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God's
Letter and Ours
A Sermon Preached by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
May 27, 2001
Text: 2 Cor. 2-4
Amy was a recent graduate from nursing school. Raised in a rural setting she
was doing what she always dreamed of being - a nurse. Excited and anxious to
share she wrote home often about her experiences. One of her first patients
was a woman named Eileen who was totally helpless. Amy wrote home and described
her like this: "A cerebral aneurysm had left her with no conscious control
over her body." As far as anyone could tell she was completely unconscious,
unable to feel pain and unaware of anything going on around her. An older nurse
told Amy, "you have to detach yourself emotionally from the whole situation."
But Amy found herself unable to detach herself from Eileen and decided she
would treat her as if Eileen could respond. She talked to her, sang to her,
and even took her little gifts. One day when things were especially difficult
she decided to use the situation to be extra kind to Eileen. It was Thanksgiving
Day and she said to Eileen, "I was in a cruddy mood this morning, Eileen,
because it was supposed to be my day off. But now that I'm here, I'm glad. I
wouldn't have wanted to miss seeing you on Thanksgiving. Do you know this is
Thanksgiving?"
Just then the telephone rang, and as the nurse turned to answer it, she looked
back at the patient. As she wrote home about it afterwards, "Suddenly Eileen
was looking back at me . . . crying. Big damp circles stained her pillow and
she was shaking all over." Eileen died shortly thereafter, but the experience
changed the whole attitude of the staff towards her. The nurse closed her letter
saying, "I keep thinking about her . . . It occurred to me that I owe her
an awful lot. Eileen was God's gift to me. Without her, I might never have known
what its like to give myself to someone who can't give back."
Have you ever had another person be God's letter to you? Have you ever been
a living letter that God was writing to someone else?
Paul writing to the Corinthian believers uses this exact expression as he describes
his friends there: (Pew Bible page 1797) "You yourselves are our letter,
written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a
letter from Christ . . . written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living
God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." Peterson
translates these verses:
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ
himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled
into stone, but carved into human lives. . . . (2 Cor. 3:2-4)
It is a new thought - thinking of ourselves as walking letters from God to
others. It is also penetrating to think of how many times we have received messages
from God through other people. They were, to use Paul's analogy, like letters
the Holy Spirit has used to communicate with us.
God's Letter to
Us in Jesus Christ
Our Lord Jesus was God's perfect letter written in fleshly tablets of the heart.
- The prophets gave us a letter of announcement. God was going to enter history
in his Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
- Bethlehem is God's letter of inclusion. It invites everyone to become part
of the story, even Innkeepers and Shepherds.
- The Gospels come to us as living letters from Christ. In them we see the
caring, teaching and healing life of Jesus written in a human life.
- The cross is a letter of pardon. Forgiveness is notarized through his blood
as a sacrifice in our behalf. It is as if our Lord hands his letter of pardon
to us personally from his cross.
- The resurrection is a letter of life announcing that death is dead.
Jesus, I say to you, is God's human, living letter to all of us who will open
our eyes and read the story.
We Are To Be Living
Letters for Christ
But our Lord not only is a living letter for us, he calls us to become living
letters for others within the gentle guidance of his Holy Spirit.
Come to think of it, Fellowship is a sharing of Christian experience, of the
ups and the downs, of the tears and the joys. In the process we become living
letters from Christ to each other.
What does this letter-writing the Holy Spirit does through us look like?
I. It doesn't look
like an ought. It looks like a light shining in the darkness.
Don't make being a living letter into an ought, a duty, an obligation. Isaiah
tried this and it didn't work. In Isaiah 49, the prophet is weary with trying
to do well, serve well, live well. He is disappointed because he seems to have
done so little with his gifts. He knows he has been called. He understands that
he has been gifted. Describes his gifts as like a sharpened sword or like a
polished arrow. But he looks back upon his life and is distressed at how little
success he has realized. But I said, "I have labored for no purpose; I
have spent my strength in vain and for nothing." (Is. 49:4)
To put this in my words, "Lord, you gave me the gifts to do something
great with my life. I had everything going for me to write a great living letter
in your name. But I look back and I have hardly even scribbled on the margin
of the page."
Isaiah has burned the candle at both ends. He has, day after day, given out
more than he has taken in. His oughts have been driving him. He wants to make
a difference. Now after years of serving, he sees his efforts not a harvest
of fruitfulness, but a bumper crop of fatigue. He thinks his effort has been
all in vain. He expects God to fire him or at least retire him so that the Almighty
can find someone more able to be an effective living letter of faith and hope.
God says, "I can't retire you or fire you. I've got too much invested
in you. Besides my ideas of success and failure are never like yours. So I tell
you what I am going to do. I am going to make you a light to the nations, to
the whole world." (Is. 49:6)
That is divine humor for you. Isaiah thinks he has failed at a large task and
so God gives him an even larger one. Isaiah feels he has failed to light a candle
where he was and so God gives the challenge to light the whole world.
Maybe we need to see ourselves not so much as doers, as "sparklers."
God says, "Stop doing a job, and start being a light. Stop worrying about
whether you have succeeded. Let your light shine. Sparkle on others and I will
take care of the rest."
What a way to change the focus of what we are about. We are asked not to be
perfect, not to be successful, not to compare ourselves with others who seem
to be more successful than we are,
- we are asked to be light to someone else,
- to light candles rather than curse the darkness,
- to sparkle on someone who needs encouragement.
Become a light carrier, a person who sparkles on others. In so doing you become
a letter of the Holy Spirit to brighten the lives of others.
II. Write a letter
with your life by using the spiritual pen and ink of love.
Nobody wrote more about love than Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus. Yet, in the
beginning no one needed to learn more about love than he did. We read in Acts
7 that the life-letter he was writing was condemnation, not love. He was the
overseer when Stephen was stoned. He was on such a mission to Damascus when
he encountered Christ on the Damascus road.
Yet, this one whose life was stained with hate and rejection, was transformed.
Who would have ever thought that Saul of Tarsus, originally more like the Gestapo
than like the Christ, could write a letter of Love to the Corinthians (1 Cor.
13, the great love chapter) and write a letter of love with his life. He summarized
what his faith was about when he wrote to his Galatian friends, "The only
thing that counts is faith working through love." (Gal. 5:6)
In recent years few have written a letter of love through their lives better
than Dominique Voillaume. He was French by birth, but spiritually born when
he became a follower of Christ. His life was transformed as few others ever
have been into a living document of life-giving love. He did it not so much
through what he said, as who he was. Those who knew him said he was the most
nonjudgmental person, the most loving presence, they ever met. His eyes carried
the warmth of love with the penetrating gaze of eternity.
At age 54 this muscular, lean, six foot two inch man, was diagnosed with inoperable
cancer. He had always wanted to spend a part of his life in the slums of Paris,
seeing if he could make a difference. With his life running out he decided it
was time. He moved into a small apartment and took a night job as watchman at
a factory. Returning every morning at 8:00 A.M. he would go directly to a little
park across the street from where he lived and sit down on a wooden bench. Hanging
around the park were marginal people: drifters, street people, winos, and castoffs
from society.
Dominique never preached at them, scolded or judged them. He laughed, told
stories, shared his candy, and listened to them. His inner commitment to Christ
gave off a peace, a warm hospitality of heart, that drew cynical young men and
defeated old men to him. As one who knew him said, "he loved with the heart
of Jesus Christ."
One day the ragtag group of rejects asked him why he was there and to tell
them about his life. He gave them a thumbnail sketch of his life and then told
them with quiet conviction that God loved them stubbornly but tenderly and that
Jesus had come for rejects and outcasts just like they thought they were. When
he finished, there was quiet admiration. His witness was heard and credible
because he had made a home for them in his heart. One old timer said that the
dirty jokes, vulgar language, and leering at girls just stopped. It didn't seem
appropriate any more.
One morning the park bench was empty. The men grew concerned. A few hours later
he was found dead on the floor of his cold-water flat. The furniture in the
small apartment contained only the bare essentials. But his spiritual journal
was on the small desk in the middle of the room.
The last entry was remarkable:
"All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully
say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness.
If he wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices.
But the usefulness of my life is his concern, not mine. It would be indecent
of me to worry about that."
Dominique Voillaume died in the obscurity of a Paris slum. Yet, when the word
got around that he had died it was decided to wait a few days to give time for
his many friends to attend the service of memory and celebration. Seven thousand
people came from all over Europe for his funeral.
Those who knew and loved him most had an all night prayer vigil before they
buried him. A simple cross gave his name and epitaph: Dominique Voillaume, A
Witness to Jesus Christ. It could have easily have read, A Living Letter of
Love from the Christ who Loved Him.
We are welcomed by our Heavenly Father to open two letters this morning. The
first is the letter God wrote to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Will we answer
it, or throw it away until a more convenient season?
The second is the invitation to see ourselves as living letters, able to give
light and able to share love. The world so desperately needs both.
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