Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Mark Twain said, "To be good is noble. To tell other people to be good is nobler - and less trouble!" St. Paul in his letters told people to be good, but he never told them to be anything he had not already troubled himself to be…in spades. Sometimes he scolds. More often he pleads for better things -- from people who are advertising themselves as followers of Jesus. What I just read to you, from Paul's first letter to Corinth, is part of the salutation. He'll have some stern things to say to these old Christian friends before he's done, but he begins his letter in a positive, upbeat way. Talks about the good things: how they are sanctified in Christ Jesus, "saints" he calls them (that just meant "believers" in Paul's day). He says he is thankful to God for them "because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus (and these were the words that caught my eye), for in every way you have been enriched in him…." And I thought of the countless ways Christ has enriched my life, and how he enriches the lives of others and the life of the world. His riches are "unsearchable," Paul says in another place. Remember, this is a poor man writing to poor people, talking about how rich they are. We would say they were all crazy. To enrich means to improve what is already there. I looked for the word "enrich" in Roget's trusty Thesaurus (you know, that dictionary of synonyms), and the first suggestion for "enrich" was "fertilize." I had not expected that, but it made sense. The soil is already there, with some nutrients already in it, but the farmer enriches it with fertilizer and makes it better. In the same way, Jesus takes what we have, our natural gifts and graces, and makes them better. Sometimes he makes them spectacular! He enriches us, makes us more than we were before. And that makes our lives better.

In the medieval church the tendency was to say, "This earthly life is terrible (plagues, and pestilence, sins and wars and death), but cheer up (!), there's a wonderful reward waiting for you in heaven (as if this life didn't count for nothin'!). But that's not what Jesus taught. Jesus said he came to bring life. Later, in the history of the church, the tendency was just the opposite: to de-emphasize heaven and stress only the earthly rewards of being a Christian.

The hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred sweets,

Before we reach the heavenly gates or walk the golden streets.

-- as if Christians will never have trouble in this world. But that's not what Jesus taught either. He promised suffering and hardship. Paul encompasses both truths: he knows about the heavenly reward, the victor's crown at the end of the race, but he also knows that, in some mysterious way, this earthly life is abundantly enriched when Jesus comes in the door. God makes more of us. In what ways? First, he gives us true security, a security which can never be taken away. Sooner or later we lose all our investments, except the investments we make in Jesus. He is that most elusive treasure: something we can hang our hats on, something that does not age, or fade, or deteriorate. "Change and decay in all around I see. O Thou that changest not, abide with me." Clarence Macartney, a great Pittsburgh preacher, of a generation or two ago, told of visiting the Covenanter Church, in Northwood, Ohio, where his father had preached years before. He said, "I thought of the changes in the world - in methods of transportation and communication, in geography and politics - since he first began to preach there. Yet, standing in that pulpit, I realized that I had no Christ to preach but the Christ whom my father preached. (Christ's) judgement, his power, his mercy are the same from age to age."

It's no small thing to find something permanent, a "solid rock" on which to stand when "all other ground is sinking sand." Parmenides said, "The only permanence is change," and we know that empty feeling. Nothing stays the same. I go back to the home where I lived as a boy, and someone's removed the shutters, someone's painted the soffit and facea a different color, and added a porch, and cut down the tree we used to climb, a tree we thought (if we ever thought about it at all) would be there forever! I go back to my first little country church, and it's all different. Where are those wonderful people who were so kind to Mary and me? Where are Leonard and Mattie Haines? (I see there's a road named after Mattie. That's good.) Where's Bill Rimbey, the town grocer, who used to call our Kathy "tapioca" because she always wanted us to buy some? Where's Willie Green who spent days up there on the church roof, frightening us all, putting on new shingles? Where Aunt Thelma Mullinix, and Mary McPherson, and Blanche Clay, who used to sing "When we meet at Jesus' feet," in those thin, old-lady voices, when the Women's Society meeting ended? I miss them. It's not the same without them. And I hear, in my mind, those cold, chilly words with which we used to open the funeral service: "We brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry anything out of it. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Death takes us all. It is no small thing, in all this transience, in this place where death holds sway, to find something permanent. It enriches our poor lives. Gives us a remarkable confidence. Jesus Christ (and only Jesus Christ) is "the same, yesterday, today and forever."

Christ also enriches us with true humility. We're teaching Will how to say "Please" and "Thank You." It doesn't come naturally to him. He thinks, for some strange reason, that he can order people around, and that whatever comes his way he deserves. Good thing adults aren't like that! "Please" and "Thank You" are conventional ways of expressing humility: they say, "I know I'm not the only human being on earth. I know that other people deserve respect, and that they are not here to serve me." A much deeper kind of humility comes to us, sometimes bowls us over, when we (by the grace of God) see ourselves honestly, as if in a mirror - and are moved to repent. Someone described Jesus' presence as a streak of lightening in the night sky. Everything is dark, and then, for a split second, the whole landscape is lit - we can see everything clear as day: all our virtues and our vices, all our strengths and our weaknesses. And all pretense falls away. Mark Twain spoke to a man who said he wanted to arrive at the gates of heaven with his trusty dog by his side. "Well," Twain said, "it's a good thing that entrance to that place is by favor. If it were by merit, you would stay out and the dog would go in." Twain had a wonderfully honest eye. (If you missed the PBS documentary on him this week, catch it the next time.) Christ brings a humility, based on honesty and confession, and in his light we see all our sins and imperfections. And we see a way, the only way, around them. And, trust me, that enriches life. It enables us to get outside our selves, to lay down our pretenses and our defenses and bear fruit. Thank God, we've heard the gospel message: that admission to heaven is by favor and not by merit! He enriches us by making us humble.

He also enriches our lives by giving us a sense of direction…a moral sense. From the moment we wake up in the morning we make choices…choices to do this and not that. Most people today live in a moral fog. They go first this way and then that, being blown about like a feather in the wind. Whatever the boss wants. Whatever the media says is right. Whatever my boyfriend asks for. Whatever the crowd demands. Whatever will get me out of the fix I'm in. No chart. No compass. We are like a train roaring down the tracks with no certain destination. We are like people all dressed up with nowhere to go. What is the right end and purpose of life, and how can I move toward it?.

The first great devotional book in the Christian Church was The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. Since it was written, in the fourteenth century, millions have opened it and been comforted by that famous first line: "He that followeth after me walketh not in darkness," sayeth the Lord. Wouldn't it be wonderful not to walk in darkness, but to walk in the sunshine and to know where we are going. Morality is not simple. Sometimes we make mistakes. But that does not mean there is no right and wrong. That would be like saying that, because we cannot mark the exact moment when day turns to night, there is no day and night. Jesus gives us, enriches us with, a moral sense.

We can hardly believe the stories of the early Christian martyrs. How they went to their deaths rather than reject their faith. We admire them, almost envy them, because they knew who they were and what they were expected to do. They had found something worth living for and , if necessary, worth dying for. Saint Paul stood before King Agrippa. Paul was a prisoner, had just been dragged up from the dungeon, was covered with perspiration and dirt, his hair all tangled, his arms and legs shackled. He told the King his story. Agrippa said, "You almost persuade me to be a Christian." And then Paul said such a gracious and dangerous thing: "Yes, your majesty, I wish you could trade places with me - except, of course, for these chains." No fear. Speaking truth to power. "I wouldn't wish these chains on you, but they are not restraining me in the least. I am made richer by them. I know where I'm going."

Christ enriches us with true security - gives us something that never dies and can never be taken away. He gives us humility, shows us ourselves. He gives us direction and a moral sense. And these are just a few of the many ways Christ enriches the lives of his devotees. His followers enjoy many benefits. He said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." I make you an offer you cannot refuse. I offer Christ to you, today