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09.06.09

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

PROVERBS 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; JAMES 2:1-10

• Life Matters
• What People Say About Us
• A preacher was asked to do the funeral service for an old man from the community who had died
• The preacher became acquainted with the old man during his years of ministry there and found him to be a most unlikable person
• The man just couldn’t stay out of trouble
• Every time he got into trouble, he turned to the preacher to bail him out, but no amount of preaching ever seemed to help because he simply refused to change his ways
• The preacher was disturbed as he began to prepare the eulogy because he couldn’t find anything good to say about the old man, so he decided simply to tell it like it is
• As the preacher delivered the eulogy, he told how the man had been a poor husband and father, cheating on his wife and neglecting his children
• He told about his shady business dealings and his addiction to gambling and alcohol
• He told about the many times he had been in and out of jail and how he always called the preacher to bail him out
• He told of the many times he had tried to get the old man to change his ways, but nothing seemed to work
• After hearing enough of the preacher’s scathing eulogy, some in the audience called out, “Preacher, the man is dead!  Can’t you find something good to say about him?”
• And the preacher replied, “Well, he wasn’t as bad as his brother.”
• What Is Our Legacy?
• We can’t deny the fact that the way we live our life matters
• Everything we do touches the life of someone else
• Our names may not be remembered in history for the good things we’ve done, but when we leave this world, we still leave behind a legacy
• We all want to be remembered in some good way
• We hope that the good we do will outweigh the bas so that when we’re gone, something more can be said about us than, “He wasn’t as bad as his brother.”
• Deep within us there is a natural desire to live forever
• There’s something about our make-up that drives us to seek after and find eternal life in some form
• There’s a yearning within us that makes us believe that there’s more to life than what we see
• We may not win the Nobel Peace Prize for our humanitarian efforts
• We may not be credited for making important medical advancements or long years of public service
• But no matter who we are, we will leave behind a legacy
• In 1998, my son and daughter attended the Presbyterian Youth Triennium at Purdue University
• When they got home, the first thing Eddie said to me was, “Dad, I heard the greatest preacher ever!”
• Imagine how that made me feel after preaching to him for seventeen years!
• But Eddie went on to tell me about the sermon
• The preacher used the illustration of a cemetery headstone with the person’s name, date of birth and date of death engraved upon it
• In between the two dates there is a dash, and the preacher drew their attention to the dash between the dates
• The day of our birth and the day of our death are both days that are beyond our control, but the dash represents the days we live in between, and over those days we do have control
• Our life is what we make of it, and how we live in our dash will influence the legacy we leave behind
• When I was in seminary, one of our assignments in my Faith Formation class was to write our own obituary
• The purpose of that assignment was to get us to think about the legacy of our life
• What would people say about me?  How will I be remembered?
• I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I remember struggling to find good things to say
• I remember deciding what I could leave out, what I didn’t want others to remember
• And I remember coming to the realization that my life mattered, and that the things I do between my birth and death—both good and bad—not only shape who I am and how people remember me, they also shape the lives of all the people whom my life touches
• What I would like most for people to say about me is that my faith in Jesus Christ was important to me and that that faith moved me to serve God by loving and serving others
• A Life that Pleases God
• Living in the Public Eye
• Proverbs is a collection of wisdom thoughts
• It contains sage advice for those who will listen and respond
• The book reminds us that we are always in the public eye, that people are watching us to see how we live our life
• But more importantly, there is another Eye always focused upon us, and that is the eye of God
• As the author of wisdom, God watches over the decisions of women and men
• God has designed us to live one way—in the way of God’s wisdom—and warns us against living outside of that design
• From the verses we have read in Proverbs 22, there are three specific areas of our life that God watches closely that ought to be of great concern for us
• We should do everything in our power to protect and uphold them as we seek to live our lives faithful to God
• They are our reputation, our riches, and our regard
• Our Reputation
• Mae West, that flamboyant and scandalous actress of the 1930’s, reportedly said about her life: “It’s a story I wrote myself about a girl who lost her reputation and didn’t miss it.”
• The writer of Proverbs says that a good reputation is something we should miss if we lose it
• We are to be concerned about maintaining “a good name” and “favor” in the public eye
• People should easily be able to speak well of us—our character and reputation should precede us
• The question of our name is a legacy question
• If we were to die, what would our funeral feel like?
• Would it be a somber ceremony full of sadness and grief or would it be a celebration of a life well lived?
• What would be said in our memory?
• This is our good name
• Baseball legend Barry Bonds made a name for himself when he broke Hank Aaron’s career record of 755 home runs
• But when evidence surfaced that he had been using steroids, his name and his record were smeared
• Fashion mogul Mark Ecko purchased Bonds’ record-breaking home run ball, scrawled a giant asterisk on it with a Sharpie and donated it to the Baseball Hall of Fame for all to see
• The concern of Proverbs is that we remain people without asterisks
• And the reason for this really has nothing to do with what other people think about us personally
• It has everything to do with what others think about God
• God is intimately concerned with his own reputation—God’s name, God’s glory, God’s fame—which God has imprinted upon us in our creation
• God is holy, worthy and exalted—God is perfectly good and wants to be seen as such
• Because God’s reputation among people is so important, God is concerned about our reputation as well
• God’s name and our name are intimately connected—what others think about God will be influenced by what others think about us
• Our Riches
• The second area of our life that is of great concern to God is our riches
• The writer of Proverbs encourages us toward financial modesty
• Riches—silver and gold—are literally set in contrast to a good name
• Having a good name is more valuable than all the riches in the world
• Try convincing your stock broker of that
• This idea is very countercultural in our day and age
• In our culture, wealth bolsters one’s reputation, one’s power and influence
• Possessing wealth is usually equated with being blessed
• But in the countercultural lifestyle of the Christian faith, having wealth and possessing a good name are in contention, and it’s not those who acquire wealth who are blessed, but those who generously and selflessly give what they have away
• Nowhere does the Scriptures condemn wealth in any way
• What it does condemn is our attitude toward wealth when we allow it to take the place of God, and it condemns what we do with it when we use it to serve ourselves rather than others
• God is the God of the rich and poor alike, and it is God’s design that those who have will use the blessings God has given to bless the lives of those who have less
• New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg says neither excessive poverty nor excessive wealth is tolerable among the people of God
• Poverty should always be covered by wealth so that no extreme exists
• Our Regard
• The third area of concern to God that also ought to concern us is our regard
• God is a God who has regard for the marginalized, who cares for the widow and orphan, the stranger and the alien, the poor and the infirm
• These are people who are often overlooked or forgotten
• Our regard for the poor influences the good name we have before others and before God
• Sadly, among so many of us, where poverty is concerned, if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind
• Because we don’t see it or refuse to see it, it doesn’t exist
• The writer of James reminds us of a problem that existed in his day that continues to exist in our day
• Even among Christians, we have higher regard for the wealthy than we do for the poor
• We will gladly welcome into our fellowship someone who is clean and well-dressed, but we are very uncomfortable with one who is dirty and wearing ragged clothing
• James calls this partiality a sin because we are not truly loving our neighbor as we love ourselves
• If we truly loved our neighbor as ourselves, we would embrace everyone as a child of God, whether they are rich or poor, sick or healthy, beautiful or ugly, black or white, gay or straight, Republican or Democrat
• Cornel West, who is a Princeton professor and civil-rights activist says, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
• In passages of Scripture about the public perception of the followers of God, we are to be pictured as those who love in public
• Because God regards the cause of the overlooked, we are to share God’s regard
• What’s in a name?
• Everything—if that name is Christian
• As Christians, we have taken on the name of Jesus Christ, and through our faith in him we become reflections of God in the world
• What others think about God is directly influenced by what they think of us who have taken on God’s name
• We must be careful, therefore, never to do anything to discredit the name of God
• The legacy we leave behind will be based upon the life we have lived
• When we die, will we be remembered as one who reflected the image of God and demonstrated the love of Jesus?