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About 75 years ago the famous American composer
George Gershwin wrote the opera that is considered his masterpiece,
“Porgy and Bess.”
And within “Porgy and Bess” no song is more well
known than the magnificent “Summertime.” The lyrics, which were actually
written by Dubose Heyward, are what make “Summertime” such a beautiful
song. In fact, I’m going to ask you to bear with me while I sing the
opening verse for you: “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are
jumpin’ and the cotton is high. Your daddy’s rich, and your momma’s good
looking.’ So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.”
In the summertime, the living is what, church? Yes,
easy. When summer comes we throw off the shackles that the winter cold
has imposed on us. Summertime is when we finally get to turn off the
furnace, throw the jackets and sweaters and boots into the closet and
wear comfortable clothes.
Summer is also the time for comfortable living. Our
problems somehow don’t seem as burdensome as they did in February, even
though the problems may well be just as real.
Most people plan long driving vacations for summer
and some people just hang out in the back yard, but whatever we do, we
want to get out in the warmth and enjoy it. The living is easy.
But most of all, our attitude towards summer is
influenced by memories of childhood. Most children experience summer as
an exciting time of endless freedom.
I was kind of a weird kid; my idea of a good time in
the summer was to walk to the library in Greensburg, get books, take
them home, read them in one day and then turn around and do it all again
the next morning.
Not many kids were like that, but the point is, kids
have the freedom in the summer to do what they want, not what their
teachers or parents want. If I were to ask Robin her favorite memory of
childhood and summer, I’ll bet it wouldn’t take her long to talk about
picking blueberries with her grandfather. Summer gave her the time and
freedom to spend it with the one she loved.
But when we get to be grownups, we miss that freedom;
we’re jealous of it, we want it back, and the sights and sounds and
tastes of summer are memory joggers of our own childhood. We long to
wiggle our toes in the mud again, or run around trying to catch
fireflies, or get all excited about lighting sparklers. But we’re too
busy to be free.
Grownups have this problem, you see. They’re always
worried about their status, their significance, their place on the
pecking order. They have to keep going, keep pushing to prove their
value to themselves.
Hundreds of years ago the philosopher Blaise Pascal
wrote, “When I consider the briefness of my life, swallowed up before
and behind it, the small space I see or even fill, engulfed in the
infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I
am afraid. Who has set me here? By whose order and arrangement have this
place and time been allotted to me?”
People have always asked these questions and they
always will: Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? What am I
worth?
Summertime is a great time to remember our childhood
and to feel free like a kid again, maybe all the way back to infancy.
Some of us were baptized as babies, as I was, and some of us were
baptized later in childhood, but whenever that moment came we were
adopted into the family of God, and at that moment he whispered in our
ear, “You are my beloved child, my very own. I have placed you here and
called you to be my own. In you I take delight.” Guess what? That hasn’t
changed.
What a thrill, huh? Knowing that God still thinks of
you as his child, his beloved. No need to fear anything in this world.
God has given you freedom from fear. So hush, little baby, don’t you
cry.
The Apostle Paul expressed this beautifully in his
famous passage from his letter to the Romans. Neither death nor life can
overthrow the good that Christ has in mind for us. Even the fear of our
great enemy is removed. Both the mystery and finality of death have been
destroyed.
And if Christ has saved us from fear and sorrow about
that final ordeal, there is nothing before or after that we need to
dread. Nothing in God’s creation can interfere with that
relationship—not angels, not demons or anything in between. God’s will
is supreme, and his will is completely expressed in love. That’s what
summertime feels like—God’s eternal, unconquerable love.
But the problem with summer is that it ends. Right?
The leaves fall, the wind gets sharper and before you know it winter
will return again. Are you depressed yet? Hang on. Summer doesn’t have
to end at all.
In 1964 a movie came out called exactly
that--“Endless Summer.” It was actually a beach movie about a pair of
surfers who roamed around the world looking for the perfect wave and the
warm weather to ride it.
Just as they achieve an endless summer by following
the sun, so we can achieve the endless summer of warmth by following
God’s son.
It is the promise of eternal life and love and God’s
grace in our lives that makes living truly easy.
So today, on the first Sunday in June, the first
month of summer, I want to suggest three aspects of summer that will
truly make living easy, if we only embrace them. Ready?
First, in the summer, loving is easy. Summer love is
really special, isn’t it? I don’t know if you ever had a summer fling
back in your youth, but if you did, chances are it was simply a lot of
fun and when it ended, it ended gracefully. No tears, just time to go
back to school with good memories. Sometimes the love we feel in summer
isn’t quite as deep and sincere as in the rest of the year.
I loved the story of a county fair where a grand
champion lamb was being auctioned off. The young girl who raised it was
holding the lamb, and when the bidding got to $5 a pound she started to
cry.
At $10 a pound she cried even harder and hugged the
lamb’s neck.
Finally the lamb sold for over $1,000, but the local
businessman who bought it said he would donate it back to the little
girl, and the crowd cheered in approval. Months later one of the people
who had witnessed the auction read a student essay from a girl whose
grand champion lamb had been sold at auction. She wrote, the “prices
started to get higher, and that’s when I started to cry from happiness.”
She concluded, “the man who bought the lamb for much more than I had
dreamed returned her to me, and when I got home Daddy barbequed the
lamb. And it was delicious.”
Real easy summer loving has to do with understanding
that we are not love’s producers, we are the distributors.
Do you get that? We don’t create love, but it is one
of the abundant gifts that flow from our father’s hand, into our hearts,
and then we redistribute love in all its rainbow of manifestations to
others all around us.
When we say the fish are jumping and the cotton is
high, it means life is good and this cascade of love from God to us and
on to others is flowing just fine. There is a place up in Indiana County
called Buttermilk Falls and it’s the prettiest little waterfall you ever
saw, well worth the hike to see it—when the stream is flowing well.
But sometimes in dry weather the stream dries up and
there’s nothing there but a pile of rocks.
Some people say they have great difficulty loving
others, and I wonder whether the real problem is that they have lost
touch with the love from the father. They seem to think that love has a
beginning and an end and once you give it away, you’re stuck, but that’s
just not true. Your daddy’s rich in love, and he’s going to keep it
coming, no matter how much you give away.
The second thing to do in the summer is jump off the
high board. That’s not a literal suggestion, but a metaphor. It means
get over your fear.
Many years ago I was taught to swim by a very gifted
young man at the municipal pool in Youngwood. He specialized in teaching
people with physical problems how to swim, and he did a great job of
teaching me how to use my arms to compensate for the lack of leg power
in the water. But before he would pass me, this young man insisted that
I had to jump off the diving board into the water.
Believe me, I was afraid of that idea, but I also
wanted to pass the course, so I got up on the board and did, for lack of
a better word, a belly flopper.
I want to tell you, that dive, if you want to call it
that, hurt like anything, but I managed to swim to the side of the pool
while the instructor applauded and told me “great job.” Later he
explained that once I had gotten over my fear of jumping off the diving
board, I would never be afraid of the water again. And I never have
been. But some people never even get in the water, do they?
Let me tell you the strange, sad story of Olga
Frankevich. Olga lived in the old Soviet Union in the days when Joe
Stalin ruled that country entirely by fear.
Olga heard that she was wanted for questioning by the
secret police, and in the Soviet Union under Stalin that meant you would
just disappear and nobody would ever hear of you again. So Olga decided
to take matters into her own hands. She hid under the bed.
Her sister was slightly braver, in that she would
roam the house and at least bring Olga food. So she was able to stay
under her bed for—would you believe 45 years? From 1947 to 1992, Olga
never came out from under her bed, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is one
of the worst ways to spend your life. I mean, think of the dust bunnies
alone.
If we really want to reconnect with summertime the
way it was for us as children, we need to take God’s word seriously.
Jesus says in Matthew, “Do not worry about your life what you will eat
or drink, or about your body or what you will wear. Isn’t life more than
food and the body more than clothing. Your heavenly father knows you
need these things, but make the kingdom of God your first priority, and
the rest will take care of itself.” A child doesn’t worry about
tomorrow, and neither should we. Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow, but
learn to live in the present, in the summer.
Finally, the third thing to do in summer is just be
still. In the Book of Lamentations it says, “It is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.” Peace and quiet are certainly things I
associate with summertime, especially the summertime of my childhood. Of
course, 40 years ago when I grew up in Greensburg everybody mowed their
grass with little push mowers that made a pleasant little clip-clip-clip
sound as you went. Now it doesn’t matter if you have a patch of grass
the size of a pool table, everybody’s got to have a riding mower that
makes a roar.
In my neighborhood it seems like somebody is always
mowing their grass from dawn to dusk.
But there is the hour or so before the dawn breaks
that is so incredible. That’s when the birds start up with their songs
and calls and feeding cries, everything from the twitter of bluejays to
the Caw Caw of crows. I love to lie in bed and listen to the birds
before the day starts. It makes me feel close to God and his protection
and purpose for my life. We have good conversations in that hour before
dawn, God and I, before the busyness of the day shifts my mind to other
things.
God wants all of us to take time to be silent and
listen for his voice. Many people wear out physically long before they
realize they’ve worn out spiritually.
Jesus himself warned his disciples about this burnout
problem. In Mark’s Gospel it says, “Then because so many people were
coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to
them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Summer gives us the freedom to rest and reconnect with God.
There is one more verse to the song “Summertime,” and
it goes as follows: “One of these mornings, we’re going to rise up
singing. Then we’ll spread our wings and we’ll take to the sky. But till
that morning, there ain’t nothing can harm you, with your daddy and
momma standing by.”
One day we will indeed spread our wings and take to
the sky. That is the real promise of the resurrection that Paul wrote
about when he said, “For if we have been united in a death like his,
surely we will be united with him in a resurrection like his.” But until
that glorious day, just like the baby who is sung to in the song
“Summertime,” so we have a father who is ready to protect us.
The summertime warmth that penetrates and enfolds us
is the love of God, straight from his heart, just like the mammy and
pappy in the song. God is there for us, standing by.
C.S. Lewis’ autobiography was called “Surprised by
Joy,” and he wrote about what it was like to evolve from an atheist to
one who experienced the full warmth of summer in the love of God.
That’s what a child experiences in the summer, isn’t
it? Around every tree, every day brings a surprise of joy because of the
freedom that summer brings. That’s what we all need in our lives—to be
surprised by joy as we delight in the endless summer, but so many people
live in endless winter, shackled to their cares and concerns and
worries.
My dear friends, on Friday of this week I received
some bad news from the doctor. The heart problems I have been
experiencing are life threatening, and there is no treatment for the
disease that is causing them.
Believe me, it felt like the depths of winter when I
received this news. But I have a strong support system led by Robin, I
think I have good medical people taking care of me and I stand on the
promises of God that he will not desert or fail me ever. And if God is
for me, who can be against me?
This morning, it feels like summer once again, and
I’m going to continue in this job as long as the Lord gives me the
strength to do it.
Join me this morning as we celebrate the wonderful
warmth of an endless summer wrapped in our father’s love.
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