Call to Worship: Helen Keller
As the heat is in the sun,
As the scent is in the flower,
As the light is in my darkness,
As the voice is in my silence,
So may God be in me.
Unison Prayer
May we be good soil.
May we be fertile earth.
May God’s seeds sprout within us.
May we produce good fruit.
May we become God’s garden.
May we become God’s field.
Amen.
Words of Assurance: 1 Corinthians 3:16, NLT paraphrased
One person plants the seed, and another waters it, but God makes it grow.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil;
for thine is the kingdom,
and the power,
and the glory forever.
Amen.
Opening Song: Building 429, “Press On”
Scripture Reading: Philippians 3:13-14, NIV abb.
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Sunday Sermon
Note: This sermon has been updated following Saturday night’s win!
We begin with a report on Annual Conference, which took place in Stamford this past week.
In his State of the Church address, the Bishop’s said that our conference is in big trouble. This year we have 389 churches, down from 409 last year, and many more are in danger of closing. We have a shortage of pastors, which is why so many are serving more than one church; and we have a shortage of office help, which is why our Conference just merged with another Conference and why it’s hard to get anyone above us to answer a phone call. And we have a shortage of funding, and the Bishop estimated the Conference will run out of reserves in eight years. And we have a shortage of youth and young people.
The Bishop admitted that Cooperative Parishes are a last ditch effort to save what is left of the United Methodist Church by getting churches that won’t merge to work together to save time and resources. He said like it or not, this is our future.
All of this may seem surprising because our church is a bit insulated from these problems. We’re one of the increasingly rare exceptions to the rule. We’re a healthy church, with solid attendance, stable giving, positive energy, active missions, great volunteers and a sense that things are going in the right direction. We’ll be healthy for a while. Our new Cooperative Parish is just us, St. Paul’s and Northport, three churches, each with their own pastor. But as of July 1, right next to us will be four churches – Commack, Dix Hills, West Hills and Huntington-Cold Spring Harbor – sharing Won Tack and Roslyn, a married pastoral couple who will be in need of our prayers.
The Bishop’s told us that everything is terrible, we’re all going to get old and die and our property will be sold but at least we’ll be in heaven. Then he said some nice things about John Wesley and how the church is doing well in Africa and the Philippines and how God is still good and we must love each other and end racism and listen to people who are different from us. And then everyone but me went to the $45 lunch.
And this brings us to today’s sermon, because through all of this I kept thinking, “Bishop, how can you not be talking about the Knicks?!!! Because seriously I have not been able to think about anything else this week. We studied today’s Scripture on Wednesday morning and printed the bulletin on Wednesday afternoon, and the Scripture says, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize. And THAT NIGHT, the Knicks, who had already done things in the playoffs that no other team had ever done, came back from a 29-point deficit, the first time this has ever happened in the Finals, and a 27-point halftime deficit, the first time this has ever happened in the playoffs, and won the game by 1 point with 1.2 seconds left.
According to statistical analysts, the chances of this happening were … zero.
Since then I’ve watched the second half of the game multiple times. I’ve watched it from different angles. I’ve watched it with TV announcers and radio announcers and Knicks announcers and Spurs announcers and no announcers, just crowd noise. I’ve watched slow motion replays and music videos of the highlights and listened to three hours of talk radio on the way to Annual Conference and watched interviews and read tweets and have been obsessed.
So at Annual Conference, I’m like, Bishop, did you not see the Knicks game last night?
Because this is where sports and religion meet. Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize. What did this mean to the Knicks? Forgetting they were down so bad that no one in history had crawled out of a hole so deep. Putting the first half behind them. Putting everything behind them. All the doubt, all the mistakes, all the missed throws and blown coverage, all the chatter, all the noise.
The Knicks had already come back from 22 down in a prior game. Then they came back from 29 down. Last night, they were down 15. They had the worst first half of their entire season. The referees seemed to be on the other team’s side. And then they came back again, because by now they knew they could. And now they are the champions.
Mitchell Robinson publicly confessed that he had been going through mental health problems and praying for just one thing to go his way, and then it did. He thanked his teammates for not considering him a liability, but a friend.
According to the website Manhattan Wellness, each of the starting five has something to teach about mental health. Jalen Brunson offers consistency, giving the same effort whether the team is up or down. You may have seen him praying before each game. Last night he took control of the game because he knew he had to. After the Knicks won the championship, he went straight to the other bench to shake the hand of the opposing coach. In a post-game interview, he credited his father for his work ethic. He said that if you keep putting in the work, you never know what might happen. Mikal Bridges has had to come back again and again after defeats in his life, putting the past behind him and straining toward what is ahead. OG Anunoby (who my friend’s wife calls “Obi-Wan Kenobi”) is even-tempered, deflecting praise in post-game interviews, giving credit to his team. He told Scott Van Pelt that the team said they were always positive, no matter what the score, telling each other, “just stay with it, keep pushing, get it down to 20, get it down to 16, get it down to 12,” which is just like today’s Scripture. Karl-Anthony Townes talks frequently about his mother, whom he lost from COVID, and wears his grief on his sleeve. Josh Hart “takes care of everyone and never complains.” With a minute to go in Game 4, he missed a crucial shot that could have cost the Knicks the game and maybe the championship, but OG Anunoby bailed him out. Hart said, “he saved me from a lifetime of regret.”
This is what keeps many of us from pressing on: a lifetime of regret. Many Knicks fans turned Game 4 off because they knew the Knicks couldn’t win, because no team had ever won in these circumstances. Some even left the Garden and their $7000 seats. And yes, the chances were zero.
I know you are expecting this, and I will not disappoint you. Do you know of anyone who was hanging on a cross, completely dead, and whose chances of coming back were zero, and who came back anyway?
They didn’t have sports betting back then, but if they did, I’ll bet nobody had Jesus in three.
One of the most often quoted lines in sports is “so you’re telling me there’s a chance.” But it doesn’t come from sports; it comes from the movie “Dumb and Dumber.” Lloyd wants to go out with Mary, and asks her to level with him. “What are my chances?” he asks. “Not good,” she says. “You mean like one out of a hundred?” he asks? “More like one out of a million,” she replies. To which he says, “So you’re tellin’ me there’s a chance!”
When Jesus came back, the disciples “couldn’t believe, they were so filled with joy and wonder.” When the Knicks came back, they gave the city what The New York Times is calling “impossible joy.”
We are tempted to give up on other people. We are tempted to give up on the country, on politics, on peace, on the world ever getting it right. We remember bad things that happened to us, and to protect ourselves, we withdraw. I had a couple in a former church who had been seeing each other for 17 years, and he’d been proposing for 14 years, and she kept saying “I was hurt once before.” We let the past hold us back and weigh us down. We fail so many times we stop trying. We say, “I can’t get out of this hole; it’s too deep.” Meanwhile someone else, somewhere else, has been in a deeper hole and already gotten out.
Paul says, “Press on.” Press on through all the trauma and all the hurt and all the pain. Press on through all the worry and the anxiety and the fear. As the choir just sang this morning, “Walk on through the wind. Walk on through the rain, though your dreams be tossed and blown.” The past is like a winter coat you’re still wearing in the summer. It is time to let it go. Run straight toward that goal, which is the call to the life above. You may think, “I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’ve messed up too much already, I know I’m going to mess up again.” Who’s saying these words? It’s not God. God is saying something else. God is saying there’s a chance. God is saying miracles happen on a daily basis. God is saying, “Press on to impossible joy.”
I’m going to close with a story from a former church. A couple had invited me over for dinner. Usually when this happens, the host asks if the guest has any food allergies or things they don’t like. They didn’t ask, and they served spinach liver quiche. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. Spinach liver quiche is VERY NOT GOOD.
But on the stove I saw a fresh baked cherry pie. It looked delicious. I wanted that cherry pie. I wanted that cherry pie now. But in order to get that cherry pie, I was going to have to press on. And I did. And it was hard. But it was worth it. And for obvious reasons I could not share this story in that church, but I can share it in this church. Sometimes life is like a spinach liver quiche. And some people’s entire lives are like this quiche. There is no getting around it, there is no sugar-coating it, it is just bad. But heaven is like this pie. And if we just bear with it, push through it, knowing we’ve got to go through the bad thing to get to the good thing, we just do it. We press on toward the goal to win the prize.
May God bless us as we press on, and fill us with impossible joy. Amen.
Closing Song: Bob Dylan, “Pressing On”
Benediction: Hebrews 12:1-2, NIV
Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.
And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
Centerport United Methodist Church 