teaching classes on the side, as of today, as of this day, Sunday, June 10 th, I am launching a new

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Stanley Esmond Brooks
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1 Seen and Unseen A Sermon by Rich Holmes on Second Corinthians 4:13-5:1 Delivered on June 10, 2018 at Northminster Presbyterian Church in North Canton, Ohio Well, I begin my sermon today with an announcement. In addition to being your pastor and teaching classes on the side, as of today, as of this day, Sunday, June 10 th, I am launching a new business. I am launching a new line of cosmetics and hair care products for both women and men. Now, I know what you re going to say to me, you re going to say, Pastor, there are a million cosmetics and hair care products out there, and probably a half a million which have failed. What makes you think that your line of products will be successful? Well, I am so glad you asked. You see my line of products is different. Unlike most of these products out there that are designed to make you look younger, mine are designed to make you look older. So, rather than selling you something called Oil of Olay, I am selling you Oil of Old Age. Oh yes, apply it generously and it adds fine lines and crow s feet, and liver spots, all the things you could possibly want. Oil of Old Age. And in my line of hair care products, rather than calling my shampoo Treseme I am calling it Yes, I m Grey. Oh yes! Yes, I m Grey will turn all your blonde, brunette and red locks of hair into grey ones overnight, and yes, it will even thin your hair with just a few applications. Now, what is that you say to me, you aren t really interested in buying my line of products? You want to look younger, not older. Well, of course you do, because you are living in a culture that celebrates youth, not old age. The youth industry in this culture is a multi-billion dollar industry. We spend money on cosmetics designed to make us look younger, gym memberships designed to keep the muscle tone of our youth. We buy clothes that are modelled not by people in their forties and fifties, but by people in their teens and twenties. People get plastic surgery designed to make them look younger, and they go to 1

2 see films, and watch shows on Netflix, and listen to music by artists and celebrities who are young, not old. Now, I know what you might be saying to me, I exaggerate how much our culture celebrates youth. For every young celebrity like Jennifer Lawrence there is a senior celebrity like Meryl Streep, for every young entertainer like Shawn Mendez if you know who that is, there is a senior one like Mick Jaggar. But while I think we often value older people for what they can do as a result of their age, we value youth for its own sake. We sometimes value older people because of their experience or their wisdom, but we value the youth because they are young. And it isn t just young people that we value, it is anything that is new. Go out to the supermarket today and just count the number of products that are marketed to you using the word new. And I will also tell you that much of our struggle, so much of our struggle to grow as a church which is not just our struggle but the struggle of every church I know is for no other reason, for no other reason than that we believe in something that is old. It isn t because our churches aren t hospitable enough, or authentic enough or because we have the wrong positions on certain moral and social issues. All of that matters, I m not saying it doesn t. But more than any of this, it is because we believe something that is old. The gospel may be good news, but it isn t exactly breaking news. Now, you may all wonder, what on earth I am spending so much time on this topic of aging for? Certainly you have heard me talk about aging before, and not just our process of aging, but the aging process of the entire creation. And you may wonder why I do this, as you remind me that you don t have to be a Christian to be concerned about getting older. I know that. I haven t seen any evidence and I know of no evidence that Christians are any more concerned about getting older than anyone else. There are plenty of non-christians who have gym memberships 2

3 and spend money on cosmetics and plastic surgery, and try to slow the cruel march of time right along with all of us. But hear this. While you don t have to be a Christian to be concerned about the cruel march of time, what makes Christians different, we are told today, is that Christians know that trying to slow down this march of time is not the answer. Yes, you can slow down the march of time, yes, you can do things to either make time move at frantic gallop or at a gradual slither, but you cannot stop the march of time. Nothing you can do can ever stop the march of time. So while the world tries to find hope in stopping the march of time, what do we do, as the people of God? What we do, what we do is look for hope beyond this world that we can see and hear, touch taste and smell. What we do is to proclaim that there is hope beyond this world of decay which we can perceive with our five senses. There is hope beyond this world that is gradually decaying whether we notice it with each passing day or we don t. In our New Testament passage for today, the apostle Paul says Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. As the people of God, we hope in what we cannot see. And you may say to me, how do I hope in what I cannot see? When I m hoping in what I can t see, how do I know I m not hoping in vain? People ask this all the time. But I frankly don t see the problem, because you know what, you do it all the time. You do it all the time. When someone tells you that they love you, 3

4 you can t see their love for you. Their love doesn t have a color or a flavor. It s not something you can measure, or weigh. They can try and show love by giving you a hug or holding your hand or writing you a love poem, but they can do all those things without loving you as well. You can t see what someone is talking about when they say they love you, but we hope in love all the time. Or what about when someone tells you they re sorry? You can t see that they re sorry. Their sorrow doesn t have a shape or a size or a height or a depth. Oh sure, they can talk about the height and depth and size of their sorrow, but all of that is just metaphor, just poetry. And they can cry and write you an apology letter. But again, they can do all that without being sorry. But you trust that people are sorry all the time. Or what about when someone says I promise. Our entire economy is based on trusting people who say I promise. But you can t see the sincerity with which they make a promise. They can sign a document; they can sign a hundred documents. They can even sign them in blood. But every day people do that for whom their words and their promise mean nothing. You are probably so used to trusting people who say I love you I am sorry and I promise that you trust people who say these things without even thinking about it, without even giving it a second thought, even though these are things you can t see. And when you consider that, when you really think about that, then is it really so hard to believe in God s promise of eternal life that you cannot see? Are you really going to believe, are you really going to believe that the point of life on earth is for everything to decay and get older and more broken and die? Do you really believe that? Maybe you do, and maybe reflecting on all the times you trust in things you don t see doesn t help too much, but maybe it will also help to know that this eternal life which we cannot see is not completely unseen, it just isn t fully and clearly seen. In this life, we at least 4

5 see glimpses. We at least see dim reflections. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says it is as if we see in a mirror dimly but then we will see face to face. You ve probably heard those words read lots of times because they are part of a passage that is always read at weddings. But I have to admit that s a phrase that has never made sense to me, what do you mean we see in a mirror dimly? Well mirrors in Paul s day were just polished brass or polished silver and they only gave off dim reflections, and Paul says this is all we see in this life, but we see them nonetheless. Few people could ever imagine that a glimpse of this eternal life would come on When you consider how many thousands of people suffered and died in the terrible events of that day, and when you consider that these thousands of people were just going about their lives and did nothing to deserve their fate on that day, it seems that the only people who would ever say that God was present on that day are the religious fanatics who carried out their acts of terror on that day. But there was one man, one man who had fallen down on the ground from his injuries during the horrible events of He was lying on the ground in the middle of lower Manhattan, when one of the twin towers began collapsing. Suddenly another man came up to him and said brother there is a cloud of glass coming at us, so if you don t mind, grab my hand and let s get out of here. The first man s name was Usman Farman. He was a Muslim and what was clearly visible around his neck was a Muslim prayer that was written in Arabic, and the second man was a Hasidic Jew, and in the midst of all the religious hate and murderous rage of that day for everyone to see, here was a devout Muslim and a devout Jew hand in hand, running together to save each other s lives. 5

6 Or consider Osela McCarty, a woman whose name you probably don t know. You won t see any statues of her, or any federal buildings dedicated to her. You won t see her face on any stamps or coins or paper money. Osela McCarty was just a simple black woman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She didn t go to college or discover a cure for a disease or win any nobel prize. In fact, she quit school in the sixth grade to care for her sick aunt and she never went back. She worked her entire life as a washerwoman, earning very little money, probably no more than minimum wage. When she was 86, Osela could no longer work washing clothes, because her arthritis was getting too bad, but the next year she gave something away from the money she had earned from working her entire life. It was a gift to the University of Southern Mississippi and it was in the amount of 150,000 dollars. It was for scholarships, for students who could never afford a college education on their own. Something Osela never had for herself, but which it was important for her to see for others. People wanted to know why Osela did this, why she was so generous, and finally a reporter from People magazine asked her why she didn t spend all that money on herself. But Osela just smiled. I am spending it on myself she said. We see in a mirror dimly, Paul says. I don t know what our lives in heaven will look like. I know it s described in the bible with pearly gates and streets of gold, but I don t know how to take these images. But we do have these dim reflections and maybe that is enough for now. Maybe that is enough for now. 6

Imitators of God A Sermon by Rich Holmes Delivered on October 7, 2018 at Northminster Presbyterian Church in North Canton, Ohio

Imitators of God A Sermon by Rich Holmes Delivered on October 7, 2018 at Northminster Presbyterian Church in North Canton, Ohio When I was in the eighth grade I remember going to a dance at Crabapple Middle