"The Tool of Discouragement"

For those of you I haven't met, my name is Scott Jones and I've been working here at the church as the Coordinator of Youth Ministry for the last year. Those of you I have met know better.

For the past several years, as I've considered possible careers in law or psychology, I've felt God calling me to the ministry. No matter how many times I heard God say that He wanted me to develop a satisfying lifetime career cleaning up after the camels that work with the Radio City Rockettes at Christmastime, I knew that He was just kidding; that He really wanted me to go into the ministry. There was a burning sensation in my soul which said that I had to investigate this call. Other symptoms included general malaise, low grade fever, itchy watery eyes, loss of appetite, nausea and bad taste in the mouth, sore feeling in lower bowels, unusual discharge, impaired general health, sharp pain in region of kidneys, backache, dull pain in small of back, dragging sensation in the groin, timid, nervous and restless feeling, dread of impending evil, irritability, hysterics, sleeplessness, morbidity and the blues, and fainting spells.

Before giving in to God's plan, I tried to deal with the symptoms with sodium bicarbonate, powdered rhubarb, gentian root, blue cohosh, capsicum, ipecac, willow charcoal, black haw, hydro-alcoholic menstruum, sugar, cactus gradiflorus, digitalis, iron pyrophosphate, caffeine, celery seed, liquid malt extract, senna, couch grass, Rochelle salts, coca leaves, corn silk, potassium iodine, burdock root, golden seal, marigold, valerian, gotu kola, camomile, ginger, and extract of queen's root, in a port wine base.

While not efficaceous in dealing with orders from On High, these remedies were good for all the symptoms above when taken internally, and are a good topical remedy for pimples, blackheads, freckles, sallowness, roughness, wrinkles, sunburn, poison oak, superfluous body hair, the venom of most poisonous reptiles and insects, and many fabric stains.

I promised myself and God that I'd take time off from college one year and attempt to decipher this sense of call. So here I am. Back in August when I sat down with Jimmy and Ned to nap out a course of experiences that I should attain as I explore this call to the ministry, each of them had several suggestions, but I've always been a good swimmer and was able to get out of that lake after jumping into it. We were throwing out ideas and before I knew what I'd said, I'd thrown one through Ned's office window. Well, you can imagine how chagrined I felt, and why I immediately offered to preach instead of paying to replace the shattered glass panes, which was his first suggestion.

My ego wouldn't let me back down from the challenge, so I set a date of April 13th, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Little did I know how quickly this day would arrive or that my tax refund would not have arrived yet and so I'd still be stuck in this hookworm paradise town you people call "home." As I began to prepare for this sermon, Jimmy gave me a book and suggested that I open with a joke or funny story from it, which would help break the ice and ease my nervousness. Reflecting upon some of his other suggestions, I graciously returned his book and decided to do something else instead. Here are two stories from someplace or other ... judging by their overall tone and quality, I probably read them in Boys Life when I was about ten years old --

A young preacher had delivered what he thought was a great sermon, and he was feeling good on the way home. "How many great preachers do you think there are preaching today?", he asked his wife.

"None, you damn fool," the harried harridan replied. "This is Tuesday, and you just accidentally shared your stupid sermon with an empty church," she answered.

I was preaching in a church where a boy would have something negative to say every Sunday, no matter what I preached on. One Sunday, he said, "That's about the sorriest sermon I ever heard." The Next Sunday, he came by and asked, "Do you call that a sermon?" The third Sunday, he said, "That is about the nearest to nothing sermon I think I ever heard."

I got so upset that I went to the elders and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, every Sunday this fellow has something negative comment about my preaching." One of them said, "That's funny, we told him to break your jaw and legs after telling you how lousy your sermons are."

In our "me first" society, total commitment to Jesus Christ can be extremely difficult. Our American culture is one of the most, if not the most selfish since the beginning of civilization. Trust me on this one, folks, for I am wise in the ways of history and all other social sciences. Look no further than the poverty rate within our own country, much less in impoverished nations all around the world for evidence of this fact. In the wealthiest country in the world, there are people starving. Betcha never heard that one before, huh?

In November I had the privilege of helping lead a group of our youth to Washington, D.C. on a mission trip, a trip that many of our church's youth and officers have served on over the past several years, where we worked in soup kitchens preparing food and serving it to the homeless. We worked in a kitchen named SOME. That morning, the ladies from one of the local A.M.E. Zion churches had prepared sausage, eggs and grits. The responsibility of the people from our church was to set the tables, serve the food and clean up in between the fifteen minute shifts during which the others might eat. It would have been much more cost efficient for us to just arrange the whole thing by mail with a low-end D.C. area caterer, but doing so would have added little grist to this sermon.

I was stationed at the end of the serving line where the homeless folks would walk by in a single file line to take their trays. I don't know that I have ever heard so many thank-yous in my entire life as I did during that 10-minute period during which hundreds of men, women and children came through the line. Of course, I'd never done anything for anyone before, either.

That experience provided me with a great deal of perspective, and it also brought about a striking realization of just how much of a product I am of this "me centered" culture. For months, I had been consumed by the effects of Hurricane Fran, which sent two and a half feet of salt water all through my house. Well, I wasn't really "consumed," but my toes stayed wrinkled for quite some time after the water had receded and felt kinda creepy. I felt inconvenienced about having to move into an apartment for several months and sorrow at the loss of those material possessions piled ten feet high at the end of the driveway, but as I handed out a plate of food to a young man about my age at the end of that serving line I suddenly realized that while I was upset about a temporary displacement from my home, this young man had no home and no food. "Hey, dude," I said in the wisest, most sensitive tones, "when the insurance company replaces my mom's walk-in refrigerator, I'll see if she'll let you have the box."

In this passage today, Jesus tells us that we must repent from our human, American tendency to only focus on ourselves. In order to be true followers of Jesus Christ, we must find all of the New Testament passages in which America is referred to.

The public relations director of a seminary in Louisville had taken a distinguished visitor to the newspaper offices of the Louisville Courier/Journal and Times to be interviewed. Naturally, the Public Relations Director for the seminary had frequent contact through his work with the staffs of the two area newspapers. As a photographer was setting up to make a portrait shot, the Public Relations Director said in the cameraman's presence, "You are about to have your picture made by one of the best news photographers in the country."

The photographer, a personal friend who deserved the compliment, was noticeably embarrassed to be included in this pointless story, and insisted that neither he nor anything else be mentioned in it beyond this point.

Three men died and went to Heaven. St. Peter met them at the front gate and said, "Heaven is a great big place, and we'll assign you a vehicle to get around in based on how faithful you were to your wives."

So he gave the first man a Cadillac, the second a Chevrolet, and the third a motorcycle. The one who got the motorcycle was somewhat disappointed, but he figured that it was fair, based on his degree of faithfulness. He went driving down one of the streets of Heaven, and he saw the man who got the Cadillac parked on the curb, and he was crying loudly. He stopped and asked, "What in the world are you crying about? You got the Cadillac."

"I know," said the man, "and I wanted a Winnebago so that I could easily continue being unfaithful to my wife."

I'm afraid that far too many of us are riding on skateboards, and that's illegal within Wilmington city limits, so somebody's going to get busted.

1) Jesus says we must deny ourselves. To deny oneself means in every moment of life to say "No" to self and "Yes" to God. To deny oneself means to dismantle the constructed notion that self is the dominant principle of life, and to make God the ruling principle and the ruling passion of life.

2) Jesus says we must take up the cross. The Christian life is the life of service, a life where at times we must sacrifice time, leisure and pleasure in order to serve God through the service of each other. That principle is one that the members of this church have all but mastered.

3) Jesus zapped that fig tree for being barren. Temper, temper, we beseech thee, O Lord.

Back in September, as my mother and I dealt with the effects of Hurricane Fran, so many of you reached out to provide the service that Jesus speaks of in this passage, from the youth armed with steel rakes and chainsaws who tackled the yard debris to those of you who were mistaken for yard debris. I don't know about you, but for me, sometimes the great moments of sacrifice aren't the most difficult. The really important thing is not a collection of great moments of sacrifice, but a life lived in the constant, hourly awareness of the demand of God and the need of others. The Christian life is a life which is always concerned with others more than it is with itself.

4) Finally, the passage says we must follow Jesus Christ, that is, we must render our lives to Jesus. William Barclay, a world renowned yet still remarkably obscure, virtually anonymous Scottish New Testament interpreter, equates following Jesus Christ to the game almost all of us played when we were little -- "Follow the Leader." Everything the leader did, however difficult, or in the case of the game, however ridiculous, we had to copy. The Christian life is a life of following the leader, no matter how difficult. We'll leave the "ridiculous" part out for the purposes of this sermon.

The Christian life is about letting go and letting God. And, apparently, about sentence fragments. I guess. As I said before, I'm here this year working at the church in an attempt to decipher my sense of call to the ministry. Sounds like a great use of your pledge monies, doesn't it? Let the roof leak and the missionaries starve, just let me use the analytical and communication skills I've demonstrated for you this morning to decipher my sense of call to the ministry. Yeah, boy.

For when our time on Earth has come to an end and we venture up to the glorious gates of Heaven, I hope that St. Peter not only gives us the keys to the gates, but the keys to a Cadillac as well. And imported chocolates delivered fresh daily by big celebrities from the worlds of film and rock music. And stuff. And more stuff.

And now, on to the real meat of today's service, a sermon entiled, "The Tool of Discouragement."

What a day that must have been on top of Mount Carmel. The sun blazing from a clear blue sky and the Mediterranean Sea below formed the coastline, or the horizon, or a cheap postcard sold on every street corner in nearby Carmelville by grubby Arabs. No Water from the heavens had been seen in three years and the drought predicted by the prophet Elijah when that pious old jackass noticed that the Carmelites were capitalizing "Water" while leaving "heaven" lower case had produced great famines in the northern kingdom of Israel. Here, a confrontation takes place between Elijah, prophet of Yahweh, and the prophets of Baal, who shall remain nameless. The people of Israel had turned from the Lord to worship the fertility gods and goddesses in the shrines of Queen Jezebel. After this turn, they had put their left feet in, put their left feet out, and danced the fertility god's hokie pokie with all of their might, for it was to their advantage not to upset King Ahab's household.

The Lord Yahweh directed Elijah to call the priests of Baal to a contest, to be known forevermore as the Unpronounceable vs. the Unnameable. It was time for the people of Israel to declare their loyalty to the God of their ancestors, and, if they played their cards right, time for a little dessert blintz and coffee afterwards. Yahweh would be their only God or he would not be their God at all, for Yahweh was ever known as a "One People God," not like those guys like Buddha and Zeus who'd go ahead and accept every race that wanted them without a whole lot of questions being raised and foreskins being snipped and all that rigmarole. It was their choice, but the people showed no signs of decision ... or of courage, or even one itsy bitsy "Burning Bush Crossing" or "Danger - Watch For Falling Monoliths" sign. They were silent, reminding Yahweh of mimes and thus setting themselves up for divine castigation.

Elijah was alone on the mountain, or at least might as well have been, what with all the other Yids being silent and stuff. On a 15-mile stretch of land stood a lone prophet, full of courage and might, plus the traditional lone prophet's breakfast of locusts and sand, ready to take on 850 pagan prophets while the people of Israel that had been summoned there stood silent, but pretended to be sewing, feeling their way along a wall, pulling in a rope, or other common mime routines. It was showtime! The contest he proposed would prove who really controlled the rains that produced the crops. Each side prepared a sacrifice in exactly the same way, and each called on its god to send fire to consume the sacrifice. The contest would be won by the God sending the fire. The contest began with the Baal worshippers. As they screamed and danced and slashed themselves, Elijah was calm and composed. He had seem similarly fearsome sights only the week before at his cousin Manny's wedding. With everyone on Mount Carmel against him, he was supremely confident in his God. In all their efforts, "there was no voice, no answer, no response." There was silence and a humiliating defeat. Now Elijah spoke, giving the prophets of Baal a big "Wazoo!" and saying, "I told you so" as only a prophet could.

Elijah then, full of confidence, courage and faith, spoke to the people quietly, "Come near to me." He did just as the pagan prophets had done in preparing the altar and the sacrifice, but this was Yahweh's altar and Elijah prepared it in true worship and then prayed a simple prayer. "Take this sacrifice and consume it with fire, please Yahweh, my Lord, or even with a little Manichevitz if you'd rather." "Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the sacrifice." The people fell on their faces, or were maybe pushed, what with them being mimes and all, and repeated, "The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God." Victory belonged to Yahweh! The prophets of Baal were seized and slain. The long punishment of drought was at an end, or soon to be. The prophet Elijah advised King Ahab to return quickly to his summer place at Jezreel, for the rains were approaching. In the excitement of the events of the day and in the enthusiasm for the great victory of Yahweh, the prophet Elijah ran ahead of the chariot of King Ahab. Seventeen miles he ran from Mount Carmel to Jezreel. Can you picture that? Do you want to picture that? His adrenalin was flowing; he was on a spiritual high! All that cocaine in Ahab's chariot had nothing to do with it! Elijah was full of courage, plus locusts and sand, and possessed the physical strength and stamina needed to face King Ahab, the pagan priests, and the wavering people of God. In the power and might of God, he claimed victory for Yahweh. The gold medal for this run would surely have been given to Elijah, and he would surely have wondered what the hell it was when he woke up sober the next day.

What happens next to Elijah provides insight into our own reactions and truth about our human nature and several handy tips about removing pudding stains from cotton play clothes.

At this point, our Old Testament scripture reading begins, "A rain-drenched King Ahab's Queen Jezebel is told of the victory of Elijah and his God and sends a death threat to Elijah's house." Now, we know that the Bible was written with divine inspiration and everything, but this passage is phrased too nebulously for us to be certain whether it is Ahab or Jezebel who is rain-drenched. Nor are we told whether the drenchee, whoever that might have been, suffered damage to coiffure or silk garments or was planning a picnic or in some other way experienced loss that would justify killing Elijah over the town's first rain in three years, but it kind of indicates that Elijah's life was not highly valued to start with, now doesn't it? The spectacular triumph over the priests of Baal was a victory for God through a faithful and courageous Elijah, but for the wicked Queen it meant revenge for the slaying of her prophets of the fertility gods. She vowed to have his life, and nobody seems to have thought there was anything weird about that.

What did this hero of Mount Carmel do then? His adrenalin pumped through his veins and he ran again. Not in courage did he run, but in fear. His whole body and soul crumbled in fear and he ran for his life. What happened here to Elijah in this story can easily happen to any one of us, unless we happen to have white Ford Broncos and prefer low-speed chases down the Los Angeles freeway. Our spirits and bodies are not indestructible(see Chapter 8, Elijah and the Bodies on Rockingham). Exhaustion can breed this discouragement that triggers self-pity, hiding and collapse. So can the wrong size jockey shorts.

In my study for this sermon, I ran across a "could be" story. The story is told that at one point, the devil decided to go out of business. He put all his tools on display for sale and priced them. They were an evil lot -- greed, lust, cruelty, murder, and so on. But over in one corner was a harmless-looking tapered device that had the most expensive price tag of all. Someone said to his satanic majesty, "There must be a mistake in this tag. What is this tool and why is it so expensive?" The devil replied, "That is my most valuable weapon. It is 'discouragement.' With it, I can wedge an opening that will then let me insert any other tool at my command."

The prospective customer pondered this for several seconds and replied, "That sounds great. I'll take a dozen."

The "tool of discouragement..." Here we see a prophet of courage that has fled into the wilderness. It is the aftermath of a tense time on Mount Carmel. No one else came out on the side of the Lord against the pagan prophets. Elijah knew loneliness and despair during the three-year drought and shared in the sufferings of God's people. He had put all his energy into the showdown with the Baal prophets, and into his victorious seventeen-mile run back to Jezreel. He was utterly exhausted, physically, mentally and spiritually. Although the buildup to this experience had been gradual, the ending was abrupt. Thud!! The phrase I like to use here for my own such experiences in life is, "I cannot go any further, I can't do any more, my wheels have fallen off." Can't you just empathize with Elijah? And does anyone out there happen to have a lug wrench handy?

Discouragement had invaded Elijah's spirit. Loneliness and self-pity were creeping into his being. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed to the Lord that he might die. "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." Let us pause to reflect briefly that the preceding statement would not be negative if spoken by a Confucian, to whom veneration of ancestors would be a constant, but the Old Testament strongly implies that Elijah was not of the Confucian gland. Elijah had lost faith in himself because he felt the Lord had lost faith in him. He felt abandoned by God.

The good news in the Old Testament is that God does not abandon Elijah. He sees the overextended soul that is so physically and mentally worn out go from a sitting position to a sleeping position under the broom tree. God does not rebuke Elijah for running in fear, which would really have been a bit much, even for God, what with Elijah having just stuck up for Him at the risk of his life, but provides him with what he needs most -- the renewal in mind, spirit and physical being that comes from sleep and food. Yea, verily, what a swell Guy iseth the Lord! It is in this section of scripture that I felt the mighty hand of God that works through others to provide us what we need when the obstacles of life come our way. At least, I hope it was His hand. There are times in our lives that anxieties, temptations, doubts and fears cause us to run and hide. Sometimes they causes us to lose faith and courage. We must remember the words of the psalmist, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart(Ps 27:14)." Sometimes we have encounters with others that we do not know. Sometimes these encounters occur just when we need them and don't expect it. Sometimes, these encounters occur just when we expect it and don't need them, but that's another story. Perhaps you have experienced God's intervention in a time of trial through another person, event, or in nature itself that brought you out of despair and gave you the hope and strength and courage to forge ahead in life. You look back and say, "Oh how I needed that," or, "God must have known how I needed that," or, "Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry when they see me out in my surry with the fringe on top."

There was a time in my life that was most difficult following my divorce. I felt alone and abandoned. Why was this happening to me? Like, I didn't know I was going to be alone after a divorce. Nobody told me. What was I paying that lawyer for, anyway? Physically, I lost weight. Mentally, I ran and covered myself up in my nursing career while losing a few pounds in that area, too, and spiritually, I abandoned God. I stopped attending Sunday School and church. The good Lord intervened. His hand was upon many of you here today that reached out in love, care and compassion. A note was on an apple pie that Nancy Brown brought to my house during a visit. It contains three scripture references and a note: "Thinking of you ... Tomorrow will soon be yesterday. Love, Nancy." That pie brought back a hardy appetite, and I gained that weight back, and then everything was okay.

An angel, a visitor, a messenger of the Lord provided Elijah with food and a visit. Elijah was not alone. But he would have been if he'd gotten divorced, let me tell you! The messenger gave Elijah instructions and encouragement. Elijah regained strength from rest and nourishment, and he went in strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb. At that place he came to a cave and spent the night there. Elijah was in a "cave mood." A "cave mood" is one in which the world tends to become small and the sunlight of life seems to disappear. Time has no meaning and lights become sounds ... No, wait a minute. That isn't a cave mood; that's the Twilight Zone. Well, anyway, Elijah's heart and mind had gone into hiding. The Hebrews had a dread of being hemmed in, possibly stemming back to their early memories of the curious desert nomad habit of encouraging nursing mothers to share their capacities with stray livestock as well as their own infants. Repeatedly, the psalmist sings of the Lord's deliverance as of being led into large places. "He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted me(Ps. 18:19)." "He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted me(Ps. 18:19)." He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted me(Ps. 18:19)." He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted me(Ps. 18:19). Elijah was in need of a larger setting, and the psalmist was in need of a new psong.

There's a story about a wise old minister who was accustomed throughout a lengthy pastorate to preach one sermon each year on astronomy. When his youthful assistant inquired why the preacher talked about a subject so far removed from the daily walks of life, the pastor replied, "Well, I wrote that astronomy sermon back when I was in seminary and had no practical experience of the daily walks of life, and I figured, what the hell, it would be a shame to let it go to waste." When a person is shut into the "cave mood," he needs a larger mental setting in time as well as in space.

Talk about divine intervention! A friend called me on the phone just as I began working on this part of the sermon. I had visited and prayed with her husband last summer following surgery and his rehab experience. She told me that following her husband's stroke her son who was in his forties had died at home with a brain tumor. It had been very difficult for her to care for her husband and her son. Discouragement, physical exhaustion and mental stress were knocking at her door. She stated that she had picked up her Bible and gone outside to read in the book of Hebrews, but something told her to look up Psalm 27, which she did, to read Verse 14, "Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord." She said that immediately her burden was lifted, and that if she gets down in spirit, then she goes out to the porch and looks up to the tops of the trees, to the sky. For her, the Lord is outside and in the scriptures, and strength and courage come. Somehow, despite the fact that God did not intervene to save my friend's son from an agonizing death, her husband from serious impairment, or her from a life so abysmal as to lead her to call me on the phone to talk about what she had found in the Bible, as if that was a new bestseller she had just picked up from the "noteworthy" table at Waldenbooks!

In circumstances where physical impairments render it impossible to take hikes on mountain trails or walks on beaches, the windows of the mind can be opened to God's love and care in books and music. A small outlook on life can become a vision of eternity. Talk about divine intervention! There I was, at a loss for what to drone on about during today's sermon and distracting myself with a visit to a neighborhood Chinese restaurant, when I bit into a fortune cookie and found, written on a tiny scroll, "In circumstances where physical impairments render it impossible to take hikes on mountain trails or walks on beaches, the windows of the mind can be opened to God's love and care in books and music. A small outlook on life can become a vision of eternity."

Elizabeth Turner, now a saint of the Church Triumphant used this quote in a study that she taught for the Venture class in 1980. I kept it along with others she often used. It lifts my spirit and gives me hope. Mrs. Turner related a story in which an elephant and a mouse were best friends. One day, while walking down a jungle path, fell into a pool of quicksand and began to yell for help. His friend, the mouse, heard his calls and immediately jumped into his Porsche and came to his friend's assistance.

"I'll save you, I'll save you," cried the mouse, but the elephant, sinking rapidly in the quicksand, was not encouraged. "How can you save me? You're too small," reasoned the elephant, but the mouse attached a rope to the rear bumper of his Porsche, lassoed the elephant's nose with the other end of the rope and pulled him to safety.

A few days later, on a different, smaller path, the mouse himself became stuck in quicksand and began to cry for help. Along came the elephant, glad to have an opportunity to repay his friend's kindness. The elephant stood straddled over the pool of quicksand and said, "Just grab onto my virile member and climb up to safety, friend mouse." The mouse did so, with gratitude and rejoicing.

The moral of the story is: If you have a big enough virile member, you don't need a Porsche.

Did they serve pork chops at the Last Supper?

Amen.

Comments always welcome