Texts: Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
YOUTH SUNDAY
I am so glad to be here with you this morning! Please raise your hand if you know that God loves you! God loves you very much, and God wants to teach you many things so that you can lead a good, full, and joyful life.
And do you know what? God led me to bring this rock, this stone, with me this morning. There are a lot of things that we can learn from rocks like this. But there are just 3 things today that I want to teach you today from this rock.
We just heard the words of St. Paul and the Lord Jesus in our readings today, and both of them were warning us that we need to be careful about how we live. If we’re not careful, we will make a lot of bad choices which will hurt us.
Did you know that the people in Jesus’ time were constantly fighting with the Romans? (A lot like Iraq today, where this are bombing and attacks every day and people are being killed every day.) It was a bad situation and a lot of people were killed by the Roman soldiers all the time. Well, Jesus taught them that if they don’t change and stop fighting with the Romans, then their entire nation was going to be destroyed! Jesus taught them that they need to stop being angry at the Romans and instead to pray for them!
For 2000 years now, the Church has been learning how to follow all that Jesus taught and they have left us a lot of good stories to teach us.
(This story is from The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers by Thomas Merton)
One good story from some wise Christian saints about the stupidity of acting like the people were acting in Jesus’ time. It is about St. Anthony, a very wise man who lived in the deserts of Egypt.
Let’s try it ourselves, shall we? Why don’t you take turns insulting the rock? We won’t beat it or hit it, but just yell at it. “You’re stupid!” “You’re an idiot!” “You’re ugly!”
It’s really pretty stupid to do this, isn’t it? Jesus tells us that this is what we are like when we are angry and fight all the time. We can never win, we can never be happy living that way. And even more, if we keep fighting and yelling all the time, then we are the ones who are going to get hurt!
But do you know what’s even more interesting, I think? St. Anthony ended his teaching story in a very different way. Do you know what he told his student?
“Then Abbot Anthony said: ‘You too must reach the point where you no longer take offense at anything.’”
He said, you must become like this rock! So that if people say nasty things to you or try to hurt you with their words, then – just like this rock – you can continue on and not be bothered at all!
You could yell at this rock every day and you’re not going to hurt it at all! People who love Jesus and follow him become like that! People can try to hurt us every day, but they can’t really hurt us at all. Because we’re strong! And we know who we are! We know that God loves us, no matter what anyone else might think.
And do you know how you and I can become that way? Become as strong as this rock?
We can become strong like this because Jesus is the rock!
St Paul said that the Israelites all “drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Jesus Christ.” Jesus is the Rock.
There’s an old song that goes like this: “On Christ the solid rock I stand! All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”
We need to turn to God to receive great strength. Everything that we could need is there. Grow in stillness (apatheia), which is contentment and peace.
A good way to start is by simply learning how to pray small little prayers all throughout your day, whenever you need any kind of help. “Jesus, help me.” “Jesus, guide me.” “Jesus, make me strong.” When we learn to really listen to what Jesus teaches us and ask him to help us, then we will become so strong that no one can ever really hurt us, because Jesus the Rock keeps us safe.
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