Sermon: Staying Positive

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Staying Positive

By Charles Rush

July 2, 2006

[ Audio (mp3, 16:08) ]

r scripture lesson this morning comes from Philippians, Chapter 4. If you have trouble remembering this, you can easily find it – we thought it was important enough that we inscribed it in stone on front of the church. It sums up what I think the gospel is all about. St Paul, writing at the very end of his life to the church at Philippi, starts to sum up and this is what he says: Celebrate God all day and every day… don't worry or fret too much or be anxious, but pray. And then he concludes by saying this: Summing it all up, my friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on that which is true, that which is noble, that which is reputable, that which is authentic, compelling, that which is gracious, focus on the best not the worst, live for the beautiful, not the ugly, look for things to praise not things to curse, put into practice what you have learned and seen in me. Brings these things to realization.

In Cry the Beloved Country a black Minister in the hill country of South Africa goes to look for his lost son in Soweto. Along the way, he meets many people. When he would leave them, it was his custom to say “Go well, stay well”. That is such a fine blessing to leave with others. “Go well, stay well.” It is such a positive thing.

I think it remains quite a challenge to us to live out of our positive energy and not in a false way. There was a ‘positive thinking' movement in management in the sixties and seventies, parts of which bordered on encouraging us to live false lives. I.B.M. had a motto in that era “Whether you can or whether you can't, the difference is you”, as though we had a level of control over our destiny not at the mercy of changing market forces, the weather, illness, or genetic inheritance. There was something false about that kind of positive thinking, viewed from a wider perspective.

There is something almost enervating about some of these motivational speakers. You are usually attending positive thinking seminars because things weren't going so well and your boss thought the whole team needed reorientation and uplift. To be told, implicitly, that the reason that things are the way they are is your attitude comes across as ironic and guilt inducing at the same time. Add to rapidly changing markets, undercapitalized business plan, loser me as the problem. When your changed attitude doesn't change those market trends or capitalize the project, there you are stuck with your loser self.

A friend sent me a De-Motivational calendar, expressly devoted to the cause of Mediocrity. Their motto is the following. “Mediocrity: it takes a lot less time and most people won't notice until it's too late.” The month of July is dedicated to underachievement. The thought for the month is “The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the lawnmower.” August is dedicated to despair, with the motto, “It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.”

It strikes me that it is truly a spiritual challenge to stay genuinely, spiritually positive. It is something you have to return to intentionally time and again. We do indeed live in a cultural atmosphere of low-grade negativity that permeates our social world and affects us more than we know.

It begins with our morning devotional when we open the pages of the paper. Negativity just permeates the way we report and receive the daily news. The past few weeks, I have been getting more in touch with the way that journalists are fundamentally motivated by crisis, tragedy, scandal. I've gotten a bunch of calls about the Church having two candidates for the United States Senate in one congregation. I tell them they are men of great character? “Yeah, yeah, yeah”, says the reporter. I say that this is a contest between better and best? The reporters go “yeah, yeah, yeah”. Then they say, “Reverend, what can you give me for the story?” I say, “What do you mean, what can I give you?” Reverend, is there any tension around the church, any tension over at coffee hour?” I'm thinking, only if Carlos forgets to plug in the coffee pot. You want tension, check out this crowd without caffeine. “Reverend, are there any factions forming in the congregation?”

It is as if they really need a fight in order to get people to read the story. Maybe I'm just imagining this but the story a couple weeks ago about the water discovered on the North Pole. That got my attention and I'm sure it did yours. I almost got the sense that the reporter was grateful for a crisis to write about. I get that same sense when I read some of the stories about the spread of the West Nile Virus or our latest crisis the contaminated bottled water. Stop, go to close up. “This just in.” It is almost like people are just sitting around the newsroom waiting for something bad to happen so they can jump on the story. That is when they come alive. And I'm not battering the media. This is far more complex than that. We all buy the papers. Apparently this is what we want. This is the spiritual climate that we have created for ourselves.

The negative climate in the local papers is actually worse as you know. The regularity of the sensational headline. “Mother let's Baby Starve”. “Drunken man shoots wife, child, turns gun on self”. Sometimes you can read between the lines in these stories and it is simply sensational voyeurism. The actual story is a sad person that had psychiatric detioration with tragic consequences. I read some of these headlines and I don't even know why this is news. I ask myself, ‘Why do we need to know that?' I'm sure you do too.

Before you have even finished your coffee, the chances are you have devoured a couple pages of sensational tragedy and voyeuristic crisis. Some mornings I feel, in the words of Walker Percy, like I am being bombarded with tiny particles of malaise.

What do you think your world would be like if we woke to read, “Underprivileged child gains admission to selective college”? What a great story. Or if we read about the many things they are doing right over at New Providence High School to put them up at #15 in the state this year. Or, as I heard this week, that Summit High School has 10 National Merit finalists- an unbelievable percentage for our School. What if that were news?

I think that is one of the reasons we love the Olympics so much. We are spiritually starved for inspirational news. Every Olympics there is a kid from Canada, somewhere way out in Saskatchewan, who is in his first Olympics. He is there because his sister taught him how to skate. She was actually the better skater. They trained together, in fact. The sister got some rare disease, encouraged him to keep on training for the team. He made the team, she got sicker and finally died just before the games. There is he, you've never heard of him until the last ten minutes and he's skating with a pin that his sister gave him for his birthday just before she died. He's warming up. Everyone watching around the world is saying, “Go kid”. So positive, so uplifting. We are starved for that.

One of these reporters asked me, “So who are you voting for?” I said, “I wouldn't answer that.” He says, “Who is your wife voting for?” “Same candidate or different candidate?” Headline “Tension after Coffee Hour at the Parsonage”. Crisis, tragedy.

We absorb this malaise. It permeates our whole spiritual ethos before we wake up and after we go to bed. It makes us sarcastic. It makes us cynical. It makes us grumpy with our families, like the wonderful dinner scenes in the movie American Beauty. Add to that some real live spiritual negativity like disease, like people in our extended families that have emotional problems, financial limitations, or addictions that aren't going to change. Add to that some real live spiritual negativity like a job that requires us to deal with high maintenance, angry, demanding clients for a good portion of every workweek, and you have a substantial spiritual challenge. Staying focused on the positive does not come naturally or easily. You have to be intentional about it.

St. Paul's letter to the Philippians says, “Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, all that deserves respect, all that is honest, pure, decent, admirable, virtuous or worthy of praise… think on these things and may the peace of God be with you.” It is the kind of wisdom you would gladly find in a fortune cookie, the quality of whose wisdom, has lamentably deteriorated over the past decade.

St. Paul was writing this letter to a church that was in the middle of an extended fight. There were two factions led by two women. In all likelihood, they were shouting past one another. St. Paul wrote to them from a prison about how to get along with one another. It is somewhat poignant, that St. Paul would never leave that prison. He would be executed and he is writing them, maybe with that in the back of his mind. And he says to them, stay focused on what is positive, on the higher reasons for which we live. That is what gives life its fullness.

Look to Jesus, says St. Paul in chapter 2. He says, “Have the mind which was in Christ.” Think like Jesus. Someone asked Jesus what it was like when God was fully present. What is the kingdom of God like? In Luke 15 Jesus says, it is like a Son who has blown all his inheritance, all his opportunities, blown his career and he comes back home. And when his Father sees him, he runs off the porch down the road and hugs him. God's is like that. Then again, he says, it is like a poor old woman who has lost a valuable coin that is most of her assets and she is worried about it. She is cleaning her house and she finds it. It's like that kind of joy. It's like that kind of acceptance and reconciliation. That is what redemption is like. It is so positive.

I think we need to intentionally immerse ourselves in the positive. If you are wondering right now, why your fun factor is so low despite being surrounded by success, this might be part of the answer. We need to intentionally immerse ourselves in the positive, the higher reasons for which we live. What do you do to do that?

I like to think that worship at Christ Church is part of that equation. Let's be frank, church is not an uplift everywhere. One of our church members brings her mother to worship when she comes to visit. Her mother likes to come. You know what she says about you all. She says, this is the happy church. Everybody here seems happy, like they want to be here and look forward to it. Things could be worse; I asked her what the alternative was. Without pausing she said, “guilt and control”.

I know about these churches. They call me from time to time for paperwork on someone aged 34 who wants to get married and they want me to send certification for baptism. John, Aimee… hold on to that little card we gave you. First time I got a call like that I told them the truth. I said, “We don't keep that kind of information on file at the church.” The person on the phone said, “I'm sorry, then they can't get married in our church.” I said, “Whoa, you know what, we just found that paper work.” I generated whatever they needed and you will be glad to know that because my sense is that Christ Church people are not very good at spiritual paper work. If there are visas for heaven, a lot of you are in big trouble. You do mortgages well and investment portfolio's – very impressive. But we just aren't big on the guilt, control, or documentation on the spiritual front. I'm okay with that because I can't imagine that Jesus would care either.

What are you doing to stay positive? Immanuel Kant summed up the higher purposes for which we live by saying that we live for three things: The true (Knowledge), the good (Morals, Virtue), the beautiful (Culture, Art, Spirituality). Life is too short to live out of our negative energy. You have to infuse your soul with a positive spirit, in pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

I just want to remind you not to overlook the obvious, meditation. Meditation is partly imaginative work. You are allowing yourself to be filled with the Spirit of God, to become a conduit of God's energy. You are focusing on one situation or person and asking for God's blessing.

You need to find a time and a place. It can be walking in the woods. It can be sitting in a quiet room. Once you become practiced at it, you can do it sitting on the runway, waiting for takeoff or riding home in a taxi.

It is easiest if you have a quiet place where you can go into yourself for a moment and let the concerns of the world drop away and simply be present. Maybe you have a spouse that needs your love, lift them up, see them surrounded by God's grace, covered with spiritual energy being healed… A difficult situation that needs an impasse… You don't have to say much, just let your spiritual imagination see blessing. They will change and you will change too. Be intentional about releasing positive spiritual energy.

Whatever is pure, whatever is true, all that deserves respect, all that is honest, pure, decent, admirable, virtuous or worthy of praise, … think on these things. And may the peace of God be with you. Go well, my brothers and sisters, stay well. Amen