“Let’s get Physical!”

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Loving God, you call us to love you with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and our whole strength. Teach us how to love you with our whole being, so that we might find ourselves in following the command that you called the most important. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Romans. Listen. Romans 12.1-8. The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

I love preparing sermons. I really enjoy sitting around the computer, Bible in one hand, some interesting book or commentary in the other, internet stories on one tab, and the latest news from NPR on the other tab. Coming up with what to say really exercises my brain. Now, imagine if I loved preparing sermons, as I have just told you, but that instead of enjoying the delivery, which I do, I loathed it. Maybe so much so that I didn’t do it. Would those sermons be worth anything to anyone?

I love Bible study. Two kinds actually. I love personal Bible study, when I can take some time to read my Bible, to meditate on it, to listen to the living Word, and to feel the Holy Spirit rushing through the scripture right through my heart. But God and I have a deal. I will study the Bible until I am really filled with the Holy Spirit, am exactly where God wants me to be, in communion with the triune God. It’s just that I’ve told God that I won’t be moved to do anything. Don’t you think that is a good deal?

And the other type of Bible study I love is corporate Bible study, that is, Bible study with other people. I love studying the Bible with you folks on Wednesday nights. Beginning soon, we’re going to use the hit television show Joan of Arcadia and a discussion and study guide written by a Presbyterian Minister, author, editor, and Spiritual Director named Teresa Blythe. But I think we should make the same deal. We ought to be able to agree to things, to believe in things, but not have to do anything with actions.

See, Bible study is great stuff. We all ought to do it. We ought to spend some of our time looking at the Bible, reading it, letting the Holy Spirit blow through it into our souls, moving us into closer communion with the triune and living God. And corporate Bible study is great too. As Jesus would put it, blessed are those who come together and study the Living Word, for they grow in community, in fellowship, and in wisdom, knowledge, and love. And sermons are great too, not just preparing them, but delivering them and listening to them. Listening to sermons is great, right! You know, if you don’t answer correctly, I can preach for 45 minutes. And you can move further into loving God with all your heart during sermons and bible study. You can move further into loving God with all your mind, certainly. And you can move further into loving God with all your soul. It’s that “with all your might” stuff that is missing from that, or as Jesus puts it in Luke 10.27, with all your strength. The problem with it is that Jesus calls us to action with strength. The writer of Deuteronomy 6.5, which is the core statement in all of the Old Testament calls the people of God into action when we find, “Love the Lord your God…with all your might.”

It is so easy to have our Christianity fall into just our heads and our hearts. Paul writes that we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Not just our hearts, nor just our minds and hearts, nor just our hearts, minds and souls, but also our bodies.

Speaking of finding sermon illustrations on the internet, I found this on http://www.sermonillustrations.com. “…an amusing story from General Stonewall Jackson’s famous valley campaign. Jackson’s army found itself on one side of a river when it needed to be on the other side. After telling his engineers to plan and build a bridge so the army could cross, he called his wagon master in to tell him that it was urgent the wagon train cross the river as soon as possible. The wagon master started gathering all the logs, rocks and fence rails he could find and built a bridge. Long before day light General Jackson was told by his wagon master all the wagons and artillery had crossed the river. General Jackson asked where are the engineers and what are they doing? The wagon master’s only reply was that they were in their tent drawing up plans for a bridge.”¹

Part of what it means to be a Christian is to do something. If you have been moved by the Holy Spirit, if you have love for God, you will do something about it. In one of my favorite movies, Dead Poet’s Society, Ethan Hawke’s character, Todd Anderson is too nervous to do anything. He studies with the best of them, makes good grades, and is doing quite well in school. It’s in life that he is struggling. When the assignment comes to write an original poem and present it in front of the class, he has several written, but throws them all away because the thought of getting in front of the class to read one terrifies him. His roommate, Neil Perry as played by Robert Sean Leonard, gets frustrated with him because he won’t participate fully in the group they form, nor in anything really. “Weren’t you moved by what Mr. Keating said?” “Well, Yes.” “Cause you look about as stirred up as a cesspool.” See, for Neil, being moved means being moved to do something. And he says so, “Don’t you want to do something about that?”

If God has touched you, if you are moved, you’ve got to do something about that. Believing is not enough. We’ve got to offer our whole bodies. We’ve got to get dirty. We’ve got to get out of our heads and follow, where ever God would lead us.

I want to share two songs with you. The first I’ll just read you the lyrics. It is by the local group, the Indigo Girls. It is called Hammer and a Nail.

Clearing webs from the hovel, a blistered hand on the handle of a shovel, I've been digging too deep, I always do.
I see my face on the surface, I look a lot like narcissus, A dark abyss of an emptiness Standing on the edge of a drowning blue.
I look behind my ears for the green, Even my sweat smells clean, Glare off the white hurts my eyes.
Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail, Learn how to use my hands.

Not just my head I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.
I had a lot of good intentions, Sit around for fifty years and then collect a pension, Started seeing the road to hell and just where it starts.
But my life is more than a vision, The sweetest part is acting after making a decision, I started seeing the whole as a sum of its parts.
My life is part of the global life, I'd found myself becoming more immobile, When I'd think a little girl in the world can't do anything.
A distant nation my community, A street person my responsibility, If I have a care in the world I have a gift to bring

Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail, Learn how to use my hands.

Not just my head I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.

The second, I’ll play for you. It is by the same person who wrote the song we sometimes sing called “Something Beautiful for God.” His name is Bryan Sirchio.²