Sermons

INTRODUCTION: Many years ago, I was in Pomona, California, part of Orange County, on a free-lance writing assignment. It was Sunday morning, and I didn’t have an appointment until that afternoon. So I decided to visit a church I had heard of, but never seen. It was a drive-in church, and Robert F. Schuller was the minister.

I learned that in 1955, his denomination – the Reformed Church of America, the denomination of Norman Vincent Peale – sent him to Orange County, California to found a new church. After trying unsuccessfully to rent numerous facilities, he finally rented the Orange County Drive-In Theater. It was a great success. People simply drove in to a parking space, picked up the speaker on the post, sat in their cars, and listened to the services and to the minister as he preached from where the movie screen used to be.

By the year I arrived, they had added a large sanctuary facility, but still kept their drive-in spaces. Giant glass windows rolled open, and he appeared at a pulpit that allowed him to speak both to the congregation and to those in their car.

During the service I worshipped in, he mentioned that his first book had just been published, and he was going to be autographing copies after the services. The title of his new book was Moving Ahead with Possibility Thinking.

I had a friend back in Tulsa, Lee Braxton, whom I thought it would fit to a “T.” Lee was such a believer in that kind of thinking that he had taken a razor blade and cut out the word “impossible” from both his desk dictionary and from that of his secretary’s. So after the service, I got in line, bought a book and had Dr. Schuller autograph it for my friend, Lee Braxton. I never thought about reading it, but I did want to give it to Lee.

He liked it so much that he bought 400 copies for a few close friends, flew out to Pomona to meet with Dr. Schuller, and eventually went on the board of his “Hour of Power” ministries. During this time, at the behest of Billy Graham, Schuller put his church services on television. And the rest is history.

One day Lee came to my office and asked, “Wayne, have you read Dr. Schuller’s book yet?” I said that I hadn’t, and in fact I had given him my only copy. Lee responded by saying, “Every time I tell someone about how I was first introduced to Dr. Schuller’s book and ultimately his ministry, I think of the fact that the man who gave his book to me hasn’t even read it.” He gave me a copy to replace the one I had given him, with a not-so-subtle nudge to read it. So to please Lee, I read the book, and here are its basic points, as I remember them, which seemed to be appropriate to the title of today’s sermon: Re-imagining Our Possibilities.

How many of you remember the biblical story of David and Goliath? As the story is told in Jewish scripture, a giant of a man from the armies of the Philistines was challenging the nation of Israel to send forth a champion from their army to battle him one-on-one. Every day, he came out and made his challenge. For 40 days, no Israelite ventured forth to take the challenge.

While this national humiliation was going on, a young man named David came to bring food to his three brothers who were in the army. When he learned of the challenge that was taking place, he said he would take Goliath on. Since there was no competition for this honor, he was selected. But instead of armor and a sword fight, David went down to the creek and found five smooth stones, pulled out his slingshot, marched on to the battlefield and promptly took Goliath out with one shot.

Schuler says that demonstrates the difference between someone practicing “impossibility thinking” and someone practicing “possibility thinking.” Same battlefield and same giant, but different kind of thinking.

The impossibility thinkers in the army of Israel looked at the giant and said, “He’s so big. We could never take him out!” However, David, the possibility thinker, as he went to get stones for his slingshot, thought to himself, “He’s so big. There’s no way I can miss him!”

So what if you are facing serious and significant problems in your life. What are you going to do? Dr. Schuller suggests “possibility thinking”: emphasizing how you can turn the enormity of the challenges you face to your favor. That’s making the very thing that is the most daunting a strength.

There’s also another dimension. Years ago, I used to love attending the horse races in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Standing down next to the track as those 1,000 pound or more animals raced by, with mud and dirt slinging, horses grunting and heaving, fans screaming – to me it was fascinating.

During that time, I had a friend who published a magazine on quarter horse racing. It was hugely successful. And then the “oil boom” became the “oil bust.” There were so many horse owners and horse racers who went broke. As a result, my friend’s magazine folded due to loss of advertising and subscriptions.

It was so bad that summons were served on him to appear in court because of bills he couldn’t pay. He was totally broke, and so every time he would see one of the process servers coming, he would hide.

One day as he was hiding, he suddenly asked himself, “Why am I doing this? They are not going to kill me. They’re not going to rob me. Nor are they going to put me in jail. They’re just going to serve a summons.”

So he decided he would meet each server with a smile, and offer them a cup of coffee. And as far as all the people who were ordering the summons, whom he owed buckets of money, he decided to write each of them a letter. It included this explanation:

“I have avoided coming in to talk to you because I knew I had a problem that I didn’t know how to solve. Then I realized this isn’t just my problem, it’s yours as well. It’s a we problem. So when would you like to come out to my place to talk about our problem.”

That’s another example of possibility thinking: Not only turning the enormity of the problem into a plus as David did with Goliath, but also recognizing that our problems are not ours alone.

I know many of you have read the book by the late Scott Peck, entitled, The Road Less Traveled, which is a quote from a poem of Robert Frost’s. In one of his later books, Dr. Peck addresses the issue of humility. He said, so many of us think of humility as self-deprecation, running ourselves down, emphasizing what we can’t do.

Instead of running ourselves down, he says brag about the ability of others and praise them. Talk about the ability of others to do wonderful things. Having recognized the talents of others, then it’s okay to speak modestly of our own capabilities. That’s true humility, he says.

Humility is affirming the virtues of others, while also recognizing that we ourselves did not just stumble off the farm.

Self-love and self-affirmation are the root of healthy self-esteem. In fact, Jesus said the measuring rod for loving others is how much we love ourselves. Again as I mentioned in my sermon a few weeks ago, on a plane they tell us in case of emergency put the mask over our own face before we try to help anyone else, including our children. Love for others begins with love for ourselves.

But he redefines what sin is. He states sin is, “any human condition or act that robs someone of their divine dignity.” Iranaeus the early church father said, “The glory of God is human being fully alive.”

So anytime we fail to realize our capacities and potential…anytime we slip below the qualities and performances of which we are possible…then according to Dr. Schuller, that’s sin. His antidote? Positive confession.

Many of us grew up with another kind of confession –“Forgive me father for I have sinned.” But positive confession is a highly motivated redirection of one’s life. “Repent” means to turn. Positive confession means we turn our lives towards that which is positive and rewarding to ourselves and to others.

1. Commitment first, how second: I haven’t told one of my favorite stories in a while. It concerns the children of Ireland coming home from school. As they take shortcuts through the pastures, typically they would come to a foreboding stone fence that was so tall, there was no way they could ever get over it. What were they to do? The impossibility thinkers among them said, how can we ever get over this fence? That was never the question for the possibility thinkers. First, they threw their caps and hats over the wall that was so tall. They had made the commitment: They had to get over the wall.

Then they discovered that by working together, they could realize their commitment. They stood on each other’s shoulder, they grasped each other’s hands, and soon: Guess what? They were over!

The question of “how” can we do something is always after we’ve committed to doing it. Then we work together to get it done.

2. It’s also a question of how we think of ourselves. Who are we and what do we believe. For me, we have three simple theological understandings:

Creeds, rituals, prayers, sacred scriptures, and music – they are the poetry of faiths all over the world.

Those three understandings inform who we are, our services and our practices. Is it unique? Compare it to others. Is it worth the difference? Is it worth sustaining? For seven years, we’ve said, “Yes.” We never know how many it will help.

Back in the early 90’s, I was minister of the Channing Unitarian Universalist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, a suburban community of 80,000 next door to Oklahoma City. During February, we always held Black Appreciation Month. That was special in Edmond because it had in the very recent past been a town which had a law precluding African Americans staying in town after dark. It was also the original White Flight bedroom community when Oklahoma City schools had to desegregate and start bussing. Edmond had no Blacks at that time.

So one of those Sundays in February, we were focusing on Frederick Douglass, one of the great African Americans who fought most of his life against slavery and then after the Civil War against racism. For our service, we had engaged an actor from the University of Texas who was appearing at the University of Oklahoma for a special one-man Saturday night show impersonating Mr. Douglass. We were able to persuade him to stay over for Sunday morning and perform at our service.

In addition, some one discovered that Frederick Douglass IV – the great grandson of Douglass – was in the military and stationed at Ft. Sill, an army base in Lawton, Oklahoma. He also agreed to attend.

During the presentation of the actor, Mr. Douglass the fourth sat on the front row. It was such a powerful presentation by the actor that tears came down Mr. Douglass’s face, because he was hearing for the first time some of the words and thoughts and feelings of his great-granddaddy. Afterwards, when he spoke, he confessed that he hadn’t known that much about his grandfather until he heard it in that service.

We had a meal following, everyone was paid, and goodbyes were said. I never heard of the actor again. Nor had I ever heard of Mr. Douglass IV again – until this past Friday. In the News-Press, they reported on an impersonation and presentation of Frederick Douglass made to the Florida legislature with children from several schools present in the balcony. Guess whom it was by? Frederick Douglass IV, along with his wife, B.J. He had gone from not knowing much about his great grandfather, to becoming a powerful presenter of his message and its application for today. All because of a UU church in Edmond, Oklahoma.

The point of that is this: We don’t know what impact we will have on others in the future. Maybe large, maybe small. But every move we make, every tear we wipe away with love, every voice we raise, every letter we write, every dollar we give, has an impact on someone, somewhere. That’s the final premise of “Re-imagining our possibilities.”

We will pause now for 7½ minutes of brief questions as a part of our Conversation Café. The Service and Support Council will provide microphones for you to speak into.

[1] A sermon presented on February 24, 2008, followed by the Conversation Café of All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, between the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.