wow. Just
wow.
This is also the most
chilling writing I’ve ever come across in the Bible. I want the screenplay
rights to this story. And, to me, the most chilling part of this story is not
Stephen’s violent death, but the introduction of a new villain—Saul. And so our
biblical author, Luke sets the stage—Stephen, this story’s hero, this young man
who had only just begun his ministry, delivers his Oscar-worthy speech to the
vengeful masses, knowing full well that it would probably cost him his life.
Moments later, our tragic hero is tied to the proverbial train tracks. Then, as
his fate is sealed, the camera pans off into the distance, as Stephen’s
assailants throw their coats at the feet of the scariest villain you’ve ever
seen. The camera pans up and introduces us to this dark, lone figure as he
twirls his handlebar mustache and nods in a sinister glee of approval of a
death he ordered.
The stones are thrown. The
big rocks are thrown. The big rocks that could have been used to build are
instead used to take a life. The big rocks. All we know about Saul is his name,
and his agenda—if our big rocks signify our priorities, we know full well what
Saul’s are. The persecution and destruction of a new movement, and the
eradication of anyone who would proclaim the Lordship of Jesus.
Where we put our priorities,
where we invest our time, what we make most important to us, where we put our
hearts—our big rocks—carry a huge amount of weight. Even when we don’t know it.
Where we choose to invest our strength, how we choose to use our special skills
and gifts, matters more than we may ever know. And it’s very easy for one of us
to say, what does it matter what I do? I’m only one person, after all.
But Saul was only one
person. A young man like Stephen, dwelling in a small place, at a single moment
in time, doing what was right in his own eyes. His big rocks. And the big rocks
of his life compelled him to take many others. It’s hard to imagine that
someone with such dark and corrupted priorities could ever do anything good for
the world—that someone so bent on destruction could ever build something good,
and meaningful, and lasting. But this is what we mean when we proclaim that God
is loving. This is what we mean when we declare that God’s love forgives, and
redeems us. Most of all, this is what we mean when we say that Jesus saves—half
of our New Testament would never have existed were it not for this man, once a
murderer. You can argue our Church, our pastors, would never have been were it
not for this man who became the very first Pastor. A pastor more commonly known
today by his Greek name, Paul.
Our priorities, where we
invest our strength, where we invest our resources—our big rocks—build the
world we live in. But we learn how to set our priorities, how to name our big
rocks, based on the advice and example of others. So it’s easy for us to
misplace our big rocks. It’s easy for us to decide to use our big rocks to
build something meaningless, something harmful, or something that won’t last.
Take a look at the world around you, and you’ll see where people have misplaced
their big rocks—what people have built with them. Racism. Classism. Sexism.
Pollution. By equal measure, you’ll see what people have destroyed when they’ve
used their big rocks as weapons instead of as resources.
Our world is eroding because
of people’s misplaced big rocks—because of people’s very bad choices. But,
closer to home for us here, our Church is in trouble. Our congregations start
to erode when we throw our rocks instead of building with them. When we worry
and squabble about money instead of making a plan for the stewardship of our
resources. When we pick out verses of our Bible in isolation to attack a
person’s choices, instead of remembering that God is love. When we use our
bonds of sister- and brotherhood to shut out the outsider, instead of
practicing radical hospitality.
Our big rocks. We can do a
lot with our big rocks. We can build a lot with our big rocks, if we pick the
right ones. We can name our big rocks for the Gospel—for love, for truth, for
justice, for righteousness, for grace, for forgiveness. We can make Jesus our
cornerstone, and his uniting ministry our foundation. Or, we can fill our jars
up with sand and gravel and water, and focus on the trivial, and accomplish
nothing.
And if you weren’t at
Tuesday’s Bible Study meeting, and you don’t know where the title of this
sermon comes from—Ebenezer—no, I don’t mean the miserly old Scrooge of Dickens’
folklore.
One of my very favorite
hymns is one that we didn’t sing this morning, but that you all will sing later
on this summer. It’s #400 in our hymnal—yes, it’s one of those hymns I love so
much that I can tell you the hymn number off the top of my head—and it’s called
“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”. The second verse of this hymn starts,
“Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come. And I hope, by thy
good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.”
When you skim down to the
bottom of that page in the hymnal, the publisher tells you what Bible story the
author was referring to when he decided to use the word “Ebenezer” in the
second verse. If you haven’t looked it up, the story can be found in 1 Samuel
7. It’s the story of a prophet by the name of Samuel, who, with God’s help,
saves Israel from the Philistines. After this victory, Samuel lays down a
commemorating stone, and calls it “Ebenezer”, and says, “Thus far the Lord has helped
us.” Ebenezer, when you break down the two Hebrew roots that make up that name,
means “helping stone.”
The first big rock we should
put in our jars, the first big rock we build with, the cornerstone of the
foundation of our church, should be our Ebenezer—the stone that reminds us that
with God, all things are possible. The stone that reminds us to put God first,
because everything else we need will follow. And if we build our Church with a
proper, God-centered foundation, we can build something that will last, and
that we give future generations of Christians a place to call home. And through
a big rock that trusts in Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, we will
build stepping stones to the Father.
Amen.
[i] Here’s one of many places around the internet where
you can find this anecdote: http://www.appleseeds.org/Big-Rocks_Covey.htm .
No comments:
Post a Comment