Some of you are old enough to remember “Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club,” the morning variety show on ABC radio ran from 1933 to 1968 – longer than Johnny Carson hosted “The Tonight Show.”

 

 I was a little kid when I listened to it, before we got our first TV in 1950. But for some reason, one of the “bits” that Don McNeill did stuck in my memory and I can quote it to you exactly, nearly 60 years later.

 

He said, “Why worry?”

 

“Either you’re successful or you’re not successful.”

 

“If you’re successful you have nothing to worry about, and if you're not successful you have only two things to worry about – either you’re in good health or you’re not.

 

“Now, if you’re in good health, you have nothing to worry about, and if you’re not, you have only two things to worry about – either you’re going to get better or you’re not.

 

“If you’re going to get better, you have nothing to worry about, and if you’re not, you have only two things to worry about – either you’re going to live or you’re going to die.

 

“If you’re going to live, you have nothing to worry about and if you’re going to die, you have only two things to worry about – either you’re going to go to heaven, or you’re going to go to the other place.

 

“If you’re going to go to heaven, you have nothing to worry about, and if you’re going to go to the other place, you will be so busy shaking hands with old friends that you that you’ll have no time to worry.  So why worry?”

 

I love it. I wish it were true. But it certainly is not.

 

I was at St. Francis of Assisi in Lake Placid last Sunday, and as is so often the case, we had several people give their personal witness before being confirmed. One man related how he was pretty complacent about his faith until he read the “Left Behind” series by Tim LaHaye.

 

And whether you accept all of Tim’s theology or not, his books pose an incredibly disturbing question: What if, on that great day when Jesus gathers all of his Church to himself, what if I were left behind?

 

That question so disturbed this gentleman that he said it forced him back into reading his Bible, forced him back to church, forced him back to Jesus.

 

And he ended up giving his life to Christ, and having it wonderfully changed.

 

My favorite theologian is the Puritan, Jonathan Edwards, who is known to most people from Literature 101 for the Enfield Sermon, more commonly called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” preached on July 8, 1741.

 

It’s unfortunate that’s all we know of Edwards, because that sermon represents only about one 100th of this thinking. He was by far America’s most brilliant theologian, pretty much in the same class as Luther and Calvin, Aquinas and Augustine.

 

I thought briefly about doing a Ph.D. on Edwards when I was seminary, and I spent a day in Yale’s Beinecke Library, where they have over 3,000 of Edwards’ sermon manuscripts, most of them unpublished, at least as of 40 years ago..

 

Paper was so scarce in Edwards' day that when he received a letter from England, he would turn it sideways and write his sermon notes right over the text he had received.

 

He had notoriously difficult handwriting, so I thought I’d begin by taking the actual manuscript of the Enfield Sermon and comparing it to the printed version in my college reader.  (By the way, that is by far the most important historical artifact I have ever held in my own hands!)

 

After three hours I was able to decipher the first sentence, to see that, yes, it said what the textbook said it said.  (I actually found two punctuation errors that didn’t change the meaning, but nevertheless they were there.)

 

And I decided I was not called to do a Ph.D. on Jonathan Edwards!

 

But you know what? He got it right. God hates sin. Isaiah said so, Jeremiah said so, Ezekiel said so, John the Baptist said so, Jesus said so. St. Paul, whose conversion we celebrate tonight, said so.

 

And but for the incredible love of God for sinners, there would be no hope whatsoever for any of us. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death.”

 

The question of scripture from one end to the other, is, “How can a holy God permit the existence of fallen men and women, boys and girls, in His universe?”

 

And the answer is: because Jesus took that sin and its horrific penalty upon himself, upon the cross, so that you and I might be spared.

 

There’s not a blessed thing you can do to earn his love. You receive it as a gift, by faith, by trust.  You begin to allow it to transform your life.

 

We live in a time in which the “old, old story” is being questioned, even by many of the leaders of the Church. Some have said that to proclaim Jesus as THE way to the Father is to put God in a very tiny compartment.

 

Well, we didn’t put him there. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the light. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

 

Peter said, “There is salvation in no one else, for there’s no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

 

Paul wrote to the young man Timothy, “What you have heard from me through many witnesses, entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well.”

 

Paul, to Timothy, to faithful people, to others and to others and to others, and to you and me. And we have the great privilege and responsibility of passing it on to the next generation as well.

 

“Will you proclaim, by word and example, the good news of God in Christ?” Answer: “I will, with God’s help.” 

 

In our Gospel reading this evening, Jesus says, “It isn’t going to be easy to be my followers. There will be opposition, sometimes severe, sometimes even from within your own family. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

 

You know, it’s not the external opposition that concerns me the most. It’s capitulation to the culture; giving up on the inside. Especially when so many of our conservative brothers and sisters are feeling the need to leave the Episcopal Church, the easy thing for us to do would be to slide into an acceptance of that which we know is unacceptable.

 

Why keep fighting the battles? Because they are the Lord’s battles. And because he’s told us to honor His word.

 

And because there will be a day of judgment and it will not be a time for shaking hands with old friends.

 

The Book of Revelation calls it “drinking the wine of God’s wrath.”

 

I don’t know about you, but that’s one drink I don’t want to taste!

 

It says, “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God, and hold fast to the faith of Jesus.” 

 

“A call for endurance.”  “Those who endure to the end will be saved.”

 

Jesus warned us not to be like somebody building a tower, who doesn’t first estimate the cost, or some one going into battle with too small an army to meet the opposition. Can you endure to the end against external opposition and internal compromise in a culture that has no place for Christ and in a Church that has a place for almost anything?

 

I need your help -- and you may need mine – to be faithful to Jesus, loyal to the Gospel, obedient to God’s word, filled with his spirit, rejoicing in his love. When I meet him face-to-face, I want with all my heart to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” How unimaginably awful it would be to hear the words instead, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

 

“And now little children, abide in him so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink back from him in shame at his coming.”  (1 John 2:28)

 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

+ John W. Howe