Moving the Chains

Sermon Transcript

Our lesson this morning comes from the 12th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, starting with the 28th verse.

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them, well, I ask, which commandment is the most important of all? And Jesus answered, the most important is hero Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. And the second is this you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. The scribe said to him, you’re right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all of the heart and with all the understanding, with all of the strength and loved one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that, he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions. Friends, this is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

We had a dog. It’s like so many of our dog. She was found on the side of the road. Her name was Dora. And Dora was a terrier mixed. Dora was a feisty little dog. She hated football. It was so bad that when a football game would come on, Dora would start whining and she would either get behind the sofa or another chair in the room where the football game was being watched, and she would just lay there and whimper the whole time the football game was going on. I knew the problem. It was Gary Danielson. She did not like Gary Danielson. So I started muting the sound on the television because I don’t need him to explain to me what’s going on the football field. And Dora persisted. I thought, it’s not Gary Danielson. And I realized that the other residents in the house makes football noises, high pitched football noises when somebody is running, when somebody missed a tackle, when somebody dropped a pass, when somebody caught a pass. And Dora was responding to the human beings in her household, not liking the response to the football game.

I’ve had to teach football. Some of you have had to teach football to the significant other in your household. The whole concept of declining a penalty to a banker is not right. It’s almost like forgiving a loan. Look, they signed up for the play. They meant to play the play this way. And if they played the play wrong and they committed a penalty, they need to be penalized. You can’t decline a penalty. I went through three years of describing why you define a penalty and, and to explain this is advantageous to the team saying no. Obviously there’s been growth in my student because last night we were watching A&M and South Carolina said, look, did you see that? Did you see them exercise inside position and swap off and let the free safety have them? Did you see that? I said, you know about the inside position. Do you know about outside leverage? Yes. You told me about outside leverage too. And you taught me that sometimes there’s a combo defense that you’re running a man to man up under, and you’re running a zone on top. I thought, what else do you know about football and where did you learn it? What are you googling there during the football game? The rules have changed. Oh my goodness. The rules have changed.

I was a quarterback. And you could tackle me in my head. You could tackle me up high. You could tackle me down low. You could dive at my feet. It was legal. Our linemen practiced high, low. What’s high? Low. One player hits him high. The other player hit some low. And on defense, I was a free safety. And when a tight end came across the middle, you better bet you I was going to make them pay. And the best thing you could do is blindside. I’m not even let you let them know you were there. And a blindside block. That was good. Blocking the coach. Love that. On Saturday morning when you were reviewing film and now. We’re three penalties away from playing flag football. Most of the things they used to show for the introduction to Monday Night Football on ABC’s run, if you’ll watch it on YouTube, most of what they show is not allowed in the NFL. Now. Rules are always changing. We are protecting the players. I get that. That’s cool. But it’s called football. It is a land acquisition game. You need to acquire land. If somebody is trying to acquire you land, you need to stop them. And the rules of football have basically been in place since 1906. In 1906, the NCAA said that no longer would a first down be five yards, it would become ten yards. In 1907, when Spaulding issued its guide for American football to radical things took place. Spaulding said that there shall be two poles at least six feet high, tied with either a cord or a chain ten yards long, and that a team, in order to continue possessing the ball, must acquire at least ten yards within the four downs they’re given.

And the other thing that went in the 1907 rule book was the forward pass. Ten yards. And that’s where the idea of a chain gang came from. And they’re still there on football fields today. But now you’ve got all the technology. You’ve got the line of scrimmage, you’ve got the first down line. You have that incessant green line that says, this is how far the field goal kicker can kick the ball. You have all that on your television. And when you go to Tiger Stadium, where you’ll be Saturday night, none of that’s there. It’s technology that’s not present. What you will see is the chain gang stretching out those ten yard chains to mark a first down. That’s football. Mike Elko was being interviewed last night going into halftime, and the girls stuck the microphone under his chin and said, coach, why didn’t you go for why didn’t you go for it on fourth and one just a minute ago? And Elko said, because they had stopped us two other times on fourth and short. And then he said, you know, we just need to keep moving the chains. We need to play for 60 minutes. We need to tackle better. We need to block better. We need to pass better. We need to run better. Elko, you need some more cliches in your bag of tricks. Football is the land acquisition game. It’s that simple. But we want to know what the rules are so we can play it so we can understand it. And y’all, you’ve never had fun until you’ve been on staff at a church in New Orleans that had two worship services, one at 830 and one at 11:00 on Saints Sunday, because the 830 service would suddenly be packed with people and the 11:00 service would be empty, and you knew which members of your church were season ticket holders for the New Orleans Saints, because they came to early church so they could worship Jesus, pray for their saints, and get to the Superdome in time for the kickoff.

We live in that culture. What are the rules? It’s a ground acquisition game. You have four downs to go, ten yards. If you go ten yards, we’re going to move the sticks, and you go ten more yards and you go ten more yards. In your faith life, are you still moving the sticks? Jesus is talking about the rules. And Jesus said the rules are pleasing God or fairly simple. They’re old rules. They go all the way back to the Old Testament. If you want to please God, you love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. That’s the humor from the sixth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. Every good Jew says it three times a day, and Jesus did that three times a day. He’s reciting the Shama to himself, to whoever would listen. He’s reminding himself that my purpose here, even as the Son of God, is to love God with the totality of my being and then Jesus quotes from the book of Leviticus. The next thing you do is you need to learn to love your night. You need to learn to love your neighbor as you love yourself. That’s it. That’s how you move the chains. That’s how you keep the sticks moving. That’s how you acquire the land, as it were.

The people of Judaism have come to Jesus, and they ask him about the rules. One of the Herodians, the Herodians, were kind of half-baked Jews that also liked the Roman Empire. One of the Herodians stands up with the some of the Pharisees and says, look, Jesus, we want to know is it lawful, lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? It’s a loaded question. If he says yes, the Pharisees are going to get him. If he says no, the Herodians and the Romans are going to get him. Jesus gives a great answer bring me a coin. Let me look at it. And they brought him one. And he said, whose likeness and inscription is this? And they said to him, Caesar. And Jesus said to them, render indices are all things that are Caesar’s, and to God all things that are God. And they marveled at him. What’s the rule? Jesus. How do we play? How do we do this? Next up for the Sadducees. They come to him. Now the Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection. They don’t believe it to the Sadducees when you’re dead. That’s it. It’s the Pharisees that believe in the resurrection, not Sadducees. And we’re told that the Sadducees came to him, and they say there is no resurrection. And they ask him a question. Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother to leave a right marriage.

It’s right there in the Pentateuch, brothers are to marry the widows and produce a male offspring. And the Sadducees say to Jesus, this woman went through seven brothers. She wiped out a whole tribe, and then she died. And the Sadducees, who don’t believe in the resurrection, ask Jesus in the resurrection. Whose wife will she be? We want to know the rules. We want to know what we need to do. To follow God. What are the rules? How do you move the chains? Jesus said, first of all, you worship. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. We prayed this morning the Lord’s Prayer. Our father who art in heaven, Holy is your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We acknowledged and we adored God the Father. We recognized him as creator. We said that it all belongs to you. We worship you, Lord, and we serve you. And we want to be a part of that which you are doing. Worship. Did you know the one thing the church does that nobody else in the world does? We worship everything else you can find repeated in culture. Doing good works. Find a Rotary club. Getting people together. Find an athletic team. Having a meal. Go to white watchers. Whatever you want is done out in the world. Accept the worship of Almighty God. And we’re lucky here at Trinity that we worship in two different ways. This morning, we went into extra innings in the early service because I had all the liturgy in the service.

Man, we were high church. The Episcopalians were in there. They were nodding and Jennifer checked, and they were happy to see the Methodist went high church. And then I come in here and we’re kind of easygoing and laid back. Sometimes I need easy and laid back. Sometimes I need the liturgy that moves me toward a holy God. I need the structure. It all points me to God. It all points me to worship God. The word worship comes from the Old English word worship. You buy your worship for showing the world what God is worth to you. We worship like somebody is watching us.
Most of the time in the Methodist Church, I’ve found out that we’re a congregation full of ventriloquist. That’s how we sing. No golf in our mouth. Not going to make a noise. Do you know, I promise you one thing. If you will sing as loud as you can, you can’t hear anybody else around you singing. Okay, but you have to sing as loud as you can.

Otherwise, you may pick up some static in the system. Okay. John Wesley told us to sing lustily. Yes. So sing. Sing. Praise the Lord, worship him. And however, you’re comfortable worshiping him. Do it in here. Do it at home. Spend time worshiping. We want to get through to it. Yes. I want to read God’s Word. But I want a 32nd reading this. I want to pray. I want to pray, but I want a system that will allow me to pray so I can get up in a timely fashion and go. And God waits. He waits for us to be fully present with him. He waits for us to give our lives to him. He waits for us to ask for his mercy and grace, because he really gives them worship. And then we’re called to love our neighbor. You live your worship as you love your neighbor, as you become Christ for them, as you point them to God, as you share the gospel with them, as you give them a morsel of food or a glass of water as you make a visit, as you speak a word of grace into their lives, you are continuing your worship because you were pointing these people friends, relatives, neighbors, strangers to Christ.

You want to keep moving the chain. You worship, and you love your neighbor. And then listen to what Jesus says because the scribe got it. The scribe repeats back to Jesus what Jesus has just said, and he’s affirmed that Jesus is right. It’s one of the few Jews who ever affirmed that Jesus is right. And Jesus says to this man. And when Jesus saw that, he answered wisely, he said to him, you’re not far from the kingdom of God. And after that, no one dared to ask him any questions. What is Jesus saying to this man? He’s saying, look, you’re in the red zone. You’re on the 20. You’re about to become a part of God’s great kingdom. Keep pushing in the direction you’re pushing. Keep worshiping, keep loving your neighbor. Keep doing the things that draw you close to God. And as you keep doing these things. You enter that place called salvation. Where Christ becomes your Lord and Savior. Where you become a Jesus follower.

Keep playing. Don’t quit. Keep worshiping. Don’t quit. Keep loving your neighbor. Don’t quit because it’s in doing these things that suddenly you realize Christ has changed your life. The Christ has transformed you.

That you’re a new creation. It’s All Saints Sunday in the church. It’s the Sunday we remember. Those who have lived their lives, finish their race, move the chains and live for Christ. One of the things that I so love about All Saints Sunday is we are reminded of the Church Triumphant, our family members, our friends, people we’ve known who’ve gone on and are now in the presence of Jesus. And the writer of Hebrews says, since we’re surrounded by such a great of cloud of since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that’s set before us. And if you want to continue this image, since we are surrounded by people sitting in the heavenly stadium, let’s you and I keep moving the chains lets you and I continue to worship with abandon, with our whole hearts, with our whole beings, with our whole voices. Let’s you and I keep loving our neighbors with abandon. And as we love completely, as we serve faithfully, as we dedicate ourselves to Christ, we move the chains. And in doing that, we make a difference in the lives of those who see us living out our Christian witness. And they’re in heaven right now cheering you on. They’re in heaven right now wanting the best for you.

They’re in heaven right now watching you as you are making a difference in your time and in your sphere of influence for Jesus Christ and in a very real sense, when we take communion, they’re taking it right along with the they’re right there. It’s the continuum of faith. We’re the church militant, and they’re the church triumphant. And together we are the body of Christ. Because Jesus said, this is my body which is broken for you. And this is my blood which is shed for you. Amen.