Walnut Hill United Methodist Church
"You've
Got to Have an Attitude"©
A number of years ago we owned two
Mitsubishis. Mary had one and our daughter Laura had one. Mary’s
car’s transmission went out at 125,000 miles. When it was being
repaired I visited with the mechanic who told me that for everything
Mitsubishi had done to improve their vehicles, at that time, they
had nothing to improve their power train and that it was almost like
clockwork that the transmission went out at 125,000 miles. Laura had
an Eclipse and I was driving it. It was sort of like sitting in the
cockpit of a fighter plane and the car was fun to drive. Well, I was
out driving the Eclipse and had stopped at a stop sign and then
turned onto an overpass over the freeway. As the car climbed the
hill it stopped and started rolling backwards. I looked at the
odometer and sure enough it was right at 125,000 miles. Well to make
a long story short I rolled backwards down hill, was able to steer
the car out of the flow of traffic and then went and called a
wrecker for help. I got a cup full of iced tea and went out to wait
for the wrecker that was to arrive, "Sometime during the next 30
minutes." So I sat by the roadside in the summer heat by my disabled
car for 20 minutes. During that time it seemed as if hundreds of
cars drove by. People looked at me, but no one even rolled down
their window to see what the problem was or if they could help. I
was stranded by the side of the road.
As I sat there I remembered the
vacation summers before when Mary and the girls and I were out on
the interstate just breezing along. It happened that I looked down
at the dashboard and there was a bright red light letting me know
that the car was overheating. I pulled over to the side of the road
to see what was wrong. I lifted the hood. No hoses were leaking and
I knew better than to remove the radiator cap. So I went back to
start the car but it was too hot to start. As 18wheelers and cars
roared by Mary and the girls asked, "What are we going to do
stranded here by the side of the road?" Just then a van pulled over
and stopped in front of us. Inside was a family whose faces were
filled with smiles. They asked what was wrong and what they could
do. I asked them if they could take us to the nearest exit with a
service station. We all got in their van and started down the road.
As were driving down the interstate I asked this family who had
stopped to help total strangers why they had stopped. They said,
"Once we were traveling and had car problems and were stranded by
the side of the road and did not know what we were going to do and
someone stopped to help us. We decided right then, if we ever saw
anyone stranded by the side of the road that we would always stop to
see if we could help. We saw you stranded and we stopped."
As I reread our Scripture lesson for
this morning, I thought about my own personal experience of being
stranded by the side of the road and that of a man going from
Jerusalem to Jericho who was attacked by robbers, beaten, and left
half dead by the side of the road. By chance a priest is traveling
the road and sees the man. If a priest was on a journey and found
someone who was dead, like this man looked, it was his duty to stop
and bury the person. But the priest passes by on the other side of
the road. So too does a Levite. Now if you were an Israelite
listening to the story, you would have expected that no ordinary
Israelite would be the third person and the one to stop, giving this
story and anticlerical edge. But surprise, surprise, it is a
Samaritan, one who was regarded as unclean because of the
intermarrying that occurred following the Assyrian settlement of
people from various religions in the fallen Northern Kingdom during
the Exile. It was a Samaritan who stops.
As I thought about the parable, the
Samaritan might not have stopped, but he did! What made the
Samaritan stop? Why did a family stop to help out my family when we
were stranded by the side of the road? It seems to me that it is a
matter of attitude and putting that attitude to work in our daily
lives. You see you’ve got to have an attitude if you really want to
live and have eternal life. You’ve got to have an attitude. When I
attended seminary back in the sixties I read Viktor Frankel’s
Man’s Search for Meaning for the first time. I have reread it
over the years. Viktor Frankel was an Austrian psychiatrist and a
prisoner of war in Nazi concentration camps. During his imprisonment
he observed that some of the prisoners who looked physically strong
and robust were actually weak because of their poor attitudes,
whereas other prisoners, who outwardly appeared to be frail and
feeble, were amazingly strong because of their positive attitudes
and faith. It was these persons who became an inspiration to all in
the prison camp. Frankel writes, "We who lived in concentration
camps can remember the ones who walked through the huts comforting
others…giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few
in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be
taken away from us but one thing: the last of human freedoms…to
choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances…to
choose one’s own way." He was saying, "You’ve got to have an
attitude!" Paul said the same thing when he said, "Do not be
conformed to this world." He was saying don’t be imprisoned by your
circumstances…don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its
mold. Rather, be a servant and be about God’s work in the world.
Jesus said, "Be a neighbor." Neighborliness is an attitude. You’ve
got to have an attitude to really live and find eternal life.
There are several attitudes that are
important. Recently you have heard me say this, that it important to
live life out of a perspective of thanksgiving, that you need to
have an attitude of gratitude. A minister tells how he was invited
to have dinner in the home of a family in his church. When they sat
down at the dinner table the mother asked her four year old to say
grace. She said, "Christopher, will you say grace tonight?"
Christopher said, "Oh mom, do I have to? I don’t know how." The mom
said, "Sure you do. It’s your turn. Just thank God for your many
blessings. Tell God what you are grateful for tonight." Four year
old Christopher began to pray with one eye closed in prayer and one
eye open so that he could look around as he prayed. He thanked God
for everything in sight. He prayed, "Thank you God for the chicken,
the roast beef, the brown gravy, the potatoes, the tomatoes, the
cantaloupe, the slaw, the baked beans, the salt the pepper, the
knives, the spoons, the forks, the placemats, the tablecloth, the
napkins…." On and on he went naming everything on the table. His
brothers and sisters snickered. Mom and dad smiled and Christopher
went on and on, "Thank you God for the table, the chairs, the floor,
the drapes, the tea, the ice, the sugar, the Sweet and Low, the
lemons, the ketchup…" Finally Christopher thanked God for all the
people at the table calling them by name, and he ended by thanking
God for his dog. When he finished his brothers and sisters began to
tease him, but his mom and dad thanked him and bragged on his
beautiful prayer. Happy people are thankful people. The strongest
most fulfilled people you can ever meet, the most zestful and
radiant people are people who approach life with an attitude of
thankfulness…an attitude of gratitude. Even when they go through
life’s most difficult circumstances they know that God is with them,
and that because of God’s presence they cannot ultimately be
defeated.
Paul said, "In everything give
thanks." Paul did not say to give thanks for everything, but rather
to give thanks in everything. Paul does not mean that we should give
thanks for cancer or war or suffering or tragedy, but rather that in
every circumstance we can be grateful. Whatever comes our way we can
be thankful for God cares and shares life with us. The God of the
universe, the creator of all that is, intimately cares about you and
me and will be with us and see us through no matter what comes our
way. We can count on that and for that we can be grateful. We don’t
know what it was the Samaritan was grateful for, but it was his
gratitude, his thankfulness for life, that caused him to stop along
the road from Jerusalem to Jericho to help a stranger. You see, it
all comes down to having an attitude!
Not only do you need to have an
attitude of gratitude, but you need to have an attitude of
compassion. The word compassion means with heart. It means to
reach out to others with your heart, to be kind. Several weeks ago
on a Sunday morning driving to church I heard a radio preacher talk
about the word compassion. If you take the suffix ion off of
the word you have the word compass. You are reminded that the
compass that directs your life is to reach out to others, to be
kind. But, he went on to say, if you know your words you know that
compassion does not have a suffix, it has a prefix, com. Com
is added to passion which means were are to be passionate about
being kind. It was this passion for kindness, this attitude of
compassion, this reaching out with one’s heart that played out in
the way the Samaritan treated this stranger. He not only bandaged
his wounds but took him to an inn to stay, and when he had to leave,
he said to the innkeeper, "Take care of him. When I pass this way
again, I will pay whatever you spend on him." What an attitude. What
a passionate attitude of kindness.
A young orphaned boy was taken in by
his grandmother. One night the house caught fire. The grandmother
tried to rescue the boy who was asleep upstairs, but she was
overcome by smoke and lost her life in the fire. As the house burned
a crowd gathered and they could hear the boy crying for help but
everyone seemed helpless in the confusion of the fire. Then, all of
a sudden, a stranger rushed out of the crowd and climbed up a metal
pipe that stretched past an upstairs window. The pipe was extremely
hot, but the man ignored the pain. He went in a window and moments
later appeared with the boy in his arms. The stranger climbed back
down the pipe with the boy clinging to his neck. Weeks later a
public hearing was held to determine who would have custody of the
boy. Persons who wanted to adopt the boy were given an opportunity
to speak. The first person was a farmer, who said that he had a
large farm where the boy could play outdoors. A teacher spoke up and
said that she had a large library in her house and the boy could
read and learn. After several other people spoke up, the town’s
wealthiest citizen suggested that because of his great wealth he
could offer the boy everything everyone else had mentioned as well
as many other opportunities that only wealth could afford. The
person leading the gathering asked if there was anyone else who had
anything to say. From the back of the room a stranger rose to his
feet and walked to the front of the room. When he reached the front
of the room, he stood before the little boy, said nothing, but took
his hands from his pockets. Everyone in the room was shocked to see
that his hands were badly scarred. Suddenly the boy cried out with
surprise as he recognized the stranger. It was his own rescuer. It
was the man who had saved his life. The scars on his hands were
received when he climbed the hot metal pipe. With tears of joy and
happiness the boy fell into the arms of the man. One by one the
crowd departed until none were left but the boy and the
compassionate stranger, his new guardian, whose scarred hands said
more than words could ever say. Compassion is self giving. We know
that more than anyone else for we serve one whose hands were scarred
for us.
Those hands were scarred out of
God’s passionate love for you and me as an example of the way we
should give our lives for other people. A woman was traveling on an
airplane and had been doing work for a meeting later in the day. It
was lunchtime and the flight attendants brought out food for the
noontime meal…this obviously happened several years ago. The woman
did not care for airline food and when she sampled her lunch sure
enough the food tasted bland and stale, the coffee was bitter and
she sat there wishing for a better meal and feeling sorry for
herself. As she looked for a flight attendant to take her tray away,
she noticed a man in his early twenties sitting across the aisle. He
had obviously been in an accident for he was wearing a body cast and
his arms and hands were in the cast immobile and useless. His tray
of food was in front of him, but there was no way that he could feed
himself. The young man sat there looking at his food. The woman
asked if she might help and the young man said, "That would be
great. I’m hungry." Feeding the young man was initially awkward and
embarrassing but soon the two of them felt comfortable with each
other and the woman learned the man had been injured skiing on
spring break from college. He ate his meal and the woman found that
this was a special time. After she finished serving him, she went
back to her meal, thinking that it would taste worse because it was
even more stale and now it was cold. But she was amazed. The food
tasted delicious, why in fact it tasted very special. It was as if
the meal was sacramental and that somehow God’s spirit made that
food unique.
You know, that’s exactly the way
it is in life. When life seems stale and bland, when we reach
out to other people, that same stale and bland life takes on new
flavor, and you are amazed, because it’s still the same life,
but yet it’s not. Hall Luccock tells that Eugene Ormandy once
dislocated his shoulder while conducting the Philadelphia
Orchestra. Luccock said he did not know what they were playing,
but whatever it was Ormandy was giving his all to it. Hal
Luccock then pushed himself with the prophetic question, "Have I
ever dislocated anything? Even a necktie?" That’s the question
we need to ask ourselves, and push ourselves with about the
attitudes we have as we go about the living of our days. Have
you ever dislocated anything with that kind of zeal, energy,
enthusiasm, or passion? You see compassion is energetic,
enthusiastic love! Oscar Hammerstein wrote:
A bell is not a bell till
you ring it,
A song is not a song till you sing it.
Love is not put in your heart to stay…
Love is only love when you give it away.
Jesus concluded, "In your opinion,
which of these three acted like a neighbor toward the man attacked
by robbers?" The teacher of the Law answered, "The one who was kind
to him." Jesus replied, "You go then and do the same." Folks, keep
in mind that in order to do that, you’ve got to have an attitude!
