FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Communion Meditation by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

 

Epiphany Communion and

Founders’ Day

January 7, 2007

 

CHRIST AT THE CENTER: GOD ISN’T IN A HURRY

 

Scripture:  Psalm 90; Matthew 4:18-22

 

INTRODUCTION

 

According to the liturgical calendar, this is the Sunday of Epiphany when we celebrate the appearance of the Christ Child to the Wise Men, as well as the Baptism of our Lord in the River Jordan.  For our congregation, this is also Founders’ Day, the Sunday closest to January 8 when this church was officially launched back in 1848.  Moreover, this is a communion Sunday, and it is the first Sabbath Day of the New Year 1007.

 

Thinking over those five options as I was deciding what to preach about today, I remembered a story told by Howard Thurman years ago.  He was traveling on a train across Texas, and as they stopped at one remote station he looked out the window and saw a huge sign right above a roadside café which read: 

FIVE HIGHWAYS MEET HERE

 

FOUR CHANCES TO GO WRONG

 

STOP IN AND ASK US

 

Well, I don’t think we could go wrong with any of these themes which converge today.  But if you put them all together, and use a little imagination, the focus of our sermon begins to come into view:

 

·        It took the Wise Men a long time to arrive

·        Jesus was thirty years old when He was baptized

·        The first communion in Jerusalem was commemorated almost 2000 years ago

·        This great church is celebrating our 159^th anniversary

·        And as we launch another new year on this 7^th day of January, the message that seems to be coming through loud and clear is that “God Isn’t In A Hurry!”

 

I

 

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible supports and sustains this profound declaration, that “God Isn’t in a Hurry!”  Assuming we Christians in the Presbyterian Tradition can read the creation story with faithful hearts and open minds, if you combine evolution with intelligent design, it is probably true that God created this universe, the world in which we live, and everything that moves and has being, over the course of billions of years.

 

The shortest route for the Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land in Canaan would have taken Moses and the Hebrews less than a year to get there.  But to strengthen their faith and to forge them together as a nation, the Lord led them through the wilderness by way of Mt. Sinai, and the journey they finally made took more than four decades to reach their destination.

 

When Isaiah prophesied that The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…and His name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9), those ancient men and women had high hopes and great expectations that the Messiah was coming soon to be with them.  But more than five centuries passed by before Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

 

Then after His crucifixion and resurrection, just before He ascended into heaven, the disciples asked Jesus: Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?  And He answered It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority (Acts 1:6-7).  Even so, they all assumed that Jesus would return in their lifetime.  But two millennia have come and gone, and we are still watching and waiting for that to happen.

 

You see, from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells us over and over and over again that God isn’t in a hurry.  And our text this morning from Psalm 90 sums it all up this way:

 

For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night…so teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:4, 12).

 

In other words, from God’s point of view, time is eternal, everlasting, never-ending, ongoing.  And because that is true, God isn’t in a hurry, and He doesn’t want me, and He doesn’t want you to be in a hurry either.

 

II

 

But most of the time we are in a hurry, and some of us take it to the extreme, pushing the envelope day after day.  Robert Fulghum in his book “Uh-Oh” tells about a man like that with whom many of us can probably identify.  I have shared this with the staff before and for the first time read it to you:

 

          “The most time-bound man I know lives in my neighborhood.  He’s always in a hurry, always late and always harassed.  I’m not exactly sure just what he does for a living, but it seems to involve buying and selling something downtown.  He’s a businessperson.

          His choice of appropriate transportation for his coming and going is a brand-new Range Rover, equipped with a winch, a gun rack, a CB radio, as well as an impressive stereo system, two cell phones, a fax machine, and a coffee maker in the glove compartment.

          Mostly my neighbor takes his Range Rover as far as downtown.  Daily I see my neighbor rushing out of his house, burdened with the impediments of high adventure, carrying his golf bag, his gym bag, lunch bag, his raincoat, umbrella, coffee cup, a sack of garbage for the dumpster, and his briefcase, a leather bound beautiful briefcase.  On the day I shall describe, he has two little pieces of bloody tissue paper stuck to his chin from a hasty encounter with his razor.  So far, it has not been a good morning for him.

          It’s a Tuesday morning around seven o’clock on a fine day in June.  A neighbor lady and I hit the street headed for work about the same time the owner of the Range Rover rushes up.  His life is leveraged to the max.  His mind is in three continents at once.  Time is of the essence and he is in no mood to make small talk.  He grunts at us as he loads his lorry for the expedition downtown, leaps into the front seat, and cranks the mighty engine in the spirit of a holder of a pole position at the Indianapolis 500.

          But uh-oh – he has left his coffee cup and briefcase on the roof of the Range Rover, and there they remain as he rolls away.

          To the rescue comes the nice neighbor and myself.  She starts honking her horn at him which he ignores because he is already on the cell phone talking to London.  As a pin affects a swollen balloon, so does her unceasing honking affect his situation.  He throws his phone to the floor of the car, leans out the window and shouts at her but she just goes on honking at him trying to get him to stop.

          In the meantime, I’m driving close behind as a kind of third float in this little parade.  My horn is an “aaaoooogaah” horn and finally after her honking and my aaaoooogaah he jams on his brakes, flings open the door of the Range Rover and tries to get out without first unlatching his seat belt.

          At that very moment, his cup of coffee slides off the roof, bounces across the hood, and smashes into the street, followed by his nice leather briefcase which crashes onto the hood, scrapes across the paint and flops into the street on top of the broken coffee cup.

          The dear lady, mission accomplished, coasts slowly around the scene, smiles, waves, sings out ‘Have a nice day!’ to her neighbor dangling from the car in the clutches of his seat belt.

          And, no, she did not, as you might anticipate, run over his briefcase.

          No, she did not.

          But I did.

          He’s not a bad guy.  Like me, he takes on more than he can handle sometimes.  Like me, he gets confused about what’s important.  I see myself in his mirror.  It’s less embarrassing to talk about how he runs his life than to talk about the quality of my own.

          Still, I think he may not know as much as he needs to know about the most basic concern of all – the profit and loss statement.  It’s very old.  In the Bible the profit and loss statement to put on the wall of any business is this:  What does it profit if we gain the whole world and forfeit our soul?”

 

III

 

That’s the extreme, and it can get us into a lot of trouble.  But there’s another struggle which many of us are dealing with today.  I’m speaking now about the good things we want to do and the commitments we make to causes that are worthy of our time and energy.  The problem is that we bite off more than we can chew, and in the words of Fr. Henri Nouwen in his book “Making All Things New”:  “Our lives often feel like over-packed suitcases, bursting at the seams…There is a nagging sense that there are unfinished tasks, unfulfilled promises, unrealized proposals…And although we are very busy, we also have a lingering feeling of never really fulfilling our obligations.”  (Pages 23-24)

 

I think that can and does happen to Christians who hear God’s call and give their all to ministry and mission in the church, only to discover that they are overextended and need to recover a sense of balance.

 

Our gospel lesson from the fourth chapter of Matthew tells the story of how those first disciples, who were fishermen, heard the words of Jesus by the Sea of Galilee, calling them one by one to Come, and follow me.  First it was Simon and Andrew, and the Bible says that Immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus.  Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, heard the call, and again, the scripture says that Immediately, they left the boat and their father, and followed Him. (Matthew 4:18-22)

 

Now I have no doubt that Christ’s call was clear and compelling, and that those fishermen were excited to join up with Jesus.  Thank God they did!  But I have often wondered what happened to old Zebedee the father, who was left holding the nets in the boat, trying to keep the fishing business afloat…and to the other family members who found out that day that their husbands and brothers and sons had suddenly gone away with this teacher and preacher from Nazareth.

         

Surely it was for the right cause, and those disciples were transformed into becoming “fishers of people” who helped the Lord bring in the kingdom of God.  But the word “immediately” seems abrupt, implying that things happened in a hurry.  And that’s where I think we need to be careful.

 

Years ago, a close friend of mine in this congregation took me aside and said “George, sometimes you are moving so fast that the rest of us feel left behind.  You’re like an express train going full speed ahead, instead of a local that stops at each station and brings other people on board.”

 

To tell you the truth, he caught my attention.  And I have tried ever since then to abide by the words which are on the desk in the pastor’s office where I work each day, written by William Paul Barnds:

 

“Stop rushing so fast, stop worrying so much,

Stop doing so many things, stop going so many places.

Look at Jesus Christ, look in the church,

Look in your own heart, look at the Holy Communion.

And listen: listen for God to speak,

Listen in your meditations,

Listen in your inner soul,

Listen in the opportunities life offers you.

And then, with new-found peace and with the

Mind of Christ,

You will be able to serve Him, to serve others,

And to serve yourself better than you ever

Have before.”

 

CONCLUSION

 

That, my friends, is the call that comes to all of us from the Lord: to stop, look and listen in our lives as Christians, and to center ourselves in Him.  And that is what we have been doing here for the past 159 years, right on up  to this Founders’ Day 2007.  So instead of being in a hurry, caught up in the stress and strain and worry of the many things that can and will distract us, what we need to do is to focus our attention on the life of Jesus: who did not rush here and there, keeping to a relentless schedule, but who rather fulfilled the will of His Father and showed us how to live in peace and to love one another. 

 

If you want to know more about how that is possible in your own life, before we close this sermon I want to commend to you three books – “Margin” by Dr. Richard Swenson.  It’s about how we can put margins into our lives so that we are not living with over-packed suitcases; “God Isn’t in a Hurry” by Warren Wiersbe, connected to the Billy Graham Crusades, which obviously helped to give me the idea for the title of this sermon; and finally, “A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants,” given to all of our staff members and every officer of this church.  It’s a way for us day by day to meditate, study the Bible and pray – just like our kids are singing about in the “Godspell” musical:  “Day by day, day by day, O dear Lord three things I pray; to see Thee more clearly, to love Thee more dearly and to follow Thee more nearly day by day.  That’s what we need!

 

So as we come to this table to celebrate Epiphany communion on Founders’ Sunday, if you’re not in a hurry, then stop, look and listen to these closing words which were given to me a long time ago, words which I treasure, and hope and pray will speak to you at the dawn of another new year:

 

Time is…

Too slow for those who wait,

Too swift for those who fear,

Too long for those who grieve,

Too short for those who rejoice;

But for those who love,

Time is eternal.

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.