First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: II Timothy 4:9-5, 19-21
As most of you know, we now have all of the formal approvals we need from the City of Birmingham to build our Christian Life Center, and it is our intention to break ground as part of our anniversary celebration on Sunday, September 29 at 12:30. Many of you even attended one or more city meetings which stretched over eleven months from beginning to end.
Strangely enough, it was the most mundane of those meetings that produced a moment of high drama. The date was Monday, August 12. The setting was the City Commission. Little appeared to be at stake, which is why we made no effort to drum up a crowd. A few of us appeared before the Commission, not to present anything, but to formally request a place on the next meeting’s agenda….the meeting scheduled for Monday, August 26. It all sounded routine, especially with our ducks in a row and eleven months of practice behind us.
Little did we know that the Commission was staring at a mountain of unfinished business and was seeking to delay anything and everything it could. Hence, they proposed that we have our final review, not on August 26, but one month later on September 23. After all, “this month, next month, what’s the difference?” Quickly, we had to explain the difference. One month’s delay would slow the permit process….itself, a six-week effort. No permits, no site work. No site work, no bulldozers and back hoes. No bulldozers and back hoes (before the ground freezes), no footings and no asphalt. Meaning nothing to park on….or build on….till spring. All of sudden the critical question became: “Does anybody know when the asphalt plants close for the winter?” When the commissioners heard “the first week in November,” you could sense the tide turning in our favor. Which is how we got on the August agenda, just as we hoped.
All of which brought back memories of an era when the coming of winter forced people to act with greater urgency than is required today. At the house in which I was raised, we had to get the screens down and the storms up….before winter. Out in the garden, we had to get the daffodils into the ground and the dahlias out of the ground….before winter. And when it came to the car, there were things like antifreeze, studs and tire chains to consider….before winter. Even today, one hears commercialized warnings directed at those who would fail to winterize. And there’s always the necessity of a flu shot. Again, before winter.
With that in mind, I would launch our program year by holding up a little phrase from Paul’s second letter to Timothy which breathes the same urgency. As the letter unfolds, Paul is in a Roman jail….dying. At this point in his life he is down to three close and abiding friends….the Master whom he serves….the doctor (Luke) who serves him….and a young half-caste apprentice, Timothy, who Paul has left in charge of the church at Ephesus. So he writes Timothy from jail, asking him to come to Rome and bring his books and his old travel-stained robe. To these requests, he adds a postscript: “Do your best to come quickly. Come before winter.”
Why before winter? A pair of reasons suggest themselves. One has to do with mobility. The other with mortality. Mobility means that winter may render the Mediterranean unnavigable, with bitter gales closing the shipping lanes till spring. Mortality means that Paul doesn’t figure to be around come spring.
Before winter or never. It sounds harsh, doesn’t it? But the truth is, there are things that will never get done if they are not completed before winter. There are certain doors, open now, that the winds of winter will surely slam shut. And there are certain voices, available now, which winter may silence forever. Most obvious, of course, is the voice of some significant other. Not everybody we know and love is going to weather another winter. Had Timothy dallied till spring, he would have arrived in Rome to find Paul silent in the ground.
This awareness of winter’s inevitability injects a certain urgency into every human relationship. It has long been rumored that mothers tell their daughters they should never go out of the house without clean underwear, lest they become involved in an accident and wind up in an emergency room. For similar reasons, Kris and I never go away for more than a day without making sure the house is clean and the dishes are out of the sink, lest there should come a day when we don’t return to the house and someone else has to come in and sift the stuff of our lives. The tragedy is that all kinds of people who die with clean underwear and no dishes in the sink, also die with words on their lips they wish they could have spoken, or words in their ears they wish they could have heard.
Fred was flying on one of those small jets from somewhere to San Diego. You know the ones I mean, the jets that have three seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other. He was one of the two….on the aisle. She was the other one of the two….next to the window. She was a stranger….traveling alone….forty-ish….and crying. Fred, being a minister, figured it was his professional duty to respond to the crying. Which he did by saying: “It would seem that this is not a very happy trip for you.”
“No,” she said, “it isn’t. I’m going to my father’s funeral.”
“I’m sorry,” said Fred. “I can tell by your tears that you and your father were very close.”
“No, on the contrary, I haven’t spoken to my father….written to my father….called my father…. seen my father….in seventeen years. Seventeen years.”
“Really?”
“In fact,” she said, “the last time I saw him, I was in his home. We got into a quarrel. I got up from the table, threw my napkin on my plate, and as I slammed the door leaving his house, I said: ‘You can go to hell.’ That’s the last thing I said to my father. And now he’s dead.”
One of life’s lousier moments is when we realize that we never got around to saying what somebody has now slipped beyond the range of hearing. Because of winter.
Not everything in our personal lives can be put on hold. Some things, yes. Other things, no. It’s true for relationships. It’s also true for opportunities. I don’t know if opportunity knocks but once. They say that. But do they really know that? And who are “they,” anyway? Still, folk wisdom is often grounded in reality. And next week (unless I miss my bet), at least twenty of you are going to tell me about a door that was there to be walked through, had you taken advantage of the limited time it was open. Where time was concerned, you thought you had plenty. And where the door was concerned, you thought it was permanently wedged. But you didn’t. And it wasn’t. Instead, the door came spring-loaded. And when it slammed in your face, it felt like….well, you know what it felt like….it felt like winter. Brrr.
This is true in public life, every bit as much as in private life. People who practice statecraft know that there is often a moment in the affairs of nations….an open window in the escalation of conflict….which, if seized in time, can arrest a slide into disaster. Isn’t the real sadness of the Middle East the number of such moments that have been missed, leading historians to say: “The window was there. Maybe only for a few days. Maybe only for a few hours. But nobody took advantage of it before winter blew it shut.”
Labor negotiators know the same thing. Settlements signal themselves with whispers, long before they speak themselves with offers. But if nobody is attentive to the whispers, there are no offers. I saw baseball at Wrigley Field on Monday, as I was pretty sure I would. Because, for the first time in memory, the participants seized the opportunity available to them and behaved sensibly, proclaiming that “the need to get it done” took precedence over the need to get it all.
But the most important voice of seasonal urgency is not the voice of a significant other, nor the voice of public or private opportunity. It is the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. As you know, I am as willing to explore the social and psychological aspects of the Christian faith as any preacher. But I have never lost my sense of the centrality of Christian conversion. The church which fails to preach conversion has no gospel. And the church which fails to harvest converts is as disobedient as it is dumb.
But the Christian faith did not begin around an oval table in a first century seminar room, with a bunch of people pondering “Messianic musings in the Middle East” (“Well, Eli, tell us what people up your way are thinking about Jesus.”). No, the Christian faith began beside a lake when Jesus laid it on the line to a couple of guys about who he was and who they were….and then (at some point in the conversation) said: “So are you guys coming or fishing?”
Sooner or later, it comes down to just such a decision….about who is going to be the central loyalty of your life….whose name you are going to name….whose banner you are going to carry….whose kingdom you are going to seek….and in whose army you are going to march. When the surrounding culture is a quasi-Christian culture, maybe you can backburner such a decision and drift in the general direction of the prevailing ethos. But I’ve got news for you. The prevailing culture is no longer Christian. Which means that you no longer can….go with its flow, I mean. Drifters need to become deciders.
And even if you’ve already made that decision, I think you need to freshen it from time to time. In the space reserved for “denominational preference,” a lady once penciled in the words “Jehovah’s bystander.” When pressed for an explanation, she said: “I used to be a Witness, but I sorta became disinvolved.” So have a lot of us, lady. So have a lot of us.
Let me re-offer a confession. There are times I worry that I have done you a disservice as your preacher….especially in my preaching about grace. You know that I am “bullish” on grace. You know I think that God’s mercy and love are going to be there for you, whether you avail yourselves of them early or late. You know of my belief that anybody who will go to the cross for you will not let any barrier (including your cussedness, your hardness of heart, or even your death) get in the way of his desire to wait you out, track you down and bring you home.
Nor would I backtrack on any of that. But my fear is that you will hear me preach such things (especially when I do so with passion and eloquence) and will say: “No rush. No big deal. I’ve got all the time in the world. And if I push the envelope of Ritter’s sermons to the outer limit, maybe I’ve got all the time in the next world, too.”
I suppose you can test that out. But I hope you don’t. Not because of the eternal consequences, but because of the immediate ones. A sweet young girl (filled to the brim with Jesus) dials my telephone and asks: “If you die tonight, do you know where you will spend eternity?” And a part of me wants to answer: “Sweetheart, I am prepared to leave eternity in God’s hands, but if you’ve got anything that will help me figure out tomorrow, I’m willing to listen. I need all the help I can get right now.”
Let me put it as bluntly as I can. This is my tenth year as your pastor, I think I know you pretty well. And one of the things I know about you is that you are as bullish on grace as I am….. meaning that there are probably not more than ten of you who have spent ten minutes in the last ten years worrying about your fitness for eternity. You ask me all kinds of questions. In fact, you’d be amazed at the range of questions that you put before me. But I can’t recall more than one or two of you ever inquiring about your prospects for eternity. As a congregation, you’re a pretty confident lot. So I am not likely to motivate you to make a present commitment in order to secure a future reward. Which, given my theology, I am not inclined to do anyway. But what I have said….loud and clear….early and late….yesterday, today and (as God gives me voice) most likely tomorrow….is that the purpose of saying “Yes” to Jesus Christ today is for the sake of today.
Think about it this way. I didn’t marry my wife when I did, just so I’d have somebody to grow old with, retire with, or rock in the nursing home with. Kris wasn’t some kind of insurance policy against the day when my bladder failed and my friends baled. I married her because I believed that, whether I could live one day longer without her, I didn’t want to….and figured it was stupid to go on pretending otherwise.
So there I stood at 3:00 on July 2, 1966 in a sanctuary eerily reminiscent of this one. Right down front I stood….two preachers before me….three friends beside me….an organ swelling around me….goose bumps rising all over me….sweat dripping….heart racing….hands shaking….five thousand to the left of me….another five thousand to the right of me….all of them standing….she walking….toward me (of all people). And I suddenly thought to myself: “Saints preserve us, this isn’t just ‘hanging around’ with Tina Larson anymore.”
I didn’t need to do that. At least, not right then. I probably could have strung things out for a year or two. Maybe even three.
Oh, but I did need to do that. I really did. And, by the grace of God, I was smart enough to know I did.
My friends, I’ve gotta believe there are a lot of you in this church who have been “hanging around with Jesus” for a long time….occasionally touching the fringe of his garment….listening to him speak from the relative safety of a sycamore tree….or a church balcony….or even right down front (maybe even in the choir), the better to fool your friends and fake out your preacher. I have got to believe this church is comfortably filled with the closet admirers of Jesus.
All of which would be all right, I guess, if Jesus wanted admirers. Except I doubt he does. I think he’d rather have some followers.
So what are you going to do about Jesus?
I think you need to decide sooner or later, today rather than tomorrow, now rather than sometime….not because you may die on your way home from church….but because you probably won’t.
Note: Before reading the text from II Timothy, I explained that there are some texts I have used, and there are other texts that have used me. This is a text that has used me, ever since I first heard Colin Morris preach it nearly thirty years ago. I’ve probably visited it three or four times since. Look for Morris’ treatment of it in the book Mankind, My Church. As for the preacher and the stranger flying to San Diego, credit Fred Craddock for that one.
