Warrior's Wardrobe
Sermon Video:
Hespeler,
8 May, 2016 © Scott McAndless – Mother’s Day
1
Samuel 18:1-9, Ephesians 6:10-17, Psalm 3
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hen I was a student studying at
Presbyterian College in Montreal, I was given an extraordinary opportunity – an
opportunity that few students for the ministry are afforded these days. There
was a small church in the city of Laval, just across the bridge north of
Montreal, called Northlea United Church. It was a church that was struggling as
an English church in what had once been, but was no longer, a fairly strong
English community.
The church needed
a minister to care for them but couldn’t afford fulltime ministry. A student
seemed like an excellent option for them, but the United Church, as a matter of
policy, wouldn’t allow their ministry students to minister in that way. The
Presbyterian College didn’t mind if their married students (I don’t know why, but
you had to be married) did take a pastoral charge while studying, but there
were no Presbyterian congregations in need of a student minister. So, when I (a
married student) came along, I was asked, “Say, would you like a job preaching
to and taking care of a little United Church in Laval for a bit of money and a manse
to live in,” I jumped at the chance.
It worked out
beautifully and not just for the obvious financial reasons. I still believe
that that church taught me at least as much about being a minister as the
college did. I had this wonderful place where I could take the things that I
was learning in classes and apply them to the real life of the church while I
was learning them. I had this place where I could go and make mistakes and get
things wrong – and yes, I made lots of mistakes and got lots of things wrong –
and the people still loved me and we worked through any of the ensuing problems
together.
When I finally
finished my studies and was ready to move on to my next steps as an ordained minister
in a Presbyterian Church, the people of Northlea threw us a party. They gave
thanks for all that they had shared with us. They gave us their blessing and
promised to pray for us. And they gave me a gift: this preaching gown.
When, a little
while later, I was ordained in my first charge, I received another item of
clothing. This stole (designed to go nicely with my robe) was presented to me
by my mother. Not only was it presented by her, it was made by her and by my
three sisters each one of whom took her turn with the stitching. When I wear
it, it reminds me that so much of what I bring to the work that I do is what I
bring from my family who did so much to form me and build me up.
And then, a few
years ago, as you all know, there was someone who I thought of as both a friend
and a mentor. His name was the Rev. Ruggles Constant. When I first arrived here
in Hespeler as a minister, Ruggles was dealing with many health issues and was
quite limited in what he could do, but he certainly went out of his way to
support me and to pass on some of his wisdom and experience in really helpful
ways. When he passed away two years ago, I was honoured when he asked me to
preach at his funeral and a little puzzled when he told me that I was to preach
on the topic of the full armour of God – the passage we read this morning from
the New Testament.
Ruggles’
daughter, Stephanie, did two wonderful things for me. She told me that her
father had been kidding and I could preach on whatever I thought was best and
she gave me Ruggles’ gown. When I have worn it since, I have been greatly
comforted to know that Ruggles continues to be with me.
And then there is
this stole given to me by someone in this congregation. Another supporting
friend and, in her own way, a mentor.
This is, for me,
a very special wardrobe that I carry with me. I’m sure that you understand
that, for me, the value of this wardrobe is much more than just the value of
the textiles.
When I came to
this morning’s reading from 1 Samuel, this wardrobe was what came to my mind.
In this passage we find ourselves in the middle of the tumultuous times of King
Saul, first king of Israel. Saul came to be king in a time of great danger,
when the people of Israel faced their greatest threat to date in the form of a
very frightening enemy called the Philistines. Better equipped and better
organized, the Philistines threatened to wipe the Israelites from the face of
the earth. And Saul was able to do what nobody had been able to do before and
created an army that could fight back against the Philistines in a disciplined
and organized way.
Saul’s success
was perhaps limited. It was not as if he made the threat go away, but he was
able to organize a real resistance – more sustained victory than anyone, even
Samson, had been able to do. Saul did slay his thousands of enemies. And his
son, Jonathan, to whom he hoped to pass the kingdom someday, also became a
great warrior. Everything was, well, maybe not perfect but as good as it had
ever been.
And then David
came along. And it wasn’t as if David was perfect; he clearly had his flaws.
But he definitely was someone who had potential. He was a leader like few
others had ever been. And both Saul and Jonathan seem to have recognized that
immediately.
Saul saw David’s
ability as a threat. Here was the man who was potentially a better war leader
than Saul had ever been – who could lead men to attack and kill tens of
thousands where before Saul had merely slaughtered thousands. Someone like that
could get good enough to take over the kingdom from him. So Saul began to plot
to bring David down.
But Jonathan,
Saul’s son, seeing the exact same potential in David, had the exact opposite
reaction. Of course, David was just as much a threat to Jonathan and his future
as king as he was to his father. But rather than responding with fear or with
that common response of wanting to put someone else down in order to bring
yourself up, Jonathan was able to respond with grace.
And that is what
it means when he takes off his armour and sword and arms and even his very robe
and gives it all to David. In essence Jonathan is taking everything that he has
built up for himself up until that point in his life – his reputation as a
warrior and a leader, his skill and training, his status and making a gift of
it to David. David hasn’t earned any of this yet. Yes, he did bring down
Goliath with one well-placed stone, but that could have been a lucky shot.
There is a great distance between that and being a great leader of men. But Jonathan’s
gift opened up all of those possibilities and closed off the likelier
possibility that David would have just ended up a forgotten footnote to
history.
Jonathan’s gift
leads me to think in two particular directions. As I have already said, it makes
me think of all of those people who, in their own ways, gave of themselves so
that I might become the person that God was calling me to be. It is Mother’s
Day, of course, so I cannot help but think of my own mother. It is Christian
Family Sunday so I cannot help but think of all of the ways in which my family
nurtured me, taught me and even sacrificed of themselves for my sake. And, of
course, it is not just family who do that for us, though they often do it in
the most enduring way.
Families, by the
way, are also so influential on our development that they can do the most
damage to us when they let us down and they can put wounds in us that we end up
carrying for the rest of our lives. So if you are able to remember all that you
received from your family and you find that you have been blessed by them and
sent on your way through this life in a positive way, you have been, in fact,
extraordinarily blessed – more so than many if not most of the people in the
world today. Your first application of this story, therefore, is to remember
your mother and your family and give thanks to God for all that they have been
to you.
On this Mother’s
Day and Christian Family Sunday, if it is possible for you to do so, take the
opportunity to thank your mother and those other people in your family for all
of those sacrificial ways in which they acted to make you who you are.
And after your
family, remember the others who invested in you – all those who, like Jonathan,
took the wisdom and honour and standing that they had built up and were willing
to invest some of it in you. Every single one of you has had people like that.
Do you realize what an incredible gift that was? I know that I could not be who
I am today without the people of Northlea United, without my teachers and mentors,
without the influence of incredibly wise and gifted men and women like a
certain Ruggles Constant. On this day, if it is still possible for you to do
so, would it not be good for you to do whatever you could to show your
gratitude to those people in your life.
But that is not
the truly exciting thing about this story of David and Jonathan. The blessing in this story is that we
sometimes get to be David and have other people build into our lives. The
exciting opportunity about this story
is that we also get to be Jonathan and to build into the lives of others. Every
person here has the opportunity to do that. It may be someone in your family –
a child, a grandchild, a niece or nephew. It may be some associate, someone in
your social group. It most certainly could be someone in this congregation – a
young person perhaps or someone somewhere on the fringes of this congregation –
but I assure you that, if you look around, God is placing those opportunities
to invest the human capital that you have built up into someone in your path.
You may ask why
you should do that – why you should be willing to give of yourself or sacrifice
of yourself for the sake of another. I will admit that it is something that
seems not to make much sense according to the way of thinking of this world.
This world is mostly interested in Saul’s approach – is much more inclined to
want to keep others down in order to protect its own interests. I’ll be honest,
this is an approach that I have even seen too often in the church. No sooner
does someone start to accomplish something and build a worthwhile ministry or
outreach than other people start to tear them down, criticize them and
otherwise make sure that they don’t get too big for their britches.
The world may
favour Saul’s approach, but God favours Jonathan’s. When you choose to invest
yourself in others for the sake of the kingdom of God, God will bless that and
bring amazing things out of it. The greatness in Jonathan, because of his
choice to share it graciously with David, became something that endured long
beyond Jonathan’s life. It continued through the kingdom that David built and
the dynasty that he founded. It continued and continues still through his
distant descendant, Jesus the Christ. That opportunity to do something important,
significant and lasting is God’s gift to you.
#TodaysTweetableTruth You can be a Saul and put others down to
lift up yourself up or you can be a Jonathan and invest your life in a David.
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