Geriatric Humor

Second Sunday in Lent

Romans 4:13-25

It’s been just a little more than a year since our friends and former church members, Greg and Linda Ray, sent us word that two distinctive events were impending on their lives – Greg was about to retire after 20 years in the Air Force, and he and Linda were expecting a baby. They had done a good job already about getting past the initial shock of their “geriatric pregnancy,” and were already referring to themselves as “Abe” and “Sarah.” They sent us a wonderful picture of their three children this Christmas. Things seem to be working out for them just fine.

Since I borrowed Will Willimon’s title for today, I don’t suppose it would be much worse to borrow his opening paragraph – the one that suggests the theme for the week’s lections. He says, “We never get too old, too set in our ways, too fixed in our expectations, that God cannot or will not surprise us, shock us, or cause us to laugh. Laughter is often the natural human response to those moments when we realize that the future is not exclusively in our hands, that God is resourceful, busy, and creative.”[i]

I suppose Willimon is experientially accurate with his assessment. We work toward control in our lives. We expect that normalcy and peace will eventually and ultimately follow us all the days of our lives. Then, life slips up on us – we receive news that shakes the foundations of our lives – we lose a job, or we discover we have disease, or we learn that we are to parent a child – and life changes, sometimes for good, other times for not so good.
I just don’t know too many of us that laugh at those kind of experiences – at least not initially.

Sarah laughed. Not in this chapter of the story – you have to get over into chapter 18 to hear her chortle. I think it was a chortle – it might have been a guffaw. Anyway, she laughed. She had good reason to laugh. Abraham was older than dirt, and she wasn’t a spring chicken. She was barren, and in her mind, she would always be barren. A child – wasn’t going to happen, no matter what the Lord had to say about it.

So, here we are, still in the early throws of Lent, and you and I have run up against a common truth. We have come to expect that things stay pretty much the same. We are moving – each of us in our lives – toward greater and greater stability and assurance – and we expect that things begin to stay more and more the same as time goes by. Even when it comes to our sin. We stated last week that we seem to deal with the same old sins, year after year. Psychologists tell us that we lapse into this need for normalcy, and sometimes we protect our “normalcy” by continuing to make the same mistakes – our norm becomes comfortable, no matter how much it hurts. You and I know people like that – they’d like to change their lives, but the newness of the change is too different for them – they feel uncomfortable, abnormal – and so they lapse back into old habits and patterns for the sake of feeling “normal” again.

This week, I read a great paragraph, written by my friend Steve Samples, who is the new rector at the Episcopal church. In their monthly newsletter, he wrote, “Lent – it’s such a serious and ponderous time, one that so often catches us out-of-mood. Of course, that’s the point. When we become comfortable with our routine, comfortable whether it’s healthy or unhealthy, Lent comes along and asks us to look at life in a different way. Lent is a matter of balance. We are drawn to that which affirms us, and we avoid that which convicts us. Lent convicts.”

Let me ask us a question. What is that new thing that God wants to do in your life? You know - the thing that would cause you to laugh?

This week I received word that Larry Frey has been asked by colleagues to consider taking on a new responsibility at DHS. There is an opening for a volunteer chaplain, and no fewer than 5 people came to him and suggested that he ought to apply for the job. He won’t get paid for it – it will be the kind of work that will often be hard, and may present something of a conflict of interests from time to time. But Larry has taken this opportunity as guidance from God, and he is moving ahead with excitement and his usual passion. At the conclusion of our service this morning, we are going to offer our congregational statement of endorsement to his ministry, as we give him our encouragement.

So I ask us again. What is that new thing that God wants to do in your life? What is that thing that will stretch you in your faith journey beyond the point of comfort? What is that thing that will challenge that set of beliefs you have built up around you and your understanding of God and God’s purposes in your life?

Or could it be that this new thing is something more ominous sounding? Does it sound more like the words of Jesus when He says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” Does it sound more like that? Is God calling you to a greater commitment of your life – a new found devotion to God – one that makes your present relationship with God look like a grade school romance? Does it sound more like Jesus saying, “If any want to become my followers, take up your cross, and follow me?"

I was most profoundly struck by an idea that impressed me out of Paul’s phrase in the Romans passage for today. Right there in verse 17 – “as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’ – in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

Calls into existence the things that do not exist. I like that phrase. You and I serve a God who calls things into existence which do not formerly exist. We call it creation. Mankind attempts to create, but we do what we do with materials and ideas that have already been created. So, while we think we may create, all we really do is rearrange. About the closest we come is when we re-create – or in the case of all parents, including Abe and Sarah, we sometimes pro-create – “create on behalf of.” Most of the time we’re just rearranging stuff that has already been spoken into existence – out of nothing.

Back when I finished my first seminary degree, I went to a church in Houston, and for the first time in my life, stepped away from music as the primary avenue of my ministry. I missed something about the music ministry, and so, really as a hobby, I started writing some music. Mostly hymn arrangements – but every once in a while, I would come up with something original. But even then, I knew that I wasn’t creating something. I was taking words and concepts and musical notes and rhythms, and rearranging them to fit my particular tastes and notions.

I noticed something this week that the commentators I usually read failed to comment on. When Paul said, “calls into existence the things that do not exist,” I think he was speaking about many things – but mostly one thing. I think he was speaking about our faith. You and I realize that the faith we express toward God really wasn’t something that we innately possessed of our own. The faith we express toward God was originally given to us by God. Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” The prepositional phrase “and that not of yourselves” refers to the word faith. Obviously the grace that God extends to each of us is not of ourselves. “Xariti” is the Greek word that is translated “grace,” and it always means “a gift given from a greater to a lesser that can not be returned.” Obviously the grace we receive is not of ourselves. But the “grace” – the “Xariti” – is the faith that God plants within each of us. So we might better translate that phrase, “by grace you have been saved by faith that is not even yours to begin with.”

I’ve been listening to us. Not to a person, but a number in our congregation are experiencing a kind of spiritual depression –I heard someone call it a “malaise.” I know what you mean – I’ve felt some of it, too. It’s not that we’ve lost our faith. We haven’t lost it, but it sure feels like work. It feels like our faith has taken leave of us, and what we do for God and Christ, or for the church, feels like work. In our hearts, we know that we don’t work for our salvation – that our salvation is a gift of God. But right now, we feel like all that we do for God is purely work.

At the same time, we don’t see a lot of results in the work we are doing. I actually had several dreams last month, that when I sat down and analyzed them, spoke to my deep-seated fear that all that I do is proving at the moment to be significantly unproductive, and that my efforts fail to produce results that seem worthy of my efforts, let alone worthy of presenting to God.

You know, I was tremendously disappointed with my garden last year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a garden that produced so little. It wasn’t that I didn’t work at it. But the weeds took hold during those months when Dad was ill, and I never got a handle on them after that. It’s time to start getting ready to plant again this year – well, really, it’s well past time to start getting ready. But the weeds and stubble from last year still litter my garden plot. It has no moisture, and the entire garden seems like a huge undertaking – one that I’m not sure I’m ready to start. Part of me wants to just sit back and leave the whole mess alone this year, but I know that eventually, I’m going to have to get back out there and start pulling out those weeds. I may not plant this year – I may spend the entire growing season just killing off the weeds that cause such a lack of productivity in my garden.

This Lent, I’ve realized that my spiritual life is much the same. I have realized that over the years, consistently I’ve let too many sins take hold in my life. Consistently I’ve left my spiritual faith garden unattended for too long, and the weeds of sin have taken over. I hear those who are tired. There have been times in my life when I wanted to say, “I have half a mind to just walk away from the whole life of faith.” I feel that way, too, from time to time. But I know that I can’t. Somehow I always know that eventually I will want to get back out into my spiritual faith garden, and plant something, and see something bloom and flower and produce fruit. If that’s going to happen in my future, I’ve got to get back in there and do what I can do to get rid of the weeds of sin in my life.

It is in those times of spiritual depression that I realize the problem is I’m pooped, and I don’t have the faith to get started. In those times of spiritual malaise, about all I can do – about all we can do – is cling to that promise that was first given to Abraham – “In the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

Will you pray with me? Lord, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief. Lord, I have about enough faith to know that you are the source of faith. Give me more. Please, give me more faith. Amen.

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.

[i] Will Willimon, “Geriatric Humor,” Pulpit Resource, Vol. 34, No. 1, p.45.