Young Mr. Gartrell and a Problem with Arrogance – Dayspring Presbyterian Church

Worship on the Lord’s Day
10:00 am 21 July 2024
Online & Onsite (Mixed Presence) Gathering as a Worshipping Community
Led by the Rev Brad Childs
Music director: Binu Kapadia Vocalist: Ann May and Sam Malayang
Elder: Lynn Vaughan

We gather to worship God

Music prelude

Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
P: and also with you.
Lighting of the Christ candle

Welcome and announcements
Silent preparation for worship

Call to Worship
L: All God’s works give thanks to the Lord.
P: We will lift up our voices in praise.
L: The Lord is near to all who call upon God in truth.
P: We will sing of God’s power and speak of God’s loving kindness.
L: Let us worship God who is faithful in all things.
P: Let us praise God’s holy name forever.

Opening praise: Here’s my heart Lord

Prayers of approach and confession
Gracious and generous God, we gather with grateful hearts, amazed by the abundance in your creation, abundance to share in food, in friendship and in faithfulness.
We gather with hopeful hearts, seeking another taste of your love for us.
Your love is both mysterious and miraculous, O God, with the power to transform times that overwhelm us and lives that hunger for hope.
By the power of your Spirit, move among us in our worship.
Open before us the new possibilities you create for us in Christ, the Bread of life, bread for our journeys.
Gracious and Generous God, we gather each week to be fed by your love, trusting that you will embrace us.
We confess we are not nearly so generous with our love.
We are often suspicious of others, fearful of what they seek from us.
We criticize what others do, but rarely question our own motivations.
Forgive us, O God, and awaken our generosity toward others.

Response: We come to ask your forgiveness, O Lord

Assurance of God’s pardon

The Letter to the Ephesians declares that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, for we are being rooted and grounded in his love. The forgiveness he offers is a gift of this love that is wider and deeper than we can ever imagine. Receive God’s forgiveness and be at peace with God, with yourself and with one another.

Musical Offering: Sam and Ann May Malayang

We listen for the voice of God

Children’s time

Response: Open our eyes, Lord

Story: During WW2 an engineer at General Electric named James Wright was searching for a rubber substitute. In one of his experiments, he poured boric acid into a test tube filled with silicone oil and it became a soft malleable substance.

Imagine his surprise when he dropped a handful on the ground, and it bounced back. With a little more investigation, wright discovered that the substance could also be stretched, flattened, rolled and sculped into all kinds of different shapes. Around the labs, the substance became something of a novelty. It was fun. Soon many employees were taking some home to show their family, kids and friends.

Unfortunately, the new substance proved to have a rather short shelf life which made it useless for the purposes of a car. It was dismissed as interesting but worthless.

However, a writer named Peter Hodgson became interested with it and took it to a party. Hodgeson was a copywriter for a toy catalogue, had a feeling that the failed rubber substitute would make a good toy for kids.

After testing the material for safety, they packaged the stuff in little plastic eggs and added a name. Within months Silly Putty © became one of the hottest toys in American history.

Sometimes in life people can be treated as if they have no purpose but you just never know. In Jerimiah God says, “I have plans for you.” Even when you feel like you can’t do anything right or you don’t really matter – know this: You do. God has something amazing waiting for you.

Prayer: We thank you for our kids. We thank you for our parents. We thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer (535)

Transition music

Song: O love divine, how deep, how broad (205: vss 1, 2, 3, 6)

Today’s Message

Scripture reading: Ephesians 3:14-21 & Psalm 14

Response: Glory to the Father

Message: Young Mr. Gartrell and a Problem with Arrogance

A great many years ago as we were painting the upstairs youth room, when a young Will Gartrell chose to paint the first line of Psalm 14 on the wall. I had asked the youth to put someone of meaning to them on the wall. The message reads Ps 14 “A fool says in his heart there is no God.” I was thinking about that line the other day and as I started looking into it, I discovered that although I thought I knew what that meant, I really didn’t. So, I decided to talk about it today.

Atheism is on the rise these days although not as much as one might think. Poll after poll throughout the Western world actually reveals numbers for “unchurched,” “unaligned,” or “non-religious.” When I was in high school the line was generally about being “spiritual but not religious” which to me sounds more like a fortune cookie than a stance. Similarly, many friends of mine were raised Christian and love Jesus but don’t much like the church. Sometimes it’s stronger than that. A friend told me “I love Jesus, but I HATE the church”.

It’s a difficult line to balance on, no doubt, but I understand it. Still, it strikes me as a little disingenuous. The Church scripture says, is the Bride of Christ and in fact, that’s the imagery Jesus uses most often for those who love him. So it has to be asked, if someone told you that they love you but they really HATE your spouse or your child, would you trust that they mean it when they say that they love you?

I sort of doubt it.

Now of course there are people to claim no particular belief in the divine. While that idea seems to have barely existed until the 5th century CE it took on some traction in Western Europe just after the Enlightenment. So is that who this verse is talking about?

In 2005-2006 Gallup Poll surveyed many countries for their religiosity and suicide. And as it turned out, the more religious, the less suicidal. This is particularly true of teens. Teens who regularly attend worship services are significantly less likely to fall into depression (the highest rate of suicide) “Religion/Spirituality and Depression: What Can We Learn from Empirical Studies?” Dan Blazer, M.D., Ph.D. [The American Journal of Psychiatry, VOL. 169, No. 1 (1/1/12)]

Atheism isn’t all bad though – You get an extra day to play. You get to proclaim that there is no “Capital T” Truth in any real sense, so even contradictory ideas are fine. Morality exists in many forms but it’s always subject to the moment. Christianity is definitely not (or at least isn’t supposed to be) a cookie jar from which you can take what you like and leave what you don’t. To be surrendered to God through Christ is to lay down your life every day • Every Ambition • Every Relationship • Every Moral Standard • Every Value.

Plus, with Atheism — you get to keep a little extra change in your pocket. Your understanding of a possible afterlife can be whatever you want, you can reject Heaven (the idea of being in the presence of God) but hey, keep Heaven without him. Masses of people like to keep the idea that your loved ones exist on some godless plain but in some vague ways seem to believe that all the people they like get in.

Please note that Atheists aren’t bad people! And religious traditions without a deity like Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism (which is not about polytheism but rather moving beyond all possible gods to a need for none) all produce moral people. Still, I have to pick on them a little because they are a really loud squeaky wheel for such a small group.

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one.

An atheist was rowing out on the lake when suddenly the Lock Ness Monster appeared and attacked the man, grabbed him from the boat and held him high in the air about to eat. The man panicked due to the seriousness of the event and shouted, “God help me!” But just then the monster as well as everything else around the man went still. It was as if someone had just hit the pause button on all existence except for him. Next, a voice boomed from the heavens saying, “You don’t believe in me and yet now you beg for my help?” The man looked up to locate the source of the voice but found nothing discernible. So, he responded to the sky itself “Well,” said the man, “until 10 seconds ago I didn’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster either.”

Certainly, tragedy has a way of calling us home. As the adage goes: In 1954 war correspondent Ernie Pyle said, “There are no atheists in the foxholes,” And it’s generally been seen as ringing pretty true. And while famed atheist Richard Dawkins was stated that he could not guarantee he wouldn’t have a death bed change of heart he did add a section to his website for soldiers to respond to the quotes.

I’ve met a lot of people in my life, but true atheists seem to be pretty hard to find for me. When push comes to shove most people have an idea about God, they just have a hard time with a lot of other parts of religious life and particularly, specificity and structures.

As the bible makes clear, if there is no Lord we should all just “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” for death comes to all. Most troubling to me is that some individuals will never feel the same kind of peace and hope that I feel. Second to this is the idea that without a created purpose, there are no laws which can be deemed true or eternal. Everything is subject to whims, whether personal, governmental, collective and they are always temporal. We should not forget that when collections of people make their own rules we end up with Hitler and Stalin. It is the inevitable end when any society determines what is good and what is evil for itself.

Jeffery Dahmer killed 17 human beings and ate them! In a statement before his death, he said, “If a man is a product of blind chance and there is no God and there is no meaning to life then who are you to tell me what is right and wrong?” And he’s got a point. But here’s the part that’s really uncomfortable. Interestingly Dahmer made this statement to challenge another inmate. By this time he had become a Christian and had been meeting weekly with Rev. Roy Ratcliff for bible study and come to believe in Jesus, see the wrongs he had done and was baptized. And yet he had no way to put right what he had put wrong. God was his only possible refuge.

Now if you want to know how loving and forgiving God is, consider the possibility we might share heaven with sinners worse than us. But also, thank God for that possibility because if God can bring Dahmer back to the light just imagine what God can do for people who cheat on their taxes and spread rumors.

Not long ago, famous disturber and comedian Ricky Gervais went on late-night TV with Stephen Colbert and made an argument he makes quite frequently. He asked Colbert, a Sunday School teacher and practicing Roman Catholic why Colbert had rejected some 3000 other gods from Zeus to the giant spaghetti monster in the sky but accepted just one. Gervais then follows this up with a pointed statement further stating that “then I just believe in one less god than you do” to the roar of the audience. And it’s a clever line (as long as you don’t think about it much). imagine for a moment that John Smith is murdered by a man named Phil. At the court case, the lawyer for John said, “You believe Phil killed John Smith and I don’t. Well, I don’t think anybody killed Phil; he died accidentally and without any explanation. There are 8 billion people on earth, and you don’t believe that 7,999,999,999 of them didn’t killed John Smith. So, I just believe in one less murderer than you do.” Do you think people might see the problem with that line of reasoning a little clearer?

Now here’s a rather significant issue:

In ancient times, there do not appear to be any people who didn’t believe in the existence of a God. In fact, the English translations here are often lacking. Likely the author is not speaking of someone who outright rejects God’s existence so much as they have no regard for it. The idea was more like saying “There is no God for Me.” In this way, it is not really about belief and disbelief in God but rather ambivalence about the impact of such a possibility.

In addition, the term used here for God is the generic word for God “Elohim” rather than the covenant name specifically used for our God “YAHWEH.” In other words, it’s like saying, I will have none of these gods tell me what to do.

On top of that, a fool in biblical language was not a description of mental ability but of one who was morally deficient. A fool is a person who leaves God out of their consideration even if there might be one.

Another problem with the way I first read these words arises because Psalm 14:1 says, one thing but the rest of the psalm fills in the details. I am sure most of us have and can quote the first portion of the text. The second half of the verse deals with the fool’s characteristics and we can’t understand the fool until we read about the fool described in that portion. The second half of VS. 14:1 says, “THEY ARE CORRUPT, and THEIR DEEDS ARE VILE.” In verse 4 it states that they “confound the plans of the poor” meaning mistreatment and moreover rejecting the idea that God cares for them.

Again, this sounds very harsh. And at first, you might think the “They” are those who disbelieve in the existence of God and because of that do VILE things. However, the end of the verse says, “THERE IS NO ONE WHO DOES GOOD.” That’s why Psalm 10:13 says, “Why do the wicked renounce God, and say in their hearts, ‘You will not call us to account’?” It is because the wickedness proceeds the godlessness. They are wicked and SO they renounce God. This does not mean that people who say there is no God are evil. It says that evil people believe there is no God, no consequences, no laws that one cannot explain away.

Worse still, the chapter adds that “None” or “No person does good” not just the fool. Verse 3 says that when God looks on humanity God sees that “They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; none does good, no, not one.” That’s why Psalm 10:13 says, “Why do the wicked renounce God, and say in their hearts, ‘You will not call us to account’?” Why is all of this important to me? Well because the Psalmist is talking about everyone (at least at one time or another).

The psalm reveals that “Those who say there is no God” do not have a mental problem, but rather those who have a moral problem will proudly proclaim that there is no God because they get away with doing evil things. It is not that a person does not believe in God, so much as that they won’t believe in God. And considering there really weren’t many if indeed any people at this time and place of the world who didn’t believe in some or more likely a great host of gods were all evil because they rejected God, these verses must by nature speak to rejection rather than reasoned objection. The fool is instead those who are evil rejecting God so that they can enjoy sin, indulge in it, excuse it, and prefer it more than the knowledge of God.

In 1972, a song reached the Top 40 in the United States by the R&B group the Main Ingredient. The group consisted of a trio with Cuba Gooding Sr. (father of the actor), Tony Silvester and Luther Simmons Jr. Their version of the hit song “EVERYBODY PLAYS THE FOOL” rose to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the fall of 1972 and would go on to reach Certified Gold Record Status.

Some of you may know the tune. This song describes how everyone has their heart broken at some point, and the chorus goes like this:

And You Brave People! You Can Sing It with Me If So Bold.

Everybody plays the fool, sometimes
There’s no exception to the rule
It may be factual, it may be cruel, I ain’t lying
Everybody plays the fool

Today just as in the Psalmists’ time everybody plays the fool. We all mess things up and we generally do it thinking we won’t get caught – as if no Lord is not watching over us.

And that’s the big mistake I made before looking into these verses. The mistake I made before I started looking into this Psalm is that I figured a “fool” is defined as a stupid person or someone who does a senseless act or can’t admit the miracles they see each day and with their own eyes. They poke fun at, rob, and make miserable those who are trying to live obedient lives before God; they do it “as easily as they eat bread” says the Psalm.

But it’s clearly much more about arrogance than it is about belief.

–Imagine someone with an exaggerated sense of his own self-importance, maybe the richest and best-known businessman in town.

–He drives off in his car knowing he has a system full of narcotics. And he puts the pedal to the metal, driving well beyond the speed limit.

–His friend is with him. His friend says: “You’d better watch out, or the police will catch you!” “Huh!” says the driver roughly, “There are no police, at least none who would dare to give me a ticket.” It’s not so much that the man doesn’t believe police exist, it is that he discounts them. He knows the laws, but he’s flaunting them and disregarding those whose job is to enforce them.

“They don’t count. They won’t change what I want to do,” he says. But someday if he doesn’t crash and die first, his luck is gonna run out.

This Psalm likewise addresses the dangerous folly of those who deny God, who live as they please, believing neither God nor anyone else will ever hold them to account.

But don’t we all do that to some extent? I know I do.

Now just in case it isn’t clear by now, I am not saying, in fact, I am not saying because the text is not saying, that people who don’t believe in God are all kinds of evil. That’s not it. And if you meet a kind atheist, please don’t attempt to argue them into faith. It wastes their time, and your time and makes us all look silly. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to ask them about the kind of god that they don’t believe in because chances are, you won’t believe in that kind of god either. Try it and see. And really listen and feel free to tell them about the God you do believe in. But just leave it at that and afterward, close your one mouth and open your two ears and keep listening closely asking them to share more.

Do you know the origins of the word fool? The English words “fool,” and “folly,” come from the Latin “follis,” which means “bellows.” It described a person’s puffed-up cheeks. Follis indicates that a fool is what some might call a windbag. I kind of like that image.

In the end, it is a fool who says there is no God because the fool knows deep down that there is but chooses to act as if there is not. And her is the really hard part: to some extent that’s all of us; that’s why the verse reads “none are good, not even one”. Because everybody plays the fool, sometimes. Our job is to make those foolish moments as few and far between as possible. Amen.

Song: We have an anchor

We respond to serve God: Our time of giving

Reflection on giving: The story of Jesus feeding the crowd with a few loaves and fishes is a parable of God’s power to multiply our gifts offered in Jesus’ name. So make your offering to God as you are able, and trust that God will create abundance from what we have to give.

Prayer of gratitude and for others and ourselves

God of mystery and miracle, You offer calm in our storms and challenge in our satisfaction. We give you thanks for all the ways we have tasted your abundance, in friendship and fellowship, in food on our tables and protection on our streets.

Amid these everyday satisfactions, keep us mindful of those who lack the necessities of life and who find each day unpredictable and anxious.

Like Jesus’ disciples caught on the rocky sea, we fear the storms of life.

In the unrest around us, call out to us.