The First Word FROM FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF BONITA SPRINGS SERMON BY REV. JUNE BARROW FEBRUARY 7, 2016 herefore, since we have been made right in God s sight T by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God s glory. We can rejoice too in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:1-5 Two Young Women Go back with me to another time, before the Civil War, and let me introduce you to two young women girls, really, when we first meet them. Susan and Anna Warner are born in the early part of the 1800 s in New York City into a family of good social standing. The father is a prosperous attorney and they live in a townhouse mansion in St. Mark s Square, a fashionable neighborhood in Manhattan. Sadly, when the girls are still young, they lose their mother. An aunt moved in to look after them. Then came what history books call The Panic of 1837, followed by another in 1839, and the country entered a depression. Banks failed; the stock market fell, and Mr. Warner, father of Susan and Anna, suffered hard losses followed by lawsuits and more disappointing investments. The older daughter, Susan, had two enduring memories from these hard days. Walking home one day, she stopped at what she saw. Workmen were carrying the family s furniture out the front door of the mansion and loading it into wagons. It was being taken to pay debts. On
another day, she saw an acquaintance across the street. She waved and called a greeting, but the other young woman walked straight ahead without turning to look at Susan. She knew then the consequence of their trouble she had been socially cut. She knew then that the life she had thought was hers belonged to her no more. At that moment, she made a decision. Rather than going home, she walked to her church, poured out her sorrow in prayer, and let herself be claimed by God. She made a commitment to belong to Christ all the rest of her days. The family lost their income and their home. They lost their social standing and the secure future they had imagined. You could put many names to such a time in a person s life. Some of you have lived through times just as unsettling, just as full of loss. You could call them problems or difficulties or trials or hard times. But there is an older term, one we don t have to avoid. Let s call this suffering. Lots of us don t want to claim that big term for our own stresses, but it s a word the Bible uses. The Bible shows genuine respect for the sufferings that come into our lives and genuine compassion for people who suffer. From Here to Hope When suffering comes, we all want one quick step to hope. We want hope to come right now, quickly. We want the sorrow or the anger or the fear replaced with the peace and optimism that hope suggests. We want assurance that things will work out, that it will be okay. The great apostle Paul writing to the Christians in Rome describes the journey from here to hope. We do get hope, but it s not a simple one-step journey. Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope. Suffering to perseverance to character to hope that s the journey from here to hope. Here s what happened to Anna and Susan Warner. The family owned a summer home on Constitution Island in the Hudson River, just across from West Point Military Academy. The drafty old farmhouse, intended as a summer getaway, became the only home they had. Burdened by heavy debts, they faced the challenge of supporting themselves, putting food on the table and wood in the stove. As they faced this new life, their aunt suggested that Susan, who loved to tell stories, try writing one down, and the girls began to write. Before the Civil War, novels were not common. Church libraries had exactly one book of fic- 2
tion Pilgrim s Progress by John Bunyan quite unlike the abundance our own Book Center carries. I once read a lecture by a 19th century professor from Princeton University who warned against the new practice of novel reading. It was dangerous, he said, especially for women. Susan Warner actually wrote a novel. She called it The Wide, Wide World and, after many rejections, it found a publisher. It was an instant success, and in fact it became the first best-seller in the United States. Over the next years, many church libraries carried exactly two novels: Pilgrim s Progress and The Wide, Wide World. It s a story of a young girl whose mother dies, who is sent away from her home to live with others, who faces many struggles and sorrows, a girl much like Susan herself. In the novel, the young protagonist meets a kind and wise older gentleman who teaches her what the Bible says about becoming a child of God, a follower of Christ. And, as both Susan and Anna had done, this young character in the novel makes a commitment to Christ. Not just to a set of beliefs, but to the Lord, who would hear her prayers, would lead her forward, would be part of every good thing and every hard thing that came into her life. In the novel, the girl learns to lean on and trust in God, just as Susan and Anna were doing. Money came, but to make ends meet, both sisters kept on writing. They wrote novels separately. They wrote novels together. Their biographer describes them rising very early in the drafty old farmhouse on Constitution Island, dipping their pens in inkwells and scratching across page after page. They wrote every morning until lunchtime and they kept on publishing. Perseverance Romans chapter 5 says that suffering produces perseverance. They persevered in their work; they persevered in their Christian faith. They worked, studied the Bible, prayed, trusted, and just as we do, waited to see what might come next. Nearly all of us, when loss comes, when circumstances change, when faced with accepting a new normal, would really rather not. We liked the old normal just fine and we want it back. How about Anna and Susan Warner? As Bible students, they knew well the story of Job, who suffered greatly, who had loss after loss. They knew the ending of 3
the story of Job. He gets it all back. At the end of the story, he is even wealthier than he was before. He has children again and respect in his community. His life is restored to him. How did the Warner sisters feel? What did they want? Did they want to get their old life back? I ve read the novel The Wide, Wide World. The main character, the little girl Ellen, survives her hardships and grows up. Into her life comes a handsome and well to do man who falls in love with her. In the final chapter, after their wedding, he takes her to the comfortable home he has provided, introduces her to the servants, shows her a small room that is her private sitting room, takes her across the room to the desk which will be hers, pulls open a drawer and it is full of cash money. Character and Commitment They wanted to get it all back, just as we do. They hoped for a return to the old normal. But that did not happen. What do you do when the old life, the old expectations, are no longer possible? Suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character. The sisters home on Constitution Island was directly across the river from West Point Military Academy. Anna and Susan volunteered to teach a Bible class to the young men, the cadets, and the offer was accepted. On Sunday afternoons they rowed across the river and taught the Bible in the cadet chapel. In later years many of the cadets rowed to Constitution Island to visit them. The Bible class continued for 40 years, until the death of the last sister, Anna, in 1915. The West Point class of 1915 included Dwight Eisenhower, who would become Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II and our 34th president. He was one of Anna Warner s Bible class pupils. When Anna and Susan were young, the future that stretched ahead of them seemed to be a life of comfort, security, marriage, all within the status of New York City society. All of that was lost to them; but not their faith. On that hard day as a teenager, when Susan was shunned by a friend, she poured out her need for the Lord and affirmed her commitment to follow where he would lead. Have you ever prayed a prayer like that? When Job was in misery, he prayed: Though he slay me, yet will I trust him. 4
Three young men in Babylon who faced the choice of worshipping the emperor as a god or facing death said, If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O King, that we will not serve your gods. A beautiful young woman named Esther risked her life to approach the king uninvited, even though to do so was against the law, in order to plead for mercy for her people. She said, If I perish, I perish. Jesus prayed, Not my will, but yours be done. Hope and Trust in God Suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character and character produces hope. What does hope mean? Does it mean wishing for things to turn out well? Dreaming of happy endings? Imagining good outcomes? Does hope mean gritting your teeth and thinking positive thoughts no matter what? What is biblical, Christian hope? Hope is the conviction that, no matter, God is God. Hope is the confidence that even when nothing seems to make sense, still the Lord is present. Christian hope is not confidence that things will turn out as I choose or as you wish, but that the Lord is at work always, that it s the Lord s place to set things to right and that he will have the last word. True, suffering awakens doubts and disturbs our certainties. When suffering comes for due cause, at least we can understand it. But when people suffer without apparent cause, when the purposes of God are entirely hidden from us, it s hard. If we do not know why we trust God, we will always need to understand exactly what God is doing in order to have confidence in him. If, however, we do know why we trust God, we can have confidence even where we do not understand. We may not know why something awful happened, but we can believe and trust God who does know why. We trust when we do not understand because we trust God s character, demonstrated through what was done for us in Jesus. Our hope is not that we can control God, or that if we perform well enough we can manipulate things to produce an outcome. Our hope is not in improved circumstances, but in in God s character. God revealed his character to Moses; God said: The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithful- 5
ness, maintaining love to thousands (Exodus 34:6). This is the character of God. This is why we trust. This is who we trust, even when our circumstances cave in around us. Confident Hope and God s Love From suffering to perseverance to character to hope; this is the path of becoming mature followers of Jesus. God never abandons us, but is with us in our sorrows and troubles, shaping our souls, forming our character, enabling us to endure what we must. As our character is shaped in the midst of our troubles, we learn the gritty, muscular, strong hope that belongs to us as believers. Our confidence is not that the old normal will never change. Our confidence is not that we can somehow control our circumstances. Our confidence is that no matter what comes; God is with us, beside us, at work in us and through us. And he will have the last word. As Romans 5 assures us, hope does not disappoint us because God s love is poured out for us and into us. We have hope for only one reason: God is loving and perfect and powerful and He loves us! 6 we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God s love has been poured out into our hearts Anna and Susan worked and wrote and served right up until they died. They were never entirely free of debt. Yet, what a contribution those women were made. At their death, the Secretary of War serving under President Theodore Roosevelt, by special action, granted the privilege that these two women be the only civilians to be buried in the military cemetery at West Point. Their contribution to generations of cadets was valued. In one of the novels they wrote together, a little boy is very sick, near death. A kind man, his Sunday school teacher, comforts this dying child and recites a poem to him. Anna wrote the poem, and you know it: Jesus loves me this I know, For the Bible tells me so, Little ones to him belong, They are weak but he is strong.
What a contribution. Set to music, this little poem has been carried all over the world, by millions of children singing in many languages. Here is one such story from an article I have in my files: When Mao Tse Tung founded the People s Republic of China in 1949, the Christian church was severely persecuted with little information coming to the outside world. In 1972, some Americans received an unusual message from China. It said that the This I know people were well! The message seemed nonsensical to the Chinese authorities, so the censors let it through. The Americans clearly understood the reference to Anna Warner s simple song. (from Glimpses, Issue 62) This I Know! We, friends, we are the this I know people. Paul wrote: we have been made right in God s sight by faith we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand God s love has been poured into our hearts Despite our situation or circumstances, no matter our record or resume, we are made right in God s sight. This is not natural to believe. What we fall back into is our cultural conditioning that we get what we deserve, that we get approval from God only by our own hard work and effort. What we fall back into is the belief that the Bible tells us that God would love to love us if only we would straighten up, try harder, behave better, and improve ourselves. But that s a cultural, nor a biblical message. The Bible says that God did for us what we could never do for ourselves: That we can t possibly ever make our own path to God by our own good behavior. Rather, Jesus took our place. Because he willingly made himself a perfect offering, the path to God for us is an open door. By faith, it says. Because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us, it says. Because of this we stand in a new place, in a different landscape. The old is gone and the new has come. We now stand in a place of undeserved privilege. Before we leave today we will sing, Dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before his throne. Faultless, blameless, fully accepted, entirely approved, completely forgiven, carry- 7
ing no accusation what good news! How hard for us to believe. So many of us are our own prosecutors, carrying a list of our failures. But that s not the Bible. That s the culture. The Bible assures us, declares to us, that we are made right, that we have peace with God, that we now stand in a new landscape not a punishing place of judgment, but a place of grace. The this I know people. Is that you? Paul writes: God s love has been poured into our hearts. We aren t just forgiven, we are loved. We aren t given a spoonful of God s love; it is poured out. We are the this I know people. I once went to a funeral home for the calling hours to visit my friend who had lost her dear mother. She told me the story of her mother s last days. Her mom had one of those illnesses that rob the mind of memories. Sometimes her mother would become agitated and repeat the same phrase over and over. My friend learned that if she recited the Lord s Prayer or sang an old hymn, the familiar words would calm her mother. On her last visit, her mother became agitated. My friend recited the Lord s Prayer but to no avail. She sang an old hymn, but it didn t help. Then she began to sing, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to him belong And her mother joined in, We are weak but he is strong. Her mother taught her that song and it was her very last link with her mother. What a contribution those Warner sisters made. The this I know people. May it be so for you, my friends. May you commit yourself entirely into the Lord s loving hands, put yourself entirely under his authority, trust entirely in his loving character. May God s love be poured into you. 9751 Bonita Beach Road Bonita Springs, Florida 34135 239 992 3233 fpcbonita.org