How many of you remember ever receiving a chain letter? Chances are, if you are over fifty like I am, you do. I asked my twenty-five year old son if he had ever received a chain letter and he said he’d never heard of them. I asked him if he ever received a piece of junk email, and he said, “I get that stuff every day!” How many of you do also?
The Internet resurrected the old device of chain letters and fed them steroids! The emails say they are from Microsoft, Mickey Mouse, or some Missionary in Africa! We live in a world of forwarded email, “spam,” scams, hoaxes, viruses, and spy ware! The numbers alone are overwhelming. Analysts say that 40% of the estimated 30 billion emails sent each day are junk mail! US businesses lose $10 billion annually just dealing with junk mail, viruses, and hoaxes.
Chain letters that promise financial return are illegal and predatory. They also are mathematically impossible! By the time you get the payoff, over 11 million people would have to participate! It doesn’t take a math professor to know that just won’t work. Why do people fall for it? Simple. Money and greed.
It isn’t just money that motivates this kind of stuff. Every year I have been a minister I have had someone ask me about a petition to the FCC from famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair to eliminate religious programming from TV and radio. Have you seen one?
The problem is – it never happened! There was a petition presented to the FCC in 1974 by two other persons, which was denied over thirty years ago.
There was a version which was circulating in 2004 when I came here which mentioned her efforts to cancel the television program "Touched by an Angel.” I told the person who gave it to me that there were several problems!
1) After nine seasons, “Touched by an Angel” was cancelled by CBS in 2003!
2) The whole Madalyn Murray O’Hair petition thing was a hoax.
3) Madalyn had been missing along with $500,000, since 1995.
4) She was incapable of a petition since she was found dead in 2001!
I got an email about that petition last week! Go figure - some things never die!
It isn’t just our mailboxes and computers. There is a whole category of businesses based on the system of signing up people who sign up others -- called “Multi- Level Marketing.” It is pervasive in our culture, and it isn’t always on the level. Televangelist Pat Robertson was investigated for using MLM to build his personal fortune by selling vitamin coupons to the elderly.
Now some such companies are legitimate. Some of you here today have hosted an Amway, cosmetics, or home interiors or “Stampin’ Up” or Tupperware party. For the Tupperware people, I just have this question. “Is there some way to organize Tupperware so it will stop reproducing in my cupboards?” Every time I look in there, new Tupperware comes flying out!
But here’s my caution. When something promises “something for nothing;” when the main focus is how it can make you money; when there is a lot of talk about uplines and downlines; when it sounds too good to be true; be careful!
A decade ago a United Methodist Theological Seminary and other charities were defrauded in the largest Pyramid schemes in history by the Foundation for
New Era Philanthropy of Charles Bennett. By the time it collapsed in 1995, it raised over $500 million from 1100 donors and stolen $135 million of this.
The thefts would have grown much larger if not for a diligent accounting teacher at little Spring Arbor College in Michigan who knew something was wrong. He knew that a college or a life cannot be founded on greed.
Who suffered? I won’t read the whole list. It is frightening and embarrassing.
I reads like a “Who’s Who” of charities, colleges and foundations.
Princeton, Harvard, The Nature Conservancy, Laurance Rockefeller, Wheaton College, Pat Boone, Raytheon, American Red Cross, Central College in McPherson, Kan., Eastern College in Pennsylvania, Focus on the Family, Fuller Seminary, Inter-Varsity Fellowship, Mission Aviation Fellowship, Moody Bible Institute, Salvation Army, United Theological Seminary, World Impact, World Vision, Youth for Christ, and hundreds of other Christian charities.
What chain letters, many multi-level marketers and pyramid schemes have in common is this. They appeal to greed. It is the theology of Wall Street. In that film, Michael Douglas’ character, Gordon Gecko delivers this speech,
“…greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit… …and greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save (this company), but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
The problem is, though that philosophy is popular, and even pervasive, it is fundamentally false. Greed leads to incredible evil. “Wall Street” was prophetic.
Ivan Boesky, David Brace and Faith Metro Church in Wichita, ENRON, EXXON, AIG, WORLDCOM, HALLIBURTON, MORGAN STANLEY - you fill in the names of the companies and individuals who have been indicted.
On the other side of the theological equation is the Gospel, as practiced by Jesus and circulated in a different kind of chain letter by the Apostle Paul.
Two thirds of the New Testament comes from him, from his Missionary Journeys and his, for lack of a better phrase, “Letters and Papers from prison.” His letters, which we count as Biblical truth, circulated from prison. They changed the world and the people in it. He wrote to places like Philippi, Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus, and Rome. I have been there.
“Pray for me,” he wrote from prison, “so that when I speak, I may make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.”
And he did make the Gospel known, sometimes at great cost. He was imprisoned multiple times for his witness to Christ -- in Jerusalem, Caesarea Philippi, in Rome, under house arrest and then again in Rome at his death.
Ann and I visited two Churches in Rome that commemorated St Paul. The first was St John Lateran. The heads of Peter and Paul are enshrined there. That seems a little creepy, but hey, it is an Italian Catholic kind of thing!
The second is St. Paul Outside the Walls. Only a year ago was St. Paul’s actual tomb discovered there. It is sort of like saying “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”
The New Testament doesn’t really tell us how and when Paul died. The Book of Acts ends with a cliffhanger: Paul is under house arrest in Rome while awaiting trial. What happened next, Luke didn’t say. Bishop Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthians in AD 96, tells us he was executed by the Romans and beheaded thirty years earlier in AD 66.
St. Paul, after Jesus himself, is the second most important figure in the history of Christianity. After his conversion on the road to Damascus, became the one who spread Christianity to the Gentiles. II Timothy, from which our text is taken today, was written from his jail cell in Rome shortly before his death.
In many ways, it is “Paul’s last will and testament.” His own words at the end of this epistle reveal this, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” He was writing to his protégé, Timothy, who was pastoring in Ephesus. Paul was writing to exhort him to hold fast to what he had received and to continue to be faithful.
It contains an indispensable message for every believer who is serious about fulfilling the ministry that God has entrusted to each of us today.
His words are powerful…
• In 1:8, “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God.”
• Look at 1:9 “(He has) saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.”
• 1:12: “…I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.
• In 2:15, he invites Timothy to that same standard, “present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed”
His message endures. It is a challenge to us today to live by that standard.
The Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls was first built in the fourth century by Constantine over the place Paul was buried. But, through the centuries, the church declined and decayed. The marshlands around it turned into ugly swamps. In 1823, it burned to the ground. Church leaders were able to rebuild St. Paul’s, but the grandeur of the ancient basilica is now gone.
What happened to this building is what can happen to our faith: It can decay inside us. In fact, that’s what has happened to the faith of countless individuals and even churches. It happens when the purposes of our lives turn inward. It happens when we make the Gospel a program for our prosperity.
But it does not need to be that way. Let me share a story with you. Two men were flying to Orlando from California and met on an airplane. After exchanging pleasantries, conversation turned to the needs of their community.
One of them was a pastor who shared his vision for a soup kitchen just starting up in downtown Orlando. He also told of local churches that had been helping people with finances, pantry items and clothing and expressed his concern that ministry might die if they didn’t find the support they needed.
The other man was a local restaurateur. He shared his heart with the pastor and told of a time when he was hungry and someone helped him. He was reminded of the promise he made to God to someday repay this act of kindness. Each man was at crossroads in his life, 30,000 feet in the air.
Within a few weeks, a ministry called Daily Bread was organized and sponsored with food from one of Orlando’s most prestigious restaurants. Churches supplied volunteers. A staff was funded to help organize this task. And, lives were touched ... one meal at a time. Within nine years, more than 900,000 meals were served by Daily Bread. Thirty years later the lives of millions of people are changed forever because of what God did 30,000 feet in the air.
The two men on the airplane were Dr. Howard Chadwick, Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Orlando and the restaurateur Champ Williams, owner of Skyline Restaurants, the largest restaurant chain in central Florida.
Dr. Chadwick built one of the great urban churches in America in downtown Orlando with that kind of vision. He also was my childhood pastor.
He confirmed me at Central Presbyterian Church in Kansas City. That day he whispered a word from Scripture in my ear that changed my life forever. It was Matthew 5:16. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
As Paul wrote in his letters, we are to live in such a way that we give God all the glory, so we can say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Dr. Chadwick is now old. He is in his 90’s – the age I hope to sometime be. He gave his life in a way that mattered. He was not ashamed of the gospel
You and I have to choose how we live. Do we live for ourselves, seeking every way we can to build our economic and life security? Or do we live for him?
If you are going to live for something, live for something that matters more than money. More than fame. More than security. Live in such a way that you can say “I am not ashamed of the Gospel!”
Paul says “I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to keep me until that day when I see him face to face!”
There is a phrase for this way of life In Latin it is this: “Soli Deo Gloria.” It means “To God Alone Be the Glory.” That’s how to truly live! Amen.
