Sermon: "Caring for Yourself"

1st in the "Inwardly Strong" series.
Delivered January 1, 2012 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Sermon Text: Matthew 22:34-40

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Abstract: The lifestyle we are living may not be that good for us in the long run. Long work hours, commutes, late nights, early mornings, and jam-packed weekends can take their toll. Some try to cope with sleeping medications, Friday night binges, or DVD marathons. Maybe we just crash at home to recoup some energy. As we start the New Year, let's take a look at the kind of priorities that help us take better care of ourselves as whole people and for the long-haul.

Well, it's the first day of a new year. So I have to ask you, what's your New Year's resolution? Maybe it's not this year's, but what is a typical New Year's resolution, maybe one you've had in the past? We've even got a mic here. If you don't have a real strong voice, I can come and give you a mic as well. Give me some examples of New Year's resolutions. Yes?

Female 1: Having a better relationship with your fiancé.

John Schmidt: Having a better relationship with your fiancé. Okay. Yes, good one.

Female 2: Getting organized and de-cluttering.

John Schmidt: Organized. Yes! We all could use that one. Okay.

Male 1: Lose weight.

John Schmidt: Lose weight. Yes, that is a frequent one. Yes?

Female 3: Hug John.

John Schmidt: Hug John. Hey, that's a great one. Yeah! Who? I thought I saw a hand over here. Oh, okay.

Male 2: Do a daily devotional and read Scripture every day.

John Schmidt: Okay. You know, some of our stuff is spiritual. Some of our stuff is physical. George was doing some research, preparing as we prepare together for this. And what he uncovered is that there are... An informal survey said that these are the kinds of things Americans most set New Year's resolutions about: spend more time with family and friends, find time for fitness, tame the bulge, quit smoking, enjoy life more, quit drinking, get out of debt, learn something new, help others, and get organized.

We've heard some of those just now! Many of us will also have a spiritual slant on things here at Central. "I'll go to church more. I'll give more to the church. I'll serve more. I'll have..." Like we say, "I'll have quiet times every day." Now here's my question. Here we are, January 1, 2012. What makes you think it's going to work this year? Yeah, it's a new year but, you know, being a new year doesn't automatically do anything. So...

Psychologists say that certain kinds of things help us to change: pain, a pull, or a push. Pain will help us to change because we just are in so much hurt because of the current situation that we are desperate to find a way out and we give the extra energy to actually break the habits.

Pull means that we aspire to something better. We see an image of ourselves but one step ahead. And so that desire to move ahead pulls us forward and, again, it gives us that energy, that focus, to make change. And the other is a push, when people around us say, "You know, you ought to be better at this. You ought to give a harder try to this." This is the role of bosses, pastors, spouses, and parents all the time, to push us, to give us that incentive, to change something that needs to change in our lives.

But all of these things, all of these things, ultimately connect on some level to guilt, to that sense that we should have done better last year. "Last year, I should have lost 10 pounds." "Last year, I should have had a quiet time every day." And so we're loaded with this low-grade sense of guilt that we're carrying around. So what are we going to do about that?

Today I'm going to give you a suggestion and some direction, and it's Biblical, and it's from Jesus, and we still might not like it when we first hear it. It might feel like a burden. But let's hope we won't hear this as another impossible New Year's resolution. I want to read to you from Matthew, chapter 22, verses 34-40. That's on page 902 of the pew Bible.

Matthew 22: "Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 'Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?' Jesus replied: '"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself." All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commands.'"

Let's pray: God, help us to hear Jesus' words. For we ask it in his name, Amen. Jesus is answering questions in this passage from religious leaders. Now this situation has come about because Jesus has been in a longer conversation, a confrontation. And just moments before, Jesus looked some of those religious leaders right in the eye and said, "You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God."

Now I know enough about ministry over the years to know that that's not a great way, you know, of making friends immediately. It might be the right thing to say. Jesus said it. He was committed to the truth. But how do you think people responded to that? Well, we can see from the passage that they weren't real happy.

And so some of the other religious leaders who saw this interchange decided they were going to ask Jesus a question. And the purpose of this question was to either get Jesus to say the right answer, in which case he would show that they already knew what was important, or get Jesus to say the wrong answer and, therefore, they could show that Jesus was a false teacher and could denounce him.

"Okay, Jesus, prove us right, or show that you're wrong." Those are the two options. So they come up to him with a question. "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law? What's the number one that sums up all the rest?" And so then Jesus answers with the words that we just heard.

And so what Jesus is telling us is that these commands to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as ourself sums up everything else, that this is the one essential thing that has to be happening in our lives. If we fulfill these two commands, then everything else would work out in life. If we could obey this great commandment in its two parts, then we most likely would be able to live with no guilt and no regrets.

Now I have to admit that we can't live up to this. We need a Savior because we don't live up to this. But if we did, if we did more live in this fashion, then so much of the guilt, so much of the regret of life would be gone. A certain harmony and wholeness would be in our lives. Everything else in life is details. This is the core thing.

And so this presents life in a positive way. Living with God in a positive way, not in terms of a long list of negatives. Rather than worrying about what we can't do, this helps us to remember what we should be doing. Now I want to stop for a moment and reflect. A whole bunch of us are thinking right now, "Yeah. Make me feel guilty about one more thing. Thanks a lot. First Sunday of the New Year, first day of the New Year, and you're going to lay a guilt trip on me."

But let's look a little deeper than that. Jesus here isn't adding one more expectation to life. He is expressing the only expectation for human life. When all of life is done, the only question that needs to be asked in terms of the purposefulness of our lives is did we love God, and did we love our neighbors?

All the other stuff is what we fill it with. It's all the other stuff that makes it complicated and pressureful. This is the one key question about the focus of life. One of the roles of a pastor is always calling people to a God-centered life. Week after week, we explain. Week after week, we exhort people about this. And sometimes after that, folks will come up and say, "Come on. You're always asking us to do something more."

And I feel that way sometimes too. And I think some of that is because that's the way American life is. We always feel the need to do something more. This congregation is infected with the desire always to do something more. We do it in our personal lives. If we run a mile a week this year, next year we gotta run two miles a week. If we've made a successive business this year, we have to double business next year.

We need to do more. We need to get more. We need more. And our whole sense of identity hinges on this more. And part of that is doing more. What we do, what we can point to, is so much a part of our identity. So it's natural that when we come to church, we think the same way. "Pile it on! That way we can be more spiritual."

But if we do it right as preachers, and if we listen right as followers of Jesus, then Christianity isn't about doing more. It's about being different. And maybe if we find a way to be what we're called to be, with God's help, then we'll be able to experience some of the peace and wholeness that comes from truly being a different kind of person. And maybe part of that is going to be pushing out some of the things that are crowding our lives, some of those lesser things.

So today I don't want us to misunderstand. I don't want to be asking us to do more. I want us to be God's. That's the issue: being God's person. To live more deeply into life as God intended, to move from the center of life and move God into the center, in his rightful place. Because having the center right makes everything else work properly.

I want to give an example that many of you will not have a clue what I'm talking about because I'm going to talk about a long-playing record. Okay? One of these ancient black things we used to listen to. It worked on something called analog technology instead of digital. And the thing about a long-playing record, when you put it on the turntable and put the needle on and listen to it, they used to make these in a mold, and then it was only after it was molded that they would drill the hole in the center so that you could put it on your record player.

And every once in a while, maybe one in a million times, it would come out off-center. And so you'd buy this record, and just by a tiny bit, the hole wouldn't be in the center of the record. You'd put it on and the sound would be all messed up, the whole record ruined because the center was a little bit off.

And so often what we're experiencing in life and so many of the breakdowns that we are encountering in ourselves and in our relationships and our successes (or our lack of successes) is because the center is off a little bit, or maybe it's off a lot. It's wholly on us instead of on God.

So getting the core right, getting the center right, is going to require some training. It's not just typical American New Year's resolutions. It's going to require some self-care, soul self-care. Soul training. And the apostle Paul is going to give us an idea of what that balance looks like in life.

In 1 Timothy when he is talking to a young person he has been mentoring for years, in chapter 4, verses 7 and 8, he tells them this: "Train yourself to be godly." Automatically it's saying that requires effort. It requires direction. It requires intentionality. "Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise both for the present life and for the life to come."

Exercise and physical care that we take of our health is important stuff, but what Paul is saying here is that stuff works for about 100 years at the outside. But there's a spiritual component of life that not only matters tomorrow, but it matters forever. Are we giving attention to that? What does spiritual self-care, what does soul training, look like? I want to cover a few of these things, going back to Jesus' own words.

The first part is love God with all that you are and all that you have. What does that mean in practical terms? The first thing we have to recognize is that Jesus doesn't say, "Fear God with all that you have and all that you are." Now fearing God is good, but that's not what the great command tells us. It tells us to love God. Love God! That's what it boils down to.

By the grace of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting in Jesus, we can put all of those things that we know are part of the whole picture, but ultimately love God. When we talk about loving people, it inevitably means relationship. And relationship means that you want to spend time with the person you love.

I've just come back from going to New York to get to see my daughter, her husband, one of my granddaughters, and my first grandson. Got another one on the way. I get to see one part of my family all the time, and that's what love wants. The other part of the family I get to see a few times a year, and I'll accept that, but it's not my preference. I want to be with the people I love. I want to be with my wife.

How does that relate to our experience with God? Do we want to be in fellowship with God? I think that it's one of the most difficult things in our culture to carve out time to be with God, and yet I think it's essential to deepening in a love relationship with God. Naturally it's going to have all kinds of impact on other things we do, but the root of it is creating time to be with God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great Christian leaders in the twentieth century, a man who had the courage to stand up against Nazi Germany. In Germany, as a Christian, he stood up against it, ultimately was put in jail, and killed. One of the things he used to impress upon his students, since he was a professor, and his parishioners, since he was a pastor, was a German practice that they called "Losungen," which means "watch words."

What he would encourage them to do is to have a daily Old Testament text that they find and a daily New Testament text, just a sentence or so. And meditate on the Old Testament text and the New Testament text for about an hour at the start of the day, and think about it repeatedly through the rest of the day. Now we don't have to start with an hour. We might not ever make it to an hour.

But can we carve out time to take a part of God's Word and say, "Okay, I'm going to think about this. I'm going to journal about it," if that's what we... Or somehow just kind of press it deep inside? Bonhoeffer said it was this kind of spiritual practice that gave him the courage to press on. Why not try it? Pick two verses, particularly at the start of the year. Instead of just saying, "Oh man, what kind of life should I be living?" actually read something in the Word of God. Think about it deeply. And out of that, say, "God, what does it mean to love you practically?"

If we are serious about doing this, this is going to confront another thing: over-busyness. Taking care of ourselves spiritually means some of the crazy, over-busyness of life is going to have to go. So take some of the insights from your Scripture meditation and your preparation, and ask hard questions about what are some of the lesser things in life that have to move in order to make room for a God-centered life.

We just can't add more on. That's the American way. Super-size it. Okay? "You've got commitments? Let's have more commitments! Let's have bigger commitments." That's the American way, but it's not the way to care for yourself, to care for your soul. What has to get a little bit smaller to make more room for God? Is it TV? One of the decisions I made is to try to protect that time that TV stinks anyway. And depending on what you think, that's a bigger or smaller bit of time.

But there were a few hours that I was sitting in front of things that I was complaining about the whole time. Finally I decided, "Maybe I shouldn't be watching TV. Maybe I should pray. Maybe I should read the Scripture. Maybe I should read a good book." Is it sports? Is it extra work that we're doing? Is it some material goal that's getting in the way of all of our relationships and everything else in our lives? Is it focusing on just a few friends instead of a truckload of friends? We don't have enough capacity. Should we have our Facebook time? Should we turn off our phones occasionally? What is it?

So that's the vertical dimension. There's a horizontal dimension, and I only want to talk about one thing in that: love your neighbor as you love yourself. A critical thing to think about at this start of the New Year is the issue of reconciliation. Now we can't make every relationship work. There are some breaks that require a lot more participation and initiative from someone else.

I'm aware of that, that we can't make everything right, but there are some relationships where God is putting into your court something you could do to reach out, to deal with something inside of yourself. If there is something like that, then do it, because even if it's not successful in bringing reconciliation, it will still bring more peace into your life because you did what you believed was right and you took the risk. Reconciliation, or an attempt at it, is an important step in this whole thing of loving our neighbor.

Now there is something else, though, that's behind loving God and loving our neighbor. When Jesus said these things, we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, and love our neighbor as ourself, when he said that, he was presuming that God had opened the way of forgiveness, that that presupposition of forgiveness is behind this, because by the time we can understand the words, "Oh, I should be loving God with all that I am," by the time we understand those words, we're already not living them. It happens that early.

And so when Jesus said these words, he is also saying, "You are a forgiven people." The amazing news we have in Christ is that we're forgiven. As far as the east is from the west, that's how far he has put our sin from us. We are a new creation. All the old is gone; all the new is come.

Every day, wherever we are, God chalks a new line and says, "Today we can begin from here." Maybe we should have been way over there, but we're not. But there is new grace every morning. Sometimes I walk into this church, and I feel just elated. Sometimes I walk in, and I feel a crushing sense of my own failure. "There is more I could have done. I should have done something better, should have done something different."

This morning was one of those days that I felt crushed. What do I do with that? What do we do with that sense of failure? The good news that I needed in the last worship service (and I still need it now) is that God is saying, "John, I chalked the line here. Yeah, it could have been different. Today is a new day, and there is new grace, and I love you."

We're going to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer's spiritual exercise to close today. In just a few moments, we're going to be going into Communion. Before we do, I'm going to read to you an Old Testament passage and a New Testament passage, the Old Testament passage coming from Psalms 103:10. The New Testament passage is coming from 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17. Psalms 103:10; 2 Corinthians 5:17.

And as you hear these words, take a look in your mind's eye over the past year, the things that you regret, those things that are behind our desire to make new resolutions. And bring to God all your guilt that's dealt with. You were forgiven. There is nothing to prove to God. God has dealt with it through Jesus Christ, and we can move on from here.

Here are the words. "The Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities." "The Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities." "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come!" "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!"

I'll read them once more. Then you can have a moment of silence, and then some music will begin, and you can continue your meditation then. "The Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities." "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!"

© 2012, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org