Minister: Kirsten Barlow

Genesis 6:9-14, 17-22 (TNIV)

July 27, 1881 was the happiest day in the life of Andrew Carnegie (recounted from Joseph Frazier Wall's biography on Carnegie).  Carnegie, a Scottish weaver's son who had started as a "bobbin boy" at $1.20 per week had become America's "King of Steel".  He was rich!

He had waited many years for his triumphal return to Dunfermline, Scotland (the city in which he was born).  There were banners on the street welcoming him home, there was a horse drawn carriage and a parade that went past the tiny cottage where his impoverished family had fled thirty-three years before.    The parade ended at the new public library that Carnegie had donated funds for.

Carnegie had always wanted to return home to show how he had made something of himself, but he also wanted his mother to be able to show off.  You see she had been quite distraught that all of the people "back home" would never see how rich and famous her son had become and so Andrew Carnegie wanted his hometown to see how rich and famous he had become.

Carnegie, an atheist, wanted others to see how well he had done.  He wanted to "show them".

Now there is not doubt that the Carnegie Family has done a lot of good things with their wealth.  They have funded libraries and performance centers and foundations that give money to lots of good causes, but it bothers me that at least some of it was done so that other people would see how well they had done.

In our scripture today, we see Noah building an ark because God told him to.  Can you imagine what would have happened if Noah said, "Well, gee, God!  I don't know.  I mean it isn't even raining outside.  What do you mean you want me to build this big boat and load it up with all of my family and every kind of animal.  Don't you think that people are going to look at me funny?  Won't they think I'm weird?  Won't my reputation be marred?

Interestingly enough, if Noah thought or said this to God, we have no record of it.  We simply read that, "Noah did everything just as God commanded him."

The movie "Evan Almighty" gives us a modern day version of how one might react to God asking them to do something similar today, doesn't it?  The movie is the story of Evan Baxter, a TV anchorman.  He is moving up on the corporate ladder.  There is a new and bigger house, there is more money...but everyone seems miserable.  The kids hate the new house and new school and Evan doesn't know how to hold it together. 

He's not much of a religious guy, but in desperation he prays that God will give him a way to bring his family back together.  (Be careful what you pray for.  God may answer your prayer in a way you don't expect!)

Well, God tells him to build an ark!  Evan worries about what his wife will think, what his children will think, what his employer will think, what his new up-scale neighbors will think...But in the end, he has to listen to what God tells him to do and he starts to build the ark.  As he begins to explain to his family just what is happening, they start to help him.

Guess what, building the ark helps his family to draw closer together.  In the end, it also saves a bunch of people in his neighborhood who would have drowned when the local dam burst.

What if like Evan and Noah, we worried more about what God told us to do than what our friends or co-workers or society told us to do?  Whose voice is really more important?

Author Os Guiness writes:

Only madmen, geniuses, and supreme egotists do things purely for themselves.  It is easy to buck a crowd, not too hard to march to a different drummer.  But it is truly difficult - perhaps impossible - to march only to your own drumbeat.  Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or another.  The question is not whether we have an audience but which audience we have.

The question is which audience do we live our lives for?

In the 6^th chapter of Matthew, Jesus says this:

 1 "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

    2 "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

 5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Jesus seems to be saying, "OK folks, here is the point.  Just do the right thing.  Don't worry about what other people think about it.  If you are doing the right thing, I'll know about it and I'll reward you."  You are better to do the right thing and get laughed at than to do the wrong thing because it will be popular with others.

As Christians, we are called by God to do the "right thing" not just to do things right.  But, doing the right thing isn't always easy.

As the church, we are called to do the "right thing", not just to do the things we are doing in the right way.

When we were in Israel in 2006, we had the privilege of visiting, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.  It was a very difficult, yet powerful experience.  Israel, the nation that was set up in 1948, opened its doors to the Jews who had been dispersed during World War II and beyond.  I never really thought much about how the Holocaust had affected the conscience of the Jewish people in Israel.

One Jewish Israeli man told me that in Israel, they couldn't call the Six Million Dollar Man by that name in Israel, because it reminded them of six million Jews being killed in the Holocaust.  Yikes!  So, they call it the Steve Austin show.

So, the Holocaust Museum was very powerful to see in that setting.  At the beginning of the museum there is this quote that I know I had seen before, but this time it really struck me.  It said:

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

Ouch!  That was written by a pastor named Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.  Niemöller had come to oppose the Nazis, and it was largely his high connections to influential and wealthy businessmen that saved him until 1937, after which he was imprisoned, eventually at Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. He survived to be a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II.

It seems that Niemoller knew the right thing to do, but because he was afraid, he didn't stand up for what he believed until it was too late.

Now, hopefully none of us will ever be faced with the fear of something as terrible as the Nazi regime.  We may never have to stand up for what is right in the face of blatant evil.  But each of us have the opportunity to do what is right in the face of a world that tells us that we are wrong.

Who is it that you live your life for?  Who is the audience that you perform for every day?  Is it your spouse?  Is it your family?  Is it your co-workers?  Is it the people you pass by on the street?

Who are you living your life for?  Is it other people?  Or is it God?

I don't know about you, but in the end it is not other people that I am afraid of.  It is God that I am afraid to face if he says, "What have you done with all the gifts that I have given you?"...and all I can say is, well, I never really used those gifts.  I was afraid of what others might say about me or think about me...so I just followed the crowd and did what they did.

Instead, I long for that day when I will see God face to face and I hope to hear him say, "Well done good and faithful servant".  You have used the gifts that I have given to you and you have used them to do what I told you was right and good in the world.

Os Guiness describes the kind of life lived for God in this way, "A life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before one audience that trumps all others - the Audience of One."

Guiness says that "those who are seen and sung by the Audience of One can afford to be careless about lesser audiences."  In other words, if you are living your life being concerned about what God thinks of what you are doing, then you don't have to be as concerned about what people think.  Isn't that freeing?

Aren't we all really some like the hypocrites that Jesus describes?  Are we praying so that others will see that we pray?  Are we giving and serving so that other people will see what we are doing?  You know in the Greek a hypocrite is really an actor.  One who puts on a mask.  One who is really one thing but pretends to be another.  Are we like that?

How can we be more like Noah who heard God speaking to him and did what God asked of him without worrying about how others might react?  How do we live our lives for an Audience of One?

1. First of all, if we are to live according to what God wants us to do, we must first listen to God.  Spend time in prayer.  Talk to God.  Tell God the deepest desires and disappointments of your heart and then be quiet and listen for God to speak to you...to nudge you...to show you the way.

It's ok to trust your gut about what you think God is trying to tell you to do.  If you find out later you were wrong, say "Oops, God!  Sorry, I missed that one.  Will you forgive me?"  And if you ask honestly, God will forgive you, extend you grace, and let you try again.  The more you are willing to do this, the more you will start to sense what God is leading you to do.

1. Practice doing what you know is right, even if those around you don't. When you think of doing something, stop and think, why am I doing this?  So that others will notice me or because it is the right thing?  It can be something simple like deciding to be good stewards of our natural resources by recycling your soda cans or bottles at work, when everyone else is throwing them in the trash that will go to the landfill.  It can be something as daunting as working for clean air and water for all God's children throughout the world.
2. Remove the phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" from your vocabulary.  Realize that words not only hurt us, but they can hurt other people.  Use your words for encouragement.  When you see others doing the right thing, thank them.  They are not doing it for the thanks, but it is nice to hear that affirmation.

This week, I was at a conference of Large United Methodist Churches.  We were hosted by St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Orlando, Florida.  They had hundreds of volunteers greeting us in the parking lot, standing on the patio to help us find our way, providing us with snacks, food, drinks, leading us in worship.

Whenever I passed by one of these volunteers, I tried to stop and look them in the eye and say, "thank you for welcoming us...thank you for hosting us" 

Let's encourage in others the behavior we'd like to see in ourselves.

1. Most importantly, when you get anxious about what other people are thinking of you, remember this, "We serve an Audience of One".  What will it take for us to be like Noah doing everything that God commanded him?  Trust in the One for whom we live and breathe.  Ask him to take the fear and replace it with love.

Let's pray...God, we thank you that you continue to love us and to care for us even when we get distracted by what others think and say.  Help us to focus our attention on serving you, on listening to you, on living our lives for you.  Take away our fear that we might be bold in our faith.  In Jesus' name we pray.  Amen.