Say It Like You Mean It

Scripture Lessons: Micah 6: 1-8 and Matthew 5: 1-12 Sermon Title: Say It Like You Mean It Preached on January 29, 2023 Our daughter Cece’s favorite restaurant is Chick-fil-A, and I don’t mean that her favorite fast-food restaurant is Chick-fil-A, I mean that if she has the choice between a pack of Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets and a $60 steak from Mac’s down the street, she’ll take the nuggets, so we eat there often. I like the spicy chicken sandwich and the ice they put in the tea. I’ve also grown to appreciate how they’ve revolutionized the drive-through. At most places, you talk to a speaker to make your order. Now, when you pull into the parking lot at Chick-fil-A, you see a huge line, but in an instant, some nice young person appears at your car door, smiling, taking your order on a tablet, and saying, “It’s my pleasure” all the while. Here’s the thing that really gets me: They say, “It’s my pleasure” like they mean it. Years ago, I read an article titled: “Corporations make employees use customer-service scripts, but what do customers think?” The author was talking about the likes of Chick-fil-A, where every employee says, “It’s my pleasure” or the drive-through at Taco Bell, where, as soon as you pull up, they’re supposed to say, “You can order when you’re ready” because the higherups at Taco Bell corporate believe asking “Can I take your order?” puts too much pressure on the customers. The one the article mentioned that I’d never heard before is at Kohl’s. If you call them on the phone, they’re supposed to answer saying, “How may I help deliver greatness today?” “How may I help deliver greatness today?” might sound a little aspirational, but Tim Omarzu, the journalist who wrote this article all about these scripts that corporations are making their employees use, wrote that we can all recognize the benefit of these scripts when we consider how not everyone is naturally polite. Some people need to be trained in how to respond to customers appropriately, so a restaurant manager should teach her workers how to speak with customers just as she should teach them how to flip burgers. Accoring to Omarzu, though, customers don’t like it when the people taking their orders sound fake. That’s a most important thing. You not only need to know what you’re supposed to say. For your words to have impact, you must say it like you mean it because if you don’t mean it, your fake words can do more damage than had you said nothing at all. For example, years ago I had to go and apologize to my sister. We were little. I stole her dolls, and hung them up in a tree, just to be mean. My mom made me take them down and hand them back to her. Mom was standing right behind me with her arms crossed, waiting for me to say the magic words. Looking down at my shoelaces, I just kind of spit the word out: “SORRY.” That wasn’t going to cut it, so Mom said, “Say it again, and this time, say it like you mean it” because it’s not just a matter of saying the words. You can’t just say, “It’s my pleasure.” You can’t just say, “I’m sorry.” Moreover, Christians can’t just say, “I’m blessed.” Have you ever heard a Christian make that claim? This is a good thing to say. It’s the perfect response to the question, “How are you?” based on the second Scripture lesson that I’ve just read where Jesus says again and again, “Blessed are you even when you suffer, even when you are oppressed, even and especially when you face hardship.” On the one hand, while there could be no more appropriate thing to say, the words are just words unless you say them like you mean them. I can remember numerous times when just this word, “blessed,” brought tears to my eyes because the one who said to me “Have a blessed day” really meant it. How many times have I asked the mourning, the impoverished, the afflicted, the oppressed, “How are you holding up?” only to hear them say, “I’m blessed” in defiance of their pain? That word “blessed” is worse than empty unless you say it like you mean it. How can you say it like you mean it? Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Wait just a minute. Blessed are the meek? What about in the airport? Have you seen what happens to meek people in the airport? A couple of weeks ago, an Ohio woman assaulted flight attendants and police officers with a fire extinguisher at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Did you hear about that? Or let me ask you a better question. After standing in line, going through security, watching people cut in front of you, feeling pushed around and prodded, only to then hear that your flight is delayed, have you ever been tempted to reach for a fire extinguisher? The meek get runover in the airport, yet Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek.” Can you believe it? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Say that to the parents who are watching their kid play basketball, watching the ref call traveling on their son after ignoring the kid on the other team who picks up the ball and runs down the court with it. How can you see the blessing in thirsting for righteousness without getting it? It’s hard. Parents get escorted out of games these days for demanding righteousness. Some would say especially the parents whose kids go to Christian schools get escorted out of games for demanding righteousness, yet Jesus says that those who don’t receive it are blessed, so shouldn’t we Christians be the first to face hardship with something more than base, human anger? A friend I run with asked his middle school son how he felt after seeing a teammate’s dad escorted out of their game. “It looked like your friend was embarrassed. Are you OK? Do you ever feel embarrassed when these parents go crazy yelling at the referees?” His son said, “I’m just glad those parents are on our side.” Now that’s seeing the blessing in an unfortunate situation. Can you see the blessing in the unfortunate situation you’re living in right now? Can you say, “I’m blessed” and mean it? That can be a challenge. The more likely thing I’m feeling during hardship is regret, saying to myself, “How did I get here? What could I have done differently?” Looking back again on my childhood, I can remember how much I loved hitting the reset button on video games. A game I could play for hours, Civilization it was called, started with this one settlement. Then you’d move around colonizing other parts of the world, until you were either wiped out or achieved world domination. What I would do when I played this game is I’d send out my little colony, and occasionally the native inhabitants of that land would attack my colony, taking it over, and whenever that happened, I’d just hit the reset button on the game and could start over with a clean slate. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do the same thing with life? Hit the reset button on your dinner party so that you could start over with the roast that ended up burnt. Hit the reset button so you have the chance to not say the mean thing that you said. Hit the reset button on your day, hit the reset button on an argument, hit the reset button and go back to see the doctor before it got so bad, hit the reset button to go back and do it all over again. Wouldn’t it be nice to just start over and do something to avoid the outcome that you’re stuck with? Jesus points us towards something other than a reset, though. His is a step beyond regret and wishing you could do it all over to see that even in times of hardship, still we are blessed: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the meek.” “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus says. Why? How? After my dad’s mother suffered a stroke - a stroke that put her in a home, led to her losing her ability to drive, her ability to paint, then her ability to remember, and finally took her life, my dad would look back on the year leading up to the stroke and wonder what could have been done differently to have prevented it all. He would say, “If only I had been there when she fell.” “If only I had taken her to her doctor’s appointments and helped her take better care of herself.” “If only I had been there when the stroke happened, then we could have gotten her to the hospital faster.” “If only, if only, if only I had a reset button,” yet those regrets are so different from what the Lord said. “Blessed are those who mourn,” he said. Why? Because while we wonder why bad things happen and wish for a way to avoid them, to start over and steer around tragedy, the Lord says, “Open your eyes and see that you are always surrounded by God’s blessings.” Blessed are those who mourn, for those who mourn are surrounded by people who love them. Blessed are those who thirst for righteousness, for righteousness is on the way. Don’t waste time on regret. Don’t spend your time looking backwards. Open your eyes to the blessing that surrounds you even when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Even there He is with you. From the cross, He said to the criminal crucified beside Him: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Paradise awaits my friends. It’s just ahead, around the corner, and so it is what’s waiting for us that must hold our attention, not what might have happened in the past. Give up on regret. Instead, look for blessings in this moment, and remember always that our tomorrows will be far brighter than our yesterdays. Know that, and you will always be able to say, “I’m blessed,” and mean it. Amen.