Westwood Presbyterian Church

September 28th, 2008

197 Browning  Boulevard, Winnipeg, Manitoba  R3K 0L1

REV. PETER BUSH's SERMONS

Principles for Successful Living 3: "Play the Movie" - Joshua 2; Matthew 7: 24-27.

 

     One year when I was on staff at a summer camp, the program director wanted to have a “Knights of the Roundtable” theme. So we built a plywood castle and a sword in the stone, but as we all know every self-respecting knight has to battle dragon and every dragon worth fighting is fire-breathing. So five of us set out to build a fire-breathing dragon. We built a paper mache head with a hole for the mouth, and we used an old nylon tent with the floor torn out for the body – and it would take two people to operate this dragon. How to make this creature fire-breathing? Someone in the group got the bright idea of taking a heavy duty Windex bottle, filling it with gasoline – then twisting a coat hanger in such a way that we could put some cloth soaked in gasoline out in front of the nozzle of the Windex bottle. We would light the cloth and then when the nozzle was depressed it would shoot gasoline through the flame and voila you would have shooting flame. We built the thing and we could get 3 feet of flame – it was very cool.

     Only one problem – the flame thrower only worked if the wind was behind you. If you sprayed the gas as you walked into the wind – the flame worked its way back to the nozzle and then you had a problem. We learned that by trying it once going into the wind – and we nearly blew ourselves up. One of the guys building the dragon, was in chemistry at university, he worked out that if the gas in the Windex bottle had ignited there would have been a hole 50 feet across and 5 feet deep left where we have been standing.

     We had not thought of the consequences of our actions – we had not played the movie forward of what could happen.

 

     To live a successful life we need to think through the consequences of our actions – or our inaction. We need to play forward the movie of what could happen.

     Rahab, part of whose story we read from Joshua this morning, played the movie. She in fact played two movies in her mind. She told the spies that everyone in Jericho was afraid, afraid because they had all heard about what had happened to the other peoples who had tried to prevent Israel from moving to the Promised Land. Everyone in Jericho had played the movie, the movie that involved the destruction of Jericho when the Israelites attacked.

     We are good at playing these negative movies – we run those movies for our kids all the time.  If you leave the tap running you will waste water and Shoal Lake will run dry and all the fish will die, and then those who fish on the lake fish won’t have work and that means taxes will go up, and then the government will go broke, and life as we know it will end – all because you left the tap running. I realize I am being ridiculous – but we all know how the stories go – we can play the movie of what terrible things will happen.

     But Rahab had not only played the negative movie – she had also played the positive movie. She had run a movie that began with her finding a way to connect with the people of Israel, a movie in which she survived. She realized that the only way to survive was to help the spies, risky as that was, dangerous as that was, it was the only option she had. She knew that because she had played the movie in her head. She had looked at the consequences of the two courses open to her – the one of doing nothing and the other one of building a connection with the people of Israel. Only one of the movies had a happy ending – and that was the movie she chose to live her life by.

 

     Successful living means playing the movie – it means thinking through what the consequences of our actions are before we take a step. Think through you life – how many times have you recognized, “If I had thought about how they were going to react I would have not said what I did.” Sometimes we speak without having thought about how someone else would react.

     At times playing the movie – thinking through the consequences will stop us from doing things. We will discover that silence truly is golden; because opening our mouths would have created problems we want no part of – problems and consequences worse than biting our tongue. 

     In other situations it is not what we did that we re-think – it is what we didn’t do. We chose not to intervene on behalf of someone – taking the path of least resistance – going along with the crowd – and now we wish we had had the guts to stand up. At times when we play the movie – when we think ahead about what could happen – we realize that we are called to take action.

     In these situations inaction while safe for us does not help those who are in trouble, which often means the situation will rebound on us. The famous lines from Pastor Martin Niemoller speak of the power of playing that particular movie, recognizing the consequences of not acting:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

     Playing the movie forces us to see our actions and our words in a larger context – in a context bigger than just the here and now – for the words we speak have the potential to be of long-term consequence – the actions I take now could impact me or those around me for a very long time.

     That is part of what Jesus is saying in the story about the two houses. The one built on a rock foundation and the other built on sand. To build on rock is not easy, it takes a lot of work – hard digging, and the foundation is not something that people are going to complement you on. People are not going to drive up to your house and say, “What a beautiful foundation your house has – good and solid.” No, the compliments come for the things that people can see – the part above ground.

     Building on sand is not hard work – no digging involved.

     On the surface it is so much easier to build on sand – less effort, less work, it is just easier. But when we play the movie, there is a different story. Because if we think ahead to the storm – to what happens when the dry river bed becomes a raging torrent and water gets up on the flood plain. Then all the hard work of putting in that beautiful foundation seems worthwhile. And not having dug deeper, worked harder, seems so foolish to those whose houses were simply built on sand. But that is only if we have the foresight to play the movie.

 

     All around us people are playing the movie and making decisions – tough decisions – because they see a different future possible.

We know people who have played two movies – one in which they stay in a dead-end job, and they don’t like where that movie goes and another movie that involves going back to school to train for something that will be more satisfying.

We know people who are choosing to make changes to their lifestyle – making changes that will protect the environment. Because they have played two movies – one in which the challenges facing our world grow worse and worse – and another where the environmental changes are slowed because of the decision they have made.

We know people who were addicted to drugs or alcohol and who played two movies in their minds – one that ended with the loss of everything they had and death and another movie that involved recovery. They made tough choices, deciding to turn their lives around.

 

     Playing the movie of where we want to go, who we want to be, of what we would like to see happen – helps keep us committed to the goal – helps us to stay focused. Playing the movie helps us stay disciplined to doing the hard work – taking the risks – of keeping headed towards the end we have in view.

 

     When we get discouraged – when the hard work of staying committed to the goal feels like it is too much – when we feel like walking away from the risks involved in taking bold new steps – that is when we need to recognize that our little movie is being played against the background of a much larger movie. God has a movie that He is running – a movie that we know the ending of. For God is in the business of building His kingdom – building a kingdom where right and justice exist – a kingdom sickness and sorrow are no more – where tears are wiped from every eye – where the destructive powers of this world have been overthrown – where all that would hurt or divide has been destroyed. That is the kingdom that God is building – and we can start to see glimpses of that kingdom growing – we can see the foundations being laid – the building being built. It is a movie that has the cross and the resurrection as part of the footage – reminders of the power of God to bring about transformation and renewal beyond our wildest imaginings.

     And the movies of our lives are played against the background of that greater movie. We have the opportunity to see our movies integrated into that masterpiece that God is creating. As we play forward the movies of our lives we have a choice to make – do we want our movies to fit against that background that God is making.

 

     When we watch a movie, we know that there is going to be an end. As we play the movie of our lives – we need to ask ourselves what do we want the end to look like – we need to live with the end always in view. But a movie is not made up just of an ending – through a movie the characters make decisions and choices that build towards that end – each choice, each decision, each situation fits into the end. So in our lives each choice, each decision, builds towards the end.

     The big moments of life have been prepared by the dozens of small decisions that were made earlier in life. We are invited to be wise people playing forward the movies that flow from the ordinary decisions of our lives. We are invited to make those decision in the light of the movie that God is creating and the end that His movie is headed towards.

 

(This sermon is part of series using ideas taken from Henry Cloud’s 9 Things You Simply Must Do (Thomas Nelson, 2004).)