This sermon is filled with the first person. Though I will certainly stand behind the Biblical integrity of its content, it is as much a personal confession and witness as it is a sermon. It also contains references to a number of the members of our congregation. Those about whom I have spoken, and all the members of New Philadelphia, are a constant inspiration, support and challenge to me. I am in my 21st years of ministry here, and I have loved each unfolding year better than the last. I can say that because I believe that those who attend our worship, and those who rest in God’s Acre still belong to the One Church, a portion of which meets at 4440 Country Club Road in Winston-Salem, N.C.
This morning I stand before you to confess that I have wasted a good portion of my life, for there was a time in my life when I did not value learning. It was a result of negative peer pressure. I remember rejoicing when I made my first “F” in geometry. I was in the 10th grade at Gray High School. It made me feel like one of the guys, because many of my friends had a couple of F’s on every report card. We boasted about them. I made one more F in high school, predictably it was in Algebra II. I used to say that I had a problem with math. The real problem was that I never did my math homework. I still graduated from High School with a 2.5 Average on a 4.0 scale and went to Lees-McRae Junior College. There the classes were smaller, and the professors called on every class member at least once a day. I experienced positive peer pressure for the first time. I was ashamed not to study. I graduated from LMC with a 2.75 average on a 4.0 scale and went to Carolina. Carolina had larger classes, and the positive peer pressure was removed. It was easy to hide. I cut as many classes as I attended. In order to graduate, I had to attend summer school at High Point College. I graduated with a 2.2 average, but even before I graduated I knew that I had I wasted a good education.
Two things happened after my graduation from Chapel Hill. I spent 3 and 1/2 years in the Marine Corps, and I learned discipline. I also became an active follower of Jesus Christ, and decided to seek God’s will for my life. That took me to seminary. In seminary one of my professors, Dr. Donald Demoray, told us about “the witness of excellence.” Dr. Demoray said that we Christians should always do the best we can at anything we do. He used the example of term papers. He said that even if we did not write well, every paper we turned in should be absolutely perfect in grammar and in typing. He had us purchase Strunk & White’s, The Elements of Style, and made us memorize the rules. For someone who needs to write or speak, The Elements of Style is the second most important book in the English Language, the Bible itself being first. Dr. Demoray also had us “toss-out the White-Out.” Many times I retyped pages that contained only a single mistake. I did that when my only word processor was an old Royal manual typewriter that my wife purchased from R.J. Reynolds for $10.00.
I was a senior in seminary when I met Dr. Dennis Kinlaw, president of Asbury College. I met Dr. Kinlaw on a flight from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania to Bluegrass Field in Lexington, Kentucky. Dr. Kinlaw asked about my grades. I told him that my grades were much better than they were in college; I had gone from a 2.2 to a 3.8, largely because I was better motivated. I told him about Dr. Demoray’s “witness of excellence.” Dr. Kinlaw then then said something I will never forget. He said, “I never met anyone in whose life the Holy Spirit has become active who did not acquire a hunger and thirst for learning.” You have heard it said, “We are not converted until our pocket book is converted.” Dr. Kinlaw maintained that we are not converted until our minds are converted to the love of learning. He might just as well have quoted today’s text, “The fear (or awe) of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In other words, “turn on to God and you are going to turn on to learning.”
Of course, life is longer than college. Learning is a life-long joy. One of the exciting people I have met in recent years is Marge N_______. Marge is 86. She seems much younger. I once asked her how she has kept so young. She answered that she has kept young by learning something new every decade of her life. In her forties she went back to college. In her fifties, she learned to fly and got her pilot’s license. In her sixties, when lots of people were retiring, she went back to work. In her seventies, she learned how to use a computer. Today, at 86, she paints, has a ceramics studio, and sometimes works all day in the family vineyard that her son started in his fifties.
In the present economy lots of people are going to loose their jobs, and they are going to have to retrain for a new one. It might be for good. One might use what one has learned on the job and apply it in a different place. You might even be like Ed P_______, who lost his job with AT&T and then founded not one but two successful telephone companies. Alternately, one may have to retrain, to learn something new in order to move into a new field. I have a friend who retired from Sara Lee and followed a life long dream. At the age of fifty-plus he went back to college, did a Master’s degree in counseling, and now works at the Trinity Center. An older person can learn “new tricks.” We can learn to do new things.
I recently decided I needed to learn something new. I am doing two things I am really excited about. I started studying Spanish via the Internet with Coffee Break Spanish. “Me gusta apprender Espanol con Coffee Break Spanish.” I download the programs for free with iTunes and listen each day while I work out. At the age of 50 I also returned to college. With the permission of our Board of Elders, I am studying anthropology with Dr. Harvard Ayers at Appalachian State University. I have been going to class every other Wednesday, from 6:30 to 8:30. I do that for six weeks. Then, for ten days in March, I will be going to the southwest with Dr. Ayers and 20 ASU students to study the civilizations of the Southwest. I will study the ruins of a pre-historic Indian civilization that was contemporary with Jesus Christ. I will also meet and converse with modern Navajos, Zunis, and Hopis. And, just as importantly, I will study 21st century American College Students. Thus far, the young people in my class have been impressive. I wish I had been their equal.
Nothing that we do in life is more exciting than learning. Let me say a word to your youth. I often hear young people say, “I’m bored.” We are bored because we are waiting for someone to entertain us. When we learn, we are entertaining ourselves.
And you might say, “Well what can I learn?” I will answer, “Anything and everything!” Galileo said, “God wrote two books, the book of nature and the Bible.” In studying nature we study everything that is seen. In studying scripture we study all that is unseen. Studying either enhances the study of the other.
We certainly want to begin as soon as we are able with the Bible. It is “special revelation” as it tells us things about God that we cannot find in the “natural revelation” of the world around us. That does not mean that we can ignore the natural revelation. The Psalms certainly do not. In the Psalms God’s “works,” include the whole creation. (Psalm 8, etc.)
John Wesley the founder of the Methodist Church once wrote, “I want to be a man of one book, the Bible.” Yet in his lifetime, Wesley read thousands of books. He often read as he rode his horse from preaching place to preaching place.
Some people will say, “But Wesley had time and opportunity to read because he rode a horse. I drive a car.” Even better, you can listen to talking books. Marion G_______ is legally blind, yet he reads dozens of books every month. He reads talking books, on tape and on CD. He retired from teaching years ago, but he is still learning. Likewise, I know a car salesman who listens to talking books as he waits for customers; and a nurse who listens to books she downloads from an on-line library.
Reading is an absolute treat. I love to read history and biography, but we can learn even from reading fiction. One of my favorite authors is the late Louis Lamour. I like Louis Lamour because he filled his novels of adventure in the old west with real history. He worked on the details and he always got the details right. On of my favorite books is Lamour’s autobiography, The Education of a Wandering Man. In that book he wrote, “It has been said that we have only one life to live. That is a lie. In books we can live 1,000 of lives in 1,000 different times and places.”
Of course, not all learning is confined to school and books and we can learn as much from the people around us as we can from books.
Will Rogers once said, “I never men a man I did not like.” I have never met a man, or a woman, from whom I could not learn something, if only I stopped long enough to look at what they are doing and to listen to what they are saying.
Let me give a couple of simple little examples. When I was a student in college, I had a summer job at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. My first day the foreman assigned me to work on a case packer with a man by the name of Hambone B________. Some of you may know Hambone. He is a member of a nearby Moravian Church. Well, Hambone let me start by putting me on the line to make a few mistakes. I figured that I knew I knew to pack a case. Every time a carton of cigarettes came down the conveyor belt, I picked it up and crammed it into the box. I bent and dented quite a few cartons, and my hands were in constant motion. Pretty soon I was tired. Then Hambone stepped in to show me how to do it right. He stuck out one hand, and let six cartons run into it, before reaching out with the other. Then, using the fingers of two hands to hold four cartons, and using pressure to hold the other two, he flipped all six cartons into the case as neatly as you please. In a few minutes, he taught me what I might never have learned on my own. One may question the usefulness or the longevity of that learning, but it made my summer immeasurably easier! One of our former pastors, Henry M______ taught me to properly torque the head of an automobile engine. Monroe B______ an executive at RJR taught me to safely run a chain saw. Jack H_________, an executive by day and a car nut by night, taught me how to spot a vacuum leak on a 1966 Ford Pick-Up. Eben A______ recently taught me how to use a tiller on a yard, plant winter rye, and cover it with straw. I have never had a green thumb, but now I have grass where once I had mud.
The truth is that lots of you teach me things I share in my sermons. Just this week I was talking with Chuck H_______ about the economy. Lots of people are really discouraged. Chuck said this, “We can’t choose to make it different, but we can choose to make it easier. It is a matter of attitude.” He then reminded me that it was Victor Frankle who taught us that.
Someone may say, as a policemen once said to me, “Worth, you are a preacher. You spend your days with nice people. I work in an unsafe environment, and spend my days and nights working with people who live on the edge of lawlessness.” I answer, “You can learn from them, even if they are negative examples. Promise yourself you will never be like them.” Remember that the Bible is filled with negative examples from Adam who sinned to Satan who lies. The Bible does not encourage us to be like them, but to be better than them. The Bible urges us to be “in Christ.” If we are “in Christ” then we are learning.
Let me add several quick thoughts about Christian learning.
First, be a seeker after truth. Christians need never fear the truth. Jesus said, “I am the Truth.” He is Truth with a capitol T and all little truth can be taken up and subsumed into him. A Christian is like a scientist, a Christian sits humbly at the feet of the facts, and fearlessly follows the facts where they lead. At least, it ought to be so.
Years ago, Catholic theologian Hans Kung wrote a book entitled, Truthfulness: The Future of the Church. In it he argues that the worst thing that the church can do is to maintain a lie. More recently, Gary Wills, a devout Catholic himself, has addressed a similar problem in his book, Papal Sins. He points out that Paul was single, but Peter, whom most Catholics regard as the first pope, had a wife. He points out that today the Catholic Church has payed out hundreds of millions of dollars in damage because of priests who are sex offenders. If the Catholic Church would permit married priests, the problem, along with the problem of a shortage of priests would disappear. All they need do is follow the truth.
Of course the problem is not all with Catholics. At times Protestants have been equally afraid of following the truth. I love good photography. One of my favorite photographers is Ansel Adams, the great black and white artist who photographed the American West. When Ansel Adams was growing up in California, his parents hired an out-of-work protestant preacher to teach him Greek and Latin. One day Ansel spoke to him about dinosaurs. This preacher said to him, “There never was any such thing as dinosaurs. God made dinosaur bones to lead astray those who are not elect.” It was at that time that Ansel Adams gave up his confidence in organized religion, though hopefully, not his belief in God.
I wish all Christians, including Moravians, could live our way into a song we sing as a part of our Liturgy of Education.
May we all science and all truth, with eager minds explore,
Lead us alike in age and youth, Thy Wisdom to adore.
When we understand that that truth is our friend, and never our enemy, and that God is the author of all truth, the world will be a better place.
While you are learning, learn about yourself. An inscription at the Delphic Oracle declared, “Know Thyself.” It was said of Martin Luther that he searched out himself before God, and that he searched out God before himself. In the 4th gospel it was said of Jesus, “No man had to tell him what was in man, for he knew what was in man.” (John 2:25) Jesus knew what was in man because he knew himself. As Abraham Maslow has said, “One cannot gain knowledge of one’s self without simultaneously gaining knowledge of the whole human race.” Jesus was the Incarnate Son of God, fully human. He knew our life from the inside out. Indeed, as the author of Hebrews observes, he was tempted in all points, as we are, yet with this difference, he was without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
Learn to serve. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. He says that those who would be first of all must be servants of all. Though learning is the best entertainment of all, we value it not for its entertainment value, but because it equips us to serve.
Service can take a variety of forms. There is a newer member of our church who dropped by my office last week to tell me that he has just gotten started at Sunnyside Ministry. I told him, “Great, you are well on your way to Worship Plus 2.” He said, “Oh, I already have the Plus 2 because I have another ministry.” He then proceeded to tell me about his “Lewisville Newspaper Ministry. ” He said that he started that ministry one day while walking his dog. His neighbor’s paper was in the road. He carried it up and put it on his porch. It was a small beginning, but it was a beginning. Since that time he has put more than 7,000 papers on the porches of his neighbors. As a result, while some people do not know their next door neighbors, he knows more than 50 families within a one mile walk of his home. It truly is a ministry.
The Psalmist says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is an attitude of life. Once we open our eyes to God, we can’t help but open our lives to learning, whether from the scripture, or from books or from the people with whom we share our lives. While we are learning, we learn of our selves, and above all, we learn to serve. It adds excitement to life.
Finis