April 15, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

“Jazz at Four” Sermon

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Romans 1:8–17

If you’re anything like me, you often find yourself wondering when life is going to get easier and it will begin to feel like there is more time in the day. Does any of this sound familiar to you? “I can’t wait until I’m done with ____.” “At least next week will be easier.” “When I get through x, things will calm down.” So often it doesn’t turn out that way. I’m guilty just like anyone else. Last Sunday was Easter, the end of one of the busiest seasons of my year, and so you would think this week would have been easy, but it didn’t feel that way. I took Monday off, but the rest of the week I was playing catch up, working a little too late each night, trying to get ready to be out of the country on a mission trip I leave for in a week. Things just kept piling up. By the end of the week, I found I was nodding my head as I talked with a friend who made a comment, like some of those others I mentioned, one I’ve heard plenty of times before: “I wish I could just do my job”—meaning that administration and personnel and budget issues and a lot of other junk keeps us, even those of us who really enjoy our work, from finding meaning in it.

So I began to wonder about this problem over the course of the week—how do we find more meaning in our daily tasks, especially at times when there are so many of those tasks and we feel like we’re just running from one of them to the next? Because I’m a minister, I looked for signs of that same kind of thinking in the Bible. I don’t just do this because I’m a minister, though; I do it because I assume that if I’m thinking about some problem and I can find it in the Bible, expressed by someone living 2,000 years ago in a totally different culture, it must really be a pervasive issue of human existence, and maybe there’s a take on it that will be helpful.

Well, I did find it. Wondering about this question of finding meaning in our everyday struggles, I landed in kind of an unexpected place. It’s not a parable from Jesus or a proverb from the wisdom literature, but rather the introduction to Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Many of you may know that much of the New Testament is made up of letters, written from someone to another person or group, and as you would expect, before getting into the real purpose of the letter, there is an introduction, a greeting. I’m going to read you part of that greeting:

First of all, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because the news about your faithfulness is being spread throughout the whole world. I serve God in my spirit by preaching the good news about God’s Son, and God is my witness that I continually mention you in all my prayers. I’m always asking that somehow, by God’s will, I might succeed in visiting you at last. I really want to see you to pass along some spiritual gift to you so that you can be strengthened. What I mean is that we can mutually encourage each other while I am with you. We can be encouraged by the faithfulness we find in each other, both your faithfulness and mine. (Romans 1:8–12, Common English Bible)

We are sometimes inclined to think that the world was a simpler place long ago, and certainly in some respects it was, but here we see Paul struggling with the same thing we often do—not enough time to do his job; he can’t get there to be in conversation with people. Have you been there—not enough time to make the trip, or even to make a phone call to a person you care about? Listen as I read how Paul plans to deal with it.

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I planned to visit you many times, although I have been prevented from coming until now. I want to harvest some fruit among you, just as I have done among the other Gentiles. I have a responsibility both to Greeks and to those who don’t speak Greek, both to the wise and to the foolish.

That’s why I’m ready to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith. (Romans 1:13–17)

In this passage, I hear Paul saying, “I know what the most important part of my job is supposed to be.” He knows there is good news about Jesus to share—salvation and encouragement for all who need it. We often move past the earlier part of his message, the introduction, and miss what I think may be an important point: Paul is taking the time to write this letter because he’s not sure if he’ll make it to Rome, he doesn’t know exactly how the next week or month or year is going to go, so he has drawn a conclusion: he is at least going to slow down long enough to communicate with his friends in Rome through this letter, doing the best that he can, and the reason why he is doing that is back in the earlier verses I read: “I really want to see you to pass along some spiritual gift to you so that you can be strengthened. What I mean is that we can mutually encourage each other while I am with you. We can be encouraged by the faithfulness we find in each other, both your faithfulness and mine.”

“I really want us to encourage one another,” says Paul. In the midst of this life where there is often so much going on so fast, let’s do the best we can and share encouraging words with one another to help us as we struggle along on the journey through life.

The takeaway, I think, is that because life doesn’t always slow down enough for us to make separate time for God by carving out tons of time for church or meditation or reflection, it’s important to look for God not just at church but everywhere you go in life. Next week, next month, next year, may feel hectic as well, so you have to start today, looking for the poetry in life, which begs the question, how would you do that?

The answer is an idea that isn’t easy to explain, but I found a poem that expresses it. Now most people will tell you not to read an entire poem as part of a sermon because it’s not always easy to track with a poem when you hear it out loud, but this one is particularly visual, I think you can really see in your minds’ eye what is going on. The poem is by Longfellow, and in it, he watches the way a blacksmith goes about his life, finding meaning in the mundane, everyday things he does, and Longfellow is so taken by it that he writes this poem, and he thanks the blacksmith for his example of how to live.

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And watch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!

(“The Village Blacksmith,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

At the end of this poem, the poet says, “thank you,” and I found myself asking, thank you for what? No answer has been given, no burden removed, no freedom from the cycle of work that is sometimes interrupted by rest but always returns to work again. Then I thought, perhaps that non-answer is the answer.

Like Paul, the poet is under no illusion that the burden will go away. He doesn’t say, as so many of us do, “Oh, next week will be totally different.” Instead, he has found a way to embrace the life he has, enjoying the poetry to be found along the way.

The Lord’s Supper is another metaphor for this kind of living. A lot of people think the big thing to understand about the Lord’s Supper is what happens to the bread and wine. Does it turn into Jesus’ literal body and blood? Is it just a symbol? Theologians have argued about this for centuries, without anyone ever really figuring it out. One of those theologians, John Calvin, made a good contribution along the way by saying that in Communion it’s not the bread and wine that are changed, but the people who receive it. The bread and wine are for our benefit. Communion is here to change us.

You’ll notice that we take the Lord’s Supper again and again, because the idea isn’t that this meal changes us forever, once and for all. As long as we’re living, we’re always going to need to come back again and again, hungry.

So we come to this table with one another, fellow travelers along the journey of life, who show one another, as the blacksmith showed to Longfellow and as the Romans showed to Paul, that we are not alone along this often busy and frustrating road and that when we do see God working in our lives, we should slow down enough to enjoy it.

My challenge to you this week is this: go out into the world and find those moments of enjoyment in your life, where you see God at work in the world. Take notice of those things; slow down, enjoy them, and share them with one another. I invite you to share something you find with me—send me an email this week and tell me where you saw God at work while you were on the lookout. And I will do my best, in faith, to keep sharing those moments with you.

Let us pray: Gracious God, open our hearts and minds to the poetry that surrounds us and reminds us of the sacredness of life. May we be moved and nurtured and challenged by life. May we find joy in the happiness of a loved one. May we notice the suffering of others and do something about it. May we remember each new day for the gift that it is. And may we remember to be thankful. Amen.