Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Bear One Another's Burdens"
Date: July 8, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Galatians 6:1-10

Three weekends ago, we met up for a tour of Boston with our closest friends from my former church in upstate New York.  In the late 1970s, Loree was the chair of the Board of Deacons, analogous to our Worship Commission.  We used to meet for lunch once a month to discuss the upcoming agenda, much as I still meet with our Worship chairs nowadays, albeit without the lunch!

While in Boston, Loree reminded me of something I had said to her long ago.  She, like many people, wondered how I come up with a sermon every week.  While I don’t remember my reply nearly thirty years later, she did.  She recalls that I said in answer to her question, “Oh, I have more topics than I could possibly preach on.”

I pondered that statement as I looked at the lectionary readings for today.  I was drawn to—and kept coming back to—a particular phrase in the closing chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, after which I titled my sermon:  “bear one another’s burdens.” (6:2)  In actuality, Paul was talking about all the community sharing in correcting the transgressions of one.  Last week I shared that when we visited Plimoth Plantation, we were reminded that the only three occasions for which the Pilgrims worshipped were the Sabbath, thanksgiving for harvest, and a call to repentance.  In that sense, when something out of the acceptable happened in the colony, all were called to repent before God.  John Wesley later picked up on this same theme as he commented on Paul’s letter:  “Temptation easily and swiftly passes from one to another; especially if a man endeavors to cure another without preserving his own meekness.”

Yet I am going to focus today on a different aspect of what it means to bear one another’s burdens.  John Donne (1572-1631), English poet, Anglican priest and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, wrote the famous devotion:  “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;  ….  any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…”

And so are we in the church, both as a congregation as we share one another’s burdens, and globally, as the wider church seeks to make life better for those in more precarious living situations than our own.

I do not believe we come to worship solely for ourselves.  Certainly we have our individual and personal wants and needs, cares and concerns.  But we engage here in a wider community of caring, so that, literally, ‘no one is an island, entire of him- or herself.’

One example would be the blue prayer cards we read each Sunday.  Someone once said to me, “You have a lot of sick people in your congregation.”  I responded that the majority of the names were unknown to me or the rest of the congregation, but they were family members, friends, neighbors, students, co-workers known to those who submitted the cards, as well as concerns for the wider world, such as those devastated by natural disasters or soldiers fighting halfway across the world.  I shared with the Worship Commission about a dozen years ago a worship bulletin from the UCC church in Ventura, in which they listed the prayer concerns from the previous Sunday.  They liked the idea; hence, you can read the names we prayed for each Sunday in the following week’s Carillon.

Last year, we were faced with three tragic and unexpected deaths of persons aged from their twenties through fifties:  Patrick Kneuer, Bill Broz, and Ali Bosl.  This congregation responded with shock, of course, but reached out to each of those families with care and compassion.  The sanctuary was filled for their memorial services, and at the receptions in the Concert Hall following each.  We continue to express our concern for the well-being of their surviving family members.  This is bearing one another’s burdens.

Prayer groups and prayer chains in this congregation; Shepherd’s Staff which provides counseling resources; the caregiver support group where we share wisdom based on our own experiences, or come to seek help—all of there are again examples of sharing one another’s burdens.  There are dozens of other illustrations I could share but cannot.  Either I have forgotten them, or they were ones done by you of which I an unaware.

There are many instances throughout the year that our mission projects touch others who do not always have the money, shelter, clothing or benefits we have.  Every week, Woman to Woman picks up donated women’s clothing here.  We collect food for the CARE Food Pantry at St. Mary’s.  We provide backpacks and school supplies for every fifth grader each fall at Lincoln Elementary School.  We’ve supported Emmanuel Orphanage in Tijuana for nearly twenty years.  And our Christmas family project for twenty-three years has helped local families with food, gifts, clothing and furniture.  We share in their burdens by attempting to meet their needs as best we know how.

Sometimes we’re tight on meeting our pledged goals for our church budget, yet when crisis strikes somewhere, this congregation responds generously.  The 9/11 bombing, tsunami in Indonesia two Decembers ago, the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, both resulted in record donations by worshippers here which we funneled through trusted charitable partners:  American Red Cross, Church World Service, and One Great Hour of Sharing.  In each case, we bore the burdens of those we did not and will likely never know.

The celebrated poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko spoke to a campus crowd at a Pennsylvania college.  Here is part of what he said:  “Don't miss the priceless luxury of always being in trouble—not so much your own as in everybody’s trouble, trouble which you feel as your own with all your guts.

“Forget the vulgar insulting patronizing fairy tale that has been hammered into your heads since childhood that the main meaning of life is to be happy.

“The only true happiness is to share the sufferings of the unhappy.  Of course it can be very painful, but it is much better to have the screaming sensitivity of the soul uncovered by any protective skin than to have a tear-proof rhinoceros skin in combination with cold fish blood.”

If a Russian poet can affirm the benefits of sharing the burdens of the unhappy, so can Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel, who writes that “God needs not only sympathy and comfort but partners, silent warriors.”  We not only need God for help, but God also needs us for help.  “God does not need those who praise him when in a state of euphoria.  He needs those who are in love with him when in distress.... This is the task:  in the darkest night to be certain of the dawn, certain of the power to turn a curse into a blessing, agony into a song.”

Burdens are tough; make no doubt about it.  But the Psalmist put it into perspective thousands of years ago:  “O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.  . . .  Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”  (30:2-5)

Paul sums up the rewards for bearing one another’s burdens:  “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.  So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”  (Gal. 6:9-10)

These [seated in the congregation] are the people who have come to have their burdens shared.  And we [seated in the congregation] are the people God has called to bear one another’s burdens.  In Christ’s name, and for our own sake, let us never neglect our calling.