Scout Sunday. A scoutmaster and his wife were driving along
a rural highway, when they found the road blocked by a herd of
cows that had escaped through a broken fence. The scoutmaster
tried beeping his horn to scare the cattle from the pavement, but
to no avail. For some reason, no sound was heard. He got out of
the car, lifted the hood and saw the problem, a loose wire, which
he quickly fixed.
As he got back into the car, his wife asked him if he had
had any luck. "Yep," he replied, [Are you ready for this?] "beep
repaired!"(1) GROAN!!!
"Be prepared!" The motto for Boy Scouts, and a good motto
for anyone. We live in a wildly unpredictable world. Ask the
people in Western India or El Salvador who have suffered through
the devastating earthquakes of recent weeks. Ask the people
whose "dot-com" jobs held such excitement and promise only a year
ago but who are now in unemployment lines. Ask the mothers down
in York County who were called to the school on Friday as a
machete-wielding lunatic was chasing teachers and children. Ask
the parents who received the phone call last night and made the
mad dash to the Emergency Room praying all the way that their
child might survive the accident. We never know, one day to the
next. Be prepared.
Of course, the Christian church has preached this theme for
generations. Any number of gospel lessons could be used as texts
for sermons about being prepared for eternity - the parable of
the rich fool who built bigger barns to house his worldly goods
but who died before getting the chance to enjoy them,(2) or the
story of the foolish bridesmaids who were unprepared for the
arrival of the bridegroom.(3) In some fundamentalist churches the
emphasis is heavily on apocalyptic themes, the rapture of the
church, the Great Tribulation, and the imminent return of Christ.
There is the threat of being "Left Behind" that has fueled the
interest in those best-selling books and the movie currently in
theatres. The message is BE PREPARED!
Fine. But this morning I would rather move being prepared
back a notch. To insure against the danger of having our eyes so
firmly fixed on heaven that we are no earthly good, I would
encourage you to BE PREPARED in the here and now. Be prepared
for THIS life and the life to come will take care of itself.
How do we go about it? Well, I have some very good news for
you. Whether you realize it or not, you have already begun...by
being right here. I am absolutely convinced, after a lifetime of
dealing with people at the heights, at the depths, and every
place in between, that there is no better way to BE PREPARED for
life out there than by spending time in here. It is here in
God's house that we build the solid foundation that is crucial to
surviving the winds and waves that come with the storms of life.
Think about it. Early on, from our first days in Sunday
School, we learn that "God is great and God is good." God is big
and strong and mighty, and there is nothing my God cannot do.
God made this world. God made the animals and the birds. God
made you and me. Even when we see horrible disasters like those
earthquakes in the news, we see miracles as little babies are
found alive in the rubble, children reunited with parents after
all hope had been lost. We learned that the great God of heaven
can take even awful things and bring good out of them.
We learn, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children
of the world; Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious
in his sight; Jesus loves the little children of the world."
Before Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu stood in front of the South African Embassy in
Washington DC one afternoon and said, "Those of you inside, are
you listening? Do you hear me? You have already been defeated.
Do you understand that? You have already lost and we on the
outside have won. Out here, we know how this struggle for black
freedom and liberation will turn out, for God is on the side of
the oppressed. It's not 'We shall win.' Oh, no! We have already
won! Only you on the inside have not realized it. We outsiders
have, and we know the future. We are the future."(4) If you and I
ever gave thought to that Bible School song that we sang, we knew
that Tutu was right. Fortunately for all of us, changes have
come - not finished yet, but on the way.
We learn, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my
path."(5) The Bible. There are many good books in the world, but
there are none like THE good book. About 92 percent of Americans
own at least one, and the average household has three. It is
unrivaled as the world's all-time best-seller. Unfortunately,
most Americans are remarkably ignorant of biblical basics. One
Gallup survey, for example, shows that fewer than half of our
nation can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis). Only one-third knew who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (many said Billy
Graham, not Jesus). One quarter could not say what we are
celebrating at Easter. One New Jersey pastor recently made his
own small effort to encourage Bible reading, posting this adage
on his church sign: "A Bible that is falling apart usually
belongs to a person that isn't."(6)
If we are serious about being prepared, we will take
seriously the words of our lesson - Scoutmaster Paul is writing
to Scout Timothy and says, "Continue in what you have learned...
from infancy you have known the holy scriptures, which are able
to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the
man of God may be thoroughly equipped...[may BE PREPARED]...for
every good work." That was and is one of the lessons of God's
house.
We learn, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it
shine." We believe, because of what we learn here, that we have
a mission in this world. The gospel is good news and it demands
to be shared - it deserves to be shouted from the housetops,
printed on balloons, slapped on billboards, chanted at ball
games, scrawled across the sky. Can't do all those things? We
learn in church that one of the best ways to share the gospel is
by the way we live.
Most important, we learn, "For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have everlasting life"(7) You have heard me
mention Karl Barth, probably the best theologian of the last
century. And you have heard me tell this story. Dr. Barth was
asked near the end of his remarkable career to state the most
significant truth he had come across in his lifetime of study.
After a moment of thought he is reported to have answered, "Jesus
loves me; this I know, for the Bible tells me so." It is in this
holy place we learn that the Jesus we come to know in scripture
is living and dying proof of God's love for you and for me.
Do you want to BE PREPARED? Not only for the life to come,
but for life in the here and now? Then you have come to the
right place. In fact, now that you are here, you are invited to
stay for dinner, food in preparation for your journey. A bit of
bread, a sip of juice. And our host is the Savior, Jesus Christ,
the Lord of all the universe. He invites us to come...and BE
PREPARED.
Amen!
1. Appropriate flames may be directed to "tellswor@slonet.org."
2. Luke 12:16-20
3. Matthew 25:1-13
4. Quoted by Marc Mullinax, "Expecting Adventure." The Living Pulpit, Oct.-Dec. 1997,
p. 42
5. Psalm 119:105
6. David Gibson, Religion News Service, "Despite being an unequalled best-seller, Bible is
America's favorite unopened text," The Presbyterian Outlook, 1/22/01, p. 5
7. John 3:16 (KJV)
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