SPECIAL DAYS: Fourth of July

Lesson: Acts 2.1-16

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HUMOR:

Helga and I were on vacation at a cottage in Tremont, ME. While sightseeing we saw some signs in different places that contained a bit of humor.

Sign Outside of Shop: "We have worked 53 days with hardly any accidents."

Screen in a High Window in the Men's Room: WARNING: This screen will not prevent children from falling out the window. Don't let children play around the window."

Sign at a Retail Store Selling Sheepskins: "Bikers, Sheepskin saves biker's bottoms."

Sign on the Back of a Large Dump Truck: "Construction Vehicle: Do not follow."

INTRODUCTION:

1. Four Preludes, Carl Sandburg

"FOUR PRELUDES ON PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND," by CARL SANDBURG

1. From: Smoke and Steel, 1922

1. Carl Sandburg was a member of the Chicago Group of the early 1900's.

2. He found beauty and glory in the simple America that surrounded him: the farms, industry, landscape, culture, and most importantly, the American people.

3. Yet Sandburg recognized the rise and fall of civilizations and nations.

4. This is reflected in this poem.

1

The woman named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair they way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.

2

The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
    We are the greatest city,
    the greatest nation:
    nothing like us ever was.
The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
    where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
    We are the greatest City,
    the greatest nation,
    nothing like us ever was.

3

It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
    a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
    to warble: we are the greatest city,
        the greatest nation,
        nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
    there were rats and lizards who listened
    ...and the only listeners left now
    ...are...the rats...and the lizards.

And there are black crows
crying, "Caw, caw,"
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
    We are the greatest city,
    the greatest nation:
    nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are the crows crying, "Caw, caw,"
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and the doorways.
And the only listeners now are...the rate... and the lizards.

4

The feet of rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

2. This appears to be a dark and foreboding work.

3. It is Sandburg's vision of the rise and fall of civilizations.

4. Remember it was written in 1922.

5. A few years after the end of WW I

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MAIN BODY:

1. Perhaps we would be more comfortable with the vision of Katherine Lee Bates

1. Probably best known as the author of the words to "America the Beautiful,"

2. A trip to Colorado in 1893 and the view from Pikes Peak inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write the poem, "America the Beautiful," which was published in The Congregationalist two years after she wrote it. The Boston Evening Transcript published a revised version in 1904, and the public adopted the idealistic poem quickly.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!

America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

3. How do we avoid the dark and foreboding vision of Carl Sandburg?

4. How do capture the vision of Katherine Lee Bates?

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2. The lesson for this morning offers more than a clue; it offers a practical way to positive thinking and right action.

1. Peter and Paul are going to the temple for afternoon prayer.

2. There is a man there who has been lame from birth.

1. He was carried to the Gate Beautiful and left there by his friends.

2. He was begging for a few coins to sustain himself.

3. Peter asks the man to look at him.

1. Peter wants to see his face.

2. Peter wants to look into his eyes.

3. Peter is determining what can be done for the lame man.

4. Peter has no silver nor gold.

1. This must have been an immediate disappointment to the man.

2. His hopes must have collapsed.

5. Peter continues, "What I have, I give you."

1. What does he have?

1. He has a Savior.

2. He has the power of the Holy Spirit.

2. In the name and power of Jesus Christ, he takes him by the hand and raises him up.

3. The man begins to leap and dance.

4. The crowd that has gathered is amazed.

6. Now Peter has the further opportunity of relating to the people what happened and how!

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2. What may we learn from the thought and actions of Peter and John?

1. We offer what we have.

1. What do you or I have?

2. This may require a personal inventory.

3. It may mean that we accept the invitations of others to participate in a work or project.

4. It may necessitate the development of a Vision and Mission Statement like the ones that were in the July issue of "The Good Tidings."

1. Preamble of The Constitution of The United States of America

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

2. A simple statement, yet one that is very profound. It is inclusive of all that the founders of this country hoped to create.

3. This is what they pledged themselves, their lives and their sacred fortunes to create.

4. For this they fought a superior British army and navy and won.

5. We are the beneficiaries of their legacy to us.

5. But what is our first loyalty? It is too God.

1. While serving another congregation we created and approved a Vision Statement:

"To be a growing body of Christian believers characterized by a loving, forgiving, accepting community, modeling the life and teachings of Jesus in an environment where hope is encouraged and people can grow to their full spiritual potential."

2. And a Mission Statement:

"The mission of this Congregational Church shall be to bind together the followers of Jesus Christ for the purpose of sharing in the worship of God, and in making his will dominant in the lives of men and women, youth and children, individually and collectively, especially as that will is set forth in the life, teachings, death and living presence of Jesus Christ."

3. We did this to frame the reason for existence for this Congregational Church.

4. These statements were important in shaping the common congregational life as we sought to live out our faith under the headship of Jesus Christ.

6. Vision and Mission statements will do us little good, unless, and this is vital, we use them to create a community of people determined to work for the creation of a body of Christ in the Congregational Way.

7. This requires that we decide what it is that we will do for Jesus Christ and one another.

8. It is a positive approach in which we leave criticism and fault-finding at the door and approach our need with positive suggestions that can be accepted and carried out, not by one person or two people, but by us all.

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2. We also learn that we can withhold what we have.

1. If we withhold what we have then we are the cripples

2. In this case there is no help for the crippled.

3. The crippled remain crippled and begging for assistance.

3. If we give what we have we can change a small part of the world.

Graffiti from the 1800's discovered by workers renovating the Washington Monument has quite a different tone from that usually found today on the sides of buildings and subway cars.

"Whoever is the human instrument under God in the conversion of one soul, erects a monument to his own memory more lofty and enduing [sic] than this," reads the inscription which can now be viewed by visitors to the monument.

It is signed BFB. No one knows who that is, or who left the small drawings and 19th- century dates on other walls.

The markings in the lobby of the monument were covered over when it was decorated at the turn of the century. They were found when workers removed marble wainscoting as part of a year-long $500,000 renovation which was just completed.

--Spokesman-Review, June 1994.

4. We can give what we have even in the most extreme times

During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived -- everyone except the Zen master.

Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn't treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger. "You fool," he shouted as he reached for his sword, "don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!"

But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved. "And do you realize," the master replied calmly, "that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"

--"Without Blinking," Zen and Taoist Stories, Utah.edu/stc/tai-chi/stories.html.

5. We recognize that we are not god, but the representatives of God.

1. We are the Peters and the Johns of our day.

2. We hope and pray that others see Jesus in us.

Robert DeNiro's character in the movie Men of Honor had a different take.

DeNiro plays the part of a cranky, belligerent training officer, and introduces himself to his nervous recruits as Billy Sunday (the movie was set in a time when the flamboyant evangelist of the same name was still remembered by most people). He tells them, "The difference between the other Billy Sunday and me is that he preaches about God and I am God."

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CONCLUSION:

1. As God's representatives we give what we have, large or small, no matter how insignificant it may appear to be.

1. John Grisham Is a lawyer and writer of excellent fiction.

2. In his work "Street Lawyer," he writes:

Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy. I had never taken to the streets before; why bother? And for the first block or two I felt odd, walking in a mass of people, holding a stick with a placard [calling for better treatment of the homeless].

But I was no longer the same person I'd been a few weeks earlier. Nor could I go back, even if I'd wanted to. My past had been about money and possessions and status, afflictions that now disturbed me.

And so I relaxed and enjoyed the walk. I chanted with the homeless, rolled and pitched my placard in perfect unison with the others and even tried to sing hymns foreign to me. I savored my first exercise in civil protest. It wouldn't be my last.

--John Grisham, The Street Lawyer (New York: Random House, 1998), 284.

3. We do not need to engage in marches, that is unless one is really called for.

4. We do need to protest in ways that are available to us to the injustice and inhumanity that exists around us.

2. Remember we do this not only for the other, but also for ourselves

1. For I remember a reflection by Martin Niemoeller, a Lutheran Pastor during and after WW II

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out-
    because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-
    because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-
    because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
    because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me-
    and there was no one left to speak out for me.

--Martin Niemoeller

2. Such as I have, I give to you.

2. On this Sunday before the Fourth of July, let us reflect on what we have and how we may share it for the glory of God and the strengthening of our country.

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