August 22, 2004, St. Andrew’s Pictou

 

Attitude is Omnipotent

 

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Psalm 71:1-6

Hebrews 12:18-29

Luke 13:10-17

 

Maybe you have had the experience that one moment so sticks in your mind that it affects your entire life. It is a learning experience that you never forget for the rest of your life.

 

Over thirty years ago my father, mother, sister Janet and myself traveled to a place called, Storrs, Connecticut. My sister JoAnne was receiving her Master’s Degree in Interior Design from the University of Connecticut. It was quite an occasion to go so far and to another country, but an exciting event like this doesn’t happen every day, so you go.

 

The moment to which I am referring you to was when we walked into her room in the dorm and there was a little picture stand on her desk with a poem on it which I read.

 

The impact of the poem was like a cosmic blast into my consciousness. I was so drawn to the poem that I couldn’t pay attention to anything or anyone else. It was called, “Press On!”

 

While I now have a copy of the poem somewhere, I checked the internet to prepare for my message today, and after 574 sites, I did find it but I couldn’t open the source. I called my sister in Ontario long distance and although she remembered the poem, it was packed away somewhere in 30 boxes back home in PEI. One word in the site I did find used the word “persistence” and so I went back to the internet and voila, I had “pressed on” until I found the poem: 600 site checks, one long distance call and I had it, the poem, “Press On.!” Which I am going to read you now.

 

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not;

Nothing is more common than unsuccessful (people) with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination are omnipotent.

The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve

the problems of the human race.                     Calvin Coolidge

 

There it was: just a few sentences, but it said it all: the secret of life was not all of those things people value, it was just simple persistence!

 

Now the cynics and negative minded might say that this is a church, I am a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ, and I should be not be speaking about attitudes, that I should be speaking about religion.

 

But what I would like to say to you is that I am indeed speaking about the deepest reality of religion that there is: faith!!

 

“Pressing on,” “persistence,” “positive thinking,” “having a positive mental attitude” are all the same thing as having… faith!

 

The Bible asks us to do a number of things, (seek justice, be kind to people, feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, and even love your enemies,) but the bottom line between us and God is to have faith in God. Of consequence, we are then to have faith in each other. We are to believe in our spouse and our children. Ministers are supposed to believe in their flock every bit as much as they are to believe in God.

 

(Maybe when search committees interview ministers, they should ask them if “If you are going to believe in us, how would we know that?”)

 

“I believe in you” is exactly what God is saying to the little boy Jeremiah in today’s reading.

 

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”

 

In plain English, God is telling the boy that he is his father, that Jeremiah is his offspring and has as his calling to fulfill his father’s legacy; that he is connected to God the Father by the love of kinship and will act with God’s power in the world:

 

“Now I have put my words in your mouth. (God Says.)

See, today I have appointed you over nations and over kingdoms…”

 

God has faith in his little boy prophet, Jeremiah.

 

God tells Jeremiah not to be afraid just like Paul tells the people in the Hebrews reading.

 

Faith is the antidote of fear!

 

Paul gives illustrations and affirms to the people that they are supported by a powerful God: “For indeed, our God is a consuming fire.”

 

Remember that poem I read to you at the beginning? The reading in Luke has our friend Jesus confronting some of the talented, genius, and educated types that take issue at Jesus for his healing of a woman on the Sabbath. Supposedly they were upset at his “working on the Sabbath.”

 

They were unable to see this example of God’s healing faith in action.

 

Jesus “was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’

When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”

 

The leader of the synagogue was a true bureaucrat. The text says that he kept saying the following, but I guess people weren’t listening to him:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.

 

Contrary to some of the hymns written about him, Jesus was not always “nice” and “meek.” He was enraged by the leader of this synagogue. Shaming him and calling him “a hypocrite” in front of the crowd was not “a politically correct” thing to do!

 

Jesus went on to show that during the Sabbath they took better care of their animals then they were willing to give this woman. They give water to their ox or donkey on the Sabbath, but they think that this woman who had been deprived of her health for 18 years should suffer yet another day for their rules.

 

“…all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things he was doing.”

 

The woman didn’t complain. The people didn’t complain. As a matter of fact they seemed very happy.

 

Isn’t it the natural order of things that when you have faith in something or someone and it works that you are usually happy?

 

When our child does well, when something good happens to one we believe in, when something happens well at the church, aren’t we happy?

 

Could this mean that when faith is fulfilled, human beings are happy?

 

Have we hit pay dirt here?

 

Could it be that having faith leads to living a successful life?

 

Wow!

 

I guess it was worth coming to church today to learn that truth:

Having faith leads to having a successful life!

 

Our attitude (our faith) determines the success and happiness of our lives!

 

A woman who had suffered and was so bent over she couldn’t stand up straight until she met Jesus, was healed on the day she met him.

 

God in Christ wants that for you and for me and for our children: leave the cynics and “nay sayers” behind in our dust. God wants us to be proud and without shame; to stand up straight and tall in confidence and with faith.

 

Thanks be to God!

 

AMEN                Rev. Alan Stewart