Old Dogs and New Tricks

Scripture Lessons: Romans 15: 4-13 and Isaiah 11: 1-10 Sermon title: Old Dogs and New Tricks Preached on December 8, 2019 As I’m sure is the case in your house, Sara and I have a list of banned words that no one is allowed to say. Our girls aren’t allowed to tell anyone to “shut-up” nor can they call each other “stupid.” Sara requires all of us to use proper grammar, so “ain’t” is also banned, and sometimes she gets on to me for telling her what “I’m fixing to do”. Apparently “fixing to” is not an acceptable alternative to “about to” in the Queen’s English. This Advent Season I’ve been thinking about adding another word to the banned list: “never.” I’m also considering the fate of the words “can’t” and “won’t.” These are words that people use, though a lot of the time these are words that they must later take back. Certainly, that’s how it is with kids. When a kid says: “I’m never going finish my homework.” “I’m never talking to her again.” Or “I’ll never make it” as adults you and I may know well enough to say to them something like: “Even though it looks like it’s going to take forever, you can and you will finish your homework.” “Even though you’re angry now, your anger will pass and you’ll want to talk with her again.” Or “Yes, rejection is hard, not making the team hurts, and when you’re standing at the bottom of the hill it may feel like you’re never going to make it to the top but just start walking and see what happens.” Those are all things that adults will say to kids, only what about all the other sayings that are just as defeatist that we adults accept as truth all the time? Consider how negative are the phrases: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Some men you just can’t reach. A leopard can’t change his spots. That dog won’t hunt. Or my favorite: You can’t fix stupid. These phrases are about things that can never happen. They claim that a dog can reach an age in which it’s outlived it’s adaptability, that some men can never be rehabilitated, that born with certain traits a leopard can never change as though genetics determine fate, which, leads me to: “you can’t fix stupid,” a phrase which people say as though education were but a pipe dream. While it’s true that some things can’t be done and some problems will never be fixed, often these phrases accept hopelessness, spread discouragement, reinforce depression, wallow in sadness, and allow the power of evil to have the final word. Yet who has the final word? You see, just as Genesis tells us that the Creator God spoke all that is into existence, we too must be warry of the power of the words that we use and the worlds which those words create. By our words will we be so bold as to deny that sometimes miracles happen? That sometimes everything changes and even those dogs who have been spreading their fleas and promising they’ll change while never lifting a finger can, in fact, learn. That’s what happened in the Mr. Roger’s move. I hope you’ve seen it. It looks like it’s all about Mr. Rogers. It’s not though. It’s actually about a grumpy young man who writes for Esquire Magazine. It’s 1997 and the journalist, his name is Tom, has gained a reputation for taking down heroes from the pedestals that society has placed them on. He goes looking for the skeletons in Mr. Rogers past, yet the plot of the movie is how Mr. Rogers ends up helping Tom face his. Tom’s father was an alcoholic. He was abusive. And as Tom’s mother was dying in the hospital, young Tom and his sister had to sit with her to help the doctors make the most difficult decisions regarding the person they loved more than anyone. They, though children, were the ones who had to do it because Tom’s father was off with his new girlfriend. Tom couldn’t forgive him for that. He was angry, and the anger that was born of a difficult childhood was poisoning the rest of his life. That’s hard for a man to admit, though it can be a state that he’s willing to accept as permanent, as though anger were not an emotion to be talked through but like spots on a leopard that he can never get rid of. Living with that attitude is dangerous and foolish, not only because his life was off track and he could do something about it, but also because even as his father was dying, now a changed man, Tom couldn’t see it. Why was that? Why couldn’t Tom see something good that was obvious to everyone around him? It’s because Tom had “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” tattooed across his eyeballs. Even when the old dog had changed his ways and gained a heart full of love and remorse, Tom who lived by words like “can’t,” “never,” and “won’t” was blind to the shoots that sprang forth from an old, nearly dead stump. The prophet Isaiah points us towards that image. It’s a small thing, a common thing a stump with shoots springing forth. It’s something that we’ve all seen after cutting down a Bradford pear tree, thinking it gone, only to watch it come back year after year, driving us crazy with its determination to testify to the reality of hope. The Prophet Isiah says, “look at this shoot, a small thing, and know hope springs forth in bigger things, Hope springs forth all around us!” It does, though so cluttered by “can’t,” “won’t,” and “never,” hope can be easy to miss. It’s easy to miss hope. Isn’t that sad? Something like the Presbyterian College Blue Hose is easy to miss. Have you ever heard of them? When there are so many other huge football programs around, an alumnus like me has to point out that Presbyterian College really does have a football program and they really are called the Blue Hose, but they haven’t been very successful. In fact, I read in our alumni magazine that Presbyterian College is leaving the Big South Conference. Why are they leaving? Because they lose most all their games. Now that’s a sad thing, but sports at a small, liberal arts college is often a sad thing. If you play sports at Presbyterian College then most likely, you won’t play professionally, though graduate Justin Bethel of the Patriots does. Still, if you’re on the Presbyterian College Blue Hoes’ than you can’t expect to win a whole lot, and if you’re a graduate of Presbyterian College you just about have to accept that you’ll never get into sports the way a Georgia graduate would. Maybe to those who are mourning the loss to LSU that sounds like a good thing, but back to Presbyterian College. Just last Wednesday, the feature story in the College Sports Journal came with the headline: “Wrestling History About to be Made at Presbyterian College.” This year Presbyterian College is home to the only NCAA Division 1 women’s wrestling team, and they are set to compete at home for the first time in the history of the program. This occasion reminds me of something my Dad said once. My Dad was the South Eastern Champion in three cushion billiards. I once asked him how he did it. He said, “Son, if you want to be the south eastern champion of something, it’s good to pick a sport that hardly anyone plays.” You might say that this is the case when it comes to women’s wrestling, but I say wait, watch, and listen as history is made. A small liberal arts school is making national news. Now, that’s different from a big deal football program, but it’s still something, and if we’re always looking for what’s big, we may look right past what’s there. Sometimes hope starts as a small thing, only don’t ignore it. A shoot grows into a tree. A small light will spread to concur the darkness. And love is a power stronger than hate even if the only place you can feel it is in your own heart. Maybe you know that Senator Johnny Isakson, who holds the distinction of being the only Georgian ever to have been elected to the Georgia House, Georgia Senate, U.S. House, and U.S. Senate, has just stepped down from his office in the U.S. Senate due to ongoing health issues. He is a three-term senator, and because we live in a country of division and partisanship, there’s been conflict between Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp, and President Donald Trump, over who ought to be appointed to fill his Senate Seat until the next election. All that’s now been settled and put to rest. What I don’t want to put to rest is how Mr. Isakson seized the opportunity in his farewell speech, not to celebrate himself or make note of his many accomplishments, but to urge all legislators to “forget their differences and focus on common ground to find solutions” for the good of this country and her people. He went on to highlight his friendship with U.S. Representative John Lewis of Atlanta, pointing to their relationship as an example of the change that bipartisanship can bring if people just let it. Now, in today’s world that seems like a longshot, and many have already given up on it saying it will never happen, but during his speech he said, “Bipartisanship will become a way we accomplish things, a way we live, a state of being. It will be the end of a bad time and the beginning of a new one and I’m going to live long enough to see both.” He also said, “America is changing for lots of reasons” and the solutions to our problems are in people’s hearts. How’s your heart? Is it hard and cold like Pharaoh’s who would not let God’s people leave Egypt? Is it settled in the way things are now and resistant to how they might be? Is it open to what God is doing in the world? Is it prepared to live in a New Heaven and a New Earth where the Wolf shall live with the lamb, The leopard shall lie down with the kid, The calf and the lion and the fatling together? A little child will lead us there, and he is coming, but are you ready to follow? He’s not grown used to the way things are because he knows how they might be. This child can see newness springing forth all around him, so he’s a permanent resident of the Promised Land and he declares that it is coming soon, but are you ready? He’s something like a tombstone that I saw last week. A tombstone, by design is hopeless. It’s the great sign of what will now not happen, what has ended, and what won’t come back, yet this tombstone declared: This memorial is dedicated to the remarkable life of Melvina “Mattie” Shields McGruder. She was born a slave in South Carolina in 1844. At age 6 she was brought to the nearby Shields Farm in what is now Clayton County, Georgia. Her family would endure a five-generation journey that began in oppression and would lead her descendant to become First Lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama. Theirs is a story of hope. Such hope is so vital in our world today, because too many use words like “can’t” and “won’t” and “never” so often that they’re residents of a fallen world full of broken hearts, resigned to broken ways, and broken habits. If that’s true for you, I call on you to look around this morning. Just last Monday I saw a great big largemouth bass mailbox on our street wearing a Santa hat and it reminded me that I must allow Christmas to surprise me. Then I saw a picture of a shoot coming out of a stump on a counselor’s card last Tuesday and it reminded me that anything can happen, anyone can change, for hope springs forth all around us and we must not grow so used to the ways of a broken world that we are comfortable in it. As Paul said in our First Scripture Reading from the book of Romans, and as I’ve quoted him every Sunday that I’ve given the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Old dogs can learn new tricks. Alleluia. Amen.