Sermon Texts: April 27, 2008

"Signs of Hope: Soap, Sunscreen & Taxicabs"
- Rev. Ken Streitenberger
Assistant Pastor

the Scripture Lesson:
Romans 12: 9-21

11:00 Service

_____________________________

               I am so excited!  I got it in the mail some time ago and I saved it specifically for this morning.  I now have written confirmation, verifiable proof, that I am not the only stupid person in the world.  Here it is.  You can’t see exactly what it is from where you are sitting, so let me tell you what it is.  It is a business reply card.  It is one of those kinds we all get every week inviting us to some financial information session that is really a very thinly disguised selling opportunity for them.  Only the thing that makes this business reply card so special is that it represents that verifiable proof that I am not the only stupid person in the world.  You see, this single business reply card, addressed to

                   Clergy Benefits Group

                   Post Office Box 82191

                   Columbus, Ohio 43202

Has on the other side of the card

                   Clergy Benefits Group

                   Post Office Box 82191

                   Columbus, Ohio 43202.

           Both sides are the mailing address.  There is no place on the card where, even if I wanted, I could put my name and address or request more information or tell them I’d like to attend their seminar.

          I love it.  Written confirmation, verifiable proof that I am not the only stupid person in the world.  –Of course, you know what I want to do.  After this sermon is over and I have used the card as my opening illustration, I want to mail it to them –and cost them their first class business reply postage –twice, once for each side!!!

          Every preacher has an “Idea File.”  A place where they put things they might one day want to preach on.  Illustrations.  Quotes.  Short stories.  Quips.  Anything that we think might some day be useful in writing a sermon.  Mine is just a box where I toss quotes and stories and illustrations –usually with a note that will help me know what it is about and how I think I might use it some day.  It is my “Idea File” where I came across that business reply card and thought, “Yeah, this is the day to use it.”

          While going through that file I came across several items.  Some of them recent.  Some of them older.  But I noticed a pattern of several of the items I had thrown into the box.  First of all, they all came from the secular world.  And while we wish it was always the religious world that guides the secular world, it is often just the opposite.  It is more often than we would like to admit the secular world that influences the religious world.  So when I see something in the secular media that espouses the attitudes and mores and message of the religious world, it grabs my attention.

          And that is what happened with the three items I want to share with you this morning.  I saw a pattern that said the world is changing.  A pattern that suggested that the secular world is aligning closer to the religious world.  And because of that alignment, I saw hope.  Thus, the sermon title of the day:  “Signs of Hope:  Soap, Sunscreen, and Taxi Cabs.”

I.

          The first sign of hope I saw came from a television commercial.  As I read the notes I had written about the commercial, I remembered it quite vividly in my mind.  It’s been several years since I saw it, but I remember my impression of it very clearly.

          The commercial opens with a young mother preparing dinner.  Her two children –probably eight and ten— are playing in the next room.  Playing is probably not the right word to describe what the children are doing because the children are having an argument.  There is not a lot of dialogue in the commercial because evidently the language the children are using in their argument is not something broadcasters are permitted to put on the air.  If you can read lips, you decipher that the children  --one boy and one girl— are calling each other every name in the book.  They are calling each other every profanity, every epithet you can imagine.  They use every obscene adjective in the English language.

          The noise from the argument gets the mother’s attention.  She hears what this brother and sister are calling each other.  In both shock and exasperation, she looks up and into the camera.  At that point, the action is frozen, and across the now still and quiet screen come the  printed words and a voice that asks, “Got enough soap?”

          That commercial blew me away.  The commercial and the hope it engenders is very subtle.  But as soon as I saw it, I said, “Wow!”  That is a powerful message.  That secular soap commercial just said that there are limits;  that there is right and wrong;  that it matters what we say and do.  And if we say and do wrong, there are consequences.  (Like getting your mouth washed out with soap!)

          Friends, how long has it been since we witnessed the secular media giving morality lessons?  Somewhere out there a switch has clicked in someone’s mind –in several peoples’ minds:  the creative mind that imagined the commercial;  the ad agency mind that was willing to propose it to the sponsor;  the corporate mind that bought into the idea that people know and that people want to know that there is right and wrong;  that there are limits;  that it matters what we say and do.  It is a small switch that has clicked, but I think it is a major sign of hope for our society.

II.

          I found a second item in my “Idea File” that resounded with hope.  This sign was something I had heard on the radio.  Evidently, I had gone on line after I first heard it and got a copy of the words.  It was the copy of the words that jogged my memory and gave me encouragement.

          Now it’s called a song, but there are those who would dispute that it is a song, because it is mostly a reading with musical background.  It’s history is that it was originally a newspaper article in The Chicago Tribune.  It was a “faux” commencement address that Mary Schmich had written.  Over a period of time it went from The Tribune website, to one of those emails that gets passed around, to eventually a song by Baz Luhrmann.  Which is what I heard.  Some of you, I am sure, will remember it.  But I want all of you to hear at least a part of it.  It is called “The Sunscreen Song.”

           As I said, it is not a religious song.  But I see in that song a great sign of hope.  That song was played on top-40 pop radio –secular radio.  At one point it even reached its peak as THE most requested song to be played on secular radio.  A song giving advice.  A song that gave instructions about how to live better and get along with your neighbors;  a song that suggested ways to fulfill the life we are given;  a song that encouraged respect of parents and elders and siblings.

          At times I thought I heard the Ten Commandments in the song.  At other times I thought I was eavesdropping on Jesus’ conversations as he gave instructions to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount.

          Did you listen to the scripture lesson for today where Paul is writing to the citizens of Rome?  It almost sounded like the lyrics to that song:  “Let love be genuine;  show honor;  persevere…;  live in harmony with one another;  do not claim to be wiser than you are.”

          I see a sign of hope –people today, even young people, want direction.  They want someone to help them be all that God created them to be.  They want mentors.  They want advice.

          I think it is a tremendous sign of God’s hope that people today want to learn from the wisdom of those who have gone before them –even if it is only through the words of a secular song.

III.

          I found a third item in my box of sermon ideas that gave me hope.  This one again returns to the world of television commercials.  And like the first, this one, too, is extremely subtle and requires very little dialogue.  It does require, however, that you watch carefully and pay attention to the visual cues.  The commercial takes place in what appears to be New York City –in the heart of the business district.  It is pouring down rain.   A woman is futilely trying to hail a taxi.  Traffic is streaming by.  The woman is getting wetter and wetter.  The voice over is talking about the world today

–its hardness, it coldness, its callousness, its anonymity;  how nobody sacrifices self anymore;  how it’s dog eat dog;  how no one cares about another or gives self for another.

          In the distance, coming down the street, you see a taxi cab begin to make its way across the lanes of traffic to where the woman is frantically and fruitlessly waving.  The taxi pulls to a stop in front of the woman.  The woman quickly opens the door, grateful that there was one last empty cab available.  –And then you see it.  As the woman gets into the cab on the curbside, a man on the street side gets out.  Completely unbeknownst to her, this man who has just exited the cab, now walks to the rear of the taxi and attempts himself to hail a new taxi cab.

          If you don’t watch it carefully, you never get the point.  Nothing is ever said about it. The commercial goes silent and simply the name of the investment firm comes onto the screen.

          But it is a sign of hope!  In an era when a lot of people think only about self;  following several decades when it was “me first” and “greed is good,” to see an obviously well-to-do businessman give up his warm, dry taxi for an unknown other and to do it with no fanfare and no chance of reciprocity is to me one of the most encouraging things I have witnessed in a long time.  Even though it is make-believe, it still represents that switch again clicking in someone’s mind and remembering, “Ah, yes, greater love hath no one than they he lay down his life for his friends.”  The secular world has picked up and is promulgating the selflessness of our Lord.

          It is my hope that that commercial portraying the taxi cab is symptomatic of a new era about to enter our world.  I am encouraged to believe that we may be embarking on an era of gratitude and thanksgiving and sharing and self-sacrifice.  I see it, again, as a sign of God’s hope for our world.

* * * * *

          A couple of weeks ago, if you were here, you heard me say that “hope” is one of my favorite words of the bible, the one word I cannot live without.  So you can imagine how thrilled I was to come across these three signs of hope in my sermon “Idea File.”  To me, these three signs of hope give me encouragement.  They remind me that this is still God’s world and that God’s plan –while it may get sidetracked on occasion— will  ultimately come to fruition. 

          The bible reading for the day from Paul’s Letter to the Romans ends with these words: 

          “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

          In a nutshell, that is why I find hope in these three illustrations.  They reveal to me a world –where at least in little ways— people, rather than being overcome, are overcoming one day, one step, one deed at a time.

          This week, keep your eyes open.  Look and see where you see signs of hope, signs of God’s kingdom all around you.  It may be in things as simple as soap or a taxi cab or a song about sunscreen.  And may those signs encourage you in your faith walk.  For you see, it all begins on the inside and works out to the world.