Back to Sermons Page

Sunday's Sermon
Aug 27, 2007

1078
"Living Abundantly"
The Rev. Dennis Posno

Jesus said it. 
Said it to a world that was missing it.
Said it to a people longing for it.
Jesus said it.
“I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
In his paraphrase of those words in The Message, Eugene Peterson writes,
“I came so they could have real and eternal life,
more and better life than they ever dreamed of.”

What wonderful words they are.
Life.  Not just mere existence, but life.
Not just muddling through, somehow, but life.
Nor just marking time, putting in the hours, but life.
Not just getting by, but life.
Not just, as someone wrote,
“If I live nobody notices and if I die, nobody cares,” but life.
Abundant.
More and better life than you ever dreamed of.

How do we get it?  What is the way?

There was a traveler, unfamiliar with a certain town,
        who happened upon one of the local residents,
                a pleasant enough chap, but not too bright.
                        The traveler asked the way to the post office.

“Well,” he said, “you go down two blocks and turn  ~  right.
No, you go down two blocks and turn  ~  left.
No, that isn’t right either.
You go up this street one block, turn right, and go one block.
No, that isn’t right either.
Truth is, mister, I don’t think you can get to the post office from here at all.”

Well, to those who want to know the way to live abundantly,
let me point you in the right direction.

When Jesus said,
“I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly,”
I believe it is in looking to Him that we can discover it.
Jesus didn’t have the abundant life as our culture might define it
but He lived abundantly, as the psalmist said,
“in the center of (God’s) will.”
He possessed “the peace and security of walking with (God.)”
He “(drew) His power from (God)”
as “(His) heart (was) focused on (God.)”
And He became to those whose lives He touched,
“a spring of healing,
a reservoir of power
to the sick, weak and empty lives
He touched about Him.”

Abundant living is found in “yielding (your) destiny to God”
and to our God’s Christ …
by letting Him be Lord of your life …
by letting Him be all that He can be for you.

As a sail opens itself up to the wind …
        as a clay vessel yields to the potter’s hand …
                it is found by opening your heart to Him
                        and committing your life to Him.
It is found by living as Jesus would have you live.

Let me illustrate what abundant living is all about.

Living abundantly isn’t finding yourself in the best of circumstances.
Living abundantly in living with grace and dignity, despite the circumstances.

Victor Frankl was an eminent Jewish psychiatrist.
        During that dark days of World War II
                he had been taken prisoner by the Gestapo, Germany’s secret police.
                        He had been removed to a place for questioning.
                                He had been stripped and stood naked before his questioners.

They had taken his gold watch,
had seen his gold wedding band,
and demanded that as well.
So there he stood.  Naked.  Humiliated.
As he was handed them his wedding ring, he would later write,
that a thought went through his brain,
a thought that sustained him:

“There is one thing you can never take from me,
and that is my freedom to choose how I will react
to whatever you do to me.”

He discovered in his dark time, when he was stripped of everything,
that there was something that couldn’t be stripped from him:
his freedom to choose how he would respond.

The Psalmist wrote:
        “I long incessantly
for the peace and security of walking with You.
Therein only is peace and purpose in my life.”

Victor Frankl lived abundantly
in the meaning and purpose that comes from walking with God.

In my family there were two men who became “men of the cloth”:
me, of course, and my father’s brother, The Rev. John  Posno.
Uncle John became a minister in the Presbyterian Church in the 1950’s.
Prior to that he had served as a lay missionary in China
where he crossed paths with our minister emeritus, Doug Muir.
He was forced to leave China when he, and others like him,
were expelled by the new communist government in the late 1940’s.

Back in Canada, while attending Knox College in Toronto,
        he served the Presbyterian Church in Cookstown.
                He didn’t have a great deal
                        and his youngest daughter ended up wearing her older sister’s clothes
                                when she outgrew them.
                        Hems were raised or shortened …
                garments were mended where there were tears …
        clothes were taken in or let out.
She wore hand-me-downs, as many children did, and do still.

One day she came home from her kindergarten class
to find her father at home.
He was sitting in a big chair in the living room, reading.
She dragged herself over to him and cuddled in his lap.
He wrapped his arms around her and with that she burst into tears.

He held he closer and asked why she was crying.
        She told him that some of the other children were making fun of her …
                laughing at her …
                        calling her Raggedy-Anne …
                                and she asked, “Daddy, are we poor.”

Such a big question for such a little girl.
Too much sadness for someone so innocent.

As he looked into her tear-filled eyes and held her closer still, he answered,
        “No, honey, we’re not poor.  We just don’t have a lot of money.”

I’m sure his daughter came to understand that.
Yet surely, here was a man who lived abundantly.
   He didn’t measure his abundance in terms of what he possessed.
           It wasn’t things or money in the bank that made him rich.
                   He measured his abundance in terms of who he was.
                           It was love, his wife, his family,
                                   and a little girl sitting in his lap
                                           that were his treasure.

If living abundantly were measured in dollars and cents
        then sadly most of the world would never experience
                what Jesus was talking about.
                        It is measured in loving, and in being loved.
                                And by that standard, he was living abundantly.

It is as the psalmist wrote:
“The (one) who trusts in (God) is very rich indeed.”

Years ago, an elderly member of my former congregation,
        unable to be in regular attendance at Sunday services any more,
                was brought to the church during the week by two friends.
                        She was in a wheelchair as she was taken into the sanctuary.
                                That place had been her church for years.
                                        She had sung in the choir … was involved in the UCW …
                                                this is where she had prayed and broke bread

Our organist was there
and he played, at her request, Breathe On Me Breath Of God.
As he did, tears glistened in her eyes  ~
tears of happiness, tears of remembrance.
And she said proudly, and gratefully, time and time again,
as she looked around the sanctuary: “My church.  My church.”

She was not in the best of health.
        She had been a widow for many years
                and still missed the man who had shared her life.
                        She had know the better and worse times,
                                the in sickness and in health times,
                                        the in joy and in sorrow times.
                                                She had know it all.

But through it all she had known her God,
made real and true in her Saviour, Jesus.
His loving presence had encompassed her,
had become “a spring of healing and a reservoir of power”
in her sickness and weakness.

And her faith was not just a remembered faith
of years ago and sunnier days …
   it was a vibrant faith that enabled her to greet each day
           as God kept her and watched over her.
Abundant living was hers.

In recent days Barry Bonds has achieved a remarkable accomplishment.
        He has surpassed what many thought
was the unbeatable home-run record set by Hank Aaron
        who surpassed the record set by Babe Ruth  ~
although because of steroid use, it is, for many, a tainted accomplishment.

Now we all know that records are made to be broken.
But when Hank Aaron did it
it wasn’t broken by just any man  ~
it was broken by an African American.

Hank Aaron received the accolades and tributes that he was due.
But he received much more.

                He received phone calls where he was told
                that no uppity black man had any business
                taking a record that belonged to a white man.

                He received calls where his life
                and the lives of his family were threatened.

                He received letters that degraded him and his race,
                diminished his accomplishment,
                and damned him for living.

And how did he react?
        Although the slurs and threats must have been awful
                he responded with a quiet grace
                        that should have brought shame on many.

He practiced the principles of Jesus he had learned as a boy:
        he turned the other cheek …
                he prayed for those who despitefully used him …
                        he loved his enemies.

The greater success of Hank Aaron
wasn’t beating Babe Ruth’s homerun record;
the greater success was the stature he attained because he walked with God.

It is as the psalmist wrote:
“ … nothing that is truly good and worthwhile
is withheld from those who walk within your will.”

He lives abundantly.

What does all of this say?
Living abundantly is with the reach of everyone.

        If it depended on being in the best of circumstances,
        Victor Frankl would have been a tragic figure.
        But he rose above them, and found self-worth,
        because he knew the peace that comes from walking with God.

If it depended on having money and the things that money can buy,
                my Uncle John would have been poor indeed.
                But he was rich in the love he experienced.

                        If it depended on being young and healthy and mobile
                        my old church friend would not have made the grade.
                        But she yielded her destiny to God and, whatever her day brings,
                        she knows God’s loving presence.

                                If it depended on being the right colour or the right anything,
                                Hank Aaron would have been a loser.
                                But he claimed his place as a child of God
                                and lived the way that he found in Jesus.

And what about you?
        You do not have to be a prisoner of your circumstances
                or your race or colour
                        or the attitudes of others
                                or your past
                                        or your health.
                                                You, too, can know what it is to live  ~  abundantly.
               
We have gathered here today
in the name of the One
who came to bring that kind of life
to any and all who truly desire it.

                Turn your eyes upon Him.
Turn your thoughts unto Him.
Give your heart unto Him.

      Centre your will within the centre of God’s will.
Seek God’s will and do it.
Draw healing from the springs of His grace
and power from the reservoirs of His love.

  Discover the meaning in life
  that comes from walking with Him.
  And you will be blessed.
  Blessed beyond your wildest imaginings.
  You will find the abundant life that Jesus promised.

 

SOLI  DEO  GLORIA
     
               
SCRIPTURE   Psalm 84   Psalms/Now

O God, the centre of your will
    is truly the place of fulfilment.
I long incessantly
    for the peace and security of walking with You.
Therein only is purpose and meaning for my life.

Even the birds of the air
          and the animals that inhabit the forests
    abide within your orbit and destiny for them.
Thus it is that those
          who discover and follow your course for them
    are forever blessed.

How enriched they are
    who draw their power from You,
    whose hearts are focused on You!
Even as they wend their way
        through this fractured world,
    they become springs of healing
        reservoirs of power,
              to the sick, weak, and empty lives
              they touch about them.

O Lord, look with loving mercy upon those
    who have yielded their destinies to You.
Just one day in the centre of Your will
    is incomparably better than a thousand
          spent in the pursuit
              of self-centred aims and objectives.

O God, nothing that is
          truly good and worthwhile
    is withheld from those who walk
        within Your will.
Those who trust in You are very rich indeed.