Acceptance
Sermon
SEASONINGS FOR SERMONS
Among the innumerable headlines depicting the Patty Hearst episode, this one spoke to much of which I had been speaking:
"Reunited with Renounced Parents"
Renunciation never precludes the moment of reconciliation. The God we leave never leaves us. We can run to any far country and when we return, our Father is there, waiting by the window.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.
- Rabindranath Tagore
The Bible speaks unequivocally of acceptance.
"Here am I! Send me," cried Isaiah, and that was acceptance.
"Straightway, they left their nets," it was said about James and John. That was acceptance.
Paul wrote about it. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present yourselves as living sacrifices." What acceptance there is in that!
We must discover that in Christ we have been accepted by God. Because he has accepted us as we are, we must accept ourselves.
- Ben Johnson, Experiencing Faith, p. 68.
We are to accept the unacceptable in ourselves and in others, because on the cross Christ accepted the unacceptable.
- Reul L. Howe, Herein Is Love, p. 39.
The first day he went to Sunday School, a little boy was so nervous he wanted to call home. His teacher helped him place the call but when his mother answered, he was too upset to speak. Not hearing anything from the other end of the line, his mother said, "Hello, who is this?" The little boy burst into tears as he responded, "This is Timmy, have you forgotten me already?"
The god who has the sparrows counted and the hairs on our heads numbered never forgets us. He always calls us by name.
Paul Tillich said much I cannot understand but this one truth he made plain for all of us.
"Simply accept the fact that you are accepted."
The great hymn, "Just As I Am," written by Charlotte Elliott over two hundred years ago, contains the theology of acceptance as none other. We don't have to plead our case, rid our heart of all its ugliness, erase every conflict and doubt; we only have to come, "Just as I am." We provide the sinner and God provides the Savior. God will receive, will welcome, will pardon, cleanse and relieve. To be accepted by God, we don't have to go anywhere; we merely have to turn around where we are, just as we are.
Action
To those who say religion is for blue-nosed ascetics or monks mumbling in a monastery I invite them to hear the words God spoke to Moses, words Moses put into action.
"Wherefore criest thou unto me?
Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward ..."
God talked the talk and Moses walked the walk.
Several years ago, Averell Harriman, upon visiting France, was asked if he spoke French. He replied, "I do alright with the nouns but I don't know the verbs." We know the nouns of the Christian vocabulary; God, Christ, church, prayer, but how are we doing with the verbs; love, witness, search, prophesy, give?
Speaking of vocabulary, it comes to me that we must live in the active voice rather than in the passive voice. We must make things happen and not just let things happen.
People can be divided into three basic groups: those who let things happen, those who make things happen, and those who don't know what is happening.
Believing is a fine thing, but placing those beliefs into execution is a test of strength. Many are those who talk like the roar of the sea, but their lives are shallow and stagnant, like the rotting marshes. Many are those who lift their heads above the mountain tops but their spirits remain dormant in the obscurity of the caverns.
- M. L. Wolf, A Treasury of Kahlil, "The Tempest," p. 14.
A newspaper columnist, Earl Wilson, once wrote, "It's the people who do nothing who are most sure that nothing can be done."
What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
- Aristotle
Sir Wilfred Grenfell once appealed for "a religion of action, not a religion of diction."
Siddhartha speaks of Gotama, "Not in speech or thought do I regard him as a great man, but in his deeds and life."
- Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, p. 119.
Confucius is credited with many things he did not say, but here is one he should have said if, in fact, he did not.
"The superior man acts before he speaks and, afterwards, speaks according to his actions."
Adversity
That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
What a man needs to get ahead is a powerful enemy.
- Wendell Wilkie
These two phrases have shot often from my homiletical gun but they always hit the target:
"It takes both the sun and the rain to make a rainbow."
"You only see the stars when it is dark."
Affirmation
Who affirms you? Who says it's o.k. to be you?
Who understands if you cuss over what makes you angry: if you take off the mask that pretends; if you hang loose and be yourself?
All people need someone to affirm them; to let them be real and authentic. Who does it for you?
A wife or husband who knows every corner of your weakness and loves you just as you are?
A friend who has been victimized by your stupid mistakes and doesn't hold them over your head?
A fellowship that is not threatened by your honesty nor shocked by your realness?
A child who delights that a big person can be down to earth, goof it up, drop the ball?
You are a real person. Don't ever run from the reality of yourself. That is exactly where the Lord is: at the heart of your realness; right where you are wounded and weak; ugly and scarred, vulnerable and susceptible.
Don't put a lid on the cesspool. The Lord is right there in the dirtiest waters.
What marvelous affirmation that holds for all of us. I can shout about that, can't you?
- Phil Barnhart
Beginning
Fear not that your life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.
- Cardinal Newman
In his autobiographical novel, Papillon and a fellow prisoner have devised an elaborate plan to escape. A guard has been given a sleeping potion to silence him for a strategic period from which he is to awake at an appropriate time to become part of their scheme. The potion is too strong, the guard will not awake, and their break from prison is thwarted. Both Papillon and his accomplice are brokenhearted. His companion speaks, "What are we going to do?" Papillon answers, "Why, begin again, man!"
- Henri Charriere, Papillon, p. 197.
What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
- Maxie Dunam, Dancing at My Funeral, p. 39.
Being
Kahlil Gibran writes to Mary Haskell, "My only desire, Mary, is to be and it does not matter how or where or when."
- Beloved Prophet - The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell, p. 77.
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What if your real worth is in your "being" and "having been" and "will be" more than in your "having" and "doing?" What if your prime gift is a set of relations with fellows - brothers - sisters, and there is no "thing" you must be? What if life really is a personal affair with people and children and family - not a professional affair at all? What if no rank or station can give us anything to keep? What if a life lived is my only worth and that is moral?
- Carlyle Marney, A Sermon, "As Fools Die," pp. 8, 9.
I sent this to Dr. Ted Weber, a beloved seminary professor:
To do is to be - Sartre
To be is to do - Kant
Dobe dobe do - Sinatra
Dr. Weber wrote back, "a concise summary of existentialism, essentialism, and asininity."
Paul Tillich was one of the greatest minds of our day: a scholar, teacher, author, theological innovator who was internationally revered. To get that reputation Tillich had to work hard and long, produce and perform. Yet, more than most, Tillich understood that our doing comes out of our being. Once, he was seriously ill with trichinosis and Rollo May visited him in his darkened room near the seminary. Tillich was lying flat on his back in the middle of the bed, his eyes closed, and looking like a premature corpse. The room was as bare as a monk's cell, no books and no magazines to be seen. Rollo May sympathized sadly, "Oh, it's too bad you have to lie here in bed. You can't even read." "No, it's not too bad at all," Tillich replied with a relish in his voice, "I can lie here hour after hour and just be."
- Rollo May, Paulus, p. 34.
The novelist William Boroughs has said, "The drama of western society is this: not having anything to do." Burroughs is all wet and all wrong. We have plenty to do; we lack the will to be. We need to stop the movement, the motion, the monotonous mad music of quick beat and fast rhythm; to just be who we are in front of ourselves and our God and let our hearts drink in the quiet ecstacy of our beautiful and bountiful being.
- Phil Barnhart, A Sermon, "Still Water Runs Deep," p. 2.
Bible
I am not advocating a naive biblicism. If we read the Bible with the eyes of the suffering, we shall see in it the hopes of God. Then we shall realize that the Bible is a most revolutionary and even subversive book. It does not have its time behind it two thousand years ago, but rather ahead of it, because it points even beyond our present time into the future of God.
- Jurgen Moltmann, The Experiment Hope, p. 8.
The Bible is a book that contains:
The mind of God,
The way of life,
The reward of the righteous,
The doom of the wicked.
Its histories are true:
Its precepts are binding;
Its doctrines are holy;
Its decisions are immutable.
It has:
Light to guide you,
Food to sustain you,
Comfort to cheer you.
It is:
The traveller's map,
The pilgrim's staff,
The pilot's compass,
The soldier's sword,
The Christian charter,
A mine of wealth,
A paradise of glory.
It is given to us in this life, will be opened at the judgment, and will be remembered forever.
Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy.
- Copied from bulletin of First United Methodist Church Newton, North Carolina
The way you defend the Bible is the same way you defend a lion; you just let it loose.
- Charles Spurgeon
We should begin at once to disinter the biblical themes from the ecclesiastical tombs in which they have been buried and make them available to fantasy hungry and ritually emasculated moderns.
- Harvey Cox, Feast of Fools, p. 98.
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of his remarkable pastorate at the Tabernacle Charles Spurgeon made legend in London he said, "If anybody had been standing in this place preaching politics and temperance for 25 years, I wonder if he could have kept a congregation. All other subjects become exhausted; but give me the Bible and the Holy Ghost, and I can go on preaching forever."
I served a church where there was a janitor who couldn't talk plainly. One day, Paul had been to hear a prominent politician speak. The politician was given to using numerous biblical references in his speeches and when Paul commented on this particular speech he said, "Boy, that man can 'weally' 'cote' the Scripture." Often the Scripture is coated and not quoted; taken out of context and glossed over to support our pet peeves and not let loose so God can speak for himself.
One problem we have in quoting the Bible is that of the mixed metaphor: The little boy said, "John the Baptist tried to put Jesus under water but he couldn't hold him down so Jesus just walked on it."
Another little boy, when asked to relate his favorite Bible story, said, "I like the one with the guy in it who loafs and fishes."
Most of my Bible professors in seminary spent most of their time setting the historical context for each book, laboriously proving who wrote it, when and from where it was written. Near the end of the quarter they would squeeze in a couple of lectures on what the book said. As I reflect on that now, I think of the student, who, after leaving seminary, read the Bible and remarked, "You know, the Bible sure sheds a lot of light on those commentaries."
I asked my secretary to type a calendar for the church year. When she gave it to me, she had made a slight typographical error. Where she was supposed to put "Universal Bible Sunday," she put "Unusual Bible Sunday." Draw your own homiletical conclusions from that.
On the subject of practicing what the Bible teaches, I heard Bishop John Owen Smith say, "A man can know the Bible and still get put in jail."
"Reunited with Renounced Parents"
Renunciation never precludes the moment of reconciliation. The God we leave never leaves us. We can run to any far country and when we return, our Father is there, waiting by the window.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.
- Rabindranath Tagore
The Bible speaks unequivocally of acceptance.
"Here am I! Send me," cried Isaiah, and that was acceptance.
"Straightway, they left their nets," it was said about James and John. That was acceptance.
Paul wrote about it. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present yourselves as living sacrifices." What acceptance there is in that!
We must discover that in Christ we have been accepted by God. Because he has accepted us as we are, we must accept ourselves.
- Ben Johnson, Experiencing Faith, p. 68.
We are to accept the unacceptable in ourselves and in others, because on the cross Christ accepted the unacceptable.
- Reul L. Howe, Herein Is Love, p. 39.
The first day he went to Sunday School, a little boy was so nervous he wanted to call home. His teacher helped him place the call but when his mother answered, he was too upset to speak. Not hearing anything from the other end of the line, his mother said, "Hello, who is this?" The little boy burst into tears as he responded, "This is Timmy, have you forgotten me already?"
The god who has the sparrows counted and the hairs on our heads numbered never forgets us. He always calls us by name.
Paul Tillich said much I cannot understand but this one truth he made plain for all of us.
"Simply accept the fact that you are accepted."
The great hymn, "Just As I Am," written by Charlotte Elliott over two hundred years ago, contains the theology of acceptance as none other. We don't have to plead our case, rid our heart of all its ugliness, erase every conflict and doubt; we only have to come, "Just as I am." We provide the sinner and God provides the Savior. God will receive, will welcome, will pardon, cleanse and relieve. To be accepted by God, we don't have to go anywhere; we merely have to turn around where we are, just as we are.
Action
To those who say religion is for blue-nosed ascetics or monks mumbling in a monastery I invite them to hear the words God spoke to Moses, words Moses put into action.
"Wherefore criest thou unto me?
Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward ..."
God talked the talk and Moses walked the walk.
Several years ago, Averell Harriman, upon visiting France, was asked if he spoke French. He replied, "I do alright with the nouns but I don't know the verbs." We know the nouns of the Christian vocabulary; God, Christ, church, prayer, but how are we doing with the verbs; love, witness, search, prophesy, give?
Speaking of vocabulary, it comes to me that we must live in the active voice rather than in the passive voice. We must make things happen and not just let things happen.
People can be divided into three basic groups: those who let things happen, those who make things happen, and those who don't know what is happening.
Believing is a fine thing, but placing those beliefs into execution is a test of strength. Many are those who talk like the roar of the sea, but their lives are shallow and stagnant, like the rotting marshes. Many are those who lift their heads above the mountain tops but their spirits remain dormant in the obscurity of the caverns.
- M. L. Wolf, A Treasury of Kahlil, "The Tempest," p. 14.
A newspaper columnist, Earl Wilson, once wrote, "It's the people who do nothing who are most sure that nothing can be done."
What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
- Aristotle
Sir Wilfred Grenfell once appealed for "a religion of action, not a religion of diction."
Siddhartha speaks of Gotama, "Not in speech or thought do I regard him as a great man, but in his deeds and life."
- Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, p. 119.
Confucius is credited with many things he did not say, but here is one he should have said if, in fact, he did not.
"The superior man acts before he speaks and, afterwards, speaks according to his actions."
Adversity
That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
What a man needs to get ahead is a powerful enemy.
- Wendell Wilkie
These two phrases have shot often from my homiletical gun but they always hit the target:
"It takes both the sun and the rain to make a rainbow."
"You only see the stars when it is dark."
Affirmation
Who affirms you? Who says it's o.k. to be you?
Who understands if you cuss over what makes you angry: if you take off the mask that pretends; if you hang loose and be yourself?
All people need someone to affirm them; to let them be real and authentic. Who does it for you?
A wife or husband who knows every corner of your weakness and loves you just as you are?
A friend who has been victimized by your stupid mistakes and doesn't hold them over your head?
A fellowship that is not threatened by your honesty nor shocked by your realness?
A child who delights that a big person can be down to earth, goof it up, drop the ball?
You are a real person. Don't ever run from the reality of yourself. That is exactly where the Lord is: at the heart of your realness; right where you are wounded and weak; ugly and scarred, vulnerable and susceptible.
Don't put a lid on the cesspool. The Lord is right there in the dirtiest waters.
What marvelous affirmation that holds for all of us. I can shout about that, can't you?
- Phil Barnhart
Beginning
Fear not that your life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.
- Cardinal Newman
In his autobiographical novel, Papillon and a fellow prisoner have devised an elaborate plan to escape. A guard has been given a sleeping potion to silence him for a strategic period from which he is to awake at an appropriate time to become part of their scheme. The potion is too strong, the guard will not awake, and their break from prison is thwarted. Both Papillon and his accomplice are brokenhearted. His companion speaks, "What are we going to do?" Papillon answers, "Why, begin again, man!"
- Henri Charriere, Papillon, p. 197.
What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
- Maxie Dunam, Dancing at My Funeral, p. 39.
Being
Kahlil Gibran writes to Mary Haskell, "My only desire, Mary, is to be and it does not matter how or where or when."
- Beloved Prophet - The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell, p. 77.
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What if your real worth is in your "being" and "having been" and "will be" more than in your "having" and "doing?" What if your prime gift is a set of relations with fellows - brothers - sisters, and there is no "thing" you must be? What if life really is a personal affair with people and children and family - not a professional affair at all? What if no rank or station can give us anything to keep? What if a life lived is my only worth and that is moral?
- Carlyle Marney, A Sermon, "As Fools Die," pp. 8, 9.
I sent this to Dr. Ted Weber, a beloved seminary professor:
To do is to be - Sartre
To be is to do - Kant
Dobe dobe do - Sinatra
Dr. Weber wrote back, "a concise summary of existentialism, essentialism, and asininity."
Paul Tillich was one of the greatest minds of our day: a scholar, teacher, author, theological innovator who was internationally revered. To get that reputation Tillich had to work hard and long, produce and perform. Yet, more than most, Tillich understood that our doing comes out of our being. Once, he was seriously ill with trichinosis and Rollo May visited him in his darkened room near the seminary. Tillich was lying flat on his back in the middle of the bed, his eyes closed, and looking like a premature corpse. The room was as bare as a monk's cell, no books and no magazines to be seen. Rollo May sympathized sadly, "Oh, it's too bad you have to lie here in bed. You can't even read." "No, it's not too bad at all," Tillich replied with a relish in his voice, "I can lie here hour after hour and just be."
- Rollo May, Paulus, p. 34.
The novelist William Boroughs has said, "The drama of western society is this: not having anything to do." Burroughs is all wet and all wrong. We have plenty to do; we lack the will to be. We need to stop the movement, the motion, the monotonous mad music of quick beat and fast rhythm; to just be who we are in front of ourselves and our God and let our hearts drink in the quiet ecstacy of our beautiful and bountiful being.
- Phil Barnhart, A Sermon, "Still Water Runs Deep," p. 2.
Bible
I am not advocating a naive biblicism. If we read the Bible with the eyes of the suffering, we shall see in it the hopes of God. Then we shall realize that the Bible is a most revolutionary and even subversive book. It does not have its time behind it two thousand years ago, but rather ahead of it, because it points even beyond our present time into the future of God.
- Jurgen Moltmann, The Experiment Hope, p. 8.
The Bible is a book that contains:
The mind of God,
The way of life,
The reward of the righteous,
The doom of the wicked.
Its histories are true:
Its precepts are binding;
Its doctrines are holy;
Its decisions are immutable.
It has:
Light to guide you,
Food to sustain you,
Comfort to cheer you.
It is:
The traveller's map,
The pilgrim's staff,
The pilot's compass,
The soldier's sword,
The Christian charter,
A mine of wealth,
A paradise of glory.
It is given to us in this life, will be opened at the judgment, and will be remembered forever.
Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy.
- Copied from bulletin of First United Methodist Church Newton, North Carolina
The way you defend the Bible is the same way you defend a lion; you just let it loose.
- Charles Spurgeon
We should begin at once to disinter the biblical themes from the ecclesiastical tombs in which they have been buried and make them available to fantasy hungry and ritually emasculated moderns.
- Harvey Cox, Feast of Fools, p. 98.
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of his remarkable pastorate at the Tabernacle Charles Spurgeon made legend in London he said, "If anybody had been standing in this place preaching politics and temperance for 25 years, I wonder if he could have kept a congregation. All other subjects become exhausted; but give me the Bible and the Holy Ghost, and I can go on preaching forever."
I served a church where there was a janitor who couldn't talk plainly. One day, Paul had been to hear a prominent politician speak. The politician was given to using numerous biblical references in his speeches and when Paul commented on this particular speech he said, "Boy, that man can 'weally' 'cote' the Scripture." Often the Scripture is coated and not quoted; taken out of context and glossed over to support our pet peeves and not let loose so God can speak for himself.
One problem we have in quoting the Bible is that of the mixed metaphor: The little boy said, "John the Baptist tried to put Jesus under water but he couldn't hold him down so Jesus just walked on it."
Another little boy, when asked to relate his favorite Bible story, said, "I like the one with the guy in it who loafs and fishes."
Most of my Bible professors in seminary spent most of their time setting the historical context for each book, laboriously proving who wrote it, when and from where it was written. Near the end of the quarter they would squeeze in a couple of lectures on what the book said. As I reflect on that now, I think of the student, who, after leaving seminary, read the Bible and remarked, "You know, the Bible sure sheds a lot of light on those commentaries."
I asked my secretary to type a calendar for the church year. When she gave it to me, she had made a slight typographical error. Where she was supposed to put "Universal Bible Sunday," she put "Unusual Bible Sunday." Draw your own homiletical conclusions from that.
On the subject of practicing what the Bible teaches, I heard Bishop John Owen Smith say, "A man can know the Bible and still get put in jail."
