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Sermon preached on July 19, 2005 by the Reverend Jim Thomas :Well, there wasn’t any doubt about it in my mind. Justice had to be done, and Billy Kitchens was the weed in my garden of paradise when I was in the 8th grade. He bothered me on the way to school. He teased me on the way home, and I had just had it with him. The thing that really pushed me over the edge was just the height of something I couldn’t stand, he asked my square-dance partner, who was my girlfriend, to dance. It was embarrassing. In fact, her mother had made us square-dance shirts alike. Of course, that was a proclamation to the whole world that she was my girl and no one else should be square dancing with her at those 4-H square dances every Wednesday night. So, on the playground, I confronted him. I had my strategy all ready. I was going to fake with the right and then I was going to do a roundhouse with the left. I’ll see how Janice Kirby would like him then, with a fat lip. My problems would be over with. But, things didn’t turn out exactly the way that I thought they would. When I confronted him, there were two hits, and they were mighty. He hit me, and I hit the ground. That’s the last time I’ve ever fought over a woman. I learned a lesson. Those junior high lessons are with you for life, aren’t they? Jesus talked about the weeds in our life. Last week, Ernest talked about the weeds and flowers in our life and how some people think that they’re weeds. But, I knew Billy Kitchen was a weed. I didn’t have any doubt about it. But, I know that Jesus was talking about those areas of our life that we need to work on. Those areas of our life that need tweaking or plucking out or dealing with in some way that throughout our life, it seems that there are always those times and those events and those people that you really don’t know if they’re a weed or a flower in your life. But, the truth is they teach great lessons about how to behave and how to think about life, as did Billy Kitchens teach me. But, the idea of doing something constructive about all those problems that we have or the idea of plucking those weeds out of our garden that need to be taken out must be done in a way that involves three things. First of all, it’s principled intent. Second of all, it’s creativity. And the third is sacrifice. In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi led many people from India on a two-hundred-mile journey on foot from his home to the ocean. They were being taxed unfairly for the salt that they needed every day. Gandhi wanted to make the point from the very core of the problem that somehow here there is an inequity between the privilege and the responsibility that the poor were subjected to. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 60s led those marches and those treks across the South at the same time, dealing with that problem of injustice. But, the effort was principled. It was well thought through. Again, Martin Luther King was able to get at the core of the problem of prejudice and hatred and lack of love and Christian responsibility and brought those ideas to focus as he got the people to march with him. Mother Teresa who would go out and literally haul home people that she would find in the gutter that were too sick to move or walk and take them home with her and attempt to nurse them back to health, thinking all the time, I am doing God’s will. God has to do the rest. All I can handle here are sixteen or twenty people. But, I will do what I can because I have a principled intent. That’s the first thing that we must do. We have to choose the high moral ground. We have to choose the way that is right. The way that is consistent with the Gospel. The way that is biblical. The way that matches Christ’s heart with whatever we do. The second thing is to bring creativity and imagination to our plan. Think about how you solve problems. One of the things that has been said over and over, and you’ve probably heard, is that real craziness is thinking that you’re going to solve new problems the way that you attempted to solve them before. In other words, we need to do something different. We need to think differently. We need to think out-of-the-box, or whatever to bring new ideas to bear on a problem. But, doing the same old thing, rarely works. Doing the same old thing usually yields the same results as we’ve always had. So, getting out of those habits of thinking this is how we’ve always done it, so this is how we’re going to do it this time, and expecting something different, rarely works. We are getting ready to build a new facility. There’s a lot of thinking out-of-the-box. It’s a lot of risk. It’s a lot of imagination that many of us have put in to doing this, imaging a whole new center here of learning, of music, of drama, new things that we could do, perhaps, that we have done a little bit, but, new ways that we could really reach the word and to get the Gospel out to the people of Christ. The third thing is sacrifice. It always takes sacrifice. Rarely, anything is accomplished without somebody sacrificing something. And, we forget that this very day, people will die throughout the world because they professed Jesus Christ as their Lord. People will be tortured. People will be murdered because they have the courage to stand up for what they believe. We take it so for granted here, all the blessings that we have. So, the sacrifices come from us, and sometimes are a little bit at a time, sometimes are big. But, I don’t think the weeds can ever come out of our life without some sacrifice, without making some changes, without having some imagination and unlike what I did with Billy Kitchens, to have some real principled intent. So, when we start thinking about those weeds in our life and how we’re going to take them out or how we’re going to address them, first of all, remember what Christ said, you’re going to have some help. The help is going to be from where, God’s angels. And Jesus said God will send his angels down to help you work on these weeds. You’re not alone. You’re not going to be all by yourself or end up alone in your effort. But, you have God’s help with you. You have the Holy Spirit with you. You’re going to have everything that you do with principled intent. You’re going to have the blessing of God’s holy angels with you. And, also you’re going to have some pretty good company, those people sitting next to you in the pew as well.
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