A Life Changing Promise
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A Life-Changing Promise
by Rev. Bernie Johnson
I do want to say a special thank you to those who lead in worship, you musicians and those who read and do prayers. Anybody who does what I am about to do, and that is to try and explore meaning from the word of God, knows how important it is to be led in worship up to that moment in time. I am very grateful for that spirit and all of you who have participated and sung. It is very nice to sit in the front and hear all of you singing. It is also good for you that you didn’t have to listen to me singing….so…that is why it is an advantage to being in that front row.
I want to read from Matthew 28, the text that is pretty familiar to all of us. Matthew 28 is a resurrection text, if you will, or chapter. It begins with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary coming to the tomb and finding that it is empty. They have an encounter with an angel of the Lord who says, “Don’t be afraid. The one who was crucified is risen.” And then a little bit further along, they actually encounter the risen Christ who says to them, “Go and tell my brothers (meaning the disciples), what you have seen and tell them to wait for me.” Then we pick it up when Jesus appears to those eleven disciples now, Judas is gone—and here is the encounter beginning in verse 16 of Matthew 28. Listen for the word of God. (Matthew 28:16-20)
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Let us pray.
Gracious God, may your Spirit have great freedom among us this morning to touch our hearts, to help us connect with the power of your word and the message that has come to us through every aspect of the Scriptures—from the psalms of David, the letters of the apostle, Paul, to the very words of your risen Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior; and it is in his name we pray. Amen.
High school reunions are sort of fun. Maybe some of you have had a chance to attend one. Several years ago I was able to go back to Massachusetts and attend a high school reunion where I had gone to high school. Before I left, I looked at my yearbook. I was leafing through the pages of the yearbook and there was a picture of one of my old flames, Allison Quinn. I looked at what she had written on her picture. She said, “Bernie, I will never forget you!” Now you have to understand, I truly hoped Allison might actually be there at that reunion, and she was. She didn’t remember me. “Bernie who?”
“Lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.” That is what Jesus wrote across his picture after the resurrection and that first Easter. I would like you to get in touch with that very statement this morning. Now I have to say at the outset that this sermon is not for everyone in the room; I am convinced of that. It is only for those who may have known intense loneliness or anxiety or fear. It is for those who may have worried about tomorrow or wondered if any one in the world cares about them. It is only for those who have experienced tragedy and loss, and for those who may have experienced rejection or failure in a human relationship. It is for the parent who worries about a child, and a young person who wonders about life and his or her future. It is also, I believe, for anyone who longs to do something for humanity that requires courage. It is for a person who may be facing a test of ethics in the workplace. So like most sermons, this one is not for everyone here; but if what I just said applies to any of you then there is enormous hope in these words of the risen Christ. “Lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.”
Some of you here are young enough to remember Groucho Marx, or, old enough. I loved Groucho Marx. One of my favorite comedians of the last, I guess it is the last century now. He would say interesting things in offhanded ways. “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like bananas.” …You have to think about that one for a minute… One of the things that he said, and it was actually in a song he sung and a title of a book written about him, is he would come to a gathering and be introduced and he would say, “Hello, I must be going!” And I thought about that and what a commentary it is about life in our times.
A loved one dies and we are not sure that we ever really got to know them. “Hello, I must be going!” Our children are born, they grow up and one day they leave home and it seems like, “Hello, I must be going.” A marriage falters and fails. “Hello, I must be going!” A valued employee is lured away by the competition. “Hello, I must be going!” Lonely people look for Mr. or Mrs. Goodbar. “Hello, I must be going!” People grow old and wither in nursing homes. Maybe a youth group visits once a year at Christmas. “Hello, we must be going!” Mortgage bankers look at a decaying urban neighborhood. “Hello, I must be going!” A busy executive husband and father is home between business trips. “Hello, I must be going!” A physician drained and tired and overworked makes his rounds. “Hello, I must be going!” People are stored away in prisons and mental hospitals where visits from the outside are always “Hello, I must be going!”
And it is in the midst of that kind of world that Jesus Christ, the risen Christ of Easter, stands and says, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” “Hello, I am here to stay!” The foolishness in our living comes all too often from trying to get a promise of “Lo, I am with you always” from a source that simply cannot provide it. Even the best of marriages are only “til to death do us part.” No nation, no leader, no earthly institution, no corporation, no career has ever been able to make a promise equal to “Lo, I am with you always.” But a Galilean preacher, crucified and risen again, makes the promise that you and I need to consider. When the disciples heard that promise, they went on to literally risk their lives to be sure that the world might hear that good news.
The basic crisis of life is in permanence. Nothing is forever. So the crucial question for you and me is whether I do what I do, choose what I choose, give what I give, think what I think, informed by that which is permanent or that which is fundamentally impermanent. Virtually all of our behavior is motivated by what we believe to be the most lasting and durable reality in life. And every one of us consciously or unconsciously is putting his or her weight down on what it is they believe is the most durable and lasting reality in life.
One of the harsh realities of aging is that our bodies change and youthful strength is not forever. Some years ago I joined a health club in the city where we were living and there was a young man in perfect condition taking me around the circuit of the exercise things that I might be asked to do if I got on his program. At the end of that little tour I said to him, “Listen, if I do what you are telling me to do and I do it faithfully, will I end up looking like you?” He just sort of laughed and said, “No, but you will be a much stronger fat man.” (laughter)
Ralph was on his way to the top of his company, a corporation whose name every one of you would recognize. He was a marked man. The company was sold. Sorry, Ralph, we have changed our mind. “Hello, you must be going!”
“Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” These words are either the greatest truth or the cruelest hoax ever perpetrated. If they are true, then my entire life can change. If they are false, then most of what Jesus taught is of doubtful value. If the words are true, then I never need to be lonely or afraid, reluctant or even morally tentative ever again. If they are false, then take your best shot from among the impermanent possibilities of life. “Lo, I am with you always” is the only truth I know that deserves to be both the first and last word defining my life—it changes everything.
One of my most treasured friendships to this day began when I first met this person as a young man. He participated in a youth group in a church I was serving as his youth pastor. Steve was bright and sensitive and intelligent way beyond his sixteen years. He was at the top of his class, most likely to succeed. He asked questions that a young youth pastor longed for. In many ways he saved my ministry with young people by helping me to understand teen-agers, better than I did for sure. He was a seeker but a doubter, as well. He came from a solid Christian family but wasn’t prepared to just imitate his parents’ faith. But he was a genuine seeker. He was like a college friend. He wanted to believe but he would never do so unless it could become very real for him. Steve took all of our conversations very seriously. He read books that I might have mentioned and then he would come to me with questions. I might make a mention of a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. By the next time we met a week later, he would have bought the book, read the book and come to me with questions that would have passed for the top of the class in any theological seminary. He was that smart, that bright, that perceptive and that capable. We talked a lot about the kingdom of God, the story of Jesus, the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ. We talked a lot about the lifestyle of faith. The turning point for Steve came during a canoe trip in the Canadian Boundary Waters. We were having the greatest of times, a group of ten or twelve of us. Steve and I spent a good bit of time talking about life and the future and about Jesus, about faith.
One of the disciplines of those trips was to require everyone to find a place away from everyone else and just take an hour of silence and solitude up there in the wilderness in the utter silence of the Boundary Waters. It was on one of those afternoons that Steve quietly came over before the hour was through and he tapped me on the shoulder and he whispered, “It is ‘Lo, I am with you always,’ isn’t it?” It is “Lo, I am with you always,” isn’t it? And he began to say to me, “It is ‘Lo, I am with you always,’ isn’t it?” He said, “That is why I can risk even the mockery of my peers for coming out as a Christian. It is ‘Lo, I am with you always.’” He was almost dancing on his toes as he was thinking it through and getting that message sunk deeply into him. He said, “That is why my deepest loyalties belong to Christ and not to some career and certainly not to some political party and certainly not to some nation or some economic system. It is ‘Lo, I am with you always,’” he said, “That is what I need if I am going to walk a straight line in an often crooked world. ‘Lo, I am with you always.’” He said, “That’s what I am going to need for marriage so that I won’t be asking another human being to provide for my spiritual welfare.” He said, “It is ‘Lo, I am with you always.’” Steve got hold of that promise and it sank into him more deeply than almost anyone I have ever known.
Less than a year after that canoe trip, the phone rang in my office on a winter afternoon. Steve’s father had committed suicide. A prominent surgeon but stressed and depressed beyond his limits, Steve’s father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I was literally trembling all over as I walked up to Steve’s house—tears, streaming down my face. Steve met me at the door; we threw our arms around each other holding on for dear life. And I shall never forget what he said to me through his tears. He said, “Bernie, this is a big one. It is still ‘Lo, I am with you always,’ isn’t it, Bernie?” And I watched a sixteen year-old boy make it through an almost unimaginable nightmare sustained by a promise of the risen Christ.
More than thirty years later Steve is still recommending Jesus to everyone he can. Frankly, as much as anything else, that is the real proof of the resurrection for me. All I have ever needed—a dramatically changed life able to meet even the most tragic of circumstances sustained by a promise, a promise found in the gospel that is rooted in the word “Emmanuel,” God with us, now and forever. Let that break in upon you this morning and go with you this day and every day of your life. Amen.