Robert Resnik

June 18, 2023
“A Change is Coming”

Welcome:

Normally this time after Pentecost we would be showing Green on the alter.  Pastor Barb has left us with Red, the color of Pentecost.  Pentecost is when we are called by the Holy Spirit to go forth and spread the Good News.

I recently read in the Great Plains Daily Devotion: “On Pentecost the Holy Spirit entered each believer and the Holy Spirit has continued to dwell with in each person who follows Christ ever since that day.”

That means that each and everyone here today has the Holy Spirit with in them.  As we recognize the Holy Spirit with in each of us, we find a wonderful way to start our celebration today!

A Time with our Children:

Our Pastor Barb has retired so she is not going to be our pastor any longer.  We will have a new pastor, Annie Ricker who will start in 2 weeks.

Pastor Barb has been the pastor that has shown you the Light and Word of Christ for your lifetime.  Soon Pastor Annie will be our pastor and she will be the pastor that will show us all the Light and Word of Christ.

I want to show you this flashlight?  What color is it? (Red) – Now let me show you the light that comes from it.

This is another flashlight.  What color is it? (Blue) – When I shine it; does the light look the same as the red one?  The flashlights look different but both give the same light.

These different colored flashlights have the same light.  This is like Pastor Barb (hold up the Red flashlight) and this is like Pastor Annie (hold up the Blue flashlight); pastor Annie will look and talk differently than Pastor Barb but she will shine the same Light and Word of Christ!

Now let me give you each a colored flashlight.

Turn them on and point them at the cross, so now we can all light up the cross.

I hope you will pray that Pastor Barb enjoys her retirement and for Pastor Annie as she gets to know all of us.

Let us pray for these Children; “May God bless you as you grow, as you go, as you play, and bless you today.”  “God bless these children and help them to grow bigger and stronger and wiser and more in love with Jesus Christ and all people everywhere.”

And all the people say – Amen!

Sermon:

Would having a child at 90 change your Life?  What about nine months of being pregnant and then having those labor pains!  So, how would you handle all that change?  Sarah just laughed.

Before today’s reading in Genesis Chapter15, God promised Abram, that his direct descendants through his and Sarai’s son will be as numerous as the stars in the night sky.  Then in Chapter 16, Abram’s wife Sarai thought she was too old to have children.  So not believing God she took matters into her own hands by giving Abram her servant Hagar who gave birth to Ishmael.  This not believing God caused Sarai much distress.

In Chapter 17 God changed her name from Sarai to Sarah, and changed Abram’s name to Abraham.

Then in Chapter 18, God came to Abraham and told Sarah, when she was 90 years old, that she was going to have a Son.  All Sarah could do was to smile and laugh.

Sarah did have a son, Isaac, and God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars did come true.  Through Jesus Christ we are part of that promise.

God changed Sarah’s and her husband’s name.  She had her slave give birth to her husband’s son because of not believing God.  Then! to top it all off she was told that she would have to go through labor pains at 90 years old!  All of this was a lot of change for Sarah to manage.  She handled it with a smile and a laugh.

(Prayer)Join me as I Pray.  Lord, fill our hearts with joy even in the midst of the uncertainties of change.  We have all seen change in our lives, some good and some not so good.  We want to thank you Lord for your constant love and guidance during those changing times.  Help us cherish those good changes and guide us as we work through those not so good changes.  We know that if we lean on God during changes in our life, he will continue to help us.  In Jesus’s name we pray.  Amen.

Changes started early in my life.  When I was just 3, my father died.  I don’t have any memories of him except seeing several men that carried him out of our home.  My mom did tell me that my memory wasn’t completely correct, but she never told me how it did happen.

Months later, my bother Bill and I were taken to Kentucky by our grandmother to stay with our aunt and uncle while mom went to beauty school.  When we came back to Potwin, Kansas, there was a strange man that came to visit mom, a lot.  I do remember one time when Bill and I were sitting on the front porch with our dog, Tippy.  This strange man picked up Bill and tickled him.  Tippy thought he was hurting Bill so Tippy bit him on the leg.

Well, it turned out this strange man married our mom and shortly afterwards mom was pregnant with our sister, Kathie.  Then mom and this man started to build a new home.  That was it!  Bill and I were happy with just living with mom in our old house; we didn’t want all these changes.  We decided to run away!

Now living in a very small town like Potwin with about 500 people (if you counted the dogs).  It is hard to run away when you are 4 and your brother is 2.  Needless to say, mom found out where we were before we had walked a block.

During the summer between my 4^th and 5^th grades I was adopted by that strange man that I now called daddy.  My last name changed, as God had done to Sarah, from Elkins to Resnik.  I instantly inherited 12 uncles and aunts along with tons of cousins.  All of that was great, but it also caused problems.

My 5^th grade teacher was new to our school so she was taking roll that first day of class and the roll was based on the roll from 4^th grade.  When she called out Robert Elkins, I held up my hand.  Then she got to the new kids in class and she called out Robert Resnik, and again I held up my hand.  Well, she didn’t believe that and wanted to argue about my last name.  She may have thought that I was covering for someone that was absent.  As I remember she apologized the next day.

That name change thing is still causing me problems.  While working on my genealogy I wanted the date of Raymond Elkins’ death, he was my birth father.  I know the year Raymond died but not the month and day.  I thought I would just go to the Vital Statistics Department and get a copy of his death certificate.  To get a death certificate you must be a close relative.  I was his son, so I figured that would be close enough.  I had my original birth certificate that shows Raymond as my father.  I also had my adopted birth certificate showing my mother and the same date of birth but it shows Al Resnik as my father.

I went into the State office building, filled out the electronic form then took a seat.  In just a little while I was called up to the window by a clerk who started asking questions about why I wanted the death certificate.  I explained the information I wanted.  She then told me; she was sorry but with my name change she could not give me the certificate.  I then showed her my original birth certificate and my adopted certificate.  She said that the adopted certificate voided my original certificate so she couldn’t accept it as proof that I was a close relative.  She said that she would need a letter from another close relative.  I explained that the only living close relative was my brother Bill and he was also adopted.

I asked if there was any other document that would help.  She gave me a brochure that listed other resources I could check to see if they had the date.  I thanked her and told her with a smile, “I guess you can’t fight bureaucracy.”  I said I hoped she would have a good rest of her day and started to walk out of the office.  I was almost to the door when she called me back.  She gave me her supervisor’s card and told me to give her a call to see if anything else could be done.  Again, I thanked her!  It is not easy being kind when things don’t go our way.  I wonder if the reason she called me back was because I didn’t argue about disagreeing about my original birth certificate?

I have been working on this sermon, so I haven’t taken the time to follow up on her suggestion of calling her supervisor.

As we all know we have a lot of changes coming here at our church.  We are changing to Pastor Annie who will be a part-time pastor.  Plus, we had to change the time of our Sunday service to 11.  Like I said lots of change and change is hard.

How are we going to handle that change?  Are we going to be like me and my brother and run away?  Are we going to be like my 5^th grade teacher and disbelieve the change?  Are we going to disagree and argue among ourselves?  Or are we going to be like Sarah who was smiling and laughing.  I pray that we welcome what God has done to change our life here at our Church.

Closing Statement:

Let me leave you with this final thought:  The Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes: “Laughter is a biblical way of receiving a newness which cannot be explained. The newness is sheer gift—underived, unwarranted.”

That laugh of Sarah’s was not her last laugh. She did conceive and she named her child Isaac, which means, “laughter.” Can you imagine? Every time Abraham and Sarah called him in for dinner, they called, “Laughter!” Every time they scolded him, they said “Laughter, stop that!” Every time they tucked him in at night they said, “Good night, Laughter.”

Every day, several times a day, they were reminded of holy, unwarranted, inexplicable grace. I suspect it kept them grinning from son up to son down. I hope the same is true for you today. It’s not about childbearing. It’s about each “newness as sheer gift.”

Welcome and Announcements:

Welcome to Shawnee Heights United Methodist Church.  Happy Mothers’ Day.

I am Bob Resnik, your Lay Servant, which means I represent you on several church committees and at the Annual Great Plains Conference meeting.

Cecelia and I started coming to this church when we were dating and Cecelia’s son was dating Bill Clemmons’ granddaughter Dylan.  Pastor Sandy was here then.  We left for a short time, then came back shortly after Pastor Judy started.  We then joined this church and got married here.

I am sure that several of you are thinking, if I can stand up here and lead this service why don’t you see me doing some of the readings.  That’s a fair question.  It is because unless I practice a lot I don’t read well.  In school I was taught to sight read, with no phonics.  Plus I have dyslexia so sometime I see words backwards or will skip words all together.  So if I see a word that starts with S H O I could think it is show, or should or even miss the first and think would.  This doesn’t make for a good reader.

The announcements I have; Harvesters will be next Saturday at 2 o’clock.  If you are volunteering please be here by 1.

Does anyone have any other announcements?

Song of Praise:

Please stand, as you are able, to sing “I Come with Joy”   (#617 verses 1, 3 & 4)

You may have a seat.

Our Mother’s Day Prayer:

Please join me in “Our Mother’s Day Prayer”:

O loving creating God, especially this day we give you thanks for those who gave us life, loved us, blessed us, corrected us and on most days endured our questions, complaining and missteps.  Thank you for our mothers.

We are so grateful for motherly love, gentle and fierce, bold and humble, compassionate and judgmental.  It is that complicated dedicated love that continues to shape us.  O God bless all the mothers in our lives. Empower and strengthen them with your love. Comfort those mothers who lost a child to death, or to complicated circumstances.  Help the mothers struggling to provide health care, enough food and safe shelter for their children. And this day, O God of endless comfort and possibilities, surround the many women who painfully wonder if and when they will become a mother with your love.

O God, do bless the mothers of our lives, regardless of what they may have done or left undone.  May each of them and all of us be strengthened by your motherly love and acceptance.  Help us all grow to be your love.  Amen.

Our Musical Response:

Join in singing “The Summons” (#2130 verses 1 & 4)

Silent Prayer & Morning Prayer (Followed by the Lord’s Prayer):

Ladonna Grindol who broke a vertebrae please keep Ladonna and Ben and their family in your prayers for healing.

Carrie and Hap Rutherford request prayers for their son John and his family.  He is being deployed to Guam shortly.  Please pray for John’s safety.

Bernadine Boyer reports her good friend Debbie, passed away.  Please pray for peace for Debbie’s family.

This is how Cecelia and I end our meal time prayer that I want to offer now:

O loving God give special peace to those families that have lost loved ones.  Watch over those that are ill and those taking care of them give them the strength to heal, in Jesus name we pray.  Amen

Join me in praying.  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.

A Time with Our Children:

(Hand out coloring sheet & crayons)

God loved the people of Israel so much he gave them rules to live by.  We call these rules the 10 Commandments.  God want the people to remember them so he wrote them on two stone tablets.  Moses was on Mount Sinai worshiping God when God gave him these two tablets.  These coloring sheets I gave you lists these 10 commandments in a way you can understand.

Then Jesus made it easier for us to remember.  Jesus told us in the Bible that we are to love God with our whole heart, with our whole mind and in everything we do.  Then He told us that we are to love other people just like God loves us.

You love your mother, don’t you?  How are you going to show her that you love her this Mothers’ Day?

There are kids you really like, right?  Are there some kids you don’t like?

You know Jesus tells us that we are to like everyone, even the kids that are mean to us.  Jesus knew it would be hard to love everyone.  Jesus told us that we can pray to Him anytime for help to love even the people that are hard to love.  We need to remember that Jesus loves us and He loves the kids that are mean to us too.  So if, Jesus can love them we should too.

May we pray?  Loving God we pray for these children and for those children that have lost their mothers.  Show them that there is love around them in others that are there to help them.  Watch over them, give them strength and help them find the love of Jesus that is within them.

And all of God’s people said – Amen!

You may go sit with your parents

Song of Preparation “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” (121 vs 1, 3, & 4

Scripture Reading – John 15: 9-17:

⁹ “As the Father loved me, I too have loved you.  Remain in my love.  ¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.  ¹¹ I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete.  ¹² This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you.  ¹³ No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends.  ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you.  ¹⁵ I don’t call you servants any longer, because servants don’t know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because everything I heard from my Father I have made known to you.  ¹⁶ You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last. As a result, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.  ¹⁷ I give you these commandments so that you can love each other.

 

 

Sermon:

We are commanded to Love!

Jesus says in verse 10 of today’s reading, “If you keep my Commandments, you will remain in my Love.”  What are his Commandments?

Jesus tells us The Greatest Commandment in Matthew 22, Mark 12 and Luke 10.  The first part is “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.”  With this love of God you will fulfill the first 4 of the 10 Commandments given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.  As listed on the children’s coloring sheet “Love God with all your heart, do not let anything become more important than God, respect God’s name and honor God by resting on Sunday.

Jesus’ Second part of The Greatest Commandment was “You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  This will fulfill the last 6 of the 10 commandments; Love your parents, do not hurt anyone, be faithful to your husband or wife, do not steal, always tell the truth and do not want what others have.

Jesus did not do away with the 10 commandments that God gave Moses, He just summarized them for us.  But how do we follow this Greatest Commandment that Jesus gave us?

Join me as I pray.  Oh loving God help me prepare a way for your love to take over the world.  Let me love the way you love by teaching me to love the way that Jesus loved.  Help me show your love to others.  Use me as a way in expanding love throughout the world.  Please keep me out of your way as you spread your love.  Amen

The love Jesus is telling us about is not the kind of love I expressed to my son 3 days before he took his life, nor the kind of love that I have for my 3 remaining children that are now adults.  Nor is it the kind of love I have for my wonderful wife.

This congregation showed me the kind of love Jesus was commanding on April 6^th, 2014.  I received one of those calls parents never want to get.  My son Brian had left a note on the coffee table and his wife found it about midnight.  She called and I went to be with her.  The police and sheriff’s departments were out looking for him, hoping to prevent him from taking his life.  They couldn’t find him.  The Jackson County sheriff contacted a good friend of Brian’s, he too found a letter that made him think of a place Brian loved to use as a hunting spot.  The sheriff checked the spot out and found Brian.  Brian’s wife was contacted about 7 Sunday morning.  I went home to cry and to call Cecelia, who was out of town.  Then I came here.

Pastor Judy was on vacation so we had a retired preacher presiding.  I just couldn’t go in to the sanctuary so I stayed in Pastor Judy’s office.  When the visiting pastor was done he came into the office and we talked.  When we were done I walked out to go back home.  Well, Berry Wilt was standing there, saw me, and knew something was terribly wrong, then he walked over and hugged me.  Then others, some no longer here, did the same thing.  I was surrounded by unconditional love.

Boy, was I glad I had told Brian just 3 days before that I loved him.  Even thought he was surrounded by his friends and was a little embarrassed.  These were the last words my son heard from me.

I love all of you regardless of where you came from, what you do or did for a living.  But, you see most of you are similar to me, more or less relatively conservative and we have the same religion.  So it isn’t quite that unconditional love that Jesus was telling us about.  Jesus was talking about the love the ancient Greeks called agapē love.  The kind of love that is perfect unconditional love.  The kind of love God has for all of us.

We are to love God with this agapē love with our whole hearts and minds and in all that we do.

And this is how we are to love our neighbor.  Now you may ask, who is my neighbor?  Is it the people that live next to me?  Or all the people that live in my neighborhood?  Is it my friends on Facebook or the people I follow on Instagram?  The answer is yes, but it doesn’t stop there.  We are to love all the people of the world!

Now you may think; but I don’t know all the people of the world!  You don’t and you can’t.  But when you encounter one of them you are not to worry about the color of their skin, the way they wear their clothes, the language they speak.  You don’t even worry if they are here legally or what religious practice they follow.  Jesus says we are to show them love and compassion.  Let’s all remember the story of the Good Samaritan.

We are told about The Good Samaritan, in Luke 10, who took care of his injured enemy that was a neighbor from another county.  A person that the Samaritan would normally not even talk to.  Jesus taught us to love even our enemy over and over.  He told us to forgive our oppressor and to turn the other cheek to the person that strikes us.  Now that takes a level of love that I have not obtained and most likely never will.  But, I pray that every day I will get closer to being able to love like that.

 

 

For us to work toward the ability to love like that.  We first must learn how to love ourselves and to take care of ourselves.  We take care of ourselves by being around people that love other people.  We also help ourselves by choosing to be around people that are always uplifting and only saying positive things about other.  Remember the movie “Bambi” there was a little rabbit named Thumper.  Thumper was teasing Bambi and his mother told him; “If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.”  These are the type of people we need to be around.  We should try to avoid the kind of people that are always putting someone down or talking about what others are doing.

Now I know there are some people that have been so badly hurt in the past they just can’t pull themselves out of the negative thinking.  We are not to abandon them.  We need to love them just as Jesus does, but they need more help than what we can give.  They may need professional help that we are to encourage and support.  Seeking help would be their way of taking care of themselves.

Jesus said in verse 16 of today’s reading, “I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last.” I think Jesus was telling us to take that love we have and do something good with it.

What is the fruit Jesus was referring to?  Is He talking about evangelism, where we bring people in to our church?  Maybe, but I don’t think that is all of it, I think He is telling us to show our unconditional love to others so that they believe in Him.  Now that could lead to people joining us or to join with others, but I think it’s about leading people to learn more about Jesus, from the Bible, from the internet, from others or from a preacher.  First and foremost the important thing is showing people that we unconditionally love them.

What are some of the ways we can show this unconditional love?  I think some of the ways are, with a sincere loving attitude, help at Harvesters, or I-Care, or the YWCA Center for Safety and Empowerment, or Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or many, many, more.

What about right here at our church!  Our church is run by committees that support our mission of “Embrace God’s Love • Respond with love for all • Grow our faith • Serve the needs of others”.  These committees need your love and presence.

Or, if you are not able to physically help you can support those that can by uplifting them in prayers, writing letters or sending short little notes of encouragement to them.

Remember Jesus said; “You didn’t choose me, but I chose you”

By the way my wife reminded me that fixing my supper, even when she is upset with me, is showing unconditional love too.

(Take a seat)

 

 

Our Invitation to Respond:

It is a commandment.  We are to love.  We are to love in tangible ways that continue to transform our world and bring God’s Kingdom to reality.  May the gifts we present this day empower ministries of healing and hope!  May our love for others, even those we do not know, be a reflection of God’s love for us.

Song of Commitment:
Dedicated to our mothers, in love and gratitude

“I Get to be the One” by JJ Heller

(About ½ way through give a sign to stand)

Blessing and Sending Out:

Jesus models true friendship by sharing with us all the love He has.  We must not hoard this love but to reach out to others who are starved of love.  Because He chooses to love others through us, we have much to do.

Music Sends Us Out:

“They’ll Know We are Christians by our Love” By King and Country

This was not recorded

Let me tell you about a time when I was thought to be lost.  In January 1962, when I was 14 years old, during a very severe Kansas blizzard I was thought to be so lost they were about to call out the National Guard to help find me.

Because of the forecast of a bad winter storm, school had been canceled.  The snow had been falling for a while but just enough to make the rabbits hunker down.  So, I and my friend and next door neighbor, Chucky Foulk, decided it would be a good day to go rabbit hunting.  We loaded up our sled and started walking south out of town down a road where no one lived.  After a few hours we had one or two rabbits and we decided that we should head back.

Well, by this time the storm had really picked up and the wind out of the north had become very strong.  The snow had completely covered the road and there were drifts that were above our knees.  We were about 3 miles out of town.  We stopped to assess our situation, we knew that we could not get back home before dark and the snow was so heavy we could easily get lost.  We looked around and we saw that there was an old abandoned farm house a little ways off the road.  So we thought we could stay inside there until the storm let up.

Well, the storm didn’t let up and in fact it got worse.  It looked like we were going to have to spend the night there.  There was an old wood burning stove so we found some wood and built a fire.  We cleaned one of the rabbits and cooked it on the fire.  Knowing that sometimes wild rabbits carried a bad disease, we cooked it until it was charred.  My feet were very cold so I thought I would warm up my shoes, do you know that rubber sole shoes melt if too close to a fire, well I didn’t.

We were fairly safe considering we were out in a record breaking blizzard.  We were warm and dry even though I was wearing melted shoes.

That was not the case at our homes.  While we knew where we were and that we were safe, our parents didn’t.

I had never thought much about what my parents must have gone through until 2019 when I attended the funeral of my good friend Chucky.  Everyone there was asking me about that hunting trip.  Re-living it there with Chucky’s family and friends I got to thinking about my parents and what they were feeling back then.  They had already passed so I couldn’t ask.

There were no cell phones back in 1962 and there was no land line to this old farm house, so they had no idea that we were safe.  They only thought that we were lost and maybe lost for good.  My parents were religious so I know they were praying for our safe return.  Fortunately a very cold farmer was out on his tractor, this was before tractors had heated cabs, smelled our smoke and found us.  He went back to get someone with a 4 wheel drive vehicle.  I assume it was a sheriff’s deputy, but I really don’t remember.  They loaded us up and took us home.

Preparing for this sermon, I found a newspaper article in a bunch of articles I found cleaning my parent’s home that gave me an idea of what they were thinking.

My mother had written a letter to the editor of the El Dorado Times.  Here is part of what she wrote:
“They (meaning the sheriff and newspaper men) couldn’t possibly know of all the farmers, refinery workers, business men, school teachers, clerks – both men and women – who so willingly risked life, limb and property to aid their fellow men.  They shared one communal thought: To find the boys and return them safely home.
Personally, I feel very humble and deeply grateful that God has seen fit to allow my family to live in a community where everyone, in all walks of life, responds so willingly and unselfishly in a time of crisis.”

It is signed Mrs. Al Resnik, it’s ironical that Pastor Barb was telling us last week how a woman in the 60’s signed their name.

Whether you are lost because of a loss of a loved one like Naomi, lost in your anxiety, or a snow storm we need to turn to God for guidance.

This was part of a sermon that I gave while filling in for our pastor, Rev. Barb Clinger, on October 16, 2022.  The service was recorded on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKaYOTl5iyo