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Sunday's Sermon
Feb 3, 2008

1098
"The Sky Isn't Falling"
The Rev. Dennis Posno

 

It’s an old story  ~  perhaps one you haven’t heard for a long time.
It begins this way …
______________________________

One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when ~ KERPLUNK ~
an acorn fell on her head.
"Oh my goodness!" said Chicken Little.
"The sky is falling!  I must go and tell the king."

On her way to the king's palace, Chicken Little met Henny Penny.
Henny Penny said that she was going into the woods to hunt for worms.

"Oh no, don't go!" said Chicken Little.
"I was there and the sky fell on my head!
Come with me to tell the king."
So Henny Penny joined Chicken Little
and they went along and went along as fast as they could.

Soon they met Cocky Locky, who said,
"I'm going to the woods to hunt for seeds."
"Oh no, don't go!" said Henny Penny.
"The sky is falling there! Come with us to tell the king."
So Cocky Locky joined Henny Penny and Chicken Little,
and they went along and went along as fast as they could.

Soon they met Goosey Poosey,
who was planning to go to the woods to look for berries.
"Oh no, don't go!" said Cocky Locky.
"The sky is falling there! Come with us to tell the king."
So Goosey Poosey joined Cocky Locky, Henny Penny and Chicken Little,
and they went along as fast as they could.

Then who should appear on the path but sly old Foxy Woxy.
"Where are you going, my fine feathered friends?" asked Foxy Woxy.
He spoke in a polite manner, so as not to frighten them.
"The sky is falling!" cried Chicken Little. "We must tell the king."
"I know a shortcut to the palace," said Foxy Woxy sweetly.
"Come and follow me."

But wicked Foxy Woxy did not lead the others to the palace.
He led them right up to the entrance of his foxhole.
Once they were inside, Foxy Woxy was planning to gobble them up!

Just as Chicken Little and the others were about to go into the fox's hole, they heard a strange sound and stopped.
It was the king's hunting dogs, growling and howling.
How Foxy Woxy ran, across the meadows and through the forests,
with the hounds close behind.
He ran until he was far, far away
and never dared to come back again.

After that day, Chicken Little always carried an umbrella with her
when she walked in the woods.
The umbrella was a present from the king.
And if ~ KERPLUNK ~ an acorn fell, Chicken Little didn't mind a bit.
In fact, she didn't notice it at all.
______________________________

It’s a wonderful story  ~  not just for kids  ~  but for us all.
        It is a story about how people react, and over react sometimes,
                to the events and happenings around them.
                        It is a story about how we deal with the things we have to deal with.
                                It is a story about keeping things in perspective.

So to all of the Chicken Littles and Henny Pennys
and Goosy Loosys and Cocky Lockys out there,
and for those of you who aren’t  ~  this message is for you.
For those of you who may feel like my mechanic, Scott Beattie,
who said one day in his dry humorous way,
“I hardly made it through yesterday and it’s today already”  ~
this message is for you.

And it all has to do with how we deal with difficult things as a people of faith.

I don’t know where I heard it, but when I heard it I never forgot it  ~
one stunning sentence that pushed me to look at things differently.

At those times in our lives
when we overestimate our troubles
and underestimate God’s ability, through us, to deal with them …
when we’re faced with a mountain
and tempted to shrink in its presence,
             this is worth remembering:
    
It isn’t the greatness of our faith that moves mountains;
it is our faith in the greatness of God that moves them.

Listen to that again.
It isn’t the greatness of our faith that moves mountains;
it is our faith in the greatness of God that moves them.

Robert Schuller sums up that attitude the Possibility Thinkers Creed …

                        When faced with a mountain
                        I will not quit.
                        I will keep on striving
                        until I
                        climb over,
                        find a pass through,
                        tunnel underneath,
                        or simply stay and
                        turn that mountain
                        into a gold mine!
                        With God’s help.

So, in some way, you think the sky is falling around you, and what do you do?
        You can either quit or in your striving deal with it  ~  with God’s help.
                You can either quit or you can put your faith in the greatness of God.

I think of a man like Martin Luther King Jr.
        filled with a dream that his people would one day be free …
filled with hope for his people, for all people,
      that there would be a promised land and a promised time.

But trouble came.
Peaceful demonstrations sometimes turned violent.
Many found themselves in jail behind bars.
Many who embraced the dream lost their lives.
Fear and discouragement are terrible things.
And there were those who might have said, “The sky is falling.”

Suppose King had said,
        “They’re right.  The sky is falling.  It’s too dangerous.
                I will have to give up the dream.”
                        Suppose he had said that.

There’s Terry Fox, a United Church boy from British Columbia.
        A young lad stricken with cancer.
                A young man at a place he could never have imagined.
                        And having lost a leg to that awful disease,
                                had his dream of running across Canada
                                        to raise money for cancer research
                                                in what was called the Marathon of Hope.

Suppose the Chicken Littles had come to him and said,
        “The sky is falling.  You’re too ill to run. 
Your Marathon of Hope is a marathon of hopelessness.
      How can you do it on one good leg and a prosthetic leg?”

And suppose he had said,
        “They’re right.  The sky is falling.  It’s too risky.
                I will have to give up on that dream.”
                        Suppose he had said that.

Two young men were working in their laboratory at the University of Toronto.
Experiment after experiment, failure after failure,
and their attempts to find a treatment for diabetes were unsuccessful.
But Banting and Best believed it was a dream worth dreaming,
believed that the answer was out there if they looked hard enough.

Suppose the Chicken Littles had come and said to them,
        “The sky is falling.  Give up on that dream.
                All that time.  All that effort.  All that failure.  All that disappointment.
                        It’s like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.”

And suppose they had said,
        “They’re right.  The sky is falling.  We’ll give up on that dream.
                No more sleepless nights.  No more failed experiments.”
                        Suppose they had said that.

Think of the Apostle Paul, facing his mountains.
        Imagine if he had allowed discouragement to defeat him.
                Imagine if he had permitted the struggles to stop him.
                        Imagine if his faith had faltered and failed him.
                                Imagine if he had let the Chicken Littles of his day
                                        persuade him that the sky was falling.

Imagine if he had not believed,
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
              Imagine if he let the sky-is-falling mentality
                        so shape his life that he would not write:
                                “Rejoice in the Lord, always.
                                  Do not be anxious about anything”
                                                Imagine if he had.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb Mount Everest, died recently.
At a luncheon meeting, long before his Everest success,
he was asked to speak about his mountain climbing expeditions
and his unsuccessful attempts to reach Everest’s summit.

Looking at a picture of Mount Everest in all of its majesty behind him,
        he addressed his audience, and pointing to the picture said,
                “The day will come when I will climb this mountain.
                        For you see, the mountain cannot get any bigger  ~  but I can.”
                                               
No.  When faced with their mountains
they did not shrink in their shadow.
When the outlook was bad they looked up.
And what did they see?
They didn’t see the sky falling …
they saw that the sky was the limit.
And they followed their dreams.

And in following this is what they discovered:
that their suffering or struggle
their disappointment or discouragement
their trials and troubles produced something:
perseverance  ~  the power to stick with it.
And their perseverance produced something:
character  ~  they became better people, stronger people, wiser people,
very often because of the struggles and in the midst of them.
And their character produced something:
hope  ~  the belief that the mountain could be climbed.

They may have developed these qualities in quieter times, easier times.
But it is usually the difficult times that make us stronger.

So they continued in the struggle for civil rights …
or began to run across Canada in the Marathon of Hope …
or continued the experiments to successfully discover insulin …
or persisted in telling the story of Christ’s saving love …
or went back to Everest another time.

They put on their mountain boots, laced them up, and started climbing.
And we are better people because they did.

There is a little bit of free verse I love called There Has To Be A Song …

There has to be a song  -

There are too many dark nights,
                        too many troublesome days,
                        too many wearisome miles,
There has to be a song  -
To make our burdens bearable,
                To make our hopes believable,
                To transform our successes into praise,
                To release the chains of past defeats,
        Somewhere – deep down in a forgotten corner of each (person’s) heart –
There has to be a song  -
                Like a cool, clear drink of water,
                Like the gentle warmth of sunshine,
                Like the tender love of a child,
                                                                        There has to be a song .

Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote that
“The life of Jesus is like music to be played over again.”

As a believing people  ~
as people who have put their trust in God …
as people who have the assurance that
in our weakness God would be our strength …
as people who have the promise from Jesus that He would always be with us …
as people who believe that doing the right thing, however difficult,
is always the right thing to do …
as people who believe that in this world, as Jesus said, we will have troubles, but who also believe, as Jesus said, that we can take heart
because He has overcome the world  ~
this is the song we sing.

Jesus is the music that can be played over again:
a beautiful song of hope in the midst of hopelessness …
a beautiful song of peace in the midst of discord …
a beautiful song of joy in the midst of sadness …
a beautiful song of strength for our every day.

And when we allow His song to become our song …
        when we allow His life to enliven us …
                when we allow all that Jesus is to empower us
                        to become all that we can be,
                                those wonderful words from Isaiah, read earlier,
                                        can be for us not just words on a page
                                                but God’s song written on our hearts:

           The LORD is the everlasting God,
       the Creator of the ends of the earth.
       He will not grow tired or weary,
       and his understanding no one can fathom.
        He gives strength to the weary
       and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
       and young men stumble and fall;
      but those who hope in the LORD
       will renew their strength.
       They will soar on wings like eagles;
       they will run and not grow weary,
       they will walk and not be faint.
Let that be the song we sing!

 

SOLI  DEO  GLORIA