Charles Michael Smith - "Desperate People" (July 2, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | This will always be one of my favorite places | 0:20 |
to spend a Sunday morning. | 0:25 | |
That's true for any Sunday of the year. | 0:27 | |
It's also a place, though, | 0:31 | |
that is especially dear to me for Easter Sunday | 0:32 | |
because back in the middle 1980s, | 0:38 | |
when I also was working as a district superintendent | 0:42 | |
with the bishop, over in Raleigh, | 0:46 | |
and that meant that I had no standing engagement | 0:49 | |
as to what I did on Easter Sunday morning. | 0:53 | |
And since Will Willimon is a Methodist preacher, | 0:57 | |
and he knows that, | 0:59 | |
he grabbed me one day and said, | 1:02 | |
"I've got just the thing for you to do | 1:05 | |
for the next several Easters. | 1:07 | |
You come and sing "The Trumpet Shall Sound" | 1:10 | |
right after I've finished preaching | 1:13 | |
and it'll be wonderful. | 1:14 | |
Ben Smith was in on this, the then choir director. | 1:17 | |
And so it was, for the next four years, | 1:21 | |
'85, '86, '87, and '88, that we did that. | 1:24 | |
We moved from Handel's familiar treatment | 1:29 | |
of that wonderful text from 1 Corinthians 15 | 1:32 | |
to Johannes Brahms and how he did it in the German Requiem, | 1:36 | |
which was a special favorite of Ben's | 1:42 | |
and became one of mine. | 1:45 | |
And I loved the way that that same famous passage | 1:48 | |
from scripture was treated by Brahms. | 1:52 | |
As you came to the end of the passage, the choir, | 1:56 | |
150 to 200 voices strong, almost shouted, | 2:01 | |
where, where, O death, is thy sting? | 2:05 | |
Unfortunately, the sting of death | 2:13 | |
is just about everywhere you turn. | 2:15 | |
Despite revolutionary discoveries | 2:18 | |
about the genomic code and projections | 2:21 | |
that we may live some day to be 120 years old, | 2:25 | |
we will still all die. | 2:30 | |
Nobody gets out of life alive. | 2:33 | |
As Colonel Henry Blake of M*A*S*H* once said | 2:37 | |
to Hawkeye Pierce after losing a patient, | 2:41 | |
"Rule number one is that young men die | 2:45 | |
"and rule number two is that doctors | 2:50 | |
"can't change rule number one." | 2:53 | |
In my former church in Wilson, North Carolina, | 2:58 | |
about 75 miles east of the chapel steps out there, | 3:00 | |
people that I loved died all the time. | 3:05 | |
It's a large congregation with many older folks. | 3:08 | |
I'd once served a church in the middle | 3:12 | |
of the Research Triangle Park, | 3:13 | |
where the average age was 33. | 3:14 | |
I only had one person die in the 4 years I was there. | 3:17 | |
I almost forgot how to do funerals. | 3:20 | |
But I got a refresher course in Wilson. | 3:22 | |
They had as many as 25 to 30 people die in a year. | 3:25 | |
And even now, people that I love | 3:31 | |
and care deeply about are dealing | 3:34 | |
with what may well prove to be terminal illnesses soon. | 3:37 | |
And others that I've just been spending fun time with, | 3:42 | |
out sailing on the Pamlico River, | 3:45 | |
have doctors' appointments within the next couple of weeks | 3:48 | |
that are causing them some sleepless nights. | 3:52 | |
We cannot control life and when it will end. | 3:56 | |
It is the natural order of things. | 4:03 | |
And not all the good work that preachers | 4:06 | |
and doctors and lawyers and researchers | 4:09 | |
over here at Duke or up at Hopkins | 4:12 | |
or Harvard are doing can change | 4:15 | |
that natural order of things. | 4:17 | |
We cannot fly. | 4:20 | |
We cannot control everything | 4:22 | |
that happens to us and our loved ones | 4:24 | |
and we cannot live forever, | 4:26 | |
we were born to die. | 4:28 | |
So even if it is summertime and the livin' is easy | 4:31 | |
and your daddy's rich and your ma is good-looking, | 4:34 | |
that's not enough to scare away death, | 4:37 | |
just ask Jairus. | 4:41 | |
Jairus was the chairman of the board of his synagogue, | 4:44 | |
there, by the Sea of Galilee. | 4:48 | |
He's a prominent man. | 4:51 | |
He has status, he has clout, people look up to him, | 4:53 | |
people listen to him. | 4:56 | |
But Jairus also has a problem. | 4:58 | |
He has a 12-year-old daughter | 5:04 | |
who is dying, and he is desperate. | 5:06 | |
This has really taken the wind out of his sails, | 5:09 | |
literally, just knocked him down into the dirt. | 5:11 | |
And here he is in Mark's Gospel lying prostrate, | 5:15 | |
that means face down, prostrate, | 5:18 | |
face down in the dirt at the feet | 5:20 | |
of a wandering rabbi named Jesus, | 5:23 | |
his pride shattered in the Palestinian dust, | 5:26 | |
begging Jesus to drop whatever he's doing, | 5:28 | |
and to come to his house to lay his hands | 5:32 | |
on his little daughter and make her well. | 5:35 | |
Jairus knows that in the eyes of his friends, | 5:39 | |
daughters aren't as important as sons. | 5:43 | |
But they don't know what it's like | 5:45 | |
to receive her hugs and her kisses, | 5:48 | |
to rejoice, to delight in her presence. | 5:51 | |
And they may not understand that, | 5:54 | |
over this past dozen years, she has become, | 5:56 | |
perhaps, the person he treasures most in all creation. | 6:00 | |
Now here he is, with his heart breaking, | 6:04 | |
and all he cares about is that he has heard | 6:07 | |
that Jesus heals people, mainly men, true, | 6:10 | |
but he's already healed one woman at least, | 6:15 | |
the mother-in-law of his buddy Simon Peter. | 6:18 | |
And maybe he'd care enough about Jairus' daughter | 6:21 | |
to come, to touch, and to heal her. | 6:24 | |
People were always asking things of Jesus. | 6:29 | |
Do something for me, Jesus, | 6:33 | |
just like human beings have been doing to his daddy | 6:35 | |
ever since creation began. | 6:40 | |
The psalmist who wrote today's psalm, | 6:42 | |
the 130th song, cried out to God, | 6:45 | |
long before Jesus was born, | 6:47 | |
"Out of the depths, I cry to thee, | 6:49 | |
"O Lord, Lord, hear my voice." | 6:51 | |
Surprisingly, that's the tact that most of the psalms take, | 6:55 | |
although we tend to gravitate toward those | 6:59 | |
that are primarily praise and thanksgiving. | 7:02 | |
But if you read through all hundred and fifty of 'em, | 7:05 | |
you'll find that the majority of them are lamentations. | 7:08 | |
And even if they begin as cries for help, | 7:12 | |
they often wind up as songs of thanksgiving | 7:15 | |
and that's also what happens in this psalm. | 7:19 | |
The psalmist says, "If you, O Lord, should mark inequities, | 7:24 | |
"Lord, who could stand?" | 7:27 | |
And I like this writer's honesty. | 7:30 | |
None of us is good enough to deserve God's goodness. | 7:34 | |
If it comes at all, it's a gift. | 7:38 | |
And the psalmist nails it by saying, | 7:41 | |
"But there is forgiveness with you | 7:44 | |
"that you may be worshiped. | 7:47 | |
"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for the Lord. | 7:49 | |
"In the Lord's word, I hope." | 7:52 | |
Jairus had cut his teeth on psalms like this one, | 7:56 | |
each, sabbath there in the synagogue and now, | 8:01 | |
like the psalmist, he's crying out to God for help, | 8:04 | |
in this case, God in the person of his son, | 8:09 | |
Jesus of Nazareth, the one we call Christ. | 8:12 | |
Jesus hears this rich religious leader's plea | 8:15 | |
and he begins the journey over to Jairus' house | 8:18 | |
to care for the daughter. | 8:22 | |
Then this strange thing happens, | 8:24 | |
right in the middle of this story, | 8:26 | |
Mark puts another one. | 8:27 | |
All of a sudden, without any warning, | 8:29 | |
Jesus feels somebody tugging on the tassel of his robe | 8:31 | |
and he also feels something like an electric current, | 8:36 | |
power just passing out of him to someone else. | 8:39 | |
So he stops his journey and he looks around, | 8:44 | |
tries to figure out who this is, | 8:47 | |
and not being able to do it, | 8:49 | |
he says, "Who touched my clothes?" | 8:50 | |
The disciples, who are not always the brightest and best, | 8:55 | |
say, "How can you ask us who touched your clothes? | 9:00 | |
"There's so many people around, how can we possibly know?" | 9:02 | |
But this woman begins dealing with what he said, | 9:06 | |
he's caught me, she thought to herself, | 9:09 | |
what am I going to do? | 9:11 | |
I've been suffering with this period | 9:13 | |
from hell for 12 years. | 9:14 | |
I wasn't going to actually touch him and make him unclean. | 9:16 | |
But I thought I could at least touch his clothes | 9:19 | |
and maybe that would do the trick, | 9:23 | |
and it did, I'm healed! | 9:25 | |
I'm not bleeding anymore, | 9:26 | |
I can stop going to see the doctors, | 9:28 | |
I don't have the money, I can't afford this anyway | 9:29 | |
but I'm healed now! | 9:32 | |
And maybe, maybe if I just go and tell him | 9:34 | |
what I did and why I did it | 9:39 | |
he'll understand and he'll be forgiving | 9:41 | |
and it'll be alright. | 9:43 | |
So afraid and shaking, she goes up to Jesus and confesses. | 9:46 | |
And his response is very much like Jesus, | 9:53 | |
no big surprise, he says, | 9:55 | |
"Daughter," kindly, he calls her this, | 9:57 | |
first time he's called anybody that, | 10:01 | |
only time he calls anybody that, | 10:02 | |
"Daughter, your faith has made you well. | 10:04 | |
"Go in peace and be healed of your trouble." | 10:07 | |
And she was. | 10:11 | |
In the meantime, back to the main story. | 10:13 | |
People from Jairus' house come with the sad news | 10:16 | |
that Jesus has waited too long, | 10:21 | |
it's too late, the little girl has died. | 10:23 | |
And implicit in this is that you have dawdled | 10:26 | |
and wasted your time with this unnamed woman | 10:30 | |
while the daughter of a really important man | 10:34 | |
in the community who really needed you has died. | 10:37 | |
But Jesus says, "Oh, no, Jairus, you keep on believing." | 10:43 | |
And then he thins out the group | 10:48 | |
and takes just his kind of executive committee, | 10:50 | |
Peter, James and John, and goes on to Jairus' house, | 10:53 | |
and by the time they get there, | 10:59 | |
the professional mourners, | 11:00 | |
the ones who are paid to do this, | 11:03 | |
are weeping and wailing and into their routine | 11:05 | |
and Jesus says, "Cut it out, she's just sleeping. | 11:08 | |
"You could go now." | 11:11 | |
And they laugh at him. | 11:13 | |
And they leave there. | 11:15 | |
And as they leave, Jesus and the girl's parents | 11:17 | |
and the three disciples go in and stand around the bed. | 11:21 | |
And Jesus confidently takes the little girl's hand | 11:26 | |
and speaks to her in his native tongue, Aramaic, | 11:30 | |
"Talitha kum," | 11:33 | |
which, as Mark tells us, means, little girl, get up! | 11:35 | |
And again, she bolts up and gets up and walks around | 11:41 | |
and they're just amazed and they do as Jesus says | 11:46 | |
and give her something to eat. | 11:50 | |
This Jesus is really somethin' else. | 11:55 | |
He can still storms, he can calm seas, | 11:57 | |
he can drive out demons. | 12:01 | |
And now, Mark is showing us, early in the gospel, | 12:04 | |
he's also one who can heal disease | 12:08 | |
and bring the dead back to life. | 12:11 | |
Kind of a preview of coming attractions. | 12:14 | |
And he thinks that women and little girls | 12:17 | |
are important enough to cure and raise them, | 12:21 | |
although most of his colleagues | 12:25 | |
wouldn't share his view there. | 12:26 | |
This is no ordinary human being, | 12:29 | |
this is not just some kind of super rabbi | 12:32 | |
who opens his cloak and reveals a big, | 12:35 | |
red R stamped on his chest. | 12:37 | |
Nah, this is the strong son of God | 12:40 | |
who's filled with the same power | 12:44 | |
that scooped up dirt and breathed into it | 12:47 | |
and created human beings. | 12:51 | |
Here, before our very eyes, | 12:55 | |
is the same power at work, to bless and to heal, | 12:56 | |
that hurled the stars and the planets | 13:01 | |
into the blackness of the universe. | 13:03 | |
Yet still cares passionately about every baby ever born | 13:06 | |
and every lily of the field. | 13:13 | |
He created all that is and still gently cradles it | 13:16 | |
in his hands. | 13:22 | |
No wonder, when we witness this power | 13:26 | |
and how it is lovingly applied for the benefit | 13:29 | |
of humankind, God is bent toward human beings, | 13:31 | |
is our belief, when we see that, we're in awe. | 13:35 | |
Oftentimes, we're overwhelmed with gratitude | 13:41 | |
and want to worship and praise and serve this God | 13:44 | |
who is the giver of every good and perfect gift. | 13:49 | |
The late Robert Earl Cushman, Dean of the Divinity school | 13:54 | |
that adjoins this beautiful chapel, | 13:57 | |
taught us back in the 1960's, when I was here in school, | 14:00 | |
that the attitude of gratitude precedes worship. | 14:04 | |
And that's what brings most of us | 14:10 | |
here any given Sunday of the year. | 14:12 | |
The feeling that we have somehow been blessed | 14:17 | |
beyond our deserving by a God who is worthy, | 14:21 | |
who deserves our worship and praise. | 14:28 | |
Easter, especially, we do that, | 14:32 | |
and every Sunday is a little Easter, | 14:34 | |
where we come to thank God, specifically, | 14:36 | |
for the resurrection of Jesus Christ | 14:39 | |
and for his victory over sin and death and for the hope | 14:41 | |
that that gives everyone of us. | 14:45 | |
But... | 14:49 | |
that's not the frame of mind all of us | 14:51 | |
bring into this glorious chapel. | 14:55 | |
Some of us are here because we're troubled, | 15:00 | |
we're anxious. | 15:05 | |
Maybe you're even desperate to hear some word | 15:09 | |
of hope and encouragement in the midst | 15:13 | |
of a community of faith. | 15:16 | |
Some come bearing the bruises from a life | 15:19 | |
that many religions teach is difficult. | 15:24 | |
And some come knowing the truth | 15:29 | |
of Thoreau's famous observation, | 15:31 | |
that most people lead lives of quiet desperation. | 15:34 | |
That first Easter Sunday | 15:41 | |
that I came here to sing Handel's song, | 15:44 | |
following Will's sermon, sticks out in my memory | 15:48 | |
because of how desperate I became. | 15:52 | |
Everything had gone fine at the nine o'clock service | 15:56 | |
that wasn't televised. | 15:58 | |
The eleven o'clock service, though, | 16:02 | |
was carried live and in color by channel 11. | 16:03 | |
And I was just floating along, | 16:07 | |
enjoying this so much and listening | 16:09 | |
to Don Eagle play that wonderful trumpet solo. | 16:11 | |
And there's a big long break in the middle of it | 16:14 | |
where the singer just kind of stands there and counts. | 16:17 | |
And the orchestra goes on, | 16:21 | |
especially with the trumpeter. | 16:23 | |
And I became so enthralled | 16:26 | |
with how wonderful all this was that I missed my entrance. | 16:27 | |
(congregation laughing) | 16:31 | |
And all the sudden, Ben Smith is looking at me, | 16:33 | |
like, we invited you here to do this? | 16:35 | |
(congregation laughing) | 16:37 | |
And the camera, I learned later from a friend | 16:39 | |
who was videotaping this to give me as a present, | 16:41 | |
said that they did a closeup | 16:45 | |
(congregation laughing) | 16:47 | |
and that my eyes looked like those of a man | 16:49 | |
who was being chased by a very angry, hungry pit bull. | 16:52 | |
(congregation laughing) | 16:55 | |
Luckily, I managed to get back in and we finished together | 16:58 | |
as well as started together. | 17:02 | |
And so it went, for the next several Easters | 17:05 | |
and some Christmases in between | 17:09 | |
and Messiahs and other things. | 17:11 | |
But the one I especially remember, | 17:14 | |
that will always stick in my mind, | 17:15 | |
is probably the most powerful worship service | 17:17 | |
I've ever been to here, maybe anywhere. | 17:20 | |
It was Easter of 1988, the last Sunday | 17:23 | |
that I was going to do that because it was the last Sunday | 17:26 | |
of the term appointment and I was going be going back | 17:28 | |
to having a church and would be preaching | 17:30 | |
in my own church the next Easter. | 17:32 | |
I had noticed that Ben Smith, | 17:35 | |
good friend for 20 years, | 17:37 | |
was looking a little pale and drawn. | 17:39 | |
And so at quarter to 11, sitting in Will Willimon's office, | 17:41 | |
talking with him, just chatting, | 17:44 | |
I said, "Will, what's wrong with Ben? | 17:47 | |
"He looks a little tired." | 17:49 | |
And Will said, "I'm sorry, didn't you know Ben's dying?" | 17:52 | |
Ooh, Ben's dying. | 17:58 | |
And we're going out there | 18:03 | |
to celebrate Easter in 15 minutes. | 18:04 | |
You could hear a pin drop. | 18:11 | |
Throughout that service, there was an energy, | 18:16 | |
there was an emotion, it was like an electric current. | 18:19 | |
It ran through every word said, | 18:24 | |
through every prayer offered, through every hymn sung, | 18:26 | |
through every anthem and solo. | 18:30 | |
And I watched Ben with fascination, | 18:34 | |
almost unable to speak, much less sing, | 18:37 | |
that this friend could come | 18:41 | |
and pour himself into this with that kind of faith | 18:43 | |
and that kind of energy. | 18:47 | |
Within about a year, Ben died and I and others | 18:52 | |
were ushers and did other things, | 18:56 | |
and one of the most unusual funerals | 18:58 | |
we ever had in this chapel. | 18:59 | |
And I went back, looking through old bulletins | 19:02 | |
and stuff and papers, | 19:06 | |
and on that last performance of Messiah | 19:08 | |
in '87 that year, | 19:13 | |
Ben had written in big, red ink, | 19:15 | |
Indeed, comma, the trumpet shall sound, | 19:19 | |
Ben. | 19:25 | |
Those excellent church members I mentioned earlier | 19:32 | |
in the sermon, who died within days of each other, | 19:34 | |
knew doxology and they also knew despair. | 19:39 | |
As I reflect back on those two friends, | 19:45 | |
they kind of remind me of Jairus in today's lesson, | 19:47 | |
for they had clout, they had money, they had influence. | 19:50 | |
They both knew the love of a good wife | 19:55 | |
and of several children. | 19:58 | |
They both had faith in Jesus Christ and his church, | 20:00 | |
lots of it, but they also knew the despair | 20:03 | |
of losing teenage sons to death | 20:07 | |
in tragic automobile accidents, | 20:09 | |
and they both watched helplessly | 20:12 | |
as their wives died too young due to illness. | 20:14 | |
They could've become bitter, | 20:21 | |
they could've become withdrawn, | 20:23 | |
they could've become angry with God, but they didn't. | 20:25 | |
Instead, they persisted in believing in this God | 20:30 | |
who had given them everything and they understood that | 20:34 | |
and so they lavished gifts on this university | 20:37 | |
and other schools and colleges | 20:41 | |
and were especially generous with their churches, | 20:45 | |
I know that. | 20:47 | |
Despite their grief over loved ones | 20:49 | |
and their own eventual decline and death, | 20:51 | |
they kept looking for ways to say thank you to God | 20:56 | |
for all of his goodness to them. | 21:01 | |
They could sing with Martin Luther's great hymn, | 21:04 | |
did we in our own strength confide, | 21:07 | |
the battle would be losing, | 21:10 | |
were not the right man on our side, | 21:13 | |
the man of God's own choosing. | 21:16 | |
Good news on this morning, | 21:20 | |
early in July of the year 2000, | 21:23 | |
is that we can still have this kind of faith | 21:26 | |
that moves us from despair to doxology. | 21:31 | |
It won't put us safely nestled in some fortified castle | 21:35 | |
or in a comfy bed with fluffed up pillows | 21:39 | |
and a down comforter. | 21:42 | |
Instead, it'll be much more like | 21:44 | |
that Swinging Bridge at Grandfather Mountain | 21:47 | |
that I've never gotten up the courage to walk across. | 21:49 | |
This rope bridge, this rope bridge | 21:53 | |
will scare the heck out of ya | 21:57 | |
if you focus on the holes in it, | 21:58 | |
the light that comes through it, | 22:01 | |
and its motion, there, in the breeze. | 22:03 | |
But if you remember all the people | 22:06 | |
who have used it to get across safely | 22:09 | |
and all those who will use it in the future, | 22:12 | |
their example, and their faith can strengthen yours. | 22:16 | |
Believing in, trusting Jesus with our life | 22:23 | |
and with our certain death | 22:28 | |
takes a lot of faith and courage. | 22:32 | |
Believing in him will not put us in control of our life, | 22:36 | |
but it will help us not fear anything that may come. | 22:42 | |
What Jesus said to Jairus, he also says to us, | 22:49 | |
"Do not fear, only believe." | 22:53 | |
The bridge will hold. | 22:58 | |
Come on over. | 23:01 |