Tomorrow's sermon: My Way
May. 16th, 2014 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrishansenhomeJesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life". Frank Sinatra sang that he did it "My Way". Which is best?
May 18, 2014 5th Sunday of Easter
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10AM.
First Reading: Acts 6:1-7; Psalm 32
Epistle: I Peter 2:4-9
Gospel: John 14:1-12
“I did it my way.”
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
If you’ve ever gone to a Karaoke bar, you’ll almost certainly have heard someone sing that old Frank Sinatra song, “My Way”. Along with “New York, New York” it’s a staple of barfly singing everywhere. I have even heard of it sung or played as the recessional at funerals, with the soulful crooning of Ol’ Blue Eyes accompanying the dear departed out the door or behind the crematorium drapes.
“My Way” is a song that is the “selfie” of songs. When I read the lyrics, I see a man who, when presented with adversity and with joy, always dealt with it “his way”. He “…ate it up and spit it out.” He did it “my way” and not “in a shy way”. He’s proud of his life and how he lived it.
I get the feeling that this is a song from a man who not only has no regrets, but he also has no sense that there is any other way to live. He is self-reliant, he stands tall, he takes life’s hard knocks, and he is like Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s atheist: he has “no invisible means of support.”
This is not the kind of person that Jesus is addressing in the Gospel passage today. Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” and Jesus replies, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
To the person who requests “My Way” at his or her funeral, or the people who request it for their deceased relative who was always self-reliant, I say, “If you did it your way, what about Jesus’s way?”
The person who sang “My Way” has done a lot, according to the lyrics. He’s “travelled each and every highway” and did it “my way”. But the highway that Jesus asks us to travel is not necessarily the one that we would seek to use. If we want to travel down the pathway of self, self-reliance, and independence, we have no need of the One who said that he was the way.
How many regrets do we have? Many? Few? The singer of “My Way” had too few to mention. Do we not stumble while we are on the way through life? And not a few times, but many?
How about planning our journey through life? General Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless. Planning is essential.” It seems as though the singer planned his way and carried it through, and did it his way. The pathway through life has many twists and turns that we cannot see and that we cannot plan for. If we do it our way, what then of the God who helps us along his way, rather than our way?
The last verse begins: “For what is a man, what has he got?/If not himself, then he has naught.” This is the real snag in the life which is lived our way. We may have our selves, but we also have Jesus: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. When we lose our way in the mires of sin, sadness, and adversity, even lose our very selves, Jesus is there to point out to us the way we should go.
Now I am not saying that Mr. Sinatra was a bad man, or that all his efforts have come to naught. His life was rough. He associated with gangsters. His mother had a clandestine abortion clinic and he was raised in that clinic. He married three times, but was arrested for adultery and seduction in 1938, when he was just 23 years old. He was plagued throughout his life with depression and tried to commit suicide at least once. His last words on his deathbed, after his wife had told him to keep fighting, were “I’m losing.”
In many ways, he did indeed live his life in his own way. But the question is: as Christians, how do we live our lives not only in our own ways, but in God’s way?
I mean no disrespect to Frank Sinatra, who was a great singer and actor, and who is still loved and revered by millions throughout the world. But as a follower of Christ, my way must be God’s way.
His way leads to the many rooms in his Father’s house. There is a place there where all our ways as Christians end. The singer’s way ends in victory in his life, but is devoid of any thought of eternal life. And that is not God’s way.
Jesus has left a signpost for us, to mark out his way. The way to eternal life with God is through Jesus. But there are no signposts on the singer’s way. He is self-reliant. He did everything his way. But at the end, he sees no future. There is no struggle left for him. There is only the record that “shows, I took the blows, and did it my way.” The singer closes the book on his life right there.
I hope that pondering the lesson of this song as opposed to the lesson of the Gospel, we’ll resolve the question of which way to take by taking God’s way, rather than our own. I won’t ask for “My Way” to be played at my funeral—as it’s God’s way, or the highway.
Therefore to the One who asks us to travel through life his way, and not our own, Jesus Christ, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
May 18, 2014 5th Sunday of Easter
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10AM.
First Reading: Acts 6:1-7; Psalm 32
Epistle: I Peter 2:4-9
Gospel: John 14:1-12
“I did it my way.”
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
If you’ve ever gone to a Karaoke bar, you’ll almost certainly have heard someone sing that old Frank Sinatra song, “My Way”. Along with “New York, New York” it’s a staple of barfly singing everywhere. I have even heard of it sung or played as the recessional at funerals, with the soulful crooning of Ol’ Blue Eyes accompanying the dear departed out the door or behind the crematorium drapes.
“My Way” is a song that is the “selfie” of songs. When I read the lyrics, I see a man who, when presented with adversity and with joy, always dealt with it “his way”. He “…ate it up and spit it out.” He did it “my way” and not “in a shy way”. He’s proud of his life and how he lived it.
I get the feeling that this is a song from a man who not only has no regrets, but he also has no sense that there is any other way to live. He is self-reliant, he stands tall, he takes life’s hard knocks, and he is like Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s atheist: he has “no invisible means of support.”
This is not the kind of person that Jesus is addressing in the Gospel passage today. Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” and Jesus replies, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
To the person who requests “My Way” at his or her funeral, or the people who request it for their deceased relative who was always self-reliant, I say, “If you did it your way, what about Jesus’s way?”
The person who sang “My Way” has done a lot, according to the lyrics. He’s “travelled each and every highway” and did it “my way”. But the highway that Jesus asks us to travel is not necessarily the one that we would seek to use. If we want to travel down the pathway of self, self-reliance, and independence, we have no need of the One who said that he was the way.
How many regrets do we have? Many? Few? The singer of “My Way” had too few to mention. Do we not stumble while we are on the way through life? And not a few times, but many?
How about planning our journey through life? General Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless. Planning is essential.” It seems as though the singer planned his way and carried it through, and did it his way. The pathway through life has many twists and turns that we cannot see and that we cannot plan for. If we do it our way, what then of the God who helps us along his way, rather than our way?
The last verse begins: “For what is a man, what has he got?/If not himself, then he has naught.” This is the real snag in the life which is lived our way. We may have our selves, but we also have Jesus: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. When we lose our way in the mires of sin, sadness, and adversity, even lose our very selves, Jesus is there to point out to us the way we should go.
Now I am not saying that Mr. Sinatra was a bad man, or that all his efforts have come to naught. His life was rough. He associated with gangsters. His mother had a clandestine abortion clinic and he was raised in that clinic. He married three times, but was arrested for adultery and seduction in 1938, when he was just 23 years old. He was plagued throughout his life with depression and tried to commit suicide at least once. His last words on his deathbed, after his wife had told him to keep fighting, were “I’m losing.”
In many ways, he did indeed live his life in his own way. But the question is: as Christians, how do we live our lives not only in our own ways, but in God’s way?
I mean no disrespect to Frank Sinatra, who was a great singer and actor, and who is still loved and revered by millions throughout the world. But as a follower of Christ, my way must be God’s way.
His way leads to the many rooms in his Father’s house. There is a place there where all our ways as Christians end. The singer’s way ends in victory in his life, but is devoid of any thought of eternal life. And that is not God’s way.
Jesus has left a signpost for us, to mark out his way. The way to eternal life with God is through Jesus. But there are no signposts on the singer’s way. He is self-reliant. He did everything his way. But at the end, he sees no future. There is no struggle left for him. There is only the record that “shows, I took the blows, and did it my way.” The singer closes the book on his life right there.
I hope that pondering the lesson of this song as opposed to the lesson of the Gospel, we’ll resolve the question of which way to take by taking God’s way, rather than our own. I won’t ask for “My Way” to be played at my funeral—as it’s God’s way, or the highway.
Therefore to the One who asks us to travel through life his way, and not our own, Jesus Christ, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
