I have previously told you that in his old age, in order to keep his arthritic fingers nimble, my father took up needlepoint. He did a little pillow that declared, “Old Age Is Not for Sissies.” It is a common aphorism by which codgers comfort one another. A member of The Chapel, hearing that, said that her mother also needlepointed a pillow. It unabashedly proclaimed, “Screw the Golden Years.” The Preacher would highly approve of those sentiments. No gilding of the lilies for him.

Though I am completely incapable of explaining what, when, or where heaven shall be, I can tell you with great conviction why it shall be. God wants us to be with Him in eternity.  He did not create us for life in temporality only to lose us for life in eternity.  Because God is eternal, He wants His children to be eternal.  And because God is our Father and because all of us are His children, regardless of who we are or what we have or have not done, His love shall lead us from this life to the next. 

There are two kinds of people. The first kind are those who know they don’t know everything and are not bothered by it. The other kind are those who think they know everything and are only too happy to let everyone else know everything they know. I confess I am the second kind, but I never thought of myself in that light until someone pointed out that’s what I am. Reluctantly I had to agree with him that I am a typical know-it-all who all too often pontificates on almost anything that anyone does -- or doesn’t --want to know. As years have turned into decades, however, I have become certain of less and less, and uncertain about more and more. When young, I had oodles of answers. Now that I’m old, I have multitudes of questions.

What is grace? A simple and short definition of grace is that it is unmerited love.  Parents love their children, not only because they are their children, but simply because they love them.  No matter what those children do or don't do, they will continue to love them.  Sports fans love their heroes, even when they drop the pass or miss the basket or strike out with the bases loaded, mainly because they love them --- period; end of story.  Many people love politicians in a grace-filled way, because no politician can do everything everybody would want done, but they respect and admire these public officials so much that they will continue to feel grace toward them, regardless of their displeasure over particular political positions.  Everybody needs to be loved with a grace-filled love, because all of us do things which may seem, and perhaps are, ill-conceived or wrong or even perverse.

We are getting down, again, to an issue I have raised before, especially in the Is Hilton Head Doomed? sermon. Climate change will kill Hilton Head later than sooner, we hope, but the Hilton Head economy will kill this island sooner rather than later unless much more affordable housing, both private and public, is constructed, and unless all of us take action, now. I am very concerned about this issue, and I hope you will be too.

The social media have produced far more gains to society than losses. People, not the social media themselves, must work much harder to address the harm that has befallen us because good technology is creating more and more unintended bad results. May God inspire those who have the knowledge, the wisdom, and the ability to seek the solutions to this immense societal conundrum.  

Peace-loving clergy fail their congregation if they think it will only make things worse if they address painful negative realities in the world around them. As Jeremiah (not God, but Jeremiah) said, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’, when there is no peace.” There is a cancer in many parts of the world, but especially in our part of the world. If it is not excised, it may destroy too much of what is good by allowing that which is bad to continue its metastasis. That, in essence, is why I believe political sermons must be preached.    

The sermon I originally planned to preach today was entitled Must We Be “Born Again” to Be Born Again? I will address that theme in the first part of this sermon, but the focus will be on the revised title, The American Evangelical Abandonment of Christianity. During the 1970s and beyond, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other evangelical television preachers became widely known as what came to be universally called “Born-Again Christianity.” To my knowledge, that term had never before been widely used.

Is humanitarianism always humane? It depends on who decides the answer to that question. And it also depends on the circumstances under which the question is asked. Is it okay to send food and clothing to Ukraine and Gaza? Almost no one, other than miserable misanthropes, would object to that. On a predictable basis, North Korea fairly often experiences famine, because its form of draconian communism fails to produce enough food for its own citizens. Would it be okay to send food to Norh Korea, if North Korea would accept the assistance, which it wouldn’t? Would it be humane, or would it help underpin a corrupt government?

Faith is counterintuitive. We tell ourselves, “Why should I believe in anything that I cannot verify?” We suppose it makes no sense to do that, But the only way that faith can become operative is to throw ourselves onto the love and support of a God we cannot see but whom we trust will grasp and uphold us, whatever obstacles may confront us. Faith is the ground on which we stand when surrounding us is nothing but quicksand.  

The Church is a means to an end; it is not an end in itself.  The Church exists to lead people to God; God does not exist to lead people to the Church.  God can do without the Church, but church people can’t do without it. The Church has a mission, but in itself, it is not The Mission.  The Church is a vehicle, it is not a final destination; it is conduit of truth, but it is not truth in itself; it is an earthly agent for God, but it is not the ultimate agent of God.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that we should love our enemies.  The word used there also is agape, certainly not eros, and not even philia.  Christian love is above-and-beyond other forms of love. It is turn-the-other-cheek love, second-mile love.  We have no reason to expect others who are not Christians to love us like that, but we are expected to love everyone else, including non-Christians or unchristian people or nasty people, like that. But is it possible?  Can anyone love like that?

We delude ourselves if we think anger is exclusively an emotion or feeling, and not a sin.  It is a sin, if we do not properly deal with it soon after it manifests itself.  Anger is one of the most anti-social and dangerously interpersonal expressions of human behavior.  Almost all of us feel angry from time to time, but the very existence of our anger is no excuse for maintaining it within ourselves.  We need to talk it out when we become angry with someone, and if an agreement cannot be reached over what caused the dispute, then it behooves us as would-be Christians to forgive the other and move on, even if we’re certain we’re right and they are wrong, or go seek the advice of a professionally-trained counselor.

This sermon asks the question, Does God need religion?  If it is true that God needs nothing (which I believe and I hope you too believe), then by an automatic inference we may deduce that God must not need religion.  For what it’s worth, I believe that is true. Ah, but can God use religion?  In the great scheme of things, can God utilize a human invention and institution, namely, religion, for His own purposes?  The answer to that is clear and unambiguous.  Yes. 

The sermon last Sunday was a litany of bad news, a recitation of big problems. Today’s sermon is intentionally much more upbeat. As real and alarming as the issues of the last ten days have been, the theme of today’s sermon is an ode to optimism, a paean of positivity --- despite everything that happened during the past several days. Following are a few examples, out of many, which give us hope.

Many old people become downcast and pessimistic as they get older. Maybe it’s because they know they’re getting closer to the end of the line. “The good old days” are farther and farther “back there,” and many elderly folks are feeling more and more diminished by advanced age, both physically and mentally. Of course this is certainly not true of all geezers, but it seems to be true for many old people.

When we recognize temptation and evil, they normally are so bold and brazen that no one could mistake them.  It is when they are subtle and cunning that we must be the most wary, for that is when the danger is the greatest.  "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!"  In our moments of greatest triumph may be the seeds of our greatest tragedies.  When things seem their best they may be at their worst.  At those times when we are the most affirmed, we may be the most tempted. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

You wouldn't think that prayer would ever have any kind of a bite in it, especially a prayer that Jesus taught his followers. However, in the Lord's Prayer, and in these two phrases, there is a very distinct note of warning.  "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us": if we think through what those statements mean, we should come away from honestly praying them as more sober and circumspect people.

When Jesus said of God that He is our Father, I suspect he clearly meant to suggest that God is definitely not an Unseen Distant Force or an Impersonal Remote Power or a Detached Impartial Energy. Instead, insisted Jesus of Nazareth, we are to see God as our Father.  We are not alone in the universe!  We are not isolated from our Creator by the inestimable void of space and time; we have a Father!