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Dr. David. D. Young
June 11, 2006
Psalm 38: 5-10
Psalm 139
“Tired or Wired”
At first glance, it may appear that today’s
sermon title indicates that I’ll be preaching about coffee. It is true that for
many of us – the response to tiredness is the old caffeine fix! For those who do
drink coffee – there are probably times when one has to stay up late or stay
awake while driving on a long road trip – that to get a little extra perk – a
cup or two of Java seems to help.
Last night - or actually early this morning around 2:30 - I awoke wired and
never really got back to sleep. I was excited thinking about the beach service
this morning, the baptisms and I just had so much going on in my mind that I
couldn’t get back to sleep. If you have ever had one of those nights you know
how frustrating that can be. It might have been that I was wired in another way
because we had been out to dinner and I did what I don’t normally do – I had two
cups of coffee after dinner. So the combination had me wired.
Ever since I cooked up the title “Tired or Wired” – I’ve noticed that people
often seem to be either tired and worn out or wired and really keyed up because
of all the things that have to get done. Perhaps some of you who spend a lot of
time in the kitchen would occasionally like to hang out the sign which says,
“This kitchen is closed because of illness.
I’m sick and tired of cooking.”
A friend of mine was at a car dealer a few
years ago and he was told to ask for Mr. Tappy – whereupon seeing the first
salesman he asked, “Are you Mr. Tappy?” The man’s reply was, “No, I’m what’s
left of Mr. James.”
Have you ever felt like that? “I’m what’s left of David Young.” I don’t know
about you this morning – but for me by the time summer rolls around –I’m usually
a bit tired. And this year has been no exception – it has been a full one.
Sometimes I can relate to the Psalmist when he wrote in the first reading that
Enid Norris read for us,
“I am utterly spent and my strength fails
me.”
To know tiredness, fatigue and exhaustion at
times in our lives is to recognize our humanness. I am aware that many of you
may not be the least bit tired this morning. On the other hand, having to be
here at 10:00 – dressed and ready on a weekend morning may suggest that many of
you are.
Risking that this sermon may only apply to myself, I want to share something of
what I believe our faith says about being tired and wired – quite different from
the effects of coffee. As I’ve suggested, tiredness is part of the human
condition. Surely Jesus must have been weary from time to time, stressed and
pressed by the numerous demands placed on him.
Now, there are different kinds of tiredness. One is the kind where at the end of
a day you are bone-tired and you wonder, “What was the meaning of what I did
today that got me so tired in the first place?” Another is feeling a good tired
at the end of a day when you know you’ve done what God had wanted you to do. Or
as a businessman once said,
“I’m not turned off. I’m run down.”
Being turned off is another manifestation of
being weary and the modern expression for that symptom is burnout.
Bruce Baldwin, of Direction Dynamics in Wilmington, North Carolina offers the
following checklist of symptoms to help busy men and women determine whether
they are already in the clutches of Personal Burnout:
- You ask, “Why am I doing this?”
- You have a bad case of the “its.” When
little things get under your skin and you don’t want to deal with “it”
anymore.
- You have a dragging, tired feeling.
- You have a strong need to be left alone.
- You use tremendous energy just to get
through the day.
- You watch television indiscriminately.
- You don’t enjoy leisure time; it’s
practically impossible for you to relax – “even on weekends!”
- You’re not as emotionally close to others
as you used to be.
- You experience physical symptoms of
stress, such as insomnia, recurring headaches, upset stomach.
- You feel out of control of your life.
Television commercials have been telling us for
years that perhaps the problem is “tired blood “ – as a result of lack of iron
or vitamins. But it was the Federal Trade Commission that declared officially
that “The number of people in the total population who are tired because of iron
or vitamin deficiency is infinitesimally small. “
You see, it is tired hearts, tired minds, and tired spirits that are the real
culprits. Burnout and fatigue are primarily mental, emotional, spiritual and
rarely physical. I don’t know about you but sometimes dreading a job can be more
tiresome for me – than actually doing it. Well, regardless of what produces our
exhaustion, the fact of the matter is that it is part of our reality.
My Aunt Marianna was a wonderful person and you could always tell how she was
doing whenever she walked into a room. She would walk into a room just like this
(David walks across room huffing & puffing). If she’s tired, she walks like this
and by golly – you know she’s bushed. But if she’s wired, she lets you know it
by her peppy, lively step.
And that brings us to the other side of the sermon title and that is being
wired. In addition to sleeping, one of the most common responses when the tired
feeling creeps in – is to want to get wired. And that surprisingly is what our
faith tells us!
Except that, the kind of wired I’m talking about has little to do with the
cultural expression of being wired as in hyper and real keyed up. No, it has to
do with a more basic and profound understanding of what it means to be wired.
Any electrician can tell you that unless all the wires are connected properly,
you’ve got problems.
The 139th Psalm is a beautiful expression of our connection with God and it
comes in the form of a personal prayer. Lutheran pastor, Leslie Brandt, has
paraphrased the Psalm into modern day prayer-like form – here is his rendering
of Psalm 139:
“O God, you know me inside and out, through
and through. Everything I do, every thought that flits through my mind,
every step I take, every plan I make, every word I speak, you know, even
before these things happen.
You know my past; you know my future. Your circumventing presence covers my
every move. Your knowledge of me sometimes comforts me, sometimes frightens
me; but always it is far beyond my comprehension.
There is no way to escape you, no place to hide. If I ascend to the heights
of joy, you are there before me. If I am plunged into the depths of despair,
you are there to meet me. I could fly to the other side of our world and
find you there to lead the way. I could walk into the darkest of nights,
only to find you there to lighten its dismal hours.
You were present at my very conception. You guided the molding of my
unformed members within the body of my mother. Nothing about me, from
beginning to end, was hid from your eyes. How frightfully, fantastically
wonderful it all is!
May your all-knowing, everywhere-present Spirit continue to search out my
feelings and thoughts. Deliver me from that which may hurt or destroy me,
and guide me along the paths of love and truth.”
Surely there have been certain connections in
all of our lives, twists and turns which go along under the category of change,
but upon reflection in retrospect, prove to be the very hand of God. Certainly,
God’s readiness to connect with us is always present.
You may have heard in the news in the last 24 hours about the three suicides
down in Guantanamo Bay. An incident occurred in New York City some years ago in
which Mike Buchanan, a 17-year-old youth, stood at the edge of the roof of a
high building in the Bowery Section, ready to jump off since life had no meaning
for him. He had not experienced love in his short life. His mother had abandoned
him and his father was an alcoholic. He was just plain tired of living. The
crowd below encouraged Mike’s self-destructive behavior by chanting, “Jump!
Jump!”
Now there was a man in the crowd, William Fox, who did the decent thing. He
dialogued with the young man at the edge of the roof for one-and-a-half hours,
and was able to convince him not to jump. The man was able to persuade Mike that
his life was valuable and worth saving. But the clincher was that William Fox
invited Mike to his own home. He had no son of his own and assured Mike that he
would be accepted as his very own son . Mike responded to the invitation and
came down from the roof. It was reported later in The New York Daily News that
William Fox had obtained legal custody of Mike Buchanan.
That moving story is a parable of how much God wants to be wired or connected to
us. Our search then, to be connected with God meets God’s knowledge of and
search for us. As the Psalmist tells us, “God you have searched me out and known
me.”
St. Augustine once put it,
“Without God, we cannot. Without us, God
will not.”
Being hooked up or wired with God is not
something we fully understand – like Baptism, it is a mystery. Again, the
Psalmist knew it so long ago when saying in verse 6,
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it
is high, I cannot attain it.”
The presence and yearning of God to be with us
is beyond our comprehension, but we are called to simply accept it – this being
wired to God.
In his book, Compassion, the Dutch born theologian Henri Nouwen, has
said,
“God is with us, he feels with us deeply
and tenderly. He allows our human pain to reverberate in his innermost self.
He even goes so far as to give up the privileged position of his divine
power and to appear in our midst as a humble servant who offers to wash our
wounded and tired feet.”
You see, the mystery of God’s connecting power
and presence is most clearly revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus showed us what a
truly connected life with God is like. He was, if you will, fully wired.
At all times, but especially when we are
tired and drained and wonder whether or not we have the energy to persevere
– we need to remind ourselves that the main thing is being wired to God
through Jesus Christ. For me, and perhaps you too – summer is a time when we
can move from being tired to wired. And whenever we are tired our faith
affirms that we can always turn to the source of our life’s energy.
In closing, I share with you one of the most connecting passages of
scripture I know. It comes from John’s gospel, the 15th chapter. And perhaps
in light of our theme today, “Tired or Wired” – we could sub-title this text
the Christ Connection.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the
vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that
bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed
by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as
the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can
you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide
in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
May it be so for each of us! Amen! |
