The Bones of the Past

Final Sermon and Service
Prepared by Rev. David A. Leach

My sister, Mary Elizabeth, wrote the following:
"My father was to have preached this on January 3rd, 1999, but ended up hospitalized instead. One of his final conscious communications was a concern about who would preach in his place. As it turned out, transportation in Milwaukee was paralyzed by a huge blizzard that weekend and church was cancelled. These notes were found next to his easy chair.
In his hospital room was a calendar with the days on tear-off pages in large easy-to-read numbers. The final day on this calendar was January 5th. There was no page for January 6th, and the space on the wall was left blank. This was the day that he died.
PRAYER:
Almighty and most gracious God, whose very nature is to be present in good times and in bad; on warm days and on cold; in wind, rain, and sunny life; in laughter and in pain; in joy and in despair; in work and in play; and in all those things that are a joy of life, open our hearts and our minds to the realities of the present here and now.
Oh great and kind Spirit, be with us through all the unknown days lying before us in this new year. Touch us that we may trust You and be strong, so that we grow in unity with all our brothers and sisters, so that we may see more deeply into ourselves and the love You have for us.
O God, the refuge of the poor, and the hope of the humble, the salvation of the needy, hear us as we pray for those who are worn by illness, for all who are wronged or oppressed, for the weary and heavy-laden, and especially those in other countries and also in our own who are hungry. May they be strengthened by Your grace and healed by Your consolation. Let the dayspring from on high visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide their feet into the way of peace.
We pray these prayers in the name of Jesus our Master and Redeemer. Amen.
JEREMIAH 31: 15-17
Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not.
Thus says the Lord:
Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears;
for your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord,
and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
There is hope for your future, says the Lord,
And your children shall come back to their own country.
PHILIPPIANS 3: 8-14
Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found by him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Sermon: THE BONES OF THE PAST
Are you familiar with the TV character Al Bundy? He was the obnoxious father on that show Married with Children. He, his wife Peg and their son and daughter were the ultimate example of what a family should not be. He was a shoe salesman who saw no prospect for happiness because he was married, with children. So when he tried to find something in his life that had been a triumph, he went in his memory way back to his high school days when he was a football star. The present held no joy for him so he had to search his memories of the past to find any sort of accomplishment in life. Have you known people like that? The Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians, Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal. There are people who are prisoners of the past, who cannot live for what lies ahead because they are bound by the events of the past.
During the war in Vietnam, a young woman was killed. She left behind her husband and her young son. The husband, needing to provide for himself and the boy, traveled far and wide looking for odd jobs. Often he left the child with neighbors. After one long trip looking for work, the man returned to find his village demolished and his neighbors gone. Searching through the rubble, he found scattered about some small bones. He was sure that these were the remains of his son. He wrapped the bones in cloth and carried them with him everywhere he went.
Many years passed. He was now an old man when one night he heard someone knocking on his door. He called out, Whoís there? It is your son! the voice outside replied. My kidnapers set me free, and I have spent many years trying to find you! The old man yelled, You are a fake. Youíre playing a cruel joke. My son is dead. Leave me alone. He would not open the door. The knocking continued for a while, but then it stopped. The young man gave up and left. This old man never found happiness. He lost his son who was still living. Why? Because he was determined to hold onto the bones of the past.
This is the first Sunday of a new year, a great day for letting go of the bones of the past. Someone once said that God created us with eyes in the front of our heads so that, if we try to look back, we get a stiff neck. The possibilities of the future call us to look forward. The good news for us at the beginning of this new year is that God has set us free from the bones of the past.
We are free because we have been chosen. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. He said that God has adopted us as His children. Years ago the University of Georgia was playing the University of Texas in a football game. Sitting on the bench was Frank Tarkenton, a third-string quarterback on Georgiaís team. Georgia had hardly been able to move the ball. Late in the third quarter they had not made a single first down. Now they were backed up near their own goal line. It was the third down. Suddenly this young third-string quarterback ran out onto the field. No one had told him to go into the game. No one tried to stop him either. The first-string quarterback saw Tarkenton heading to the huddle and assumed that the coach had decided to replace him, so he trotted off the field. Tarkenton took charge, led the team down the field for a touchdown, and the rest is history. That started him on one of the most remarkable careers the sports world has ever seen.
Can you imagine a football player having the nerve to go out onto the field in a situation like that? Thatís confidence. He somehow had the feeling that he had been chosen to lead his team to victory. You and I can have confidence in this new year because we have been chosen by God.
We find that we are freed from the chains of the past when we realize that our sins are forgiven. To encourage the Ephesians Paul wrote, By the sacrificial death of Christ we are set free; that is, our sins are forgiven. There are no chains that bind us any more than the chains of guilt, guilt over things we have done in the past. These chains make us feel unworthy. But, in Christ, we are forgiven and given another chance. The Apostle Paul admitted that he had made mistakes in the past: I persecuted the church of God. But, by the grace of God, he was forgiven and given another chance.
Country/Western singer Willie Nelson recalls attending a small Methodist church in boyhood days. I was one of those kids who kept going down front when the preacher called for converts at the end of each sermon, Nelson wrote. Iíd see somebody next to me start to the front, and, well, there Iíd go again. I joined the Methodist Church at least 30 times when I was a kid. Every time Iíd do something bad, Iíd go join the church again. Iíd walk down to the front and renounce my sins and ask Jesus Christ to come into my heart. And all of a sudden I had a new slate in the eyes of the Church. Then Iíd slip off and smoke a long strip of cedar bark rolled up in a newspaper, and suddenly I was back facing the fiery furnace again.
Each time I went to the front and rededicated my life, I wanted to leave my sins with God and walk away clean. I felt I shouldnít have gotten off so easy. I mean, the Church had let me off, but I hadnít let myself off. Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. We are set free in Christ. We are forgiven through Christ.
We are set free when we realize that we are not trapped by whatever has happened to us in the past. Many people get stuck because they remember and keep reliving old painful memories. They are holding onto the bones of the past.
Several years ago on Johnny Carsonís last program, he recognized the presence of his family in the audience, but with one member missing. One of his sons had been killed in an automobile crash a year or so before. Johnny said that life does what itís supposed to do and then you move on.
For some people the past year was the worst ever. I am sure that for President Bill Clinton last year was not one he wants to remember. Times have been pretty good, but a lot of people lost their jobs. Others experienced death in their families which left them hurting and grieving. Whatever may have happened to us in the last year, the start of a new year is a time to free ourselves from the past and start over. New beginnings are possible.
Richard Speight tells about a man who sat next to him on a plane. For this man things had gone from bad to worse and then to unbearable. At first he took a drink to be sociable, then two, then several. Before long there was a bottle in the desk drawer to make the long afternoons more bearable. You wouldnít believe how much booze I could put down in a single day, he said. Then he told of how his new business was going nowhere. He spent a lot of time trying to make it successful. Eventually his wife and children, in tears, left him. All I wanted was my friend, the bottle, he said.
A business trip took him out of state one day. I was drunk, driving a rental car, he said. I pulled up to an intersection. The cross street I was facing was a main highway. He thought he had stopped, but in his drunken state he rolled through the busy intersection and was hit broadside by a truck. He was thrown out of that car with terrific force. His body skidded along the pavement. He was bloody, raw and battered, but he was alive.
The next thing he remembered was two medics standing over him. They thought he was dead and so did a policeman. They couldnít feel his pulse nor hear his heartbeat. Even though they thought he was dead, they decided to take him to the hospital. He couldnít make a sound. He prayed and prayed the whole time. He promised God that, if God would help him get their attention, if God would help him get out of this, he would never touch another drop of alcohol again and would be Godís servant forever.
He said, The next thing I remember is sitting on a gurney in the emergency room, talking to the doctor. The medics and the policeman were still there. They were absolutely astounded! It turned out that he was not seriously injured. After he was cleaned up, he was released. He decided to get some rest so he checked into a motel. He bought a six-pack of beer, opened a can and lay down on the bed. Flipping through TV channels, he found Billy Graham leading a crusade. He was looking right at me, pointing a finger, the man recalled. You have made promises to God today that you havenít kept, Billy Graham said. This hit home. I buried my head in my hands, he recalled, and leaned over, almost touching the ground with my face. I had admitted my weakness to myself for the very first time.
In this time of struggle he discovered answers in the Bible. The Holy Spirit came into my body and into my life, he said. The Spirit gave him the strength to open those beer cans, one by one, and pour the beer out. Thatís the hardest thing a drunk can do, he testified. I couldnít. The Holy Spirit did it for me. This, for him, was a time of new beginning. He was set free from the chains of the past.
As we enter this year, the last year of the twentieth century, the love of God can set us free, too. There is no difficulty that the love of God cannot conquer. There is no grief that the love of God cannot hear. There is no door that the love of God will not open. There is no gulf that the love of God will not bridge. There is no wall that the love of God will not tear down. And there is no sin that the love of God will not redeem. It makes no difference how deeply seated may be your trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the problem, how great the mistake, the love of God will resolve it all!
If only we could feel that love of God enough, we would be the happiest people in the world. And then we could learn how to love even as He has loved us. The world needs us. Godís world needs our loving.
This is a time of new beginning. We are set free from the chains of the past. We have been chosen. We have been forgiven. We have been given a brand new year. We are free to make of that new year what we will. How will you use the year 1999 that God has given you?


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