I found my cleanest, dirty shirt to wear to worship today.  It reminded me of the days when I first moved out of the house following high school.  During college I lived an hour from home with no washer and dryer, no clothes iron, and no concept of a Laundromat.  I worked at a bank in those days and had to wear a shirt and tie to work everyday.  I know well what it means to wear your cleanest, dirty shirt.  Johnny Cash fans will recognize those three little words as ones he wrote for a song called Sunday Morning Coming Down.  Cash, known as the Man in Black for his fully black wardrobe, was perhaps only known more for his deep voice and folksy song-writing that tell of life’s troubles. 

 

Johnny lived life the hard way.  In many ways, hard living fueled his music.  He was married twice and fathered four daughters.  Once his music career took off, he toured across the states and picked up drug and alcohol habits along the way.  This led to what friends called “frequent erratic behavior” which led to a number of overnight stays in jail.  Most were related to his abuse of drugs but he also got locked up one time for trespassing late at night onto private property to pick flowers for his true love, June Carter.  His experiences in jail created some of his best music and he also developed a soft heart for the plight of prisoners.  He began doing concerts in jailhouses around the world and his live album Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison was one of his most popular offerings. 

 

Later in his adult years, Cash had a Damascus Road experience where he came to know another criminal, Jesus Christ, as his Lord and Savior.  While he continued to be stubborn, rugged, and outspoken, he began to speak out about his faith.  He became a voice for the Native Americans who continue to be mistreated in America and he longed for prisoners to be seen as human beings not burdens to society.  His conversion and subsequent dreams for humanity are ones we have heard before.

 

The Apostle Paul could be considered the original “Man in Black.”  He was hard, driven, and guiltless early in his life.  When it came to followers of Jesus, he felt the best Christian was an exterminated one.  His overzealous commitment to Judaism and following the laws of the religion found him often involved in the persecution of many Christ-followers.  That is until the day when Paul had the original Damascus Road experience, coming face to face with Jesus and being overwhelmed by his grace.  Paul quickly changed his tune and became an advocate for Christians he once oppressed. 

 

He began writing letters like Johnny Cash wrote songs.  They were real, raw, and spoke to the troubles of humanity.  He wrote of visions for the world, dreams he hoped to be realized within his lifetime.  However, some just remained dreams.  One thing we know about dreams we have when we sleep is that we often wake up before they are over.  Our waking dreams; however, are too seldom realized before our eternal sleep begins. 

 

Before a dear woman from Third Christian Church passed away, she gave a young minister in her church a book to read.  If you hadn’t guessed, it was me.  I love books and am always fascinated by what others are reading and what they find to be valuable.  The title captured my imagination:  The Ghetto of Indifference.  It was written by a Quaker Pastor named Thomas J. Mullen from New Castle, Indiana and published in the year 1966.  In this work, Mullen suggests that many live in the ghetto of indifference, a place where we accept that life is just the way it is…that some suffer and others do not, that some are judged by the color of their skin or by their social status and there is just nothing we can do about it.  Listen to this excerpt from his chapter entitled, “The Christian Schizophrenic.”

 

“A group of Presbyterian elders who were also realtors in a Pittsburgh community were asked by their pastor to open the way for a cultured Negro family to purchase a home in their neighborhood.  After a lengthy discussion in which they consulted Scripture, prayed and generally agonized over a decision, they summoned their minister and reported:  “Our duty is clear.  We know that as Christian men we ought to give the word that would make it possible for this man to find a house here, but God help us, we cannot do it.  Most of us have spent a lifetime building up our businesses. The reprisals from the realty board, the banks, and certain other groups would be more than we could take and stay in business.  Not only our businesses but our families would suffer all kinds of threats and social ostracism.  We just can’t do what we ought to do as Christians.”[i]

 

Mullen was saddened by this statement.  He had a dream that everyone might be seen as a child of God, not an inconvenience or social burden.  It is interesting to me that at the same time Mullen was writing this book, another man, a “criminal” from the south, was sharing with the country his own dreams for humanity.  Some specific words from this dreamer come to mind in light of what you have just heard:  “The ultimate measure of a [person] is not where he [or she] stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he [or she] stands at times of challenge and controversy.[ii]  This man, this dreamer was Martin’s son, Martin Luther King, Junior that is.  

 

Paul is living amidst a time of challenge and controversy and because he had been on the “persecuting” side of things, he would have to stand even taller on the “loving” side of things in order to be taken seriously.  He speaks to a church in Galatia that is still trying to decide how to be the church.  Were they really just a new breed of Judaism and considered as a branch of that religion or were they to be a whole new faith movement?  When Gentiles accepted Christ, did they need to follow the laws of Judaism or was the acceptance of grace enough?   These were the questions they were facing.  In his cleanest, dirty shirt, Paul offers his dream for humanity under the Lordship of Jesus. “It’s not about separation,” Paul says, “it’s about unity. When one accepts Jesus as their Lord, when they receive the brand of the cross, they are clothed in him...we are to be one with them as well,” he says.  “There is no gentile or Jew, there is no woman or man, there is no slave or free… I have a dream…this is my dream,” says Paul. 

 

But Paul would not see his dream realized.  Hatred and bigotry would remain and he would die for his dream.  He was a martyr.  I recently read of pastor who said, “Our problem is that we no longer have martyrs.  We only have celebrities.”  He went on to say, “Most of the time, when I see Christian superstars like [the late] Jerry Falwell or Al Sharpton, I feel like I’m watching professional wrestling.  There’s a lot of shouting and sweating, but the people seem too superhuman, and I’m not convinced all the moves are real.”[iii]  I’m not trying to make a statement about the two men mentioned here but I think he makes a good point about our perceptions of the faith these days.  We don’t really have a concept of martyrdom anymore.  In many respects I am grateful for this.  I’m thankful that our lives are not threatened daily because of our faith.  I wonder if some of the ease and comfort of our faith has kept us from doing something great; kept us off the list of criminals row which from this message alone has included the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., the apostle Paul, Johnny Cash, and lest we forget our own criminal, Christ. 

 

These criminals dreamed big and made remarkable strides for those for whom they advocated. They witnessed with their own eyes strides toward equality, unity, and grace. Even so, their dreams were not fully realized in their time and they remain unrealized today.  Johnny Cash’s last music video before his death was for a song entitled “Hurt.”  In it, I think you can hear and see and feel his pain for dreams he had for life that went unrealized.  My guess is that you sit here today with unrealized dreams too.  If you are a Cubs fan, you know what I’m talking about.  Seriously, beyond our fantasies of personal fulfillment and wishful thinking, lie dreams for humanity somewhere within each of us, no matter how deep you have to dig to find them.  I imagine you dream of something better for your kids…a world that is more just, an environment that is safe for your grandchildren to enjoy, a society that provides a chance for them to succeed no matter their gender, social status, race, or otherwise.  I dream this for my little girl.  Every time we get ready to leave the house recently, Morgan says, “I wanna go to church,” and when we are actually going to the church, she cheers and claps her hands as we pull in.  I dream of this kind of Church where, as she ages, she wants to be that enthusiastically active…where the stories of faith are made real to her…where she is valued and is encouraged to be who God has created her to be.  I long for her to be concerned with the welfare of others and find the joy in making a difference in love.  As much as we dream however, I imagine some of us battle indifference, our tendency to accept that things are just the way they are and nothing can be done to change them.

 

That is “celebrity” thinking in my opinion.  We see big names doing this or that and think we can’t have that sort of influence so we don’t take any action.  We survey how small we seem and compare it to how big the issues are and decide we cannot stand.  But the process is really a simple one.  Perhaps the Psalmist says it best as he cries to God, “Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me.”  We can cry out the same simple prayer and trust God to hear us.  God sent out light and truth before us in the person of Jesus.  When asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” in other words, “What is the greatest truth?,” Jesus answered, “You want the truth? (I know, I know…you can’t handle the truth, and maybe we can’t but he offers it anyway) … the truth is love.”  Love God with all you have and love your neighbor as yourself.   That’s the truth, that’s the dream Jesus puts out before us.  You can try to draw lines of division, you can try to keep the laws, or doctrines, or other measurements of judgment…but you’ll fail every time.  As Paul says, we fall short all of the time…we can’t keep the law ourselves and yet we expect perfection from others.  But the truth is, we are, what they call in the insurance business, “habitual offenders.”  

 

We have enough to keep up with simply trying to love one another than to waste time trying to decide who’s in and who’s out, who’s gay or straight, who’s Republican or Democrat, who is Baptist or Methodist.  “You genuinely love all of those people first and then come to me with your complaints about them,” Jesus seems to say.  Jesus was not a professional wrestler.  His moves are real. He lived this truth…he followed this light.  And he ultimately steals a line from the Man in Black on his way to the cross, “Because you’re mine, I walk the line.”  Because of my love for you, I’ll take the cross.           

The way to the cross is long and can seem like it is so far away.  I’m not asking you to get to the cross in one jump but rather to face it and take a step in that direction.  Every step you take toward the cross is one step closer to realizing the dream of love, of justice, of equality.  Along the way, we pick up the dreams of Paul, Martin, and Johnny, of Mother Teresa, of a Quaker pastor from New Castle, and a little bus rider named Rosa… and, of course, the dreams of Jesus and carry them on.  We may not see the difference today but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep stepping toward love.

Perhaps I have a slight bias in this but I believe youth ministry is among the toughest places to serve in the church.  Our adult volunteers, which we call youth sponsors, offer a great deal of time and energy to our ministry.  Every year when we gear up for another year of service, I offer them the same encouragement.  “Your primary responsibility is to love these youth. They will test your patience, they will seldom (if ever) say thank you, and will occasionally make fun of your clothing and the times you say things like “totally awesome” which no one says anymore.  Through it all, genuinely love them and you will change the course of human history.”  You see, every dream started somewhere.  Some youth sponsor told Martin Luther King, Jr. that he was valuable and had a voice to share.  Some parent from the church drove Mother Teresa and the other kids from the church on her first mission trip to serve the poor.  Someone encouraged Randy Spleth to go to seminary.  Someone invited Johnny Cash to worship.  And somewhere along the line, someone showed you the love of Christ, too. 

 

Pick up the dream and run with it.  Whether you will see the dream fully realized in your lifetime is unknown; dreams this big may take an eternity to come to fruition.  But perhaps I can share with you the message I share with our youth sponsors.  Love has no set time, no exact way of measurement, but know that what we do now…how we love now…will alter the course of another life that is only realized much later.  

I remember having the opportunity to preach at my home church a few years ago on a Sunday set aside to encourage others to pursue full time ministry.  It was the second sermon I had ever preached in my life and I had just decided to attend seminary.  It had been more than five years since I had left high school and going back, I saw a number of adults who were youth sponsors during my time in youth group.  My wife as my witness, I am not a highly emotional person.  Carrie wonders if I even have tear ducts at all.  But as I preached that day, and even as I typed these words on paper this week, I welled up a little thinking of those people who loved me enough to spend time with me and the other youth, who showed me that being an adult and Christian could be fun and meaningful, who showed me that I was somebody of worth who could make something of my life.  It wasn’t until that day that I was able to truly tell them what a difference they had made in my life.  I couldn’t imagine this point in my life during my days as a youth and the sponsors who led our group couldn’t know the end results of the impact they were making daily among us but they loved us anyway.    

 

We aren’t called to see the end, only to be faithful on the journey.  It is much like the words a friend shared with me at a meeting this week.  “The results don’t come at the end of the meeting, but at the end of the age.”  Take a step toward the cross.  Don’t chase a doctrine but chase love.  In times of controversy put on your cleanest, dirty shirt and take a stand on love.  We can learn a lot from these criminals.  You never know, someday a preacher might offer a sermon entitled, “Johnny Cash, Jesus, and Other Criminals,” and that other criminal just might be you.                

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