Creekside Church Sermon of November 12, 2000 "Faith in an Anxious Age" Revelation 1:4-8	Rev. David Bibbee
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As Scott Peck said in his first book, The Road Less Traveled, "Life is difficult," and some things are more difficult than others. In my files I came across a "Hard Things To Do" list compiled by Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame. He said, "It's hard to..."

• Tear something along the dotted line when the instructions read, "Tear along the dotted line."
• Let down a venetian blind the first time without pulling the cord this way and that.
• Cut the fingernails of your right hand with your left if you are right handed, or visa versa.
• Keep from getting distracted by another newspaper story when you're looking for the continuation on page ten of a story you started on page one.
• Get anything out of your pocket when your seat belt is on.
• Pack a suitcase for warm weather when you are leaving from a cold place.
• Get rid of the toothpick after you've eaten an hors d'oeurve at a cocktail party.

This morning I want to add one more item to the list... "It's hard to hold fast to faith in an anxious age." At the dawn of a new millenium, there is deep uncertainty and anxiousness about what is happening in this world. Great changes are taking place. The world as we used to know it will not be that way again. There is no clear consensus about what is right or wrong. The contested presidential election indicates the nation is split at worst or confused at best about the path we should follow given the problems we face. We are slowly becoming conscious of the fact that the culture in which we live dismisses Christianity as irrelevant, and is becoming increasingly hostile to it.

We are fed a daily diet of tragedy and mayhem by the media. As a result we are either numbed by it all or addicted to it. The Fox network has turned calamity into entertainment with such fine shows as "Animal Attacks", "Natural Disasters", and other human tragedy shows which display footage of people being thrown from amusement park rides, or a family trapped in their car being swept away by raging flood waters to their deaths. It's easy in such a time as this to feel powerless to do anything. Even our faith in the sovereignty of God is questioned.

Let's remember that faith cannot flourish in isolation. Faith does its best work "in tension." Many of us when we were young played telephone. I don't know if kids do this anymore, but we would punch a hole in two tin cans, tie a length of string to them, and drawing the string taut, we could sometimes hear one another. But it would not work if the line was not taut. The vibrations couldn't be transmitted unless there was tension on the line.

Similarly, it is when we experience tension between security to God and giving in to whatever the culture is worshipping at the time, that we become strong. It is unfamiliar territory for us, but God's people have been through it before.

Israel was devastated by Babylon and Assyria. They were hauled away from their homeland and forced to live as exiles in a hostile foreign land. Another perilous period was at the end of the first century when the fledgling Christian church was just getting a foothold in the Roman Empire. Christians lived in tiny bands in pagan cities where Roman culture reigned supreme and Caesar, not Jesus, was lord. When John of Patmos wrote the book of Revelation, the emperor Domitian launched a bloodthirsty persecution of the church meant to make it extinct. The enormous evil of the powers that be against little bands of Christians who believed that Jesus was the ruler of all nations. Not exactly an encouraging picture. Confronted with such strong forces, where did the church find hope to continue? Before I answer, let's sing a hymn. #164, vss. 3 & 4, "A Mighty Fortress".

How did the first Christians hold to their faith in the face of such overwhelming conditions? They sang. Revelation is about the ultimate battle between good and evil. In one corner is the Lamb of God. In the other the seven-headed beast, and the future of history hangs in the balance. It is a book about the deep deep distress of the church. But it begins with shouts of praise. The opening verses are actually lyrics of an early Christian hymn in praise of Jesus whose power and grace will withstand any and all attacks of everything that is supposed to his rule of the earth.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the sale of this church building, moving into a temporary facility, and the challenges it will present. What resources "within" will enable us to withstand the pressures from "without"? The answer is almost embarrassingly simple... we sing. Churches in severe conflict do not sing well. They don't blend their voices in harmony. Churches with no clue about who they are and what God is calling them to be are lousy singers. When I see the anemic attendance we have had of late and think about how lax we are in regular attendance, I am not encouraged. When I think about those on the periphery of the church's life, neither totally in or completely out, neither hot nor cold, I am not encouraged. But when I hear your faith filled voices singing and see the expression on your faces, I become hopeful. The church that sings together stands together.

Conditions in the world in which John and Charles Wesley lived were bleak. How did they effect a revival in England? They wrote hymns which expressed the belief that Christ was the hope of the world. The civil rights movement had a song... "We shall overcome." Protests against the Vietnam War had a song... "Blowin' in the Wind." It's not surprising that more Christian music is written now than ever before. We will have much to sing about as a constant reminder that something more is at work in the world than the daily stream of bad news.

War is being waged in Revelation, but John leads us in praise of the power of Jesus, and is clear about whose world this is. Sing #154, vs. 3, "This Is My Father's World."

One of the best films about hope I have seen is the Shawshank Redemption. Andy DuFresne is sentenced to Shawshank where a sadistic warden regularly punishes inmates in the name of God. Andy received a life sentence, but at the outset he vowed never to give in to despair. He was always imagining the world outside the prison in hopes that one day he could own his own fishing business. Over the years he keeps busy. Andy was an accountant by training, and offered his services to the crooked warden who accepts them as a way to cheat himself into a fortune. Andy used his position to get favors for his fellow inmates, including funding for a library. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," Hebrews says. Andy didn't have what he hoped for. Though the possibility of release was remote, he never let go of hope.

Andy also became a victim of the warden's cruelty. He was savagely beaten and locked into solitary confinement for 60 days. He emerged looking totally broken. When others asked how he survived, he gave a one-word answer... "Hope." For years he planned an elaborate escape. He succeeded and in the process exposed the warden's fraud. But the film did not end with his escape. The hope which kept him going affected other inmates. He lived to realize a dream that others called hopeless, and because he never stopped hoping, an inmate friend who was paroled as an old man, joined Andy for a new life together.

These are difficult, times in which we live. Some choose to deal with the enormous problems of the world and church by pretending they do not exist. They have seen so much already that nothing shakes them anymore. But as Christians we have a rock on which to stand and be honest about the circumstances around us without being overwhelmed. Sing hymn # 343, vs. 3 "My Hope Is Built."

Many people think that Revelation is a book only about the end time. I think it is more true to its purpose to say it is about the "meantime." When the church was in its infancy it endured brutal persecution. Yet Revelation starts with singing about the Almighty... "I am the alpha and the omega who is and was and who is to come, the Almighty."

Barbara Brown Taylor tells of the summer she found a large loggerhead turtle stranded on the beach. Afraid it would die, she found a park ranger who returned with a jeep. He flipped the turtle on its back, wrapped tire chains around its front legs, hooked the chains to the trailer hitch and took off yanking its body forward. Its mouth filled with sand and its neck bent so far backwards it seemed it would have broken. She was sure it wouldn't survive the trip.

She followed the furrow plowed by the turtle's shell to the beach where the ranger unhooked it and turned it right side up. The waves washed the sand from its head. As each wave lapped over it, the turtle revived until a large wave made it buoyant enough to push off into its watery home. Reflecting on the experience Taylor said, "It's sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down. Through all our terrors, our hope is that we are being saved."

When the pain of life washes over you...as it will, and conditions in the world distress you, go to the scriptures and read the witness of the faithful who preceded us. Sing to yourself verses from hymns which affirm the sovereignty of God like, "Though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet." In this age of anxiousness which threatens to overwhelm us, one of the best things we can do is worship.

Let's go back now to 1973. I am standing with Arleetha's family in front of her home which is decorated with balloons and a big "Welcome Home" banner. The car pulls into the driveway and Arleetha's husband Bill helps her from the car. Everyone claps and cheers, but Arleetha is crying. "They just told me," she moaned. A heavy hush came over us, and I decided to stay outside. I couldn't bring myself to go in. I swallow hard and step inside. I find Arleetha sitting on the sofa with a swarm of adoring grandchildren all around her. They eventually leave the room. Arleetha and I are alone. "This isn't supposed to happen to someone like you," I say. She replies, "I don't know why things turn out like they do, either. I don't know why life is as hard as it is. But there's one thing I know with all of my heart," she says. She then speaks to my fledgling faith with this scripture:

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

And this is something worth singing about!

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