First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
June 10, 2001
Scripture: John 18:12-27
Note: The following sermon was preached at all four services on Sunday, June 10. At the 9:30 service, it was heavily slanted toward graduates. At the 11:00 and 5:00 services, it was directed toward confirmands. First Church was privileged to confirm a total of 74 sixth graders at the aforementioned services. For purposes of consolidation, the Confirmation version of the sermon is reprinted here.
The Sermon
Isn’t it one of the ironies of the summer driving season, that just as gasoline is becoming more affordable, our roads are becoming less negotiable. Or, as they say about Michigan, we have but two seasons….winter and road construction. I can’t drive anywhere without having my progress slowed by signs that read: “UNDER CONSTRUCTION.” But not every such sign is out there to read. Some of them are in here to wear.
But why wear a sign that reads: “UNDER CONSTRUCTION”? Because you are very much a work in progress. You are full of pride and potholes. But stay with the “under construction” image for a minute. Most such signs come with miles attached. They suggest that a particular road is going to be under construction for two miles….four miles….sometimes even seven miles. So how long are you going to be “under construction?”
If you are talking about the maturity of your body, I suppose the answer is eight or nine years. By that time, you’ll be 21. And I am told that by the age of 21, your body will be as good as it’s every going to get. You’ll still be generating brain cells until 21. After that, they’ll start to die. Pleasant thought, isn’t it?
And if you are talking about the maturity of your mind, a different set of figures apply. It will be six years before you graduate from high school…..ten years before you graduate from college…. twelve years before you finish a master’s….and minimum of fifteen years before you earn a Ph.D. True, you may not be going that far. But if you are, you are going to be “under construction” for a long time.
But if you are talking your maturity as a Christian, how long will it take? Well, I’ve got news for you. You are going to be “under construction” forever. Come September, I’ll be 61 years old. I am still trying to learn what it means to be a Christian, and to live what it means to be a Christian.
Sitting behind you (in this very sanctuary) are a lot of people who have some age on them. Some of them are a little older. A lot of them are a whole lot older. I would guess that at least fifty percent of them understand what I am telling you. They are the ones wearing “under construction” signs. But the rest of them don’t have the faintest idea what I am talking about. As Christians, they think they’re finished. What’s worse, they think that God is finished with them. Color them “silly.”
So what does one say to a group of“still under construction Christians”? Well, one usually offers a mighty challenge. Most Confirmation sermons are a variation on the “believe it and live it” theme. Reduced to their essence, they sound something like this.
Stay with the church.
Stay with Jesus.
Serve the church.
Serve Jesus.
Honor the church.
Honor Jesus.
Clean up the world through the church.
Clean up the world with Jesus.
Heck, most of you still have trouble cleaning your room. So I won’t embarrass any of you by asking: “How many of you made your bed before coming to church today?” Although the answer would be illuminating.
I am going to surprise you. Instead of starting with a big challenge this morning, I am going to start with a small one. Do no harm! You heard me. Do no harm!
I didn’t think that up by myself. It’s the first item in the physician’s credo. Before doctors go out to do their thing among the sick and the dying, someone tells them: “There’s a lot of healing you can do….should do….are trained to do….no doubt will do. But first, don’t make things worse.” That’s good advice.
For most of your growing-up life, there weren’t a lot of things you could do. You lacked power. You lacked opportunity. But along about this time in your life, most of you have discovered that you have an incredible ability to do harm….to hurt….to destroy….to inflict pain. What do I mean? I’ll tell you what I mean.
Early on, you learned you could harm your stuff. When you were a little kid, you got mad at yourself. You got mad at your friends. Or you got mad at your parents. Then you went upstairs and trashed your room (tearing things….breaking things….mashing, mangling and mutilating things), only to discover that once you felt better, your stuff was still busted up.
More recently, you have learned that you can harm yourself.
By what you eat….or don’t
exercise….or don’t
ingest, imbibe, inhale….or don’t.
You can hurt yourself in ways that show right away. And you can hurt yourself in ways that may not show for years. But you can screw up your life royally. Which is something that, until a few months ago, probably never occurred to you (and may not have occurred to you yet, given that some of you are a bit more dense than others).
You can harm your stuff. You can harm your body. And you can harm others. You can kill a German Shepherd puppy, like those kids did down in Ecorse the other day. There they were, playing beside the train tracks. They had a puppy. They had a train track. And they found themselves wondering what would happen if you tied the puppy to the train track….just before a train came. Would you believe it? Trains slice German Shepherds in half. Amazing.
But while most of you will never kill a puppy, you will kill a friendship. In fact, you have probably already done that. At least once. Which hurts. You better believe it hurts. There’s lots of ways to kill a friendship. Some of them are verbal. You may still have a relatively weak body, but you have an incredibly strong tongue. You have the capacity to cut people down….cut people up….cut people to ribbons….slice and dice people until you reduce them to tears. I once heard it said of a demure little girl: “She may be tiny, but boy does she have a mouth on her.” The author of the book of James says that “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” He’s right, of course. And all of you know it.
Everybody is talking these days about bullies. You have probably already met kids who used their mouths to be bullies. But chances are, you may have already used your mouth to be a bully, too. And didn’t even know it.
What am I saying? I am saying that you can cause pain. To which I would say: “Don’t!” The world doesn’t need any more pain. As the world’s pain goes, Jesus came to heal it (and said that we ought to do so, too). So first….for God’s sake….don’t contribute to it.
Let me tell you a story. It’s a very personal story. In fact, I told it to a group of people like you, five or six years ago. But you were in the second grade then. So I doubt you heard it.
It’s a story that made a big impact on my life. It took place when I was 13, sometime during the autumn after I was confirmed. A lady moved into a house on Northlawn (four blocks from my house on Wisconsin). She was a single lady….although she did have a kid. The kid could have been as young as 15.…or as old as 25. I couldn’t tell. That’s because her kid had a big body but a slow head. So it’s hard to tell (from a distance) exactly how old he was.
I didn’t know anybody in my neighborhood….or among my friends….who knew this lady or her kid. And I didn’t know anybody in my neighborhood….or among my friends…..who liked this lady or her kid. So why in the world did we dislike a lady (and a kid) who we didn’t even know? Because she was not of our color, don’t you see. In fact, these were the first people, not of our color, to move into our neighborhood. Which bothered a lot of the adults. So it bothered a lot of my friends.
But it gets worse. My friends were all planning to go over there….after school….after paper routes….after supper….after dark….to make things just a bit uncomfortable for this lady. The plan was that we would mill around….call names….throw stones….hurl some rotten fruit…. write nasty things on the sidewalk….that sort of thing. Everybody I knew was planning to go. Everybody I knew figured that I was going to go. Which led to a dilemma.
On the one hand, I knew it was wrong. I knew it was hurtful. I knew it was not behavior worthy of a kid who had just been confirmed the year before. On the other hand, I knew I wanted to be with my friends. I knew I wanted to be like my friends. And, more important still, I knew I wanted to be liked by my friends.
I would like to tell you that I told my friends:
I can’t go….this is wrong.
I can’t go….this is unchristian.
I can’t go….this is not what a confirmed member of the Church of Jesus Christ would do.
I can’t go….I don’t want to add any more pain to what this woman and her kid have already experienced.
But I am embarrassed, almost to tears, to tell you that I didn’t say any of those things to my friends. I believed those things. But I didn’t say them. But I also didn’t go. The conversation that afternoon at school went something like this:
“Hey, Ritter, are we going to see you over on Northlawn tonight?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not,” they said.
That’s when my moment came. That’s when I could have taken my stand. That’s when I could have made my witness. That’s when I could have honored my Lord. That’s when I could have expressed my faith. But I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I said:
Because my old lady won’t let me out after supper.
Now, you need to know, I never called my mother “my old lady” except for that one time. And the fact is, I could have gone out after supper anytime I wanted to. I was a good kid. I was also a responsible kid. My mother would have believed anything I told her. But I blamed my unwillingness to go on “my old lady” rather than on my relationship with Jesus Christ. Because my friends would buy that.
In the years since, I have spent my entire life telling “the old, old story of Jesus and his love.” I am not bashful about telling it. I tell it in public, in front of hundreds of people. I tell it out loud, into a finely-tuned microphone. I print it on colored paper. I record it on cassette tapes. I send it out over the World Wide Web. But when I was 13….in the company of my friends….I did not tell it then.
But do not lose sight of this. On that night (when I was 13), I did not go with my friends to that house on Northlawn. I stayed home. Which made nothing better. But which made nothing worse. First, do no harm. More than that, I hope you’ll do. But at least that, you must do.
In time, Jesus will ask for a deeper commitment. If you don’t believe me, ask my esteemed colleague who writes:
I was in graduate school at Vanderbilt. I had left my wife and our young children back in my little parish and had moved into a tiny room in Nashville to prepare for those terrible comprehensive exams. “Comps” are killers for a Ph.D. student. I mean, they can make or break you. And I was studying for a Ph.D. in New Testament.
I would go, every night (along about 11:30 or 12:00) to a little all-night diner. No tables. Just stools. Where I would have a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee….to get me away from my studies. Every night, same time. Every night, same order. It got so that when I came through the door, I didn’t even need to say anything, but what the counter man would start grilling the cheese and pouring the coffee. Then I’d join the others of the night, hovering over my coffee, thinking about what possible questions my New Testament doctoral committee could ask on my oral exams.
Which is when I noticed a man who was there when I went in, but had not yet been waited on. I’d been waited on….even had a refill. As had the others. Finally, the counter man went over to the man and said: “What do you want?” As I remember, he was an old, gray-haired black man. I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. All I knew was that the counter man went back to the grill, scooped up a little dark patty from the back of the grill, and slapped it on a piece of bread. No pepper. No salt. No ketchup or mustard. No pickle or onion. No lettuce. No tomato. Not even a napkin. Then he handed it to the man in exchange for some money. Whereupon the man went out the side door (by the garbage cans) and sat down on the curb. And in the shadow of the 18-wheelers of the night, with salt and pepper from the street to season his meat….he commenced to eat his sandwich.
To which I said nothing. I did not protest or witness to the cook. I did not go out and sit beside the man at the curb. I did not note the irony of it all to the people sitting beside me. I did not do anything. Because I was thinking about the questions coming up on the New Testament, don’t you see.
So after a little while, I paid my bill….went back up the hill….back to my room….back to my studies….and walked right past the rooster (who looked, for all the world, like he was getting ready to crow).
Note: I am indebted to Fred Craddock for the wonderful story at the conclusion of the sermon.
