Know Yourself And Know God
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Is the life you lead one for which you want to be remembered? That very challenging and thought-provoking question must have come to the famous Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel when in the common everyday exercise of reading the morning paper he discovered the challenge of God before his very eyes.
Nobel, who was born in 1833, was gifted intellectually. He read voraciously every book he could find, but he especially loved literary classics. By the time he was fifteen he could read, write, and speak four languages besides his native Swedish. Although he showed promise in the "humanities" area, it was his love of science and his desire to be an inventor like his father that most excited him. When Nobel was sixteen he had exhausted the educational possibilities of his native district in Sweden and, thus, decided to go abroad for more training. He first went to Paris and then across the Atlantic to the United States where he spent four years studying science and engineering principles, ideas that had become much more important after the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the latter decades of the eighteenth century.
With his education complete, Nobel returned to his native land and began to tinker around in his laboratory, creating an invention or two, but nothing of any significance. In the 1860s, however, he began to conduct experiments with nitroglycerin, a highly volatile and unstable substance. An explosion during one experiment killed Alfred's younger brother. The experience crushed Nobel in one way, but in another it became the catalyst to find a way to harness the energy of this substance and make it useful to the world.
Nobel discovered a functional use of nitroglycerin, but it came about quite by accident. One day in his workshop, he noticed that some of the nitroglycerin, which is a liquid above 55 degrees Fahrenheit, had leeched into some packing material which surrounded the many bottles of chemicals sent him for his various experiments. Nobel found that this third substance, made from the initial two, had all the energy capacity and blasting potential of nitroglycerin, but was stable and, thus, could be better controlled. Without knowing it, Alfred Nobel had invented dynamite.
The uses of dynamite throughout the world made Nobel a rich and famous man overnight. Mountains could be blasted away to make room for railroads, but it could also be placed in bombs, projectiles, and other weapons of war. With patents received in 1867 and 1868, first in the United States and later in Great Britain, for dynamite and blasting caps, Nobel gained great notoriety. With the discovery of oil on land he owned in the state of Russia, Nobel became one of the richest men in the world. He could sit back, relax, and enjoy life.
Alfred's serenity came to an abrupt halt one day when he picked up the morning paper and read the headline, "Dynamite King Dies." The story and obituary in the paper were erroneous, for he was very much alive and well. Nobel decided to read the article, however, in order to know what people would think of him after his death. Besides all the normal facts and dates of an obituary, he read a description which labeled him "the merchant of death." The expression disturbed the scientist greatly. Certainly the comment came in reference to his association with dynamite, but this did not lighten the blow. Nobel realized at that moment that the life he had led was not one for which he wanted to be remembered.
Something needed to be done to correct how people perceived him. The past was history and its record was etched in stone, but the future was something over which Nobel had some control. A rich man, he pondered how he could use his money for others. He decided to change his will, leaving his vast fortune in trust to a committee which each year would select people who, in theory and practice, had made positive contributions to the furthering of humankind. Thus, in 1901, five years after his death, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded, initially in five areas, physics, chemistry, literature, medicine, and the famous Nobel Peace Prize. Later, in 1968 and thereafter, a prize in economics was added. Alfred Nobel had experienced conversion. God had been challenging him in many ways, but he never took the time, nor realized the significance of God's presence; he never understood himself and how others saw him. He was determined to change and not allow the presence of God to pass him by again!
Is the life you lead one for which you want to be remembered? Do you know who you are, or is life more a masquerade? Do you understand how much you have, or are you never satisfied with what life provides? The life of Alfred Nobel and the surprise yet inaccurate announcement of his death in the daily newspaper raised these questions for him. In a similar way these important questions were raised for the Hebrews by Hosea in his ministry as prophet. Unfortunately, despite the gifts they were given, the challenge was too much and their response too late, insufficient, and weak for God and they lost everything.
The image we receive in today's lesson from Hosea is much different than last week. We recall how the idolatry of the Hebrews, manifest through their worship of alien gods, was analogized to the prophet's relations with a harlot, with the offspring of their union symbolic for failures of Israel and God's rejection of the people. Today, on the other hand, we hear about a more sensitive, yet nonetheless definitive action by Yahweh against the nation of Israel.
Our reading is broken down into four parts, which taken together speak of how God, who was faithful to Israel despite the nation's failures, chastised the people and brought destruction, in order to bring them salvation. The first section of the passage speaks of God's fatherly care for Israel. The Hebrews as a collective people were the child that was unique and special to God, the nation loved by God and called forth in the great exodus from Egypt. God taught the people and led them as a father leads an infant child, cared for them, and fed them in the desert. Yet, the more God called them and met their needs, the further the people drifted from Yahweh and toward Baal. The second section of the reading speaks of how God plans to punish the Hebrews for their indiscrete behavior, as a loving parent punishes an errant child. Because the people have refused to return to God, Assyria will overrun the nation and its leader will become ruler in Israel. The people will call upon the most high God, but the Lord will not raise them up any more. The prophet, however, is not through proclaiming God's word and goes on to tell the people that the very act of disobedience and the wrath of God that it provokes are the very elements that call forth a renewal of God's love for his own people. As a loving parent pardons the child who has gone astray, so the parent's love increases, knowing at times it is the path of "tough love" through chastisement that may be the proper road to take. God acts as a parent and renews his love, and it is this love for the wayward child that will bring salvation. As God says in the words of the prophet, "I will return them to their homes."
Why does Hosea speak to the people in this way? Why did God present the prophet such a difficult message? The basic reason is that the people have lost their way; they do not know who they are and where they are going. They have lost perspective in life. They claim they are God's people, but they serve and worship Baal! They, like Alfred Nobel, have coasted along and things seem to be fine. The rich have abused the poor; the privileged have oppressed the lowly. The Hebrews were seemingly never content with what they had or who they were. But when the day of reckoning came and God asked for an accounting of their lives, they were not ready. Yet, despite all their apostasy, idolatry, and many other offenses against Yahweh, the Creator of all things could never abandon them fully. God gave them life and wishes them to return one day to their land and regain their lives, which had been stripped away because of their faithlessness.
In life we, like Alfred Nobel and the Hebrews, forget who we are. Some of us gain great prestige in life and forget our origins, that is the people and the life circumstances in which we were raised. Some of us get so caught up in who we are and what we do that we forget those whom we are asked to serve, namely those entrusted to our care and the people who have helped us achieve our present state in life. A short but important story captures our need always to keep the proper perspective on who we are in this life.
On two special days every year a physician goes to a special place in his closet and takes out a coat that is out of style, patched in one arm, and rather tawdry, stringy, and dirty. It is his coat for the day. Years ago, it seems, when he was an intern in the lower Manhattan section of New York, he received a call on a blustery and cold winter evening. A little girl had come to his apartment, banging on the door, asking his assistance. He threw on a jacket and followed the child to a stinking one-room tenement apartment, where a little boy, the girl's brother, lay terribly sick. His parents were hovering over him. Despite the doctor's well-intentioned efforts, the boy died before his very eyes. The doctor was shivering, not only because of the death of the child, but because there was no heat in the apartment. The boy's father took off his coat and gave it to him, saying, "Here, you are cold. Thank you for trying to save my boy." The doctor realized immediately that this was the only means the family had to say thank you, and thus he did not have the heart to refuse the gift. Now that he is a prominent physician and quite wealthy, he still wears the coat the family gave him on two special days, the anniversary of the boy's death and the day he graduated from medical school. He wears the coat to remind himself what life is all about.
Besides our periodic failure to know ourself, we sometimes fail to reflect sufficiently how our lives affect others. Again, like Nobel and the Hebrews, we are rich in possessions, prestige, and power. We might need to be chopped down a bit, pruned back, and honed in the crucible of life to round off the sharp edges, cut down the mountains, and fill in the valleys of our lives. What will it take for us to look seriously at who we are? If we are not careful we will become like Dorian Gray, the protagonist in Oscar Wilde's macabre novelette, and see only the beauty and seldom, if ever, the bumps, bruises, and shortcomings in our lives as well.
There are times in life that we, like the Hebrews, Nobel, and unfortunately countless others, are never content with what we have and who we are. We want to be more than we are and have more than we presently possess. We fail to see how truly rich we are. Again, however, a little story can possibly bring us down to the reality of life.
One cold winter day a lady heard a knock on her front door. She went to the door, peered through the window, and saw two children huddled inside the storm door in ragged third-hand coats. "Any old papers, lady?" they inquired. The woman was about to say no when she looked down and noticed the children's shoes, thin sandals sopping wet from the snow and slush. "Come in," said the woman, "and I will make you a cup of hot cocoa." There was no conversation, but soggy sandals left muddy footprints on the hearthstone. The woman provided toast and jam with the cocoa to fortify the children against the severe elements outside. One of the children, a little girl, held the cup of cocoa in her hands, admiring it from all sides. Her companion, a little boy, asked, "Lady, are you rich?" The woman, looking at the shabby slipcovers on the couch where the children were seated near the fire, responded, "Mercy, no, child." The little girl, however, rejoined, "But your saucers match the cups." Her words struck the woman powerfully. They were plain blue pottery, but the cups and saucers did match. After a half-hour the children thanked the woman and returned to their task of collecting old newspapers. The woman returned to her chores. She tested the potatoes for dinner and stirred the gravy. Potatoes and gravy, a roof over her head, a husband with a good and steady job: these things matched as well. The woman tidied up a bit and noticed that the muddy footprints of the small sandals were still wet upon the hearth. She decided she would leave the marks when they dried in case she ever forgot how rich she was.
Self-understanding and realization are true gifts, but they cannot be discovered without some significant inward searching and evaluation. For most people this is a rather perilous journey to look inside and to discover the person we truly are. We will find much good. Made in the image and likeness of God, we are God-like in our being and, thus, naturally good. Along the path of life, however, we sometimes deviate from our proper course, causing us to experience the bumps and bruises that are the reality of every human life. We seek to be perfect, as Christ commands, but we will never find this ideal. However, if we know ourselves and can accept who we are and what God created in us, we have come a great distance toward gaining the insight we need to find life. For Alfred Nobel it was the warning of an erroneous obituary that caused him to re-evaluate his life; for the Hebrews it was the hard words of the prophet's proclamation. What will it take for us? Let us look inside, discover ourselves, and then use the life God gave us -- our talents, strengths, and weaknesses -- to build the kingdom today and each day of our lives.
Nobel, who was born in 1833, was gifted intellectually. He read voraciously every book he could find, but he especially loved literary classics. By the time he was fifteen he could read, write, and speak four languages besides his native Swedish. Although he showed promise in the "humanities" area, it was his love of science and his desire to be an inventor like his father that most excited him. When Nobel was sixteen he had exhausted the educational possibilities of his native district in Sweden and, thus, decided to go abroad for more training. He first went to Paris and then across the Atlantic to the United States where he spent four years studying science and engineering principles, ideas that had become much more important after the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the latter decades of the eighteenth century.
With his education complete, Nobel returned to his native land and began to tinker around in his laboratory, creating an invention or two, but nothing of any significance. In the 1860s, however, he began to conduct experiments with nitroglycerin, a highly volatile and unstable substance. An explosion during one experiment killed Alfred's younger brother. The experience crushed Nobel in one way, but in another it became the catalyst to find a way to harness the energy of this substance and make it useful to the world.
Nobel discovered a functional use of nitroglycerin, but it came about quite by accident. One day in his workshop, he noticed that some of the nitroglycerin, which is a liquid above 55 degrees Fahrenheit, had leeched into some packing material which surrounded the many bottles of chemicals sent him for his various experiments. Nobel found that this third substance, made from the initial two, had all the energy capacity and blasting potential of nitroglycerin, but was stable and, thus, could be better controlled. Without knowing it, Alfred Nobel had invented dynamite.
The uses of dynamite throughout the world made Nobel a rich and famous man overnight. Mountains could be blasted away to make room for railroads, but it could also be placed in bombs, projectiles, and other weapons of war. With patents received in 1867 and 1868, first in the United States and later in Great Britain, for dynamite and blasting caps, Nobel gained great notoriety. With the discovery of oil on land he owned in the state of Russia, Nobel became one of the richest men in the world. He could sit back, relax, and enjoy life.
Alfred's serenity came to an abrupt halt one day when he picked up the morning paper and read the headline, "Dynamite King Dies." The story and obituary in the paper were erroneous, for he was very much alive and well. Nobel decided to read the article, however, in order to know what people would think of him after his death. Besides all the normal facts and dates of an obituary, he read a description which labeled him "the merchant of death." The expression disturbed the scientist greatly. Certainly the comment came in reference to his association with dynamite, but this did not lighten the blow. Nobel realized at that moment that the life he had led was not one for which he wanted to be remembered.
Something needed to be done to correct how people perceived him. The past was history and its record was etched in stone, but the future was something over which Nobel had some control. A rich man, he pondered how he could use his money for others. He decided to change his will, leaving his vast fortune in trust to a committee which each year would select people who, in theory and practice, had made positive contributions to the furthering of humankind. Thus, in 1901, five years after his death, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded, initially in five areas, physics, chemistry, literature, medicine, and the famous Nobel Peace Prize. Later, in 1968 and thereafter, a prize in economics was added. Alfred Nobel had experienced conversion. God had been challenging him in many ways, but he never took the time, nor realized the significance of God's presence; he never understood himself and how others saw him. He was determined to change and not allow the presence of God to pass him by again!
Is the life you lead one for which you want to be remembered? Do you know who you are, or is life more a masquerade? Do you understand how much you have, or are you never satisfied with what life provides? The life of Alfred Nobel and the surprise yet inaccurate announcement of his death in the daily newspaper raised these questions for him. In a similar way these important questions were raised for the Hebrews by Hosea in his ministry as prophet. Unfortunately, despite the gifts they were given, the challenge was too much and their response too late, insufficient, and weak for God and they lost everything.
The image we receive in today's lesson from Hosea is much different than last week. We recall how the idolatry of the Hebrews, manifest through their worship of alien gods, was analogized to the prophet's relations with a harlot, with the offspring of their union symbolic for failures of Israel and God's rejection of the people. Today, on the other hand, we hear about a more sensitive, yet nonetheless definitive action by Yahweh against the nation of Israel.
Our reading is broken down into four parts, which taken together speak of how God, who was faithful to Israel despite the nation's failures, chastised the people and brought destruction, in order to bring them salvation. The first section of the passage speaks of God's fatherly care for Israel. The Hebrews as a collective people were the child that was unique and special to God, the nation loved by God and called forth in the great exodus from Egypt. God taught the people and led them as a father leads an infant child, cared for them, and fed them in the desert. Yet, the more God called them and met their needs, the further the people drifted from Yahweh and toward Baal. The second section of the reading speaks of how God plans to punish the Hebrews for their indiscrete behavior, as a loving parent punishes an errant child. Because the people have refused to return to God, Assyria will overrun the nation and its leader will become ruler in Israel. The people will call upon the most high God, but the Lord will not raise them up any more. The prophet, however, is not through proclaiming God's word and goes on to tell the people that the very act of disobedience and the wrath of God that it provokes are the very elements that call forth a renewal of God's love for his own people. As a loving parent pardons the child who has gone astray, so the parent's love increases, knowing at times it is the path of "tough love" through chastisement that may be the proper road to take. God acts as a parent and renews his love, and it is this love for the wayward child that will bring salvation. As God says in the words of the prophet, "I will return them to their homes."
Why does Hosea speak to the people in this way? Why did God present the prophet such a difficult message? The basic reason is that the people have lost their way; they do not know who they are and where they are going. They have lost perspective in life. They claim they are God's people, but they serve and worship Baal! They, like Alfred Nobel, have coasted along and things seem to be fine. The rich have abused the poor; the privileged have oppressed the lowly. The Hebrews were seemingly never content with what they had or who they were. But when the day of reckoning came and God asked for an accounting of their lives, they were not ready. Yet, despite all their apostasy, idolatry, and many other offenses against Yahweh, the Creator of all things could never abandon them fully. God gave them life and wishes them to return one day to their land and regain their lives, which had been stripped away because of their faithlessness.
In life we, like Alfred Nobel and the Hebrews, forget who we are. Some of us gain great prestige in life and forget our origins, that is the people and the life circumstances in which we were raised. Some of us get so caught up in who we are and what we do that we forget those whom we are asked to serve, namely those entrusted to our care and the people who have helped us achieve our present state in life. A short but important story captures our need always to keep the proper perspective on who we are in this life.
On two special days every year a physician goes to a special place in his closet and takes out a coat that is out of style, patched in one arm, and rather tawdry, stringy, and dirty. It is his coat for the day. Years ago, it seems, when he was an intern in the lower Manhattan section of New York, he received a call on a blustery and cold winter evening. A little girl had come to his apartment, banging on the door, asking his assistance. He threw on a jacket and followed the child to a stinking one-room tenement apartment, where a little boy, the girl's brother, lay terribly sick. His parents were hovering over him. Despite the doctor's well-intentioned efforts, the boy died before his very eyes. The doctor was shivering, not only because of the death of the child, but because there was no heat in the apartment. The boy's father took off his coat and gave it to him, saying, "Here, you are cold. Thank you for trying to save my boy." The doctor realized immediately that this was the only means the family had to say thank you, and thus he did not have the heart to refuse the gift. Now that he is a prominent physician and quite wealthy, he still wears the coat the family gave him on two special days, the anniversary of the boy's death and the day he graduated from medical school. He wears the coat to remind himself what life is all about.
Besides our periodic failure to know ourself, we sometimes fail to reflect sufficiently how our lives affect others. Again, like Nobel and the Hebrews, we are rich in possessions, prestige, and power. We might need to be chopped down a bit, pruned back, and honed in the crucible of life to round off the sharp edges, cut down the mountains, and fill in the valleys of our lives. What will it take for us to look seriously at who we are? If we are not careful we will become like Dorian Gray, the protagonist in Oscar Wilde's macabre novelette, and see only the beauty and seldom, if ever, the bumps, bruises, and shortcomings in our lives as well.
There are times in life that we, like the Hebrews, Nobel, and unfortunately countless others, are never content with what we have and who we are. We want to be more than we are and have more than we presently possess. We fail to see how truly rich we are. Again, however, a little story can possibly bring us down to the reality of life.
One cold winter day a lady heard a knock on her front door. She went to the door, peered through the window, and saw two children huddled inside the storm door in ragged third-hand coats. "Any old papers, lady?" they inquired. The woman was about to say no when she looked down and noticed the children's shoes, thin sandals sopping wet from the snow and slush. "Come in," said the woman, "and I will make you a cup of hot cocoa." There was no conversation, but soggy sandals left muddy footprints on the hearthstone. The woman provided toast and jam with the cocoa to fortify the children against the severe elements outside. One of the children, a little girl, held the cup of cocoa in her hands, admiring it from all sides. Her companion, a little boy, asked, "Lady, are you rich?" The woman, looking at the shabby slipcovers on the couch where the children were seated near the fire, responded, "Mercy, no, child." The little girl, however, rejoined, "But your saucers match the cups." Her words struck the woman powerfully. They were plain blue pottery, but the cups and saucers did match. After a half-hour the children thanked the woman and returned to their task of collecting old newspapers. The woman returned to her chores. She tested the potatoes for dinner and stirred the gravy. Potatoes and gravy, a roof over her head, a husband with a good and steady job: these things matched as well. The woman tidied up a bit and noticed that the muddy footprints of the small sandals were still wet upon the hearth. She decided she would leave the marks when they dried in case she ever forgot how rich she was.
Self-understanding and realization are true gifts, but they cannot be discovered without some significant inward searching and evaluation. For most people this is a rather perilous journey to look inside and to discover the person we truly are. We will find much good. Made in the image and likeness of God, we are God-like in our being and, thus, naturally good. Along the path of life, however, we sometimes deviate from our proper course, causing us to experience the bumps and bruises that are the reality of every human life. We seek to be perfect, as Christ commands, but we will never find this ideal. However, if we know ourselves and can accept who we are and what God created in us, we have come a great distance toward gaining the insight we need to find life. For Alfred Nobel it was the warning of an erroneous obituary that caused him to re-evaluate his life; for the Hebrews it was the hard words of the prophet's proclamation. What will it take for us? Let us look inside, discover ourselves, and then use the life God gave us -- our talents, strengths, and weaknesses -- to build the kingdom today and each day of our lives.
