Are you paralyzed, church? Why are we paralyzed in our lives and as a church? Why can we not show this world how much God loves it? Why can we not communicate the love of Christ to this world that is out there waiting and hungry and starving for the love of Christ? M. Scott Peck put this so powerfully in his book that has sold millions of copies. I don’t know how many people have read it but I know that many of you right this evening know the first three words of his book, The Road Less Traveled. We bought it for the power of these first three words and they begin this way: "Life is difficult." Life is difficult. It is difficult in your personal life, it’s difficult for us as a church. It’s extremely difficult for the church of Jesus Christ in these latter days of the twentieth century because in your lifetime and mine we have gone through a transition from one way of living and moving and being in the world into an entirely different way of living and moving and being in the world.

There is a difference between change and transition, and in your lifetime and mine, God has called us to lead the church in this time of transition. Let me explain to you what I mean. I’m making an omelet. All I’m doing is stirring this omelet with—notice what kind of instrument I’m using—a whisk or a fork. I begin to make an omelet and all I do is add equal amounts of fat and air, fat and air, fat and air. This is just change. Fat and air, more fat, more air, more fat, more air. But after a while, suddenly change turns to transition and that omelet changes from something that is liquid to something that is solid. I pass through a phase transition or what is called in physics, a threshold. Once you pass that threshold, it’s a new world. And if I keep making that omelet with that whisk or with that fork, I mess it up. I don’t help it. I’ve got to get new instruments, new tools. I’ve got to move from a whisk to a spatula. In your lifetime and mine, this world has moved from a whisk world to a spatula and our churches are still using forks when we should be using spatulas.

Let me give you another idea of what I’m talking about. I’m doing photography. I take pictures in five-frames-per-second photography. Fifteen-frames-per-second photography. All I’m doing is changing. Twenty-seconds-per-frame photography. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three-frames-per-second still photography. But once I reach twenty-four-frames-per-second—all I’ve done is add one change to that—suddenly I’m no longer in photography. I’m now in cinematography. It is a whole new world. You judge movies differently than you judge photographs. You make movies differently than you make photographs. And in your lifetime and mine, we have gone through a major transition. A transition from modern to post-modern. Life is difficult and we in the church and we in our own individual lives are many times using forks and whisks when we need to be using spatulas. We’re trying to make of our lives photography when God maybe calling us to make of our lives cinematography, just in the period in which I have been born.

In the olden days when I was born—and let me give you some examples here—I was born into a five day a week, nine-to-five, work day world. We are now living in a twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five world. You fully expect, if you can’t go to sleep at night, to be able at three o’clock in the morning to get up, take that catalog out and order any thing you want from that catalog.

In the olden days when I was born, they didn’t even have fences around airports. They put up the first fences so that children could be prevented from being hurt when the planes were landing because those children were playing in the fields. That is not change, that is transition.

In the olden days when I was born—actually before I was born—did you know that the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia has twice as many bathrooms as are necessary because when the Pentagon was built the state of Virginia had segregation laws that prevented whites and blacks from sharing bathroom facilities? Whites and blacks in this country have only been talking together really for twenty-five years. That’s not change, that’s transition.

In the olden days when I was born, twenty-five percent of the language that we are using today wasn’t even invented yet. Twenty-five percent of the English language has been invented in the past twenty years.

In the olden days when I was born, my mountain culture used the word "log on" to mean make the wood stove hotter. And "down load" meant get the wood off the pick-up truck. When we said somebody was a crack salesman, it meant that they were good at what they did. Hello! You and I are living in a very different, a very different world.

Let me give you just a couple more examples. In the olden days when I was born, real estate was one of the best investments you could make. Today, "unreal" estate is the best investment you can make and Bill Gates is the world’s largest "land" owner.

In the olden days when I was born, only four percent of church members were raised in a different denomination. Today, that figure is almost fifty percent.

In the olden days when I was born, weather forecasting was a joke. Well, some things do not change. You and I are living in a world that is very, very different than the one in which we were born. In many ways, I was not educated to do ministry in this new world. I was not educated to do church in this new world. What does it mean that the promise of the Gospel is that, no matter how difficult our life is, no matter how difficult a time we are having making this transition, God promises to be there?

One of the most amazing verses in all of the scripture is this verse from the book of Revelation. You remember that John is at a place called Patmos. Let me just read you this verse very, very briefly. It goes like this. This is John I, verse 9 and 10: "I was on the island called Patmos and I was caught up by the Spirit." The island of Patmos was a death camp. It was the Dachau of the first century. There was death, disease, destruction all around John. And yet in the worst of times, no matter how difficult life was for John, he had one of the most dazzling visions of God and God’s future. The Bible says here, "I was caught up in the Spirit." In the worst of times, God gave us one of the best of revelations and one of the best of things.

Let me give you another example of where you can find this. This is in Corinthians II, 4. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to this marvelous passage. Lesslie Newbigin calls it the locus classicus of the church’s mission. This is where we find out what we are to do in the world. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, from Corinthians II, reminds us that we are no better than pots of earthenware to contain this treasure. Some of your Bibles have it, "We hold these treasures in earthen vessels." My favorite translation of that: "We are all cracked pots." But the promise is that—now hear this—yes, life is difficult, but that is a profound half truth because the other half is that God is good. Here is how Paul said it: "Hard pressed on every side." That’s his way of saying life is difficult. We are never hemmed in. Oh, God is good.

Bewildered. Life is difficult. We are never at our wit’s end. God is good. Haunted. Life is difficult. We are never abandoned to our own fate. God is good. Struck down. Oh, life is difficult. We are not left to die. God is good. Wherever we go we carry death with us in our body—the death that Jesus died. Life is difficult. But in this body also life may reveal itself, the life that Jesus lives. God is good. For continually, while still alive, we are being surrendered to the hands of death for Jesus’ sake. Life is difficult. So that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in this mortal body of ours. God is good. Death is at work in us. Life is difficult. But life in you. God is good.

Are you paralyzed? What’s keeping you in your own life from being all that God is calling you to be? What’s keeping your church from really reaching out to this new world and communicating the love of Christ to this post-modern, twenty-first century world? Life is difficult. These are in many ways the worst of times for the Christian church. But the promise of the Scriptures says that no matter how difficult life is, God is good.

You all know what the seven last words of the church are: "We’ve never done it that way before." But I want to tell you this evening there are the seven first words of the church. Paul wrote them when he was himself in prison. He wrote it to a church at Philippians. He wrote it in this passage that talks about the joy of the Lord. Here he is knee-deep in death and destruction and he writes to this church at Phillipi, "Rejoice in the Lord always." And then concludes this marvelous passage of Scripture with these seven first words. May they be your seven first words. Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ."

Sisters, brothers, life is difficult, but the promise is: God is good.

Lydia Talbot: Len, in your masterful message, "Doing the Best of Things in the Worst of Circumstances," you conclude with the words, life is difficult, but God is good. How did that first become real to you?

Leonard Sweet: In my own ministry, Lydia. I, all of a sudden, woke up one day and realized that I was doing ministry in my own life with that fork and that whisk. The things that my ancestors had done that created massive results and changes, that won people to Christ and built great churches, I was doing the same thing and nothing was happening. I really think we have today the best educated, most highly motivated, hardest working group of churches and clergy that this country has ever seen and we are getting less results from them than ever before.

Talbot: But back up for a second. Life is tough. We are surrounded all the time with tragedy in our lives and in the lives of those we love. What is it that informs you about the reality that, in the midst of all of that, God is good—that kind of affirmation that you can say so emphatically?

Sweet: My first funeral sermon was my father’s. My father died three months before I was to graduate from seminary. My mother insisted that I do that memorial service. I didn’t want to do that. I had never done a memorial service in my life. My mother—who by the way was an ordained preacher, I’m a preacher’s kid but it was my mother who was the preacher—insisted that I do that memorial service. I knew I could not do that service. The only one way I got through that service was that no matter how difficult life was, I experienced the goodness of God. And I lived those seven first words that I could do all things through Christ. I couldn’t do it on my own, but I could do it through Christ. From my own life, yes, life is difficult. A lot of things happen, but God happens.

Talbot: You mentioned your mother—a staunch Methodist—and you also say that she fancied herself as Suzanna Wesley, the wife of John Wesley, the eighteenth century founder of the Methodist Church in England. But tell me about growing up. What was it about a young man from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains who could evolve into one of the most popular, hot items on the church circuit these days. How did you do that?

Sweet: I think that one of the things that happened to me is I went through a deep conversion. At seventeen years of age, I deconverted. For seventeen years of my life...when I was five years old, we had to memorize twelve Bible verses a week and say it perfectly on Friday or we couldn’t play that weekend. We had family prayer twice a day. We lived in church. We breathed the Bible. So my whole life had been totally this churched culture. And at seventeen something happened to me. That’s another story, but I deconverted. I said, " I want nothing to do with you God. I am out of here. I want nothing to do with the church. I am through." The irony, Lydia, is that when did God start working most powerfully in Len Sweet’s life? For the first seventeen years I was living out of my mother’s faith, my father’s piety. I was living out of the church’s tradition. But at seventeen when I said, "God, I am so mad at you. I don’t even like you. I don’t even think you exis,." then was the first time in my life I started talking to God personally. And even though my relationship to God was negative, still I began it.

Talbot: You say that’s another story, but just give us a bit. What was the experience that you made you feel that way?

Sweet: The worst thing you can do to a teenager is public humiliation. I was playing the organ at a camp meeting at the last service. I was playing the altar call. I was the organist playing the altar call for this camp meeting. I was dating the district superintendent’s daughter. I was really, really hopped. I was a super-spiritual seventeen year old. While I was playing that altar call, my mother’s best friend came to that altar not to go the altar but to get me to go to the altar because my mother had told her in confidence some things that she was having trouble with me. I don’t think my mother liked my dating that district superintendent’s daughter!

Talbot: You say that the great "continental divide" among the church folks these days is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who get it and those who don’t get it. And if you have to ask what the "it" is, you don’t get it, but I’m going to take the risk anyway. What is that critical pronoun?

Sweet: The modern world, the world that was created by the Protestant reformation and other movements is over. In your lifetime and mine, we are living totally in a new world and God has called us to lead that transition.

Talbot: And your message advice to the church for that?

Sweet: Is that God is good.