|
Sermon Nov. 6, 2005 |
Being in Attitudes
A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s
November 6, 2005, All Saints Day
By Karen Eberhardt
This is a story
about the Beatitudes – or being in our attitudes. As some of you know, I grew up a Southern
Baptist. Some of my earliest memories
are those of being in church on Sunday nights, and spending time at my maternal
grandmother and granddaddy’s church outside Apex, North Carolina when it was a
little bitty town with a railroad crossing, a farming and feed store and a drug
store on Main Street. If I was lucky, my
Granddaddy would hitch the mule to the open hay wagon and I would get to ride
to the feed store where he would buy
something for his little farm and then I would listen while he and his farmer
friends stood around “chawing” tobacco and talking for hours at a time. And then if I was really lucky, we would go
to the drug store up on the street corner where my Aunt Polly worked, and I’d
get to sit on the little round stools at the soda fountain and eat ice
cream. Across the street was the fancy
brick church in town, First Baptist, where my Auntie Anne went to church, but
my grandparents and Aunt Polly, and my family when we were there, went to the
little rural wooden church out in the country called Salem Baptist.
I have so many
wonderful and kind of funny memories of my time spent at this church. Everybody
went to Sunday school and then everyone went to church. The old women sat on the left side of the
church fanning themselves with the paper fans from the funeral home, and the
old men sat on the right side, often with their old coffee can spittoons
sitting underneath the pews in front of them.
I loved going to church there, where I got to wear my fancy dress and my
patent leather shoes, where I got to hear the Bible stories told as only
Baptist preachers can tell them; I loved singing the music, what we
ex-evangelicals now lovingly call the blood songs; and I loved to watch as
people would get up out of their seats at the end of the service and go forward
to the altar where they would kneel down with the preacher and ask Jesus to
come into their hearts, and they would be saved.
But most of
all, I loved it when the evangelist would come to town. There would be a big tent set up outside, and
for a solid week, we would go to church every night and hear the good news
preached for all to hear. It was a time
of celebration and fellowship, a time to spend with friends, and a time to cry
openly and freely (without totally understanding what it was I was crying
about) when people would go forward and turn their lives over to God. There is no way to adequately tell about the
emotions, the sense of expectation and hope, despair and longing, that would
build all night as we waited for the traveling preacher to start to tell the
story. We always went to those tent
meetings with an attitude of both high expectation and fear.
We would hear
the story of Jesus, as he was baptized by his cousin John at the River Jordan,
and we children would be so amazed when John said Jesus was the Son of God,
that he was the Messiah, the one the people of
While walking
by the sea one day, Jesus calls to Peter and Andrew, then to James and John to
follow him and help him call all the people to repent and turn their lives and
their attitudes over to God. As this
little band of men travel all over the region, people come to hear this man
named Jesus, the tent preacher and healer.
The more he preaches and heals, the more famous he becomes. He has become an evangelist. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a
Billy Graham crusade, but if you have you might have some idea of how Jesus
might have felt when he saw the huge crowds who had come because they wanted and
needed to be healed in so many ways.
They were hungry and poor, they were sick and in mourning, they were
afraid – afraid of their government and their religious leaders who were
supposed to be the select few but were corrupt in their power and their faith. They needed someone to tell them that they
were cherished and loved, that they were on the right path, and that there is
hope, that there is always hope.
So what was
Jesus response to these huge crowds of people who were so needy and in so much
pain? He left them, and went off into
the mountains to be by himself, and knowing him, most likely to pray. The people must have been disappointed and
confused, but they probably also stayed around for a long time waiting for him
to return because he was the famous evangelist and they knew this man was
perhaps the most important person they would ever see or hear in their
life. The disciples however, followed
Jesus, and when he sat down he told them, the one’s who were already with him
and who were part of his ministry and work, the good news – the news of a new
way. This news wasn’t about repentance,
it wasn’t about power, and it wasn’t about what they had to change about
themselves to find God in their everyday lives.
Now, I am sure
that along about now, you must be asking yourselves what this story has to do
with All Saint’s Day. Believe me, I
struggled with that very same question even as I sat down to write this
story. But as I was writing, I realized
that it is a story for us, for all the saints, (because you know we are all
saints) for the one’s who come to the tent meetings and wait with baited breath
to hear the story again and again, and then watch in tears of joy and sorrow
and unbelievable hope as those who don’t know the story begin to understand. This is our good news, that no matter what
attitude we are in today, we can never be beyond the grace-filled love of God,
the caring, just, concerned, protective, comforting, strong, benevolent, and
manifold love of God. Today, as we weep
for and remember all those who have gone before us, we must also rejoice
because Jesus tells us that no matter where we are, what we are doing, what we
are thinking, and how we are feeling we are always a part of each other and all
of us are always blessed because we are all always and forever the beloved
children of God.
Eventually,
Jesus goes on to tell us what is expected of us as saints, those who already
know they are part of God and God’s all-encompassing family, but he wants us
first and foremost to know that we are all saints, simply because we are all
part of God. And as saints, no matter
what we face every day, yes every hour, and even every second of our lives, no
matter what attitude we have met the day with, or faced each other with, we are
assured that our reward is great, because that reward is having the deep,
internal and abiding knowledge and understanding that we will always have
everything we need, and yes dare I say it, even want, when we know beyond a
doubt that we are greatly and marvelously loved in every fiber of our being
just as we are, and that we continue to be
blessed and flourish throughout eternity. And at the risk of being a little too
evangelical or too corny here, when you ask how I know this, I tell you I know
it because our Creator declared it, Jesus lived it, the Spirit fills my life
and my heart and my soul with it, and from one of the best loved evangelical
songs ever, because the Bible tells me so.
AMEN