The Sustaining Promise
Sermon
An Idle Tale Becomes Good News
Messages On Lent And Easter Themes
Bishop William R. Cannon used to say that he volunteered to be a preacher, and God accepted him and let him do it. I can't say that I volunteered for the job, but I never resisted the call as I have heard so many ministers say that they did. I was eighteen years old when the Quarterly Conference of Centralhatchee Methodist Church in Heard County, Georgia, recommended me to receive a License to Preach. This was on a Sunday afternoon in the early summer of 1947. The District Superintendent asked me if I wanted to say anything to the Conference. I don't know what I said, except for one thing: I said that I did not feel worthy or capable of being a minister, but that I was willing to do it because Jesus had said, "Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."1
That promise must have been precious to Jesus' first disciples also. It certainly came at a timely point in their experience with him. For three years his presence had been their life and joy. Then through some long, dark hours he had been away from them -- gone forever, they thought -- and life had seemed empty and meaningless to them. Now, so far as bodily presence was concerned, he was about to be away again. Besides that, he was setting a task before them that would require their greatest efforts and more. They could not do it if they had to do it alone. But they didn't. He was going to be with them. They had his word for it, and they knew he was a man of his word.
So it must have been with confidence -- not in themselves, but in him -- that they launched out on their mission. They were not going alone; their Lord and Master was going with them.
Providing Fellowship In Aloneness
This meant that they could be sure of fellowship in the midst of aloneness. There was no question as to whether they would experience aloneness; it was inevitable. The very nature of life itself made it inevitable. Matthew Arnold expressed it like this:
Yes, in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.2
Some would deny that life is really that way. But Jesus knew that those who sought to do his bidding would find themselves separated at times even from those who knew and loved them best. For some this would mean the chasm of physical distance, but the even more painful loneliness would be that caused by differences in thought, in aims and purposes, in desires and motives. Those who lived under the sway of Christ's influence would at times know a marvelous fellowship with others, but they might also experience the terrible isolation of deep commitment and dedicated living. There would be a sense in which they would be living in a different world from many of the people around them.
But they had this assurance: They would never, as long as they were true to Christ, be away from his presence. He had promised to be with them, and they knew that however isolated -- physically, psychologically, spiritually -- they might be from others, they could always count on his sustaining fellowship. That would put something into life for them that nothing else could.
Even today, the life of Christian devotion and service can be a lonely life at times, but Christ's promise of long ago is valid for us, too. "Remember," he said, "I am with you always." That means we may know his fellowship even in our aloneness.
Supplying Strength For Service
It also means strength for service. Those disciples had a gigantic task ahead of them. They could not do it alone. They needed strength beyond what they themselves possessed or could muster. Christ's promise to be with them encouraged them to believe that the strength would be there when they needed it.
In An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen pictures a man who has stood for the right against the crowd and has suffered for his stand. His wife Katherine is afraid he will be driven out of the country, but he is not afraid, for he believes himself to be the strongest man in the town -- perhaps, he says, "the strongest man in the whole world." The basis of this belief is a discovery he has made. "The strongest man in the world," he says, "is he who stands most alone."3
Surely, there is strength to be gained in standing alone, when that stand is for the right. But the strongest person in the world is not the one who stands most alone. Rufus Jones once said that one person alone is nobody at all! But if Christ is standing with one, that makes all the difference in the world.
The Apostle Paul had learned this through long experience in seeking to "make disciples of all nations." He had encountered all kinds of obstacles and opponents but had not been deterred from the mission Christ had given him. In writing to the church at Rome, he raised the question, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" Then he called the roll of things that might possibly do that: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Then he exclaimed, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us!" But he wasn't through yet. He went on then to call yet another roll of enemies of the human spirit, declaring the doom of their efforts. He said, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:31-39).
No wonder Paul and his fellow missionaries gained a reputation for "turning the world upside down!" (Acts 17:6). If Christ was with them, they had strength for their task.
And so do we! The task is not yet completed -- far from it. Now it is ours, and Christ is with us to give us strength to make disciples for him and to cooperate in the interests of the Kingdom of God.
Giving Direction For Action
Notice, too, that Christ's promise assured the disciples of direction for the living of their lives and the fulfilling of their mission. Here, again, there was no question as to their need for direction. They were going to be doing something neither they nor anyone else had ever done. How were they to know what to do? How could they carry out this mission? They needed a greater wisdom than their own.
When Lord Irwin was Viceroy of India, he and Mahatma Gandhi often had serious differences of view. One day a friend and supporter of Gandhi tried to ease the conflict between the two by saying, "Mahatma, you must know that Lord Irwin never makes a decision without praying over it first." Gandhi reflected on this for some moments and then said, "And why do you suppose God so consistently gives him the wrong advice?"4
There must surely have been times when friends, as well as opponents, thought Jesus' disciples had been given "the wrong advice." Indeed, the missioners themselves often disagreed with one another. A classic illustration of this occurred between Paul and Barnabas when they were getting ready for their "second missionary journey." Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them, but Paul objected. The narrator of Acts tells us, "The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company" (Acts 15:36-41).
These folk made mistakes; they were not perfect. Yet within a generation they had taken the gospel of Christ all over the Roman Empire. They could not have done that in their own wisdom and strength alone, but Christ was with them, giving direction to their efforts.
Christ is always with those who are spreading the good news, taking the gospel to people who need to hear it. He does not save them from all mistakes, he does not deliver them from all errors of judgment. But somehow, when they are faithful, their efforts bear fruit, the good news spreads, new disciples are made, and those who are already disciples are built up in the faith.
Bringing Blessing Out Of Trouble
One more thought: When Jesus promised to be with his disciples, that meant through bad times as well as good times, and consequently there were many instances when they found blessings where there had seemed to be only troubles.
Calvin Coolidge once observed to Herbert Hoover that if you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you will have to do battle with only one of them.5
That may be a good philosophy to live by. Who has never been guilty of anticipating troubles that never materialized? But those early Christians had their share of them. Luke tells us that some who were beaten because they would not agree to stop speaking in Christ's name "rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name" (Acts 5:41). Paul and Silas sang in prison in Philippi (Acts 16:25), and years later, after a long imprisonment on two continents, Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians, "What has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel" (Philippians 1:12).
This gives us a clue to one reason why they could find blessings in their troubles: Their own welfare was not the chief good as they saw it. The spread of the gospel, the winning of persons to acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior, was more important than what happened to them. When you get that kind of outlook upon life, personal troubles do not distress so much as before. Then, too, when one begins to look for traits of character and qualities of spirit instead of for material prosperity or social prominence, troubles are evaluated by the contribution they make to these, and not by the amount of suffering or inconvenience or embarrassment they have caused.
Through whatever becomes our lot, Christ assures us, he is with us, and if somehow our troubles make us more aware of him and more obedient to him, there cannot but be blessing in them.
The late Bishop Francis J. McConnell once wrote of his wife: "It may seem strange to use a term suggestive of mathematics in speaking of one's wife, but she is one of the 'constant quantities.' Having become a friend of anyone, she remains a friend forever."6 Austin Farrer said something similar about C. S. Lewis. He said that when Mr. Lewis entered into any relationship, his patience and his loyalty were inexhaustible. He said, "He really was a Christian -- by which I mean, he never thought he had the right to stop."7
Christ, too, "remains a friend forever." He is one of those "constant quantities." Indeed, he is the supreme constant quality, for he has given his word and never thinks he has "the right to stop." We can count on that. We have his word that he will be with us always, providing an enriching fellowship in our aloneness, supplying a strength that will make us "more than conquerors," giving us direction in a bewildered and bewildering world, and helping us to find blessings even in our troubles.
Those early Christians were sustained by that promise. So may we, too, be in this our day.
____________
1. King James Version of Matthew 28:20.
2. Matthew Arnold, "To Marguerite."
3. Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People," in Gateway to the Great Books, edited by Robert M. Hutchins, Mortimer J. Adler, and Clifton Fadiman (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1963), Vol. 4, p. 246.
4. John Kenneth Galbraith, Name-Dropping: From F.D.R. On (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), pp. 138-139.
5. Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), p. 616.
6. Francis J. McConnell, By The Way (New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952), p. 81.
7. James T. Como, editor, C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979), pp. 243-244.
That promise must have been precious to Jesus' first disciples also. It certainly came at a timely point in their experience with him. For three years his presence had been their life and joy. Then through some long, dark hours he had been away from them -- gone forever, they thought -- and life had seemed empty and meaningless to them. Now, so far as bodily presence was concerned, he was about to be away again. Besides that, he was setting a task before them that would require their greatest efforts and more. They could not do it if they had to do it alone. But they didn't. He was going to be with them. They had his word for it, and they knew he was a man of his word.
So it must have been with confidence -- not in themselves, but in him -- that they launched out on their mission. They were not going alone; their Lord and Master was going with them.
Providing Fellowship In Aloneness
This meant that they could be sure of fellowship in the midst of aloneness. There was no question as to whether they would experience aloneness; it was inevitable. The very nature of life itself made it inevitable. Matthew Arnold expressed it like this:
Yes, in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.2
Some would deny that life is really that way. But Jesus knew that those who sought to do his bidding would find themselves separated at times even from those who knew and loved them best. For some this would mean the chasm of physical distance, but the even more painful loneliness would be that caused by differences in thought, in aims and purposes, in desires and motives. Those who lived under the sway of Christ's influence would at times know a marvelous fellowship with others, but they might also experience the terrible isolation of deep commitment and dedicated living. There would be a sense in which they would be living in a different world from many of the people around them.
But they had this assurance: They would never, as long as they were true to Christ, be away from his presence. He had promised to be with them, and they knew that however isolated -- physically, psychologically, spiritually -- they might be from others, they could always count on his sustaining fellowship. That would put something into life for them that nothing else could.
Even today, the life of Christian devotion and service can be a lonely life at times, but Christ's promise of long ago is valid for us, too. "Remember," he said, "I am with you always." That means we may know his fellowship even in our aloneness.
Supplying Strength For Service
It also means strength for service. Those disciples had a gigantic task ahead of them. They could not do it alone. They needed strength beyond what they themselves possessed or could muster. Christ's promise to be with them encouraged them to believe that the strength would be there when they needed it.
In An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen pictures a man who has stood for the right against the crowd and has suffered for his stand. His wife Katherine is afraid he will be driven out of the country, but he is not afraid, for he believes himself to be the strongest man in the town -- perhaps, he says, "the strongest man in the whole world." The basis of this belief is a discovery he has made. "The strongest man in the world," he says, "is he who stands most alone."3
Surely, there is strength to be gained in standing alone, when that stand is for the right. But the strongest person in the world is not the one who stands most alone. Rufus Jones once said that one person alone is nobody at all! But if Christ is standing with one, that makes all the difference in the world.
The Apostle Paul had learned this through long experience in seeking to "make disciples of all nations." He had encountered all kinds of obstacles and opponents but had not been deterred from the mission Christ had given him. In writing to the church at Rome, he raised the question, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" Then he called the roll of things that might possibly do that: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Then he exclaimed, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us!" But he wasn't through yet. He went on then to call yet another roll of enemies of the human spirit, declaring the doom of their efforts. He said, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:31-39).
No wonder Paul and his fellow missionaries gained a reputation for "turning the world upside down!" (Acts 17:6). If Christ was with them, they had strength for their task.
And so do we! The task is not yet completed -- far from it. Now it is ours, and Christ is with us to give us strength to make disciples for him and to cooperate in the interests of the Kingdom of God.
Giving Direction For Action
Notice, too, that Christ's promise assured the disciples of direction for the living of their lives and the fulfilling of their mission. Here, again, there was no question as to their need for direction. They were going to be doing something neither they nor anyone else had ever done. How were they to know what to do? How could they carry out this mission? They needed a greater wisdom than their own.
When Lord Irwin was Viceroy of India, he and Mahatma Gandhi often had serious differences of view. One day a friend and supporter of Gandhi tried to ease the conflict between the two by saying, "Mahatma, you must know that Lord Irwin never makes a decision without praying over it first." Gandhi reflected on this for some moments and then said, "And why do you suppose God so consistently gives him the wrong advice?"4
There must surely have been times when friends, as well as opponents, thought Jesus' disciples had been given "the wrong advice." Indeed, the missioners themselves often disagreed with one another. A classic illustration of this occurred between Paul and Barnabas when they were getting ready for their "second missionary journey." Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them, but Paul objected. The narrator of Acts tells us, "The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company" (Acts 15:36-41).
These folk made mistakes; they were not perfect. Yet within a generation they had taken the gospel of Christ all over the Roman Empire. They could not have done that in their own wisdom and strength alone, but Christ was with them, giving direction to their efforts.
Christ is always with those who are spreading the good news, taking the gospel to people who need to hear it. He does not save them from all mistakes, he does not deliver them from all errors of judgment. But somehow, when they are faithful, their efforts bear fruit, the good news spreads, new disciples are made, and those who are already disciples are built up in the faith.
Bringing Blessing Out Of Trouble
One more thought: When Jesus promised to be with his disciples, that meant through bad times as well as good times, and consequently there were many instances when they found blessings where there had seemed to be only troubles.
Calvin Coolidge once observed to Herbert Hoover that if you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you will have to do battle with only one of them.5
That may be a good philosophy to live by. Who has never been guilty of anticipating troubles that never materialized? But those early Christians had their share of them. Luke tells us that some who were beaten because they would not agree to stop speaking in Christ's name "rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name" (Acts 5:41). Paul and Silas sang in prison in Philippi (Acts 16:25), and years later, after a long imprisonment on two continents, Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians, "What has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel" (Philippians 1:12).
This gives us a clue to one reason why they could find blessings in their troubles: Their own welfare was not the chief good as they saw it. The spread of the gospel, the winning of persons to acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior, was more important than what happened to them. When you get that kind of outlook upon life, personal troubles do not distress so much as before. Then, too, when one begins to look for traits of character and qualities of spirit instead of for material prosperity or social prominence, troubles are evaluated by the contribution they make to these, and not by the amount of suffering or inconvenience or embarrassment they have caused.
Through whatever becomes our lot, Christ assures us, he is with us, and if somehow our troubles make us more aware of him and more obedient to him, there cannot but be blessing in them.
The late Bishop Francis J. McConnell once wrote of his wife: "It may seem strange to use a term suggestive of mathematics in speaking of one's wife, but she is one of the 'constant quantities.' Having become a friend of anyone, she remains a friend forever."6 Austin Farrer said something similar about C. S. Lewis. He said that when Mr. Lewis entered into any relationship, his patience and his loyalty were inexhaustible. He said, "He really was a Christian -- by which I mean, he never thought he had the right to stop."7
Christ, too, "remains a friend forever." He is one of those "constant quantities." Indeed, he is the supreme constant quality, for he has given his word and never thinks he has "the right to stop." We can count on that. We have his word that he will be with us always, providing an enriching fellowship in our aloneness, supplying a strength that will make us "more than conquerors," giving us direction in a bewildered and bewildering world, and helping us to find blessings even in our troubles.
Those early Christians were sustained by that promise. So may we, too, be in this our day.
____________
1. King James Version of Matthew 28:20.
2. Matthew Arnold, "To Marguerite."
3. Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People," in Gateway to the Great Books, edited by Robert M. Hutchins, Mortimer J. Adler, and Clifton Fadiman (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1963), Vol. 4, p. 246.
4. John Kenneth Galbraith, Name-Dropping: From F.D.R. On (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), pp. 138-139.
5. Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), p. 616.
6. Francis J. McConnell, By The Way (New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952), p. 81.
7. James T. Como, editor, C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979), pp. 243-244.
