August 19, 2012 Sermon on John 6:51-59

Brothers and sisters, I know that I’ve shared this news with you already, but I have to share it again because I do not think that it has completely sunk in yet for me. Jess and I are having a baby! Wow! I mean, I knew going into our marriage that the next logical step after getting married was to start growing the family, but it is still crazy to think that by the end of the year, I will be holding a tiny baby in my arms, one that I helped bring into the world.

Honestly, it’s kind of scary. I keep praying that God will allow me wake up one morning feeling completely ready and prepared for this new adventure, but so far this hasn’t happened. Instead, I wake up every morning with the knowledge that I’m one day closer to being a dad, and I feel this electric jolt of both unbridled excitement and uncontrollable fear.

This week marks Jess’ twenty-fourth week of pregnancy. During the past six months, we have both learned a lot about the 40-week process of pregnancy. We’ve read books, listened to professional advice, and done the best we could to equip ourselves with as much knowledge as possible as we prepare for our bundle of joy.

And I have to tell you, one of the most interesting aspects of this journey so far has been learning about the cravings that pregnant women endure and why they crave certain… substances. According to a number of sources, many women deal with cravings for all sorts of foods that range the spectrums from healthy to artery-clogging, from breakfast foods to deserts, from staple foods to out-of-the-box delicacies. Some women’s diets completely change while they are pregnant; Jess told me about a case of a life-long vegetarian who had such strong cravings for meat that she ended up eating steak or bacon almost every day until the baby came!

Sometimes, though, it is not an actual food that the mother-to-be will crave. Sometimes, they crave non-food substances as well! Jess read one day that she might develop cravings for things like clay or iron. Apparently, these cravings come about because her body knows that she needs to eat a certain kind of nutrient or protein, and sometimes the only way to best relay this message from her body to her brain is as a desire for something completely inedible. She read that if this happens, she should consult her doctor to find out what exactly she needs to eat to satisfy this yearning for a non-food.

I told her that if she started craving iron I’d just get her a piece of rebar to chew on. I don’t think she appreciated that…

I think this is extremely interesting, though. Your body sends you a message that you need a certain type of nutrient, but your brain only hears “CLAY! GIVE ME SOME CLAY!”

It is as if it completely misses the point. It’s not about iron. It’s not about clay. 

8.5.12--Sermon on John 13:31-35

When I was a senior in high school, one of my classmates decorated and taped a sign up onto her locker. It had Rom 1:16 written on it and stated in big fancy letters: “I’m not ashamed of the Gospel!” It was up there just a few hours before someone walked by and ripped it off. She didn’t know who did it, or why, but during the next period, she make herself a new sign, near identical to the first, and taped it on her locker as she moved to her next class.

That was on a Monday. Tuesday morning, upon arriving at her locker to get her things for first period, she was aghast to see that her sign was once again removed. So she started the process again: make a sign, post a sign, lose a sign. This continued throughout the day and the next.

Make a sign, post a sign, lose a sign. Make a sign, post a sign, lose a sign.

By Wednesday afternoon, she was pretty upset about it. That night, at FCA, she shared her discouragement with us. She was simply trying to share her beliefs, and someone was tearing her down every time. So we decided as an FCA group that we were going to join her in declaring our faith for everyone at Burnet High School to see. A group of about thirty of us made our own signs that stated in big bold letters: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel!”

It sparked a movement. Soon more and more people were putting up their own locker signs in support of the faith. It did not take long before every third locker or so was wearing its own Romans 1:16 sign. They were multicolored and sported handwriting spanning from completely illegible to seemingly professional calligraphy, and they all declared what we thought was a strong stance on hard issue.

We were standing up for our faith, and supporting a fellow Christian’s right to stand up for her faith as well.

The signs kept coming down, though. No matter how many people put them on their lockers, every passing period saw more and more ripped off and thrown on the ground. We would work in groups to make extra signs, intent on winning this extremely important cultural battle. And the cycle escalated. Make 20 signs, post 20 signs, lose around 12 signs. Make 20 more signs, replace the 12 signs and post 8 more signs, lose a few more signs.

And so on and so on.

We were winning, though! More signs were popping up than were being torn down. And it didn’t take long before a group of us spotted one of the perpetrators vandalizing our pious property. We jumped on him, yelling at him and calling him names and humiliating him in front of the student body for his heinous crimes. Soon we even figured out whom the other people were who were ripping down our signs. We didn’t seek most of them out to verbally destroy them, we just made sure that everyone else knew who they were so that we could collectively shun them and teach them a lesson about attacking us in such a way.

And we won. After a while, no one ripped our signs down any longer.

The guy whom we so well shunned was the son of two members of my church at the time. He didn’t attend except when forced to do so, but his parents were strong members and avid supporters of the youth ministry. They came up to me after the service one Sunday and asked me if I knew what had happened with their son at school. They said that he came home so upset one day that he had refused to go back, that he said everyone hated him and it wasn’t worth it.

I pleaded ignorance, but I knew what had happened.

It was at that moment that I was realized that I was ashamed, deeply, deeply ashamed. Not of the Gospel, but at myself and at my fellow classmates that we would do such a thing in the name of our God. We were trying to stand up for our faith in the one whom we believed was the epitome of love, and in doing so we had shown hate and alienation for those who truly needed to know that love.

The next day I tore my own sign down, for I realized that what it stood for was not love, and therefore was not God.