Hidden In Change
Sermon
The Christ Who Is Hidden
Sermons For The Lord's Supper
Well over 100 years ago, on April 10th, 1852, beneath the African sun an American died in the city of Tunis, North Africa. To be frank, there is nothing particularly important about this fact. The man's name has long been lost among us. Even if we heard it, it would mean nothing to us. He fought no great battles, nor did he command armies, yet he was honored as a national hero.
Some 30 years after his death, his body was moved from its burial place in Africa to be re-buried in Washington D.C. Both houses of the Congress turned out to attend the ceremony of re-burial. The only thing noteworthy about this man was that he had written a song. But what a song! It seems to have struck a universal note in the human heart. Some of the words of the song say:
Mid pleasures and palaces through
we may roam;
Be it so humble, there's no place
like home.
These words of John Howard Payne are not sung much anymore. Certainly, the language and the style of the song belong to another time. But the mood and the truth of the song are for all times and all people. The words of this song bring to us a nostalgia for the familiar and for the solid things of life. They express a longing, a desire, a homesickness in each of us.
The need to go back to how it used to be is part of each of our lives. It is a need to get back to happier and simpler days, days when we did not have to worry about the bills or the children's education, days when we were not in a hurry, when we took time to smell the roses. It is a need for the time when life wasn't so confusing and lonely. This need is a yearning for the old safe and uncomplicated ways. It is a need that can process us as a mood.
This mood first came to me, I suppose, when I was in my early thirties. The mood began to dominate my thinking and feelings. I began to think of persons from my past -- particularly my high school days -- who I had not thought of in years. I wondered about them, about what had happened to them, where they lived. At first, I was possessed with finding them, seeing them and visiting with them again. I longed for the good old days.
Another event intensified this mood for me. The mood was stirred with a rage when Elvis Presley died. When I was a teenager, Elvis was a reflection of our youth. And youth represented the vitality of life. When he died, I truly realized my own mortality was real, but more clearly, I realized that I could never go back to the days of my youth. It was gone! It was no more!
Some years ago, Thomas Wolfe, the novelist, wrote a book titled, You Can't Go Home Again. Wolfe's first novel had been a story set in his hometown of Ashville, North Carolina, about the people with whom he had lived his youth. A native of the town said, 'Thomas Wolfe rattled a skeleton in every closet in Ashville, so that the favorite pastime of the town's people ever since is to recognize each other's portrait in his story. And some of them are pretty mad.' After fame had come to him, Thomas Wolfe went back to his hometown -- only to find it no longer there. Of course, Ashville was still on the map, but it wasn't the same. The town and its people weren't like he had remembered. Old relationships were not as warm as they once had been. Reflecting on this experience, Wolfe wrote the book, You Can't Go Home Again.
There is a word for what each of us, at one time or the other, has noticed, and for what Thomas Wolfe experienced when he went home to Ashville. The word is 'change.' It could be said that change is just another word for life. But it doesn't make change any easier for us. Everything in our lives is in the movement of change.
When we have gone back to the homes of our youth, we have not found them there anymore. The people have changed, and perhaps most of all, we have changed. We are no longer the same persons we were. For most of us, this change is difficult to accept and to come to grips with. We do try and wish to get back to how it used to be. Things change! Life does not stand still. It moves. No one time or place lasts any more than a moment. The ancient philosopher said, 'You never look twice at the same river.' And that is true. Each moment of life is lived but once. It comes and then it is gone forever -- never to return.
Change is not only a fact of life, but it is also a dependable truth. Things change! If you don't believe that, most basically, life is about change, take the time to open your family photo album. Look at your high school graduation pictures. Then look at your wedding portraits. Can you believe that the young man who just graduated from high school is that same person in the photo riding in a baby carriage? Talk about change!
On the wall in our bedroom hangs a wedding portait of my wife and me. Not long ago, in all seriousness, my youngest son questioned, 'Daddy, who are the people in the picture?' Change is clearly part of the nature of life. That's true, but it does not make some change easy to live with.
In recent times, as a parent, I have grown to understand change in a clearer way than ever before. I can remember the first day we sent our children off to school. Even now, I get a little choked up when I remember that day for each of my children. When you send them off to school, as a parent you know that they will not be the same little boys and girls when they come home from school. They will have been to school. They will be different. They will never be the same again. Their toys and interests change with the passing of each day. Tricycles are replaced with bicycles, bicycles give way to cars, short pants go to the garage sale.
Those changes of life that have to do with my children are the most difficult for me to accept. Two of my sons have finished high school. I would not be honest if I said that I was prepared for my sons to graduate from high school. I am proud of each of my sons, but it is hard to accept another change in my life. I know that I must accept this change. It is part of life.
What bothers me most, I guess, is the change in my relationship as a father. I know that once they finish high school and go to college, our relationship will change. They are no longer my 'little boys,' no longer 'Daddy's shadow.' And in a way, that is very frightening to me.
In college, they will become young men who will be responsible for their own actions and behavior. I can no longer decide for them. I can no longer protect them from wrong decisions. Change is what it is called, I know. But turning loose is not easy.
These changes I will have to deal with for years yet to come. That's life. Children grow up. As a parent, I know that I cannot relate to my sons as if they were children. I know that it will not be easy, but my relationship with my children will be as one fully human person to another. Of course, I hope that I have built a foundation for such a relationship. I have always tried to remember that children are people, too.
I know that graduating from high school will also bring changes in your lives, those of you who are graduating. This time and place is but for once. I remember my own high school graduation, even though it will soon be thirty years ago. There was a spirit of excitement in the air, a feeling that only a 'natural high' gives. It was a beautiful experience. Everyone attempted to hold on to everyone else. Hands were warmly shaken, embraces were sincerely felt, kisses were freely given to one another, and promises were made to keep in touch. It was a moment to hold on to as long as one could.
But there was something I did not know then. I know what it was now. Time changes, and we are changed with and by time. I know now that I can never get that moment back again. Not ever! This is one thing that needs to be remembered by each of us. It makes each thing we do or say very important, because we will never pass this way again. It will only happen to us once. So we must live each moment as fully as we can.
After you graduate, you can never go back to what you were, to what your friends were, or to what anything was before you left. Relationships and people will be different -- changed. You can't go home again.
When I was young, I took piano lessons from a man who was, what was called then a 'displaced person.' What had been his country was now behind the 'Iron Curtian.' His country was gone. It was no more. The land of his youth, the land of his sweet memories, was not on the map any longer. It was as if it had slid into nothingness.
Change will be the biggest issue for all of us, whether we are parents or graduating seniors. Change! What should be our response to it? What is the Christian attitude toward change?
The prophet Isaiah encourages us with these words from
God:
Cease to dwell on the days gone by
and to brood over past history.
Here and now I will do a new thing:
this moment it will break from the
bud. Can you not perceive it?
(vss. 18-19a NEB)
In these words, the Second Isaiah (as he is called because of the date of his writings) is recalling the event of the Exodus. But the old events of God are to be surpassed. God is doing something new right now among the people. The past was glorious, yet the present is to be even more full of God's glory. The prophet is asking the people of God to turn from memory to hope. The future is going to be greater than the past.
Change! It is part of God's creative demands. Everything changes. Other persons change. We change. Changing is part of the rebirth of life. In a word, Christians -- God's people -- are not to continually look back at the past. They are also to look forward to the new days of God's grace. Change is good! The old familiar ways must pass away, so that God can bring the new. Every time a door closes, another door, in God's grace, opens to us. When one road ends, another road is found. 'Here and now I will do a new thing,' says God.
For me, as a father, it means that I must find a new way of relating to my sons, because change is taking place. With the help of God and with patient and understanding sons, I will not need to 'go home again.' I will, with God's help, enjoy and celebrate the new that God creates for me and my sons.
I invite those of you who are graduating to come to this table to celebrate that 'the times they are a-changin'.' Change is exciting and sad, but it has the grace of God in it.
(This sermon is for my sons, now and in the future, because I am proud of them and love them very much.)
Some 30 years after his death, his body was moved from its burial place in Africa to be re-buried in Washington D.C. Both houses of the Congress turned out to attend the ceremony of re-burial. The only thing noteworthy about this man was that he had written a song. But what a song! It seems to have struck a universal note in the human heart. Some of the words of the song say:
Mid pleasures and palaces through
we may roam;
Be it so humble, there's no place
like home.
These words of John Howard Payne are not sung much anymore. Certainly, the language and the style of the song belong to another time. But the mood and the truth of the song are for all times and all people. The words of this song bring to us a nostalgia for the familiar and for the solid things of life. They express a longing, a desire, a homesickness in each of us.
The need to go back to how it used to be is part of each of our lives. It is a need to get back to happier and simpler days, days when we did not have to worry about the bills or the children's education, days when we were not in a hurry, when we took time to smell the roses. It is a need for the time when life wasn't so confusing and lonely. This need is a yearning for the old safe and uncomplicated ways. It is a need that can process us as a mood.
This mood first came to me, I suppose, when I was in my early thirties. The mood began to dominate my thinking and feelings. I began to think of persons from my past -- particularly my high school days -- who I had not thought of in years. I wondered about them, about what had happened to them, where they lived. At first, I was possessed with finding them, seeing them and visiting with them again. I longed for the good old days.
Another event intensified this mood for me. The mood was stirred with a rage when Elvis Presley died. When I was a teenager, Elvis was a reflection of our youth. And youth represented the vitality of life. When he died, I truly realized my own mortality was real, but more clearly, I realized that I could never go back to the days of my youth. It was gone! It was no more!
Some years ago, Thomas Wolfe, the novelist, wrote a book titled, You Can't Go Home Again. Wolfe's first novel had been a story set in his hometown of Ashville, North Carolina, about the people with whom he had lived his youth. A native of the town said, 'Thomas Wolfe rattled a skeleton in every closet in Ashville, so that the favorite pastime of the town's people ever since is to recognize each other's portrait in his story. And some of them are pretty mad.' After fame had come to him, Thomas Wolfe went back to his hometown -- only to find it no longer there. Of course, Ashville was still on the map, but it wasn't the same. The town and its people weren't like he had remembered. Old relationships were not as warm as they once had been. Reflecting on this experience, Wolfe wrote the book, You Can't Go Home Again.
There is a word for what each of us, at one time or the other, has noticed, and for what Thomas Wolfe experienced when he went home to Ashville. The word is 'change.' It could be said that change is just another word for life. But it doesn't make change any easier for us. Everything in our lives is in the movement of change.
When we have gone back to the homes of our youth, we have not found them there anymore. The people have changed, and perhaps most of all, we have changed. We are no longer the same persons we were. For most of us, this change is difficult to accept and to come to grips with. We do try and wish to get back to how it used to be. Things change! Life does not stand still. It moves. No one time or place lasts any more than a moment. The ancient philosopher said, 'You never look twice at the same river.' And that is true. Each moment of life is lived but once. It comes and then it is gone forever -- never to return.
Change is not only a fact of life, but it is also a dependable truth. Things change! If you don't believe that, most basically, life is about change, take the time to open your family photo album. Look at your high school graduation pictures. Then look at your wedding portraits. Can you believe that the young man who just graduated from high school is that same person in the photo riding in a baby carriage? Talk about change!
On the wall in our bedroom hangs a wedding portait of my wife and me. Not long ago, in all seriousness, my youngest son questioned, 'Daddy, who are the people in the picture?' Change is clearly part of the nature of life. That's true, but it does not make some change easy to live with.
In recent times, as a parent, I have grown to understand change in a clearer way than ever before. I can remember the first day we sent our children off to school. Even now, I get a little choked up when I remember that day for each of my children. When you send them off to school, as a parent you know that they will not be the same little boys and girls when they come home from school. They will have been to school. They will be different. They will never be the same again. Their toys and interests change with the passing of each day. Tricycles are replaced with bicycles, bicycles give way to cars, short pants go to the garage sale.
Those changes of life that have to do with my children are the most difficult for me to accept. Two of my sons have finished high school. I would not be honest if I said that I was prepared for my sons to graduate from high school. I am proud of each of my sons, but it is hard to accept another change in my life. I know that I must accept this change. It is part of life.
What bothers me most, I guess, is the change in my relationship as a father. I know that once they finish high school and go to college, our relationship will change. They are no longer my 'little boys,' no longer 'Daddy's shadow.' And in a way, that is very frightening to me.
In college, they will become young men who will be responsible for their own actions and behavior. I can no longer decide for them. I can no longer protect them from wrong decisions. Change is what it is called, I know. But turning loose is not easy.
These changes I will have to deal with for years yet to come. That's life. Children grow up. As a parent, I know that I cannot relate to my sons as if they were children. I know that it will not be easy, but my relationship with my children will be as one fully human person to another. Of course, I hope that I have built a foundation for such a relationship. I have always tried to remember that children are people, too.
I know that graduating from high school will also bring changes in your lives, those of you who are graduating. This time and place is but for once. I remember my own high school graduation, even though it will soon be thirty years ago. There was a spirit of excitement in the air, a feeling that only a 'natural high' gives. It was a beautiful experience. Everyone attempted to hold on to everyone else. Hands were warmly shaken, embraces were sincerely felt, kisses were freely given to one another, and promises were made to keep in touch. It was a moment to hold on to as long as one could.
But there was something I did not know then. I know what it was now. Time changes, and we are changed with and by time. I know now that I can never get that moment back again. Not ever! This is one thing that needs to be remembered by each of us. It makes each thing we do or say very important, because we will never pass this way again. It will only happen to us once. So we must live each moment as fully as we can.
After you graduate, you can never go back to what you were, to what your friends were, or to what anything was before you left. Relationships and people will be different -- changed. You can't go home again.
When I was young, I took piano lessons from a man who was, what was called then a 'displaced person.' What had been his country was now behind the 'Iron Curtian.' His country was gone. It was no more. The land of his youth, the land of his sweet memories, was not on the map any longer. It was as if it had slid into nothingness.
Change will be the biggest issue for all of us, whether we are parents or graduating seniors. Change! What should be our response to it? What is the Christian attitude toward change?
The prophet Isaiah encourages us with these words from
God:
Cease to dwell on the days gone by
and to brood over past history.
Here and now I will do a new thing:
this moment it will break from the
bud. Can you not perceive it?
(vss. 18-19a NEB)
In these words, the Second Isaiah (as he is called because of the date of his writings) is recalling the event of the Exodus. But the old events of God are to be surpassed. God is doing something new right now among the people. The past was glorious, yet the present is to be even more full of God's glory. The prophet is asking the people of God to turn from memory to hope. The future is going to be greater than the past.
Change! It is part of God's creative demands. Everything changes. Other persons change. We change. Changing is part of the rebirth of life. In a word, Christians -- God's people -- are not to continually look back at the past. They are also to look forward to the new days of God's grace. Change is good! The old familiar ways must pass away, so that God can bring the new. Every time a door closes, another door, in God's grace, opens to us. When one road ends, another road is found. 'Here and now I will do a new thing,' says God.
For me, as a father, it means that I must find a new way of relating to my sons, because change is taking place. With the help of God and with patient and understanding sons, I will not need to 'go home again.' I will, with God's help, enjoy and celebrate the new that God creates for me and my sons.
I invite those of you who are graduating to come to this table to celebrate that 'the times they are a-changin'.' Change is exciting and sad, but it has the grace of God in it.
(This sermon is for my sons, now and in the future, because I am proud of them and love them very much.)
