Who Can Ask For Anything More?
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
Those who have read Charles Dickens' famous story, Oliver Twist, will recall that little Oliver, still hungry after receiving the thin gruel doled out to him in the orphanage, was always saying, "More, please." Whether we are entitled to more or not, we human beings are very much like Oliver. We are always saying, one way or another, "We want more." Who was it that first said, "Enough is always a little more than a man has"? Philosophers and sages of long ago were sure that happiness does not lie in acquiring many "things" but in taming our desires. An ancient Greek thinker named Epicurus said of a friend, "If you want to make Pythocles happy, do not add to his possessions, rather, take away from his desires."
Surely the happy ones are those who sing along with the shepherd boy in John Bunyan's song in Pilgrim's Progress: "I am content with what I have, Little be it or much, And, Lord, contentment still I crave, because Thou lovest such."
After pondering over the words of our text for today, three things began to emerge. Reflecting on them, it became clear that those who perceive these concepts, and are possessed by them, are among those who can sincerely say, "Who can ask for anything more?"
The first thing that emerges from our text is this: we have a Father who provides for us. "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist" (v. 6).
It was Jesus who experienced, and reveled in, this Father-Son relationship, and he tells us that we can know God in the same way. He assures us that at the heart of this universe is One whom we, too, may call Father, One who calls us son/daughter. We marvel, do we not, that so many we know feel they cannot lay hold on this transforming relationship? For some, Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners" is a vivid description,
"Is there anybody there?" Said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And he smote upon the door a second time;
"Is anybody there?" he said,
But no one descended to the Traveler
Where he stood perplexed and still.1
Whatever the poet may have intended by these lines, surely this much we can say: it expresses a hunger in numerous lives for the assurance that a Father's heart beats in their behalf somewhere, but somehow they have not found him. Perhaps, only perhaps, they have been knocking at the wrong door.
An old story is told of a man who was asked if he found shade while crossing the desert. He said he had found shade but was not able to get into it. When asked why he could not, he replied, "Have you ever tried to sit down in your own shadow?" A life without a Father-God is like nothing more than trying to sit down in our own shadow. Under burning sun, traveling across parched wasteland which affords no oasis against either heat or thirst, some do try to take refuge in the shadow of themselves. But a person overcome by guilt, appalled by his own insufficiency, alarmed at life's demands, finds in his shadow no refuge. Then comes the Savior offering, in his Father, a strength not our own, to lead us to a sanctuary above ourselves. "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High (Father), who abides in the Shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, 'My refuge and my fortress is my God, in whom I trust.' " Dear people, there is a strength in the sheltering love of a Father who loves his children, a strength these children take with them even when they go forth to cross the sands of life's fiercest trials and dissonant testings.
The sum of what we've been saying is seen in a story told in the terrible days of the blitz in London during World War II. A father, holding his son by the hand, ran from a building that had been struck by a bomb. In the yard was a shell hole, and seeking shelter, the father jumped in, then held up his hands for his son to follow. But the small boy, hearing his father's plea for him to jump, cried out, "I can't see you." The father, however, could see his son outlined against the night sky, standing hesitant and anxious, and he replied, "But I can see you. Jump!" In similar fashion the faith that enables us to face all of life -- and death as well -- with dignity and confidence is not that we can see, but that we are seen by our Father; not that we know, but that we are known; not that we understand, but that we are understood, and that all of life, and every event within it, is part of our Father's gift. Nothing can separate us from his love. Such a faith gives dimension and dignity to your life and mine. "Who can ask for anything more?" But there is more!
Not only do we have a Father to provide for us, but also we possess a Friend who loves and walks with us. "For us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and through whom we exist" (v. 6).
John Newton's most familiar hymn is "Amazing Grace." Another of his hymns, though less familiar, is one of my favorites.
One there is above all others,
Well deserves the name of Friend;
His is love beyond a brother's,
Faultless, free and knows no end;
They who once his kindness prove,
Find it ever-lasting love.
Which of all our friends to save us,
Could or would have shed his blood?
But this Savior died to have us
Reconciled in him to God;
This was boundless love indeed
Jesus is a Friend in need.
Recall our Lord's words, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends ..." (John 15:13, 14). Tie these words in tandem with "What a Friend we have in Jesus. All our sin and grief to bear," and "He walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own." Then we begin to see what our text is seeking to tell us. We do have a Friend who loves us, who walks beside us; but first this Friend walked the painful path of the Via Dolorosa, the path that ended at Calvary's Cross. There, this Friend gave his life to bring each of us back to the circle of the Father's love. Yes, he is a Friend indeed!
And what does this divine friendship imply? Perhaps the most precious implication is that it provides each of us with a divine identity. In Christ, everybody is somebody. He knows your name! One little fellow aged six, one night said a new prayer he had just learned. "Our Father who art in New Haven, how do you know my name?"
Without realizing it, this child asked doubt's most stubborn question. How does our divine Friend know our name? With all of New Haven to look after, that question seems not entirely out of order. Then add to that, the measure of our insignificance is not only New Haven, but also the whole world! But if God, in Christ, is our Friend, he does know our names. Everybody is somebody! The humblest life takes on a divine identity. Christ is present at every birth, at every baptism. Christ shares the loneliest life with every person who may sit in darkness. Life means something when Christ shares it. On the birth certificate signed at Bethlehem was your name along with that of Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth!
Doesn't this add a new dimension to your Friend's word, "And remember I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20) and "I will never let go of you or desert you" (Hebrews 13:5 Goodspeed)?
I offer a final incident that sums up the central truth of the unfailing presence of our Divine Friend. It comes to us from Pastor John Short of Toronto. A young man was observed to enter a Roman Catholic church at lunch time and to kneel before the altar for a few moments and then to depart. That went on for quite some time. The priest's curiosity was stirred. One day he stopped the young man and asked him why he did it and why his devotions were so brief. The lad explained that he had to come during his lunch hour, and that he only had time for a very brief prayer before he reported back for duty. "What do you say?" asked the priest. "I say, 'Jesus, it's Jimmie,' " replied the lad. The priest was deeply moved. Some time later that same priest stood in a bedroom and, as the incident was reported, a "greater" than the priest was present. Jimmie hadn't many more days to spend in this world. The priest said he was certain as he stood there he heard a Voice saying, "Jimmie, it's Jesus." The unfailing, inescapable presence of Christ, our Friend! Who can ask for anything more? And yet there is more!
To the Father who provides for us and the Friend who loves and walks with us, our text adds a final gift: we have a brother and sister who need us. "Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend" (v. 13 KJV). Without entering a discussion of meats offered to idols, we draw one clear conclusion from our text: each of us exerts an influence on other believers for good or for ill. They need us; they are God's gift to us. Our faithfulness to them is crucial. We must never lose sight of this.
Dr. William Barclay tells the story of Egerton Young, who first preached the gospel to the Indians in Saskatchewan. He found that the truth of the Fatherhood of God fascinated men and women who had hitherto seen God only in the thunder and lightning and the blast of the storm. An old chief said to Egerton, "Did I hear you say to God, 'Our Father'?" "You did," said Young. "God is your Father?" "Yes." "And," went on the chief, "is he also my Father?" "He certainly is," said Young. Suddenly the chief's face lit up with a new radiance. His hand reached out. "Then, you and I are brothers," he said, like a man making a dazzling discovery. To really discover that we are brother or sister to every other person is a dazzling discovery for anyone to make. But this is what our text asks of us.
As time permits, look about you this morning. Behold! These are your brothers; these are your sisters. Do you have a Father who provides for you? What need of your sister or brother can you provide? Do you have a Friend who walks beside you? Which one, close by you, needs a friend to stand with him/her in the storm? Can you conceive of the transformation that might occur in this congregation if each of us, including the one who speaks, were touched with the greatness of our need for one another? May the One who is both Friend and Brother of us all provide both inspiration and strength for us to demonstrate to all who observe us the same kind of compassion and brotherly affection that once prompted a pagan leader to say of the early Christians, "Behold how they love one another!"
Ralph Harlow expressed it beautifully when he wrote:
Who is so low that I am not his brother?
Who is so high that I have no path to him?
Who is so poor I may not feel his hunger?
Who is so rich I may not pity him?
Who is so hurt I may not know his heartache?
Who sings for joy my heart may never share?
Who in God's heaven has passed beyond my vision?
Who in hell's depths where I may never fare?
May none, then, call on me for understanding,
May none, then, turn to me for help in pain,
And drain alone his bitter cup of sorrow,
Or find he knocks upon my heart in vain.2
A final time I ask you, "Who can ask for anything more?" Amen.
____________
1. The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1920), p. 144.
2. Quoted in Masterpieces of Religious Verse, p. 465.
Surely the happy ones are those who sing along with the shepherd boy in John Bunyan's song in Pilgrim's Progress: "I am content with what I have, Little be it or much, And, Lord, contentment still I crave, because Thou lovest such."
After pondering over the words of our text for today, three things began to emerge. Reflecting on them, it became clear that those who perceive these concepts, and are possessed by them, are among those who can sincerely say, "Who can ask for anything more?"
The first thing that emerges from our text is this: we have a Father who provides for us. "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist" (v. 6).
It was Jesus who experienced, and reveled in, this Father-Son relationship, and he tells us that we can know God in the same way. He assures us that at the heart of this universe is One whom we, too, may call Father, One who calls us son/daughter. We marvel, do we not, that so many we know feel they cannot lay hold on this transforming relationship? For some, Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners" is a vivid description,
"Is there anybody there?" Said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And he smote upon the door a second time;
"Is anybody there?" he said,
But no one descended to the Traveler
Where he stood perplexed and still.1
Whatever the poet may have intended by these lines, surely this much we can say: it expresses a hunger in numerous lives for the assurance that a Father's heart beats in their behalf somewhere, but somehow they have not found him. Perhaps, only perhaps, they have been knocking at the wrong door.
An old story is told of a man who was asked if he found shade while crossing the desert. He said he had found shade but was not able to get into it. When asked why he could not, he replied, "Have you ever tried to sit down in your own shadow?" A life without a Father-God is like nothing more than trying to sit down in our own shadow. Under burning sun, traveling across parched wasteland which affords no oasis against either heat or thirst, some do try to take refuge in the shadow of themselves. But a person overcome by guilt, appalled by his own insufficiency, alarmed at life's demands, finds in his shadow no refuge. Then comes the Savior offering, in his Father, a strength not our own, to lead us to a sanctuary above ourselves. "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High (Father), who abides in the Shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, 'My refuge and my fortress is my God, in whom I trust.' " Dear people, there is a strength in the sheltering love of a Father who loves his children, a strength these children take with them even when they go forth to cross the sands of life's fiercest trials and dissonant testings.
The sum of what we've been saying is seen in a story told in the terrible days of the blitz in London during World War II. A father, holding his son by the hand, ran from a building that had been struck by a bomb. In the yard was a shell hole, and seeking shelter, the father jumped in, then held up his hands for his son to follow. But the small boy, hearing his father's plea for him to jump, cried out, "I can't see you." The father, however, could see his son outlined against the night sky, standing hesitant and anxious, and he replied, "But I can see you. Jump!" In similar fashion the faith that enables us to face all of life -- and death as well -- with dignity and confidence is not that we can see, but that we are seen by our Father; not that we know, but that we are known; not that we understand, but that we are understood, and that all of life, and every event within it, is part of our Father's gift. Nothing can separate us from his love. Such a faith gives dimension and dignity to your life and mine. "Who can ask for anything more?" But there is more!
Not only do we have a Father to provide for us, but also we possess a Friend who loves and walks with us. "For us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and through whom we exist" (v. 6).
John Newton's most familiar hymn is "Amazing Grace." Another of his hymns, though less familiar, is one of my favorites.
One there is above all others,
Well deserves the name of Friend;
His is love beyond a brother's,
Faultless, free and knows no end;
They who once his kindness prove,
Find it ever-lasting love.
Which of all our friends to save us,
Could or would have shed his blood?
But this Savior died to have us
Reconciled in him to God;
This was boundless love indeed
Jesus is a Friend in need.
Recall our Lord's words, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends ..." (John 15:13, 14). Tie these words in tandem with "What a Friend we have in Jesus. All our sin and grief to bear," and "He walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own." Then we begin to see what our text is seeking to tell us. We do have a Friend who loves us, who walks beside us; but first this Friend walked the painful path of the Via Dolorosa, the path that ended at Calvary's Cross. There, this Friend gave his life to bring each of us back to the circle of the Father's love. Yes, he is a Friend indeed!
And what does this divine friendship imply? Perhaps the most precious implication is that it provides each of us with a divine identity. In Christ, everybody is somebody. He knows your name! One little fellow aged six, one night said a new prayer he had just learned. "Our Father who art in New Haven, how do you know my name?"
Without realizing it, this child asked doubt's most stubborn question. How does our divine Friend know our name? With all of New Haven to look after, that question seems not entirely out of order. Then add to that, the measure of our insignificance is not only New Haven, but also the whole world! But if God, in Christ, is our Friend, he does know our names. Everybody is somebody! The humblest life takes on a divine identity. Christ is present at every birth, at every baptism. Christ shares the loneliest life with every person who may sit in darkness. Life means something when Christ shares it. On the birth certificate signed at Bethlehem was your name along with that of Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth!
Doesn't this add a new dimension to your Friend's word, "And remember I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20) and "I will never let go of you or desert you" (Hebrews 13:5 Goodspeed)?
I offer a final incident that sums up the central truth of the unfailing presence of our Divine Friend. It comes to us from Pastor John Short of Toronto. A young man was observed to enter a Roman Catholic church at lunch time and to kneel before the altar for a few moments and then to depart. That went on for quite some time. The priest's curiosity was stirred. One day he stopped the young man and asked him why he did it and why his devotions were so brief. The lad explained that he had to come during his lunch hour, and that he only had time for a very brief prayer before he reported back for duty. "What do you say?" asked the priest. "I say, 'Jesus, it's Jimmie,' " replied the lad. The priest was deeply moved. Some time later that same priest stood in a bedroom and, as the incident was reported, a "greater" than the priest was present. Jimmie hadn't many more days to spend in this world. The priest said he was certain as he stood there he heard a Voice saying, "Jimmie, it's Jesus." The unfailing, inescapable presence of Christ, our Friend! Who can ask for anything more? And yet there is more!
To the Father who provides for us and the Friend who loves and walks with us, our text adds a final gift: we have a brother and sister who need us. "Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend" (v. 13 KJV). Without entering a discussion of meats offered to idols, we draw one clear conclusion from our text: each of us exerts an influence on other believers for good or for ill. They need us; they are God's gift to us. Our faithfulness to them is crucial. We must never lose sight of this.
Dr. William Barclay tells the story of Egerton Young, who first preached the gospel to the Indians in Saskatchewan. He found that the truth of the Fatherhood of God fascinated men and women who had hitherto seen God only in the thunder and lightning and the blast of the storm. An old chief said to Egerton, "Did I hear you say to God, 'Our Father'?" "You did," said Young. "God is your Father?" "Yes." "And," went on the chief, "is he also my Father?" "He certainly is," said Young. Suddenly the chief's face lit up with a new radiance. His hand reached out. "Then, you and I are brothers," he said, like a man making a dazzling discovery. To really discover that we are brother or sister to every other person is a dazzling discovery for anyone to make. But this is what our text asks of us.
As time permits, look about you this morning. Behold! These are your brothers; these are your sisters. Do you have a Father who provides for you? What need of your sister or brother can you provide? Do you have a Friend who walks beside you? Which one, close by you, needs a friend to stand with him/her in the storm? Can you conceive of the transformation that might occur in this congregation if each of us, including the one who speaks, were touched with the greatness of our need for one another? May the One who is both Friend and Brother of us all provide both inspiration and strength for us to demonstrate to all who observe us the same kind of compassion and brotherly affection that once prompted a pagan leader to say of the early Christians, "Behold how they love one another!"
Ralph Harlow expressed it beautifully when he wrote:
Who is so low that I am not his brother?
Who is so high that I have no path to him?
Who is so poor I may not feel his hunger?
Who is so rich I may not pity him?
Who is so hurt I may not know his heartache?
Who sings for joy my heart may never share?
Who in God's heaven has passed beyond my vision?
Who in hell's depths where I may never fare?
May none, then, call on me for understanding,
May none, then, turn to me for help in pain,
And drain alone his bitter cup of sorrow,
Or find he knocks upon my heart in vain.2
A final time I ask you, "Who can ask for anything more?" Amen.
____________
1. The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1920), p. 144.
2. Quoted in Masterpieces of Religious Verse, p. 465.
