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This is the first time since Northminster began having a
Kirkin’ O’ the Tartans service that the preacher has a Southern accent
rather than a Scottish accent. This preacher can’t
even mimic a Scottish accent, so you must settle for a Scottish story
instead.
Scots are known for being, shall we say...
thrifty? A story is told of five Englishmen
who boarded a train just behind five Scotsmen, who, as a group had only
purchased one ticket. Just before the conductor
came through, all the Scots piled into a toilet stall
at the back of the car. As the conductor
passed the stall, he knocked and called “Tickets please!” and one of the
Scots slid a ticket under the door. It was punched, pushed back under the
door, and when it was safe all the Scots came out and took their seats.
The Englishmen were tremendously impressed by the Scots’ ingenuity.
On the trip back, the five Englishmen decided to try this themselves
and purchased only one ticket. They noticed that,
oddly, the Scots had not purchased any tickets this time. Again, just before
the conductor came through, the Scots piled into one of the toilet stalls,
and this time, the Englishmen into the other.
Then, one of the Scots leaned out of his stall, knocked on the Englishmen’s
stall and called “Ticket, please!” When the ticket
slid out under the door, the Scotsman picked it up and quickly closed the
door to his stall.
Those five Scots had certainly lived up to the
thrifty reputation of their fellow Scots that day!
In the letter to the Ephesians, the writer tells the people in the church at
Ephesus to lead a life worthy of the calling to which they had been called,
i.e. to live as followers of Jesus Christ. They
are to do this by taking their lead from Jesus. The writer even spells out
for the Ephesians the “equipment” they will need to do so.
Humility
The ancient world did not have a word
for humility that was not degrading. The Christians of the ancient world
gave the word humility a new meaning. People who are humble consider
themselves “small” but at the same time recognize God’s power and ability in
their lives.
Humility is personified in the person of Jesus Christ and is best understood
in the drama of the cross: God in human form,
submitting to the humiliation of crucifixion. Jesus Christ humbled himself
that creation’s relationship with its creator would be restored.
Gentleness
Gentleness is another word for
“meekness” but it is not a synonym for weakness. Gentleness was used to
speak of a wild animal that had been tamed, suggesting controlled strength
or power under control.
Christians are gentle when they are able to control their
sinful natures.
Patience
Probably the virtue we most hear people acknowledging they don’t possess!
Patience involves endurance and
describes the attitude Christians are to show toward others. “Bearing with
one another” is the practical expression of patience. Patience stays with
someone until the problem or provocation is past.
Love
Love is what enables humility,
gentleness, and patience. Love is the
foundation of the other virtues, the virtue that enables and supports
humility, gentleness, and patience.
The apostle Paul described love in
1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is
not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own
way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing,
but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
It is these virtues that support the unity of the church. The writer of
Ephesians is not talking about organizational unity or mere uniformity. This
unity is a dynamic, living union of believers energized and united by the
Holy Spirit who already dwells within them.
The Church is an organism, an
organism pulsating with life and made up of living persons who are
responsible for the growth of their character, responsible for maturing into
the people God wants them to be.
In
Philippians,
the apostle Paul tells us: “Not that I have already attained this…but I
press on…because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
Perhaps we can look back to 1620, when a boat filled with
more than 100 people sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New
World. These people, known to us as the Pilgrims, settled in what is now the
state of Massachusetts. Their first winter in the New World was difficult,
to say the least. They had arrived too late to
grow many crops and without fresh food more than half the colony died from
disease.
But to be a Pilgrim meant to share what you have and turning thanks into
giving. The Pilgrim colonists willingly shared all they had. During their
first three years, all property was held in common. At one point, they were
down to five kernels of corn per day for food. Still, they divided the corn
kernels up equally. And, the original group of
fifty that survived the first winter shared their limited food with the
sixty newcomers who arrived the next spring.
The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them to grow corn, a new
food for the colonists. They also introduced the Pilgrims to other crops to
grow in the unfamiliar soil of the New World and taught them how to hunt and
fish.
One of the Pilgrims’ finest moments came in 1623, at the first real
Thanksgiving. The small colony hosted over ninety Native American braves for
three days and there was eating and drinking, wrestling, footraces and gun
and arrow-shooting competitions; now we know where
the idea of playing or watching football on Thanksgiving came from.
It was the Pilgrims’ way of saying “thank you” to God and to the
Native Americans who had helped them survive.
In the following years, many of the
original colonists celebrated the fall harvest with a feast of thanks. In
1863, at the end of the long and bloody civil war,
Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in
November as a day of Thanksgiving.
I think those Pilgrims exhibited the virtues of humility,
gentleness, patience and love that the writer of Ephesians talked about.
They humbled themselves when they recognized they didn’t have the resources
and knowledge to care for themselves.
But the native Indians did, and they
accepted the help and encouragement offered to them by those Native
Americans.
The Pilgrims were gentle, meek people. Through the Pilgrims we can certainly
understand that meek and weak are not synonyms! While those who died did so
because of disease, those who did survive very well may not have had they
not been gentle people, able to control their individual wants so that the
community would survive, rather than just a few individuals surviving.
The Pilgrims must have been patient people. When one is facing tremendous
hardship and suffering, one’s ability to keep any perspective quickly
fades. But somehow, through the hunger, through the cold, through the loss
of husband or wife, sister or brother, daughter or son, mother or father,
the Pilgrims supported and encouraged each other.
The Pilgrims were a people who knew about love. Somewhere
along the way, they had learned that love indeed “bears all things, believes
all things, hopes all things, endures all things”.
Today, on this sixth annual celebration of the Kirkin’ o’ the Tartans at
Northminster, we have placed on the communion table symbols of our
individual families, asking for God’s continued blessing upon our families.
But have we not also placed these tartans and tartan ribbons from all
our families to ask for God’s blessing upon our Northminster family, this
part of the Body of Christ?
Look at the wealth of color provided by these tartans!
Isn’t this a beautiful visual of our coming together as a community,
not only to ask for God’s blessings upon us,
but to also give thanks to God for the gifts God has given us?
Here our tartans lay on this table, the table around which we
regularly gather to celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of the one
who gives meaning to our life now
and life with God eternally.
The early settlers and indigenous people they found here recognized what was
needed to survive.
May we who gather today in this
Kirk seek humility, gentleness, patience, and love as we give thanks to God
today and every day of our lives. Amen. |
