It's More than Positive Thinking Scriptures: Isaiah 11 Matthew 3-1:12 Romans 5:4-13 Date: December 8, 2013 Second Sunday of Advent Preaching: Rev. Dr. W. Clifford Houston Interim Pastor I’m going to tell you a secret. I grew up in the South, watching a variety show called Hee Haw. The show was centered around country music and Southern culture. It took place in an imaginary county called Kornfield County, which was just as corny as it sounds. Buck Owens and Roy Clark co-hosted the show, but my two favorites were Grady Nutt and Archie Campbell. Archie owned a barber shop. Each week Roy would go to Archie to get his hair cut, and Archie would tell him some good and bad news. Let me read a portion one of Archie’s routines with Roy. Imagine the two men talking back and forth. Archie first. [Bear with me … Only take minute. Roy walks into barbershop …] Archie: Hey Roy, I guess you heard about my terrible misfortune. Roy: No, Archie, what happened? Archie: Well, my great uncle died. Roy: Oh that's bad! Archie: No that's good! Roy: How come? Archie: Well, when he died, he left me 50,000 dollars. Roy: Oh that's good! Archie: No that's bad! Roy: How come? Archie: When the Internal Revenue got through with it, all I had left was 25,000 dollars. Roy: That's bad. Archie: No that's good. Roy: How come? Archie: Well Roy, I took the $25,000, bought me an airplane, and I learned to fly. Roy: Well that's good. Archie: No that's bad. Roy: How come? 1 Page Archie: Well, I was flying upside down the other day, and I fell out of the darn thing. Roy: Well that's bad. Archie: No that's good. Roy: How come? Archie: When I looked down I saw a great big ole haystack underneath me. Roy: Well that's good. Archie: No that's bad. Roy: How come? Archie: Well, when I got a little closer, I saw a pitchfork aimed right at me. Roy: Well that's bad, Archie. Archie: No that's good. Roy: How come? Archie: I missed the pitchfork. Roy: Well that's good. Archie: No that's bad. Roy: How come? Archie: Because Roy I missed the haystack too. Those two went on and on like that week after week. Good news. Bad news. [Fits …] John the Baptist is the main character in today’s Bible passage, and John was a little like Archie. John had good and bad news to share. John lived in the desert – a harsh, unforgiving place with a punishing climate. He wore simple clothes – clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate simple food – locusts and wild honey. And his message was simple, too. Simple but harsh – because he told the people of his day to repent, and we don’t like to hear that. Repenting means accepting responsibility for our own actions. It means admitting that we’ve made mistakes, that we haven't been as loving as we should be – and that kind of news doesn’t give you a warm, fuzzy feeling. The people asked John what they should do, and John told them they should be kind to their neighbors, and show their kindness in practical ways. If you look at Luke’s account of John’s message, John says, “Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same.” John told tax collectors to collect no more than they were authorized to collect. He told soldiers to stop cheating and harassing people, and to be satisfied with their pay. And he made it clear that God is watching to see how well we obey his commandments. John said that every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. If Archie was telling that, he’d say, “Roy, I’ve got some bad news. God’s about to cut some firewood.” But an interesting thing about this is the Bible describes John’s message as good news. Matthew says John was the voice of one shouting in the wilderness, encouraging people to get ready Jesus, and Luke says, “With many other words John proclaimed good news to the people.” 2 Good news – not bad! Page On the surface, John’s words may sound harsh, but underneath the surface, it’s all good. John told the people to repent and be baptized, because God wants to forgive us of our sins, and wipe the slate clean. And any way you cut it, that’s good news! If we’re really sorry for the unkind things we’ve done and we say we’re sorry, God forgives us of these things. He washes us clean. He gives us a fresh start. John’s baptism was a visual illustration of this truth. Once we repent of our sins, our sins are washed away! The past is over and done with! We have new life in God. John preached a demanding message, that’s for sure, but he did more than condemn the wickedness of his day. John made sure his listeners knew there is hope with God. Which is a central theme in the scriptures. You remember what Paul says in Romans. In Romans 15:4 he writes: Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction so that we could have hope through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures. The Bible was written to give us hope – hope that God will be our friend in this life, and hope that God will take care of us in the life to come. Friends, our hope isn’t based on wishful thinking. And it’s a whole lot more than positive thinking. When I graduated from high school, a friend of our family gave me a book by James Allen called As A Man Thinketh. [Some folks still give it as a graduation present today.] It’s a wonderful little book about maintaining a positive attitude, which is a good thing to do. The book has had a great impact on my life. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the book: 1. A man (language outdated) is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. 2. He who would accomplish much must sacrifice much. 3. Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him. 4. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. 5. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit. 6. For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now? Allen was a pioneer of the self-help movement. Emmet Fox, Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer – all of these have been touched by Allen’s work, and I think most of them would agree that maintaining a positive attitude is good for your physical, mental and emotional health. But as helpful as positive thinking is, it isn’t enough to carry us through life. We need something stronger than optimism to get us through. We need hope grounded on the promises of God to get us through! If you go through your Bible with a highlighter, and mark all the verses which promise something good to you, you won’t find many chapters which don’t have at least one verse to mark. The Bible assures us, we have hope in God – a hope which helps us address the concerns and problems we have on our plates today, and a hope which assures us we have life with God forever. 3 Page Ask yourself this, would God create creatures capable of thought and speech and understanding – creatures like us / creatures he loves – would God create creatures like us merely to cast us aside when our life is over? No. That’s not God. That’s not the God who became incarnate. We have hope in God – hope for today and all eternity! Let me tell you a story. Boris Cyrulnik is a Frenchman, in spite of his unusual name (which I may be mispronouncing). When he was six during the war, his parents disappeared, and he was left an orphan. Foster-parents forced him to work in the fields and sleep in a barn, and nobody loved him. When the allied soldiers came to liberate Bordeaux, he became the runner, carrying secret messages through the German lines. It was dangerous, but he was made to do it because he was an orphan, and if he’d died, no one would have cared. After the war, he managed to train as a psychoanalyst. And because he’d been so traumatized in the early years of his life, he became a worldwide specialist in trauma counseling. He helped rape and accident victims, boy soldiers in Africa, people with broken hearts, people who found it hard to make meaningful relationships with others. Lots of people benefited from the resilience he gave them. He wrote a book. The English translation’s title is Talking of Love on the Edge of a Precipice. It was a best-seller in France for over a year, and during that time, Cyrulnik became known as the shrink who gives back hope. He actually turned his own suffering into a means for healing others. He found ways to give people hope. And he always said, All you need is hope.