As most of you know, I have been away for awhile. I hope you know that. It started out to be a two-month renewal leave. It ended up being six weeks – two of those were work, but four wonderful weeks spent in renewal. I didn’t know how desperately I needed it. I had no agenda, other than to walk the beach, relax, read, reflect, and pray. I began that time of renewal with a three-day fast (Jerry and I together). I wanted to disconnect from an arduous work schedule and to connect with unscheduled days, and open myself to the “wind of the Spirit.”
My prayer was a simple one: “Lord, renew me – body, mind and spirit, and teach me what You will.” That was my prayer. “Lord renew me.” Well, my prayer was answered. I will come back to that specifically later because it is all connected, and is a part of my sermon.
You have noted the sermon title. It is a quote by Thomas Fuller: “Let not Your will Roar, when Your power can but Whisper.” (Ernie Larson and Carol Hagerty, Believing In Myself, Prentice Hall, 1991) Now that’s a word on which we can reflect for a long time. It is a graphic word designating for me common extremes to which we go in responding to life and seeking to cope. One extreme is to adopt a victim mentality; the other is a pretension to strength and sufficiency.
The two stances are portrayed in our Scripture lessons from the Psalms and Proverbs. Look at them. The psalmist’s complaint is forthright. He clearly sees himself the victim and he paints a pitiful picture. Listen. “I am gone like a shadow in the evening; I am shaken off like locusts. My knees are weak…my body has become gaunt. I am an object of scorn to my accusers; when they look at me, they shake their head.” (vs. 23-25) A portrait, a Van Gough-like portrait of a victim. My quote from Fuller is an echo of the 14th verse of our Proverbs lesson. Listen to them in tandem. “Like clouds and wind without rain is one who boosts of a gift never given.” “Let not thy will roar when thy power can but whisper.” It happens all the time doesn’t it? It happens to me. We desperately try to do something to prove ourselves to show that we have willpower, but not only willpower but also resources to accomplish what we will, when the truth is we are really weak. Our actual power is minimal. While our will is roaring our power is whispering that we are not adequate and that we are really fooling ourselves and are trying to fool others. And isn’t it true that we move back and forth between those extremes of victim mentality and a pretension to strength and sufficiency. Now I am preaching autobiography today, not because I want to purge myself by confession. I am doing so because I believe, students, that these are the issues you are going to be dealing with throughout your ministry. So, let’s look carefully.
As for the victim mentality as losers, that is what the psalmist was doing. “I am gone like a shadow in the evening. My knees are weak – my body has become gaunt.” And we do the same thing --we cast ourselves as losers.
Now if you who know me then you know this would be a good time to call on a Peanuts cartoon. Because you are an intelligent congregation and you know that in Peanuts Charlie Brown is the consummate perennial loser.
But to let you know that I read more theology than Charles Schultz, I call on another cartoonist, Gary Larson. He retired from giving us those Farside cartoons, cartoons that were so far to one side that I really couldn’t understand many of them. But this one I got. He pictured an overstuffed woman sitting on an overstuffed sofa, her hair in curlers and in her right hand she is holding a broom. She has either been at work or she is going to work. In the left hand she holds the phone up and this is what she says. You look on the scene and see her there in that overstuffed sofa surrounded by large fish bowls filled with all sorts of swimming creatures. She said, “Well, that is the way it happens, Sylvia. I kissed this frog, he turned into a prince, we got married and wham – I am stuck at home with a bunch of
Pollywogs.”
Now that is the victim mentality. It is easy for us to fall into that mentality. We cast ourselves as losers. And I don’t know why. But preachers are more apt to do this than anybody else I know. And people who have a special calling – people who are engaged in so called “full-time Christian service.” And I want you to know it is a perversion of humility. It is a distortion of sanctification. We develop a persecution complex. We take ourselves too seriously. We think that the Kingdom enterprise is really hanging on our activity. We don’t know how to fail gracefully. If things don’t go our way we think it is because we are being faithful. We play the martyr role. If we don’t say it -- we act it out. Poor me. It is a role we play in a drama that we keep writing as we go along. We cast ourselves as loser and scene after scene, act after act, we get victimized.
Now closely akin to casting ourselves as losers is the practice somewhat less extreme but still a dimension of the victim mentality – of drowning ourselves in negative thoughts. I know people who are ruled compulsively by negative thoughts as those whose lives are ruled by some obvious addiction – such as gambling, sex or drugs. This is one of Satan’s ways to seek to control us. He tempts us to think less of ourselves than we are and to think less of what God can do and in us than God can.
Now we who have been saved by grace – we who know the saving power of Jesus Christ -- ought not to be drawn into that temptation. Don’t you remember -- John said it? (In his first epistle, if you want the reference, chapter 3:1-2. “See what love the Father has bestowed upon us (this is the Phillips translation with a little Maxie added) in allowing us to be called children of God.” And that is not just what we are called, John says, it is who we actually are.
Here and now we are God’s children, he says. “It doesn’t appear what we shall be in the future, but we know when He shall appear we shall be like Him for we will see Him as He is.” Have I made the point? More often then we are aware and to a greater degree than we realize, we cultivate a victim mentality and we cast ourselves as losers and we have drawn ourselves into negative thinking. What about the other extreme -- pretension of strength and sufficiency?
I read a story recently about General Omar Bradley, a bigger-than-life hero in World War II. He boarded a commercial plane for a long trip. He was wearing a business suit, rather than his normal military attire. He found his assigned seat and settled down to begin working on some important papers. Ironically, the general’s seatmate turned out to be a private in the US Army, and this young private was rather gregarious. He didn’t recognize General Bradley, so he said to him, “Sir, we are going to be traveling a long way together and I think it would be a good idea if just got to know one another. I am guessing that you are a banker.”
Bradley, not wanting to be rude but really wanting to get back to his work, replied, “No, I am not a banker, I am General Omar Bradley, a five-star general in the United States Army. I am head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon in Washington, D. C.” After a slight pause, the young solider said, “Well sir, that is a very important job. I sure hope you don’t blow it.”
No matter where we are, or what we do, we don’t want to blow it – we don’t want to blow it. So we pretend to be sufficient, we pretend to have all the strength that we need. Now I confess (again it is autobiographical) that I fall into this snare more than I fall into the victim snare. Let me share some pages from my own life’s story.
Many of you know I grew up in severe poverty down in Perry County, Mississippi. My mother and father didn’t go to high school – they didn’t even finish elementary school. I found myself socially, intellectually, culturally and economically deprived and in reaction to that I developed an almost “sick” determination to achieve, to get out of that situation, to be a success. Even long, long after I had answered the call to preach and was practicing ministry – I was still caught up in that. Spent a great part of my life trying to prove myself worthy and driving myself – slave-driving myself, mercilessly.
Throughout my life, until about 15 years ago, I had a recurring dream. I am sure some of you can identify with this. The dream expressed itself in a lot of different ways – but always there was this same dynamic. The setting was that I needed to be somewhere to preach. It all centered in my preaching – because I wanted to be an outstanding preacher – I wanted to be a great preacher. I confess, that I am sometimes a little bit jealous of people like Ellsworth Kalas. Just a little bit. That jealousy is not enough to cause me to lose my salvation -- because there are not many people around like Ellsworth Kalas, so I can’t be too jealous.
Anyway, it all had to do with my preaching. Also my deep inferiority feelings, my inadequacy and my own drivenness to perform, to prove myself worthy. So, in the dream I would always have to be somewhere to preach and all sorts of things, bizarre things would keep me from getting there.
Sometimes I would be at home, about ten minutes before the church time. And I would be struggling to button the top collar of my shirt, unable to do so, knowing that I was running out of time. Or, I wouldn’t be able to tie my tie. Or I might discover that the dry cleaners had mixed up my clothing. I would put on a pair of pants and discover the coat didn’t match – that the pants might be four inches too short, or that I couldn’t buckle them around my waist. Things that would prevent me from getting on with my calling – that to which I was committed, preaching. All of them underscoring my drivenness. All of them circling around my feelings of inadequacy – unpreparedness, the limitation of my past.
Well, I have not had that dream for a long, long, long time – for many, many years but then in 1993 – I know it, I have it recorded --on July the 27th that year, I dreamed that kind of dream, I thought, all night long. I woke up at 5 in the morning and I was in a sweat. Worn out. There was no logic to the dream but there was meaning in it. It was the same old thing. I had to preach at a great convention to a lot of people and I had not had time to prepare – and nothing frightens me more than to think I have to preach when I haven’t prepared. All sorts of bizarre things like had happened in the past but I finally got through all of that and I was about to go on. I had on a freshly starched white shirt, a brand new beautiful tie – my best suit (so I thought). But when I walked on the stage and I looked down I had on jogging pants and running shoes. And five thousand people broke out into laughter. And the dream ended. That’s serious. I went to my study that morning and to my time of prayer after that dream having received a message from the Lord – a message to surrender. To let go. Let me tell you what was going on in my life when I dreamed it and you would know why I dreamed it, perhaps.
I was chair of World Evangelism for the World Methodist Council. The wall had fallen, the Soviet Union was crumbling, eastern Europe was opening up and in World Evangelism we had exciting things going on all over that section of the world. And the following Saturday I was supposed to go to preach in Czechoslovakia, go to a conference in Estonia, and then go to Russia.
I was chairing the Board here at Asbury Theological Seminary. And I had just been made the chair of a Search Committee to find a new president for this seminary. That process was just getting underway and I felt a huge responsibility.
I was trying to finish a manuscript, which was due September the 15th – only two months away.
A lot of things were going on in the church. We were in the process of adding a Saturday night worship service and planning a lot of new kinds of ministries – crucial decisions had to be made. And on top of all that my mother had had a stroke, the Sunday afternoon preceding that dream.
So God was speaking to me again, and on that Thursday morning – five years ago now – I renewed my commitment to the Lord. It was one of those Mt. Tabor experiences – you know, the kind of experience where the Lord reveals Himself to you – and allows you to see a little bit more of His glory.
I cancelled my trip to Russia. I made a commitment not to sweat the search process for Asbury Seminary – you may not like that. I dedicated myself to doing the job and doing the job as well as I could. But I was not going to get all stressed out over that. I made a decision to keep plodding on with that book manuscript and if I didn’t get it finished by September the 15th that was ok and I didn’t. I did get it finished by October 15th.
I recommitted myself to be the best leader, the best pastor, of Christ United Methodist Church that I could be – but determined that I would not bear the weight of that congregation upon my own shoulders. And that next year was the best year of ministry I ever had. I surrendered.
My will, which may have been roaring, gave way to a whisper because I realized again how limited and how dependent I am upon the Lord.
Again, in that Mt. Tabor experience, God sent me to our New Testament lesson for the morning. That graphic word of St. Paul. Paul heard Jesus say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Then his paradoxical conclusion, verse 10: “For whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
Well, I have not had that dream since. A year later I came to the presidency here, and I believe that experience was one of the preparations for my ministry among you.
And that brings me back to my renewal leave. One mountain top experience is not enough. Our sanctification is really never complete. My prayer was “Lord, renew me – body, mind and spirit – and teach me what you will.”
Just a brief aside. When I came home Monday, a week ago —came into my office, Sheila and Linda had all your greetings and all your welcome cards and notes spread out all over my desk -- my clean desk. That is the only time the desk has been clean in four years. I cleaned it because Dr. Mulholland had to go in there and sit at that desk and be the Acting President. And he doesn’t like messed-up desks.
Most of your cards and greetings showed that you were aware of the fact that I do appreciate the characters in Peanuts cartoons. One of them had Lucy kneeling beside her bed praying and this is what she said, “Lord, I would pray for greater patience and understanding, but I am afraid I would get it.”
Well, my prayer was, “Lord, renew me, body, mind and spirit – and teach me what You will.” God answers our prayers. He not only has a sense of humor; He has a sense of irony.
We arrived in Navarre Beach, on the panhandle coast of Florida, to begin our renewal leave. That is one of my favorite places in all the world. We arrived there on Monday evening, September 21. Hurricane Georges was doing his thing way down south of us. But by the following Saturday we had to evacuate the island. We moved in with my sister and her husband on the mainland. For three days we were there, and that is where God taught me. I had gone to the beach to be alone with God – just Jerry and me and maybe a person here and there we would invite to share it with us. Our time of rest and renewal had only begun and here we were in the midst of a hurricane. It wasn’t hard to think of yourself as a victim and you certainly couldn’t imagine you had strength and sufficiency because Hurricane Georges was reigning monarch and I was completely helpless. No control. I had no space of my own – and you have to know – I need my space. I don’t like to have to put up my books when I am reading or a magazine article, I like to have a space where you can come back to it when you want to come back to it. I didn’t have anything like that – I had to claim a little corner of the living room where early in the morning I would read and pray – I had to practice solitude without privacy. I had not even a smithereen of control and it was ironic. I thought my renewal plans were all shot. There was no way to concentrate on my reading, which by the way, was a collection of “spiritual devotional classics” and two biographies. There was no way for my will to roar. My powers couldn’t even whisper.
Thus came the lesson. We do not seize the Kingdom of God by our effort. The Kingdom of God is bestowed. It is not ours to take, but God’s to give. We are not victims; we need not pretend strength and sufficiency. His grace is sufficient. “For power is made perfect in weakness.”
The big issue – it is the biggest issue of our lives. The big issue is surrender -- yieldedness – giving up our delusions and denials – our victimhood – and claiming the truth about ourselves: our strength and our weakness – not letting our will roar when our strength can but whisper. We must deliberately sign away our own rights, our own will, and our own need to control and become a bondservant of Jesus.
I didn’t finish one of the books I intended to read – G. K. Chesterton’s marvelous biography of St. Francis of Assisi. I read enough of it, though, to be sensitized again to the freedom, which Christ is seeking to give me and the joy of serving Him.
St. Francis of Assisi is often called the troubadour of Christ. G. K. Chesterton painted the most beautiful portrait of Him that I have ever seen or heard, when he described Him as the court fool of the King of Paradise. That’s what I want to be. I want to be a court fool for the King of Paradise.
It takes a fool to yield, it takes a fool to give up control, and it takes a fool to believe that in our weakness, we are made strong. So let not your will roar, when your power can but whisper and join me—please join me in becoming a court fool for the King of Paradise. Let us pray.