Sermon, 1965-06-21

i begin this sermon by reaching back into my sunday school days and bringing forth one of the questions from the catechism which we memorized i learned is you may have that one of the first questions in the catechism has to do with what is the chief end of man and the answer we were supposed to have memorized was the chief end of man is to praise god and to love him for ever now a very many of us had really learned this this sermon would be on necessary this morning but i am assuming that most of us if we memorized it may have memorized the words and not yet begun to catch up with the meaning for the writers of the catechism these were very important words they reflected a central idea that he's found everywhere in the scriptures for all throughout the bible we find the affirmation that not only man but their whole creation itself has as

its purpose the praise of god it's almost declared the heavens declare the glory of god and the firmament show with his handiwork and when the gospel writers are trying to describe god's coming into the world and jesus christ how do they do it of course with bands of angels proclaiming glory to god in the highest and paul as he writes to his little flock in episodes and as he writes to us here this morning speaks of the same responsibility he says that we were destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory i would like to invite you to examine this text with me for a while this morning i want to say three very simple things about it first that the text comes to us as a promise for it

is for us a bulwark against the meaninglessness of life but it also comes to us as a judgment whether text challenges that any attempts that we make to put other things in a place reserved only for god and finally that the text comes to us as an opportunity a chance for us all to begin living for the purpose for which we were each created we'll look with me at the way in which this one line can be all these things at the same time first a promise we have been just under an appointed to live for their praise of his glory well here is a simple and direct statement that says we can never again despair about purpose in life for the tax deferral is that we have a purpose that comes from god himself a purpose that comes to us from beyond our life a purpose which brings meaning to

our life i don't know how it is with all of you but for many of the people who talk with me a problem of finding real meaning in life is an increase the problem it seems to come for most people as an amazing letdown for in this marvelous american culture we somehow have the idea that the moment we could afford cars or television sets or the us and we got into the wage bracket that would match our spending or the moment we were really able to get into all the things that we wanted to buy some how everything was going to come out all right and yet we have discovered that when the threats to our physical existence are removed the same struggle for meaning still goes on our lives our jobs for instance may be so dull and pointless but we feel restless and bored in them rivalries in our officers may make us feel that while others are moving on up the ladder to success we

have never ever been recognized for our own rio works we may find ourselves working with people who are competitors rather than our friends we may find ourselves living with people whom we discussed rather than like in homes that are filled with tension rather than with love now eventually if this is the way it as far as we are driven to cynicism more to despair the cynicism that reflects itself in the ruthless competition for power that we see in so much of a business life today or escape perhaps which reflects itself in a flight from any kind of responsibility in a continual playing around with our lives or the lives of others are in a constant search for a new and bigger thrills and suffused through it all the feeling of

futility and restlessness a sense that somehow we have been on tour to ourselves somewhere but we have failed ourselves or our wives or our families or perhaps even god himself now what we're talking about is really the problem of finding meaning in life and one of the false assumptions of our affluent society has been that possessions and achievements will fill the void when life has no meaning but the truth you see is just exactly the opposite when there is no purpose to my possessions seem somehow to emphasize and compound the trouble this is the truth that is in a wave of contemporary novels is seen in a memorable motion pictures like blood all to return and so much of what we see on television now a life that all of these are describing is not a life in physical want these people have enough for their physical

needs in fact they have more than enough their lives are not threatened by starvation their existence is threatened by the fact that they have lost the capacity to respond to anything their lives are joyless and therefore they are pointless they move from one activity to another without satisfaction in anything lacking purpose they live at the level overall sensation and they experience only boredom but how then can this threat to meaning be resolved for the christian the threat to meaning is resolved because of his relationship with god when we have really committed ourselves to god's purposes and no matter how hard pressed we are we know that meaninglessness cannot be the final answer if we believe that our existence has its

beginning and let's end in the will of god for us then our lives take on a personal significance that no other means can supply even tragedy when it comes and be accepted as part of the total life pattern which we trust and not part of a blind irrationality sweet here we believe that we are participants in order and a plan for a world that has been established by god and like the rest of his creation that we are destined and appointed to live with the praise of his glory you say if we really believe this if we really can't trust this then there can be no meaninglessness we are set free from the bondage of so much that is meaningless to us now for we know that no matter what life may look like it is good for god made it and his is the glory on april sixteenth fifteen hundred and

twenty one martin luther arrived in the city of art's to face one of the great ordeals of his life he uttered the city in the midst of tremendous popular demonstration and then went to bed nearly dead with a t the next afternoon he was to stand trial for his life before the diet when he awoke in the morning what did he do did he spend his last the rich hours reversing his position or putting the finishing touches on his arguments are lining up to support no he spent the morning visiting a dying man who had expressed a desire to see him he heard the dying man's confession and administered the sacrament and we are told that in the afternoon when he went before his accusers loser enter the whole smiling well in this little incident we have i think something of the secret of the man

and of the whole reformation movement or here is a man who had been released from the power of self centered for years he had learned to trust god's power instead of his own you know he did not need to spend his strength and his energy in the battle where he was like a man set free a man frayed to do the will of god and free to serve his fellow man so the text comes as a promise but it also comes as a demand for any gift from god carries with it a demand for its fulfillment and the demand is this but if we are set free for meaninglessness because of the purposes of god for us we may not therefore live for anything else ultimately or give the final glory to anything that is not god now there is a lot of misplaced glory going around

there are an awful lot of things that are being accepted for iowans that were only meant to be means in an election year we are bound to hear a speech after speech after speech in which it will seem that the american way is the center and the end of all life the assumption seems to be that we as a people can never do anything wrong in our dealings with the rest of the world but freedom and enlightenment will come to other nations if they will just play our way if they will use our forms we seem to believe that in spite of our own solve problems of racial strife of slums of inadequate education of the neglect of older people of poverty in spite of all these things we are the best people that have ever appeared on the earth and that if the rest of the world would just be like us everything would be fine this is a line that is as old as time and every nation that has ever attempted to put itself in the center of history

and demand for itself everlasting glory has now crumbled away into dust the phrase which we show our upon ourselves and up on the american way will crumble if we attempt to make our nation the object of our glory if we attempt to use our national pride to displace the creator himself but this is not only true on the national and international level is perhaps even more true at the personal level as well for if we are to live for the praise of god's glory we cannot ever live just for ourselves alone we are no longer free to work just for our personal glory this is where jesus was trying to teach us he said let your lights all shine before men that they may see your good works not that then they give you glory but rather that they look beyond you to god himself that they may see your good works and give glory to your

father who was in heaven a person who disobeyed this fundamental rule of the universe is in trouble the person who put himself continually epicenter of his life was always using other people for his hands who is concerned with only what he can get that person wakes up one day to find that everything he tried to get so hard as somehow eluded him but silver wrote a book that has become a broadway play called what makes sammy run it is the story of an egocentric hustler called sammy glick sami has used everybody he has ever met in his whole life and at this point he is surrounded by people who though they worked for him this bison dislike him and one of the great insights about this book and this play comes when one of the characters says about semi unconsciously i had

been hoping to be around when sammy got what was coming to him and now i realize that what was coming to him was not a sudden payment but a process a disease a cancer that was slow leading him away the symptoms intensify success loneliness thier i thought you can't have your brothers and eat them too you're alone how all alone that's the way you want it that's the way you learned it all alone in sickness and in health for better or for worse till death part you from your only friend your worst enemy yourself well in sharp contrast to sammy glick i asked you to think of the men who have been their true leaders of our race a man who had done the really great work in the world they have been universally man who had never allow themselves to think of

themselves at the center of life think about lincoln do you recall a stream of abuse that was heaped on him while he was president this is the man who when he was snubbed by general mcclellan responded he would gladly whole general mcclellan source if by doing so he could ensure victories or think of gandhi they're getting the king of england wearing his sandals and his loincloth and his shawl and his dollar watch dangling reporters afterward asking him if he thought he own enough clothes for such an important visit and gandhi saying simply the king had on enough for both of us or think of george washington carver who could tell the story about himself that he had asked god for the secret of what man was and dodd said this was too much for him to understand and so yes god instead for the secret of life and god told him this deal was too much

for him to understand and finally scaled his request down to ask for the secret of the sweet potato and the peanut and god told him he wouldn't be able to understand everything about them either but now at least he was getting down to his own level well are these the kind of man who have themselves and their egos at the center of their lives or are these men who are aware that they stand with other men within the internal purposes of god but they are a part of his total creation accountable always to him well the text becomes not just a promise by the demand and not just the demand but also an obligation but how shall we fulfilled the obligation to live for the praise of god's glory well i think we do this by taking part in god's creation to give the glory

which we can give the heavens declare the glory of god because it is for this purpose that he created them and night after night they continue to manifest odd beauty and majesty and joy we were created for different purposes to manifest god's love is concern is forgiveness is tenderness we're called upon to be what we alone can be where was towel god demands of the job when i laid the foundations of the earth when the morning star signed together and all the songs of god shouted for joy well where last fall busy praising god's glory or busy about a multitude of our own things for this is what we are to be doing raising the glory of god in the lives of each one of us

it is for this that we come together and worship when we come together like this now for any other purpose than we are failing to give glory where glorious do if we can hear it merely because we like the people we meet are because it's a quiet spot in our week or because it's good for business or because it's beautiful here none of these reasons is adequate and if this is our reason for coming rather than to praise god we're like a cartoon showing people entering the church martha beck's and in front of them is a large sign printed in gothic letters in as much as the service is being televised spirited singing of the hymns a devout aspect during prayer and rapt attention to the sermon are respectfully urge to well in contrast to that kind of superficial it how it can lift us and liberate us and remake us when we know that what we have come together

for is to give glory to god but the glory that we give him here is only the gathering up and the focusing of the glory which we give him day by day and all that we do faithfulness and obedience to his will for each device the daily offering of honest labor for the mingling of the truth of our lives with those of other people through these we also give him the glory and if an we do not give him glory in all the places where we are through the week it is not very likely that there will be much glory here on sunday as we come together if we have any reason for being here are for returning to their homes to which we shall go where the jobs to which we move tomorrow or the lives that we live day by day it is that we are trying to be worthy of the life to which god has blessed and us and called us

a few years ago on a weekend retreat we heard a young woman tell how she came to be doing the work that she was doing she was the chaplain of the hospital for children crippled by muscular dystrophy and other similar misfortunes and she herself is in a way well suited for this responsibility for she too is the victim of a birth injury and every step she takes is a stumbling falter and every word she speaks must be shaped with care if others are ever to understand what she's saying and he told us how she came to her work she said as a girl alive and she had been reading the story in the gospel about the blind man whom jesus had given site and the disciples came to ask who sent this man or his parents that he was born blind and jesus said neither neither this man or his parents bought that the work of god might be made

manifest in him and i as i read this she said i said to myself that's it that's what i will be people will see the works of god made manifest in may and even as she was telling you those of us who listened could see that it was true there is really no question why any of us are here the only question is whether the reason will be our reason whether we can by the grace of god and learn to live for the praise of his glory and whether we can in all times and in all places give glory to him to minorities and to let us pray almighty god except now the

finds in praise of buy grateful people help us to live for the to put aside selfishness and pride in what we are and to learn to be what thou hast you called us to be right we may be truly children's bomb is being