Sermon 1/21
I am Josh Fremuth and I’m from suburban Philadelphia, born and raised there so I know how to lose very well. The last time a Philadelphia team won a championship was 1983, I came along in ’84 and it’s been downhill from there. I grew up in the church, I went to The Church of the Good Samaritan which is a conservative Episcopal Church outside of Philadelphia and came to faith through their youth ministry. My youth leader, Robi Haris, mentored me and helped me discern my call to youth ministry. It was the winter of my senior year of high school and Robi and I were meeting at Starbucks as we often did and Robi posed the question, "What do you think God wants to you to do with your final semester of high school?" After not thinking about the question at all I responded that I thought God was calling me to simply coast through my final months of high school. Robi didn’t exactly agree with my assessment of the situation and challenged me to go as a leader on the middle school winter retreat. I accepted and over that weekend God revealed to me my call to youth ministry and he placed a vision in my heart to make young people into disciples of Jesus.
I learned a lot about myself that year, another thing I learned was how much of a family man I am; even though I am about as different from my parents and brothers as possible. My parents are both very outgoing social people and I’m just about the biggest introvert on the face of the planet. My older brother is the classic first born overachiever and I’m … well … not. And my younger brother is the epitome of a metrosexual and obsesses over how he looks and I … well … don’t. We’re all so different yet we love and care for each other is ways that are beyond comprehension and we’re all proud to be Fremuth’s.
I attended Eastern University which is a small Christian Liberal Arts college outside of Philadelphia. I have to tell you that I had mixed feelings about Eastern while I was there. I loved how the classes taught everything from a Christian perspective. Math, Biology, Anthropology and Sociology all taught from a Christian World View. In my opinion the faculty is the best thing that Eastern has to offer. All the professors are passionate Christians and are passionate about their subjects. They have to be because they don’t make much money. In fact many of them have jobs on the side to support themselves and their families. What I didn’t like very much was how the administration attempted to mold every student who went there into this perfect ideal Christian. People who didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, only listened to Christian rock and were always politically correct. Then they’d meet a nice girl or a nice guy and get married but not kiss until the big day and everyone would just be these nice perfect Christians. Well I’m sorry but if the goal of a Christian college or high school or church for that matter is to make people nice, we’re wasting our time.
I think Christian colleges should produce wild, dangerous people. Parents should be scared to death to send their kids there because most of the kids that go, drop out and go into the mission field, or because the valedictorian boasts a 2.75 GPA because they spent all their time studying scriptures and being a part of small groups. They were too busy living the Christian life to learn about it. I knew a guy at Eastern who I think made the most of his time there, his name is Charlie after a year and a half he was on academic probation because he spent all of his time in extracurricular activities and going on mission trips. So his GPA was in the toilet after his sophomore year he dropped out and now he’s getting kicked out of China for preaching the gospel. This guy heard the word and decided he didn’t need a degree to tell him that he could build the kingdom of God. My story at Eastern was much different than Charlie’s, but our goal was the same, to serve the Living God. That should be the goal of a Christian college or high school or church, to disciple, encourage and equip children of God so they can build His Kingdom.
There’s an interesting and thought provoking movie which came out a couple of years ago which takes a satirical look at a contemporary charismatic evangelical Christian high school, it’s called SAVED! The film says some interesting things about Christianity, some of which should be promptly rejected but there are some nuggets of truth which slipped in. Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right. At the end of the film the main character Mary is in an argument with the principal of this Christian high school and she says something to him that I think is profound and true. She asks him, "Why would Jesus make us all so different if He wanted us all to be the same?"
Why would Jesus make us all so different if He wanted us to be the same? A valid question I think and I think that Paul is addressing this question when he talks about the Body of Christ and its diversity in I Corinthians, starting at the 14th verse:
" 14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be?"
We’re just a few weeks removed from Christmas now and I think that we all have one Christmas present in our history of receiving Christmas gifts that we consider to be the best of all time and all presents that I receive until eternity will be compared to that one gift. For me it was a Nintendo Entertainment System when I was 6 years old. I was 6, my older brother was 9 and for what seems like forever we had been asking our parents for a Nintendo. They came back at us with every excuse in the book, it’s too expensive, it’ll ruin your brain, it’s a waste of time; so we were denied from getting this amazing toy for months and months and months. And no matter what we did we couldn’t get our parents to buy it for us. So we decided to resort to the only option left open to us, we’d ask Santa. So Christmas Eve rolls around, my brother and I waiting with baited breath for morning so we see if we’ve gotten the Nintendo that we asked for. We wake up at some ungodly hour of the morning, wake our parents up and yell and scream until they let us go around to the living room where the tree is to see what Santa brought us, we charge out of the room, around the corner and do a power slide in front of the tree and the both of us wrap our arms around our very own brand new Nintendo Entertainment System.
And I know that story rings true for many of you, you’re best Christmas present ever isn’t a Nintendo, some of you may wish it was and some would have no idea what to do with a Nintendo. These gifts are like the spiritual gifts that the Lord gives us. He gave me a Nintendo, he gave my dad a catcher’s mitt, He gave my mom a Barbie doll. He’s given us all the best possible gift that we could imagine. We all get different gifts but they all come from the same giver.
That was a great gift and playing the Nintendo games was awesome, but what I didn’t realize about the gift is how much frustration it would bring later! I didn’t know how impossible it is to defeat Bowser and save the Princess. I didn’t know how much better than me my brother would be at Duck Hunt and I’d never be able to beat him. I think this is why Paul tells us not to be envious of other’s gifts yes he tells us this because it’s a commandment not to covet thy neighbor’s possessions but because we can hardly handle the gifts that we have, it can be frustrating, unnerving to use your gift. That why I sometimes feel like when God came into my life, he ruined it! I don’t know how many of you were at the Thanksgiving service but Herb opened up the floor after his "short" sermon for testimonies. And God had to tap me on the shoulder and give me something to say. I’m not that guy! I’m the kind of guy that sits there and says okay lets get on with it because North Carolina is playing Gonzaga and it’s probably halftime already. If someone came up to me and said, "Man, I wish I had the gift of being able to speak", I’d say are you crazy! It’s not a gift, it’s a curse! Once people find out that you are good at speaking in public they never back off you to speak and the expectations get higher and higher and your speeches get worse and worse an its one huge disappointment but somehow God uses it to speak to His people, I have yet to figure out how, but He does, so I keep doing it even though it takes me weeks to prepare, it makes me nervous as anything and I have to dress decent when I do it! I can barely handle the gifts I’ve got, I’d be nuts to be envious of someone else’s.
So then what do we do with the gifts that God has given us? If we read on in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians Paul tells us and the answer is simple, love.
I Corinthians 13:1-3
"If I speak in the tongues of mean and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophesy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I posses to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
God commands us to use our gifts but only if we have love for Him and His people. But what does Paul mean when he uses the word love. Love is an ambiguous word in our culture today. I love my mother, I love playing golf, I love cheeseburgers, I love Scarlet Johanson. Look back to the previous passage:
25 there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
That’s the love we’re called to have for each other folks. And that’s the love that makes the Body of Christ what it is. That’s the love that allows the Body of Christ to build the Kingdom of God in spite of all our faults and all our differences; we have a common love for God and for each other. Now walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.
Amen.