Minding Our Business

Sermon, May 7, 2000

Texts: Acts 9:19-25, Matthew 28:16-20

As you just heard, from July 2 to 8, 2000, a group of youth and adult leaders from Greenwood will be headed on a mission trip to Garysburg, North Carolina; they are going to donate their time, energy and talents to building and refurbishing projects for needy people in an area of great economic difficulty. What are they really up to, you might ask? What's their business? Their business, their purpose, is not just to give themselves something "to do" this summer, although it very definitely will give them something to do...however, they could easily find plenty else to do, as could their selfless leaders who are taking time off from work and family to accompany and assist them. Their business is not just to maintain a viable and active youth group in this church, although I can guarantee this experience will give them wholesome and cherished memories that will provide a unifying bond like no other. Their business is not just to something nice for needy people, although this, too, will certainly be accomplished. Their main business in going is to learn more how to better fulfill their life's calling, their life's vocation; their business is to learn a bit more how to better mind their ultimate business in life, which is to be servants of God. One might say they are going for an intensive training course to learn ways how to be better engaged in the "Reclaiming and Salvaging" business of God.

When we left the apostle Paul (actually, then he was Saul) a few weeks back, he was rudely interrupted on his way to a mission trip of a sort to Damascus. What was his business in Damascus? If you remember, he was engaged in the earnest business of maintaining, reclaiming and salvaging Jewish orthodoxy, and the greatest threat to Jewish orthodoxy at the time was this new sect called "The Way." Thousands of Jews had become followers of this Jesus and had joined this new organization known as the "church." Saul was determined to put a stop to it. As Acts 8 tells us, he was "...entering house after house, dragging off both men and women, committing them to prison." Many of these converted Jews were now living in Damascus, so Saul got permission from the high priest to go to Damascus to hunt them down and straighten them out. Along the way on his mission trip, Saul was blinded by a new vision of Jesus Christ, a new calling, that changed everything for him....it especially changed the nature of his life's vocation.

Three days after that vision, Saul became a member of the very church he tried to destroy. Today's passage from Acts begins by telling us that Paul began to preach about Jesus in the synagogues saying, "Jesus is the Son of God." I can imagine a bit how the synagogue leaders must have felt; after all, one of my duties here is to "guard" the pulpit, so to speak. Whenever a guest is invited to speak in this pulpit, one of my mandated responsibilities is to take reasonable measures to ensure that only qualified, credentialed and/or experienced people with relatively orthodox Christian beliefs will be invited to fill this pulpit. I'm sure the Jewish leaders were more than happy to have this credentialed student of Gamaliel, this "Pharisee of the Pharisees", this one commissioned by the High Priest of Jerusalem himself, speak in their synagogues. More than likely they readily and eagerly gave Saul the "pulpit," so to speak, and were no doubt shocked to hear him say, in so many words, "You know, I was wrong about this Jesus. I thought he was a messianic pretender whom we had crucified. But He really was God's own Son, who died for our sins, who was risen for our hope. Won't you, too, turn to him and believe?" I'm sure they were baffled and amazed, as well as astonished. Acts 9:21 -- "All those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?" We are told that Paul was quite good and powerful at proving Jesus was the Messiah.

Interestingly enough, what we are not told is that anyone in Damascus believed in Jesus because of Paul's preaching. Up until now (in the preceding eight chapters) Luke, the author of Acts, more or less kept a running count of those who converted and joined the church, whether it was several thousand or just a single Ethiopian. It would be very uncharacteristic of him not to mention any conversions; it seems there was certainly no revival in Damascus as a result of Paul's preaching. It would appear that his first mission campaign was a failure. Not only that, we are specifically told that some of the people there got so fed up with Paul and his preaching that they plotted to kill him. So Paul has to get out of town. He can't even leave by the city gate, because people are lying in wait for him; so he has to get some friends to lower him down the city walls by night sitting in a basket! What do you think was going on in Paul's mind as he exited the town so ignominiously, as they lowered him in that humble basket? Do you think he felt failure? Do you think he was overwhelmed by it all? The only "soul" he managed to save, it seems, was his own with this humiliating escape. As his friends let the basket slide down to the ground, do you think Paul may have had second thoughts about his new calling, about his vocation, about his business? I don't think so!

We know from his later letters to Galatia and Corinth that Paul thought about his failure in Damascus for a long time. Rather than get overwhelmed by it, he learned from it. He became a better servant of God through it. The experience did not seem to accomplish much, but it was instrumental in Paul's development as the apostle to the Gentiles. In a similar vein, we are under no illusions that our young people will "save" Garysburg, or that they may initiate a large-scale economic and spiritual recovery in that destitute area; the conditions there are so overwhelmingly difficult and their efforts may have very little or no lasting effect. They may have as much lasting effect on Garysburg as Paul seemed to have had on Damascus. However, like Paul, they will learn invaluable, lifelong lessons from their experience. They will become better servants of God through it. And that is their business, to learn how to better mind the Ultimate business of their lives. One related aside: I have been a pastor long enough to know that in just about every life here there is, or has been, a great failure that may continue to haunt. It may be failure in professional life, it may be failure in personal life -- in your family, raising children, friendships, or in the dreams of your youth that you never quite managed to pursue. I might also add that if you haven't known failure in any area of life, then shame on you. That probably means you have been much too careful with life. Anyone who is attempting to live life well, to live life to its fullest, must spend time on the edges. And there is no question that one can't get out on the edge, where risk is taken and faith exercised, without occasionally failing. The question is, how do we handle failure? Do we get overwhelmed and discouraged and deterred by it, or, like Paul, do we learn from it how to be better servants of God?

I recently read that business analysts examined the practices of corporations that failed and fell into bankruptcy during the tumultuous decades of the '70's and '80's. Analysts came up with many reasons that many corporations failed, but one interesting theory gained ascendancy. One main reason there were so many bankruptcies in those decades is that many corporations didn't realize what business they were in. They had too narrow a view of their business; they didn't have the "big picture." For one example, in the 30's and the 40's and even into the 50's, the railroad industry was the greatest industry in the nation. In the year 1950 the Pennsylvania Railroad was voted the Number One Best Managed Corporation in the U.S.A. The railroad business was without parallel; it was making so much money. But according to Theodore Levitt of Harvard University, the tragic flaw of the railroad industry is that its executives became foolishly, imperturbably self-confident, narrow minded and complacent. They thought railroads would go on forever, they focused only on the thought that they were in the railroad business, and all their transactions and goals and dealings focused on railroad maintenance and development alone. If only they realized they weren't in just the railroad business, that they were in the transportation business. If they saw the "big picture," they would have had wonderful new opportunities open to them that began springing up in the 1950's: interstate highways were being built, jumbo jets were being manufactured, shipping and trucking industry started to grow in gigantic proportions, space exploration was beginning to emerge, and all throughout the 1950's the transportation business was booming, transportation stock was skyrocketing ... and the railroad industry stock was plummeting. If only they realized what business they were really in.

Now contrast that with a woman named Mary Parker Follet, who in the year 1904 may have been the first official management consultant in the nation. She was born in 1868 right up the street in Quincy, Massachusetts. Business writer Peter Drucker, author of the Peter Principle, once said: "Just about everything written today about leadership and organizations comes from Mary Parker Follett's writings and lectures." I'm told that Mary Parker Follet was hired as a consultant by a window shade company, because the little company was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1904; they needed to find better ways to conduct their business. Mary Parker Follet looked at their sales, revenue, expenditures and so forth, and she coined a phrase called "The Law of the Situation." She said in so many words, "You have to ask yourself the question, 'What business are we in?' Determine your situation. I think you are thinking too narrowly; see the big picture! You are not really in the window-shade business, you are in the Light Control business. Think in terms of light management. Not only ought you to be thinking about window shades, you ought to be thinking of draperies, you ought to be thinking about shutters, you ought to be thinking about the manufacture of windows and window-frames, and you also ought to be thinking of the sources of light itself...not just light from the sun and the sky, but maybe you ought to be thinking about electric light." And do you know that little corporation started to make moves and changes, and over a period of time through some acquisitions and mergers and more mergers and acquisitions that little corporation is known today as ... General Electric. GE -- a multi-billion dollar international industry...largely because an insightful woman in 1904 asked the question of a struggling little business, "What business are you really in?"