Positives and Negatives
Isaiah 63:7-11; Matthew 2:13-16
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Harry G. Winsheimer
February 15, 2009

How are you?  We ask that question all of the time when we meet each other.  We really throw people if we tell them.  No answer is expected, except, “Fine.  How are you?”

So, how are you, really?

Worried about your job?  Will a pink slip greet you soon?  Did you get your credit card bill, and still wonder how you could have spent so much in December?  Now, you are feeling the pinch.  You leave this week for a couple of months in Florida -- had enough of winter.  You can’t wait to feel the warm sand under your toes and to be soothed by the gentle rhythmic swooshing of the waves.  (Oh, just daydreaming makes me envious!)

Isn’t life quite a mix of threats and joys, of sadness and laughter, of regret and anticipation, of positives and negatives?

Prayer
O God, you incarnated yourself in Jesus, a person of our species – a baby like we were, a child like us, an adult like us.  In him, you have experienced the positives and negatives that we experience.  Show us your involvement in human lives today.  Mold us into the people you want us to be.  In his name we are privileged to ask.  Amen.

Our two texts for study contain positives and negatives.

Isaiah 63:7 is a poem.
I will tell of the Lord’s unfailing love;
    I will praise him for all he has done for us.
He has richly blessed the people of Israel
    because of his mercy and constant love.

The prophet is as happy as a kid on Christmas morning.  God has been good!  Life is good!  He feels blessed.  He tells the world about it.  He praises God.

But the very next words are a downer!
They rebelled against [God] and filled [God]with sadness.  So the Lord became their enemy and fought against them.

But then they remembered the past, the days of Moses … and they asked , “Where now is the Lord, who saved the leaders of the people from the sea?  Where is the Lord, who gave his spirit to Moses? Where is the Lord…?”   Excerpts from Good News Bible

On the Sunday after 9/11, I was sitting in the chancel as another minister led us in praying the Lord’s Prayer.  (Remember the high emotions of those days?  Intense worry, anger, fear, uncertainty – very emotional time.  I was in DC.  Several members of my church were in the Pentagon when it was struck.  We did not have anyone injured or killed in our congregation, but the nose of the plane that hit the Pentagon stopped in the office of our church treasurer.  One of the admirals in the congregation raced ahead of flames to escape.  One of our deacons was on business near the World Trade Towers, and searched for a way out of the dust and confusion.  It had been quite a week!)  Again, as I said, the preacher led us in praying the Lord’s Prayer.  We said, “…deliver us from evil….”  “Oh!”  Instantly, that phrase of Jesus zapped me with powerful emotion.  Of all the phrases in the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from evil” had had the least relevance for me.  Said, but not with any meaning.  Now, it has immense meaning!  I feel vulnerable and pleas to be delivered from the evil intent of our enemies make sense.  At the Inauguration and the Super Bowl a few weeks ago, I prayed that no suicide bomber would strike. Emotionally, now, I am aware that you and I could be done in while just going about our ordinary daily life.  “Our Father…deliver us from evil.”

Positives and negatives.  What a mix of emotions!

Which type are you?  Do you focus upon the positive or the negative?  We seem to fall into one of the two types.  Let me ask you a question that a counselor once asked me, “When you look at your dinner plate, do you usually see it filled with good food?  Or, do you usually only really see the vegetable which you do not like?”  (For me, that is steamed cauliflower.)  Take a moment and think about your typical response.  Regrettably, I had to admit that one of my shortcomings and sins is that I tend to see the one bad item.  I have to battle that propensity.  I may receive ten expressions of appreciation and one complaint, and I can easily forget the ten affirmations and fret over the complaint.

At Christmas we read the story of the execution of the baby boys, and the flight to Egypt, and exclaim, and properly exclaim, “That is terrible!”  Afghanistan.  Iraq.  Sudan.  The economy.  Cancer.  Auto accidents.  Death by alcohol.  Life is like that!  Evil!  Violent!  Threatening!  Depressing!  Suffering everywhere!  It is true.  Those of us who see the vegetable that we don’t like are right!  Evil and suffering are real.  But that is not the whole truth!

Some Christians need corrective lens.  My driver’s license has stamped on it: “Corrective lenses.”  (Seeing the number of you who wear glasses, I suspect that you have the same written on your license.) We can see the pain, but we cannot see the whole picture.  God provides us with lens to see the whole picture.  Under stress, we tend to focus upon, to think about, to fret over, the negative.  The great symbol of the negative is the cross.  They killed the finest man who ever lived!  His closest friends ran away.  His friend, Peter, swore that he never knew him.  He was tortured, beaten, forced to carry his own means of execution until he collapsed.  Hung to die slowly, slowly.  And, his own mother watched!  Horrible!  The classic example of humanity’s inhumanity. 

In my Orchard Park church, a private school group asked if they could rent classrooms until they built their new building.  One of their board members stated, “You will have to remove all of the crucifixes.  We don’t want the children being affected by that cruel image.”  Whoa!  I bristled, but calmly responded, “We don’t have crucifixes!”  We did not agree to rent them space.  I could have gone on.  We have crosses, of course.  But, they are empty crosses.  Empty crosses acknowledge the suffering of Jesus for humanity, and they represent that God raised Jesus.  Jesus did not stay on the cross.  The symbol of suffering and pain was not the final word.  God raised Jesus.  That is the final word, a word of forgiveness, hope and joy.  The resurrection is the most positive act in the world! 

The message is this: through the minuses and the pluses, through the sorrows and joys, through the threats and the laughter, God is involved.  Even when we look about and can’t identify God’s impact upon ourselves, God is working.  God is involved.

Most important!  Most important, God was involved in the person of Jesus!  God incarnated the divine self.  God personified God’s self in Jesus.  What an amazing expression of how greatly God treasures us!  God became one of us. 
He interacted with people.  Some loved him, such as the disciples.  He went to weddings.  He had dinner with sinners.  Some were threatened by him, such as many Pharisees.  One sold him out.  Eventually they got him, hung him to die.  But God raised him!

Even Jesus knew the pluses and minuses.   Yet through his life, God was working to bring more goodness and more joy, to convert the evil, to redeem the sinner, to encourage the vulnerable.

God came in Jesus as a dramatic demonstration that God is involved in the world, and wants to be involved in each and every one of our lives.

One of our tasks is to identify where God is at work.  The news media saturates our minds with evil and suffering.  We don’t have to look for them.  They blow their own horn – loudly!  On the other hand, have you noticed this?  It is the nature of goodness and joy to be quiet and peaceful and therefore often go unnoticed.  Ask, “Where is God working today?”  Pray, “God give me lenses to see your influence.”

Fill in these blanks:  God is working in those people whom I know who are….  And, God is working in those people who do….  If you pause to think, you will think discover examples of God’s good work.  (pause)

Look for the kind of thing God would be doing, and join in!

As you focus your thinking and energy in doing the good, the building up, the helping out, the godly, guess what!  Your self-pity drifts out of consciousness.  You are empowered to cope with suffering.

Thomas A. Dorsey discovered God’s involvement in his life even in the worst of times.

In August 1932, Dorsey was scheduled to be the feature soloist at religious services in St. Louis.  Because his wife Nettie was pregnant, Dorsey had reservations about leaving her behind.  “Something was strongly telling me to stay,” he recalls.  Yet, commitments had been made and he knew people in St. Louis would be disappointed if he canceled.  So Dorsey left for the revival service.  During the performance that next night in the steaming St. Louis heat, a messenger from Western Union approached Dorsey on the stage with a telegram.  Puzzled, Dorsey opened the envelope and read the four devastating words: “Your wife just died.”  He rushed to a phone and called home, only to hear it confirmed: “Nettie is dead.”

Dorsey quickly returned to Chicago.  There he learned that just before his wife died she had given birth to a boy.  Later that night, the baby died.  Dorsey now had to deal with two losses, two funerals.  “I buried Nettie and our boy in the same casket,” he says.  “Then I fell apart.”

During this painful time, one of Dorsey’s friends made arrangements for him to use a local music school’s piano. There, alone with his thoughts and a piano, Dorsey describes what occurred: “I sat down at the piano and my hands began to browse over the keys.  Then something happened.  I felt as though I could reach out and touch God.  I found myself playing a melody, one I’d never heard or played before, and words came into my head – they just seemed to fall into place.”

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn,
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light,
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

Dorsey recovered from his losses.  He would go on to write and compose more than 400 Gospel songs, including, “We Will Meet Him in the Sweet By and By,” “Stand by Me,” and “There’ll Be Peace.”  (Dynamic Preaching, “Way Down in Egypt’s Land,” Dec. 1992, No. 12, p. 25, quoted form Catholic Digest, Feb. 92, p. 65-66.)  God was involved and redeemed a tragedy.  Ask: What is God doing within me?

In a world that often seems like a plate of negatives, God is at work.  Look for God’s activity.  Look to Jesus.  Look around.  Look inward.  Invest yourself where God is involved.  And, take hope in the persevering, loving, transforming power of God!

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