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[silence] Can One Possibly Please Everyone? A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [silence] The scripture reading for today will be 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

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"If I had the gift of being able to speak in other languages without learning them, and could speak in every language there is of all of heaven and earth, but didn't love others, I would only be making noise. If I had the gift of prophecy, and knew all about what is going to happen in the future,

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knew everything about everything, but didn't love others, what good would it do? Even if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, I would still be worth nothing at all without love. If I gave everything I had to poor people, and if I were burned alive for preaching the gospel,

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but didn't love others, it would be of no value whatever. Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful nor proud, never haunty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable nor touchy.

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It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him,

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and always stand your ground in defending him. All the special gifts and powers from God will someday come to an end, but love goes on forever. Someday prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge,

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these special gifts will disappear. Now we know so little, even with our special gifts, and the preaching of those most gifted is still so poor. But when we have been made perfect and complete,

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then the need for these inadequate special gifts will come to an end, and they will disappear. It's like this. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does.

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But when I became a man, my thoughts grew far above those of my childhood, and now I have put away the childish things. In the same way, we can see and understand only a little about God now, as if we were peering at his reflection in a poor mirror.

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But someday we are going to see him in his completeness, face to face. Now all I have known is hazy and blurred, but then I will see everything clearly, just as clearly as God sees into my heart right now.

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There are these three things that remain, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. So I awoke at 6.30 this morning,

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and rolled over, and saw that beautiful sunshine, and I thought, "Isn't it great to be in California?" And my mind went back, because, you see, then it was 9.30 in Pittsburgh, and I thought of my people there,

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stumbling through the snowdrifts and slithering across the slippery spot, fighting their way to the church doors, and you know I didn't miss it a bit. Can one possibly please everybody?

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I think the answer to that question is no. Thomas Carlyle, the great English biographer, said that there were two standards of measurement by which you might determine the worth of an individual's life. First, how that life had influenced mankind.

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Secondly, how much dignity and purity there was in the character of the life lived. By either of these standards of measurement, Jesus Christ stands supreme amongst men. How much did his life influence mankind? He quite literally stopped the calendar, and then started it again.

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And what of the dignity and the purity of his character? There are countless millions upon the face of the earth today, two thousand years after he returned to his heavenly home, who would affirm that he lived perfectly.

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And yet this one, who lived the most simple, the most splendid life that's ever been lived, was unable to please everybody. He could forgive a prostitute and start her walking upon a road that was more dramatic and dynamic than any road she'd ever walked before, and in that very act, he frustrated and angered her lovers.

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He could cleanse a temple and make it again into a place of prayer, and with that very act, irritate and send to gnashing their teeth those who had made it into a marketplace. He would forgive sinners in the name of his Father and by the power of his Holy Spirit, and those who styled themselves as righteous would be infuriated.

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He would dine with the rich, and this would irritate the poor. He would reach out and with one miraculous touch take the twisted, paralyzed hand of a man and make it healthy and whole and useful again, and in that very act, those who put the law above his love would find something to become disturbed about.

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Here was one who lived and loved so magnificently that men killed him. And if this one, who lived and loved so simply and splendidly, could not please everybody, then by what stretch of the imagination could we assume that such a possibility is open to us? If you think about it for a moment, there are very definite reasons why you cannot please everybody.

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In the first place, there are some individuals who are never pleased by anything. You know, these persimmon personalities that go through life perpetually bitter. I read about a man who went out fishing one morning and during the course of the day he didn't have a single bite, and to ease his frustrations he began to imbibe rather freely from some whiskey he'd taken along,

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and by the time the sun set he'd still not had a bite, but he'd become quite drunk with the whiskey. And he started to row a rather staggering course back to the shore, and as he rowed a great and magnificent fish leaped out of the lake and landed in the boat. And he picked it up and hurled it back into the water, crying out, "If you won't bite, you're not going to ride!"

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There are some people who just won't be pleased. They recently were dedicating a small church in northern Michigan. Everyone wanted the dedicatory service to go into perfect manner, and it did. Finally it came time for the choir to recess up the center aisle, and as they were recessing up,

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it so happened that one lady's heel got caught in a heating grate in the floor. And not wanting to disturb the procedure, wanting it to be pleasing to everyone, she very quickly slipped her foot out of her shoe and continued up the aisle. The next man coming along behind her was also very anxious that everything would be pleasing and perfect,

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and so he thought he would bend down and pick up the shoe quickly and continue, and this is what he did. The only trouble was that the grate remained attached to the shoe, and when he picked it up he had both the shoe and the grate in his hand. But not wanting to disturb the processional, he continued out the aisle,

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and the next man fell through the hole and into the furnace. Everyone was trying to do everything just right, and the results were catastrophe, and there are some people you meet in life that no matter how hard you try to please them, you're never going to succeed because some folks are like that.

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Another reason you can't please everybody is that people's preferences differ. We don't all enjoy the same things. I used to frequent a little restaurant which was very near our church back east, and one night I was sitting there feeling very sorry for myself

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for what I considered to be a decidedly unimaginative menu, and I said to the waitress, "Why is it that you don't add some new things to this menu? The choice is so narrow." And she said, "Look down the counter." And I looked down the counter and there were about a dozen people sitting there,

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and every one of those people was eating a different thing, and every one of those people was eating not only a different thing from every other one of those people, but also different from what I was eating. And by this little deed, she made it obvious to me that my preferences were such

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that I was consistently selecting only two or three things from the menu, and then faulting the menu for what I called its narrowness. I was being led by my preferences, and I think we're all led that way. Like that lady who walked into a millinery shop and said to the clerk,

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"Would you get the hat with the cherries on it out of the window?" And he went and he got it and he brought it back and he said, "Would you like to try it on?" She said, "Certainly not. I think it's terrible. That's the reason I wanted it out of the window. It bothers me when I pat it."

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I had a man say to me on one occasion, "I don't like your face." See, there's no accounting for taste. And people do have different preferences, and because this is so, we're not able to please everybody. And another reason we can't please everybody is that we have principles.

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You know, this question, "Is it possible to please everybody?" can be a very dangerous question, because if you throw yourself into a passionate search for popularity, laying aside every restraint, every standard, everything which you consider to be worthwhile and true,

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just in order to get a slap on the back or a few more votes, that's not meaningful or significant living. If you are ready to sacrifice anything in your life in order to gain the allegiance or the loyalty of another, their praise or their support,

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then what is there in your life that's worthy of praise or of support? I think that Dag Hammarskjold is going to be remembered as one of the truly great statesmen of the twentieth century. And in his amazing book, Markings, he considers at one point what he would do if he were called upon to make a decision

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which would determine the whole future history of the human race. And this is what he writes. "If this should at any time become my duty in the role that has been assigned to me by faith, how straight must be my path at all times if we are not to perish."

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That's a fine and a noble thing to say, and we should all be willing to say it. But my friends, when you walk a straight path in accordance with what you know and believe to be right, you are inevitably going to come into conflict with those whose opinions and persuasions are other than your own. And that's one of the reasons that you're not going to be able to please everybody.

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But having said all of this, we must go on to say, mustn't we, that as Christians we're not here to be disagreeable. We should try to please as many people as we possibly can. We are here to make the world a place of joy and not of sorrow, a place of happiness and not of unhappiness,

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a place of unity and not disunity, a place where there is peace and not war. If we can do those things which will make us pleasing to more people, then surely this is what God would have us do. And I think there are certain suggestions which we might draw from our understanding of Scripture

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which tell us how we might be more pleasing to more people. Consider, for example, this. We should learn to look at and to listen to people. Most often when we look at folks we think of them as being causes and not results. I mean by that we consider them and think of what they've caused to come to pass in our lives,

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and we measure them by that, and we never stop to think of those events which have occurred in their lives that have made them the way they are. People are not only causes, people are also results. And it takes a little time, it takes a little looking and listening

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to understand why people are the results that they are. I remember counseling a young lady who came to me with a hostility and a bitterness and a sharp-tongued attitude that just took all the patience I had to sit and listen to. More than once I was ready simply to ask her to leave the office.

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But I was constrained, I believe, by the grace of God to look and to listen, and as time went by I discovered that this girl's father had died when she was very young, and in her young mind she interpreted his death as an act of betrayal. She thought he had deliberately left her alone, and she had so resented this

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that she had built up within her a hostility toward all men, and I was simply receiving a portion of the bitterness she bestowed upon all those of my sex. And because we looked and we listened and we cared and others loved and prayed, she moved into a new and more joyous dimension of the human experience.

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I think our Lord Christ was just absolutely perfect in this as in everything else. There was about him a sensitivity which we should emulate. Do you remember that scene when he was crowded about by a multitude of people and a good woman came who had been embarrassed and debilitated for years because of an issue of blood,

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and she reaches out and she touches the hem of his garment and she's healed. And even though he's surrounded by a great crowd of people, Christ is immediately aware of this. Now why? Well, it's suggested most often that it was because he felt the healing power go out of him and into her body, making her whole again, and I'm sure that a large part of that is true.

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But I would suggest to you also that Christ was attached to those about him by filaments of such tenderness, sensitivity, and response ability that he was able to detect immediately the presence of someone near him who had tremendous need. And he reached out to that person and they became whole.

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My friends, terrible things happen when we don't look and listen. Following the First World War, they held a victory parade in Chicago and thousands of people lined the streets. And the first unit in a parade was a group of 200 American flags being carried by servicemen, and as they walked by, of course, everyone removed his hat and saluted the flags,

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all except one man who was standing right on the curb, and his hat stayed on top of his head. And people caught up in the patriotism and the enthusiasm of the moment began to cry out, "Take off your hat! Take off your hat! Take his hat off for him! Take his hat off for him!" And they began to push him and shove, and eventually they actually pushed the man from the curb

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and he fell flat in the street. [bell rings] Please turn your cassette to the other side. [silence]

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Sympathetic souls went forward to help him up, and as they went forward, he rolled over. And they discovered that he had no arms, and pinned upon his coat was a purple heart. We do terrible things when we don't see people as results, when we don't stop to look and to listen and to understand.

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If we'll learn how to do that as Christ did, we'll be more pleasing. And something else. I think we need to learn how to laugh at ourselves. It's always seemed strange to me that we as Christians have mastered two dimensions of the art of humor, but have completely forgotten the third.

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We know, for example, how to deflate the inflated with wit. I very much enjoyed during the recent campaign, listening to Vice President Humphrey. He is so skilled at rapier wit and repartee that he could take the comments of those who were rebuking him or ridiculing what he was saying, and with some quick shift of that very alert mind of his,

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reverse the thing upon them so that they were embarrassed in front of the crowd of which they were a part and consequently became quiet while he continued his speech. Well, many of us have developed that skill. Learn how to puncture a stuffed shirt with a shaft of a joke.

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Not only that, but we've also learned how to inflate the deflated. We come across the individual whose spirits are on the floor, and with some comic comment or some little humor that we muster, we manage to make them feel better. Viktor Frankl, who is the founder of the Viennese psychoanalytic school called Logotherapy,

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was imprisoned for some years in a Nazi concentration camp. And he attributes his capacity to come through that horrifying experience with a free spirit to many things, but one of the principles of these things is that every day while he was in prison, and he tells about this in his book, The Search for Meaning,

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every day while he was in prison, he forced himself to make up at least one joke. And in doing this, he managed to keep a dimension of lightness in his life. Well, we know how to do this too, but what we fail to understand is the importance of laughing at ourselves, of every once in a while stepping outside of ourselves and shaking ourselves up with some raucous laughter.

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Aren't you sometimes dismayed by these individuals who go about with the Bible under one hand, under one arm, and with a look of great seriousness on their face, and every time you want to talk to them about faith or the meaning of our Christian experience, they get a kind of hazy mist in their eyes and look like they're about to break into tears.

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I read a typographical error once that said that the sermon was going to be about tearful chidings instead of cheerful tidings. Well, there are some individuals that when I see them that way, I just wonder how such a tearful testimony can in any way, shape, or form represent our Lord Jesus Christ.

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It says in Scripture that he wept three times, and I think those times are mentioned precisely because this was so rare in his experience. And I think there were times when he went off into the hills alone so that he could laugh without anyone else hearing. I think his mirth was beyond our understanding.

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The Scriptures say, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." We sing, "Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell." Why don't we every once in a while direct a little bit of that humor at ourselves and think, isn't it grand that everybody is not as odd as we are?

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Oscar Levant, the pianist and raconteur, was stopped on one occasion by a traffic officer for driving too fast. And the man asked him why he was driving too fast, and he explained, "Well, officer, I have been humming the fourth movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and you simply can't drive at 60 miles an hour when you're humming that movement."

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And the operator said, "Oh, is that so?" And he said, "Yes, and I'll show you." And he proceeded to hum a few bars, and the officer agreed and didn't give him a ticket. Well, I'm suggesting that we should go through our lives humming always a kind of melody of mirth

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which is directed at ourselves, and if we do this, I think we start to live life on tiptoe, and that kind of life is the life that our Lord led, and that kind of life is pleasing to more people. And one last comment. If we're going to live lives that are pleasing, I think we need to understand first of all

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that we have to seek to please Jesus Christ. John Gunther, he's the one who's written all these inside books, inside Africa, inside Europe, inside South America. He says that when he goes into a country, he always seeks to interview the ruler, and he's always interested in the answers to two questions.

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First, what is the source of your power? And second, where does your ultimate loyalty lie? And by the answers to those questions, he says he can determine a great deal about the life of that man and the life of the country that that man is leading.

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Now that's the question that should properly be asked of us. Where does our ultimate loyalty lie? What is the source of our power? I'm suggesting to you that the source of our power and our ultimate loyalty is to lie in the person Jesus Christ. Occasionally you encounter individuals who seek to criticize or analyze or assess,

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either positively or negatively, our Christian faith, and they do it as if our Christian faith was an amalgam of theological theses or a collection of ethical verities or a group of ecclesiastical allegiances, and the Christian faith is none of those things.

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At the center of our faith is not a creed but a Christ, not a proposition but a person, a living person with whom we can have intimate personal relationship. A man's Christianity is not determined by his ecclesiastical affiliation. A man's faith is not determined by his ethical conduct.

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A man's faith is not determined by those things which he affirms as his theology. A man's faith is determined by his allegiance to Jesus Christ. The question is not "What think ye of this or that?" The question is "What think ye of Christ?"

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It was said that Napoleon made his generals out of mud. Christ does much more than that. When a person enters into the kind of relationship with him in which the individual says, "I'm sick and tired of being what I am and am ready to become the magnificent thing you'll make me be."

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When that kind of relationship is entered into, marvelous things happen. An arrogant, supercilious, bigoted Jew like Paul is turned in to one who describes himself as the chief of sinners and lays down his very life to tell others the truth. A loud-mouthed, blustery, undependable fisherman like Peter is turned in to one who is so dedicated

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and so committed that the early Church is built upon his confession of faith and his example of discipleship. What is it that happens to men like Bernard of Clairvaux or Francis of Assisi or Newbigin of South India or Dooley of Asia or Carlson of the Congo or Jim Elliott of Ecuador? What happens in the lives of men like Schweitzer and Lamberini or Cunningham or Larson or Rayburg or Pittsburgh

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or some of those individuals that you meet in the life of this congregation? Those individuals it's a joy to be with. Those people who radiate the love that's in Jesus Christ. Those people who win you by their winsomeness.

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Those people to whom you respond because they are the way they are. These individuals are different in every way that you can imagine. Different levels of education, different occupations. The colors of their skin are not the same.

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Their attitudes, their positions, their theologies differ. But what is there about them that makes them the same? What is there about them that makes them dynamic and exciting? What is there about them that thrills you so that when you are with them you are more than you've ever been before?

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It's the fact that at the burning center of their experience there's a relationship with Jesus Christ which warms and lights and thrills. And because they love him, they love like him. And that's so pleasing to behold. This last August I was in New Jersey at the seashore and I watched a group of boys playing cowboys and Indians.

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They were between the ages of seven and eleven and wearing nothing but bathing suits and ten gallon hats and holsters and toy six guns. And I was watching. And suddenly they came to a point in their game where they decided that they were going to tie a little seven year old cowboy to a driftwood stake like the Indians supposedly used to tie the cowboys. And one of the boys, not the one to be tied, but one of the cowboys, about an eight year old cowboy, decided that he didn't like this.

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Now I don't know whether he didn't think the stake was a good representation of what it was supposed to be, or whether he didn't think this was a proper part of the game, or whether his heart went out to the little boy who was going to be tied. I don't know what the reason, but for some reason he said he didn't want to play that part of the game. And the bully, the boss boy in the crowd, began to cry out, "Oh, you're always spoiling things. We don't like you. We don't like you."

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And the rest of the group took up the cry, "We don't like you. We don't like you." And I saw the hurt on that eight year old's face. And he took off his hat, and I was so close that I could see the sand in his tousled hair, and the dejection in the slope of his shoulders. And they kept on crying out, "We don't like you. We don't like you." And then there came a moment of silence. And he said, "But I like you."

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And you know, for a moment there flickered in me the hope that the reasonableness of what he said was going to prevail. But it didn't. The bully said, "Come on, let's go someplace else and leave him by himself. We don't like him. We don't like him." And off they went. And I felt like I'd seen a prophet being stoned. It's a long way from Ocean City, New Jersey to Jerusalem in Palestine.

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And yet as I looked at him, I thought of one who came and who said from the bleeding beams of a cross, "Yes, but I love you." So the little cowboy walked off down the shore following the wavering edge of the waves. And he hadn't gone too far when a man came down and started to walk beside him. And at first they walked hand in hand, and then they began to skip and laugh, and I heard the boy call the man "Daddy."

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And then the man stooped down, and he picked up the little eight-year-old cowboy, and he put him on his shoulders, and they galloped off down the beach together, the cowboy and the sturdy steed that was his father. And you know, there's some reason I've never been able to understand that certain scenes stay with you. And that scene has stayed with me.

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For you see, as we walk the shoreline of life, and as we play the game of human experience, there are many times when we meet people who say, "We don't like you. We don't like you." But if we look, and if we listen to them, and if we pause to laugh at ourselves, and then if we so love Christ that we love like Christ, then even in the midst of that experience, we meet our Father.

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And he picks us up, and he puts us on his shoulders, and he takes us with him all the way home. All the way home. O gracious God, we cannot please everybody, but by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, grant that we might be a blessing to many. For Jesus' sake.

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For the world's sake. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you,

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and give to you and to all those whom you love his peace. Amen. Amen. Amen.

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Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

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