"THE BIG ROCKS"

I like rocks. I like to look at them; I like to climb on them. I like the way they feel. And, while it may not be totally scientifically accurate, I love the metaphor of a "rock" as something solid and lasting...simple and unchanging.

I carry two little rocks in my pocket; one is a rock that many of us got at our Service of Prayer and Remembrance on Sept. 11th; it serves to remind me to pray for peace and healing in our world. The other is a small, blue stone that represents, for me, "wholeness"...and the importance of wholeness in my life. I have a rock that weighs about 15 pounds in my living room; it holds sentimental value because, a year or so ago, I carried it out of the woods on the land where my parents live in Alabama. And when I'm around big rocks, like at Elephant Rock State Park, I just can't keep from climbing all over them. I just really have a thing for rocks and the great things they can represent.

A few years back, a visual illustration involving rocks was very popular at both business-related and self-improvement seminars. You may have seen this particular illustration before. The seminar leader pulls out a one-gallon glass jar and carefully places into it, one at a time, about a dozen fist-sized rocks. She looks at her audience and asks, "Is this jar full?" Most everyone says, "Yes."

Then she reaches under the table, pulls out a bucket of gravel and dumps some gravel in while shaking the jar, causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks. Then she smiles and asks again, "Is the jar full?" By now, of course, people are starting to catch on and say, "Probably not."

"Good!" she says. Reaching under the table, she brings out a bucket of sand. As she dumps the sand into the jar it penetrates the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more she asks, "Is this jar full?" "No!" the audience shouts.

Once again, she says, "Good!" Then, grabbing a pitcher of water, she pours until the jar is filled to the brim. Then she asks the audience, "What is the point of this illustration?"

Someone will usually call out something like, "You can always cram more into life," or "There's always enough time for people in need." But that's not the point at all. The point is that IF YOU DON'T PUT THE BIG ROCKS IN FIRST, YOU'LL NEVER GET THEM IN AT ALL. Or, to put it in a way that preachers are fond of, "The Main Thing is to Make the Main Thing the Main Thing."

What are the "Big Rocks" of life? What are the big rocks in your life? A project that you want to accomplish? Time with your loved ones? Your education, your finances? Some important cause? Teaching or mentoring others? Like that illustration shows: we'd better remember to put the big rocks in first or we'll never get them in at all.

There are a lot of things in life that might qualify as "big rocks"...but our Scripture lesson for this morning may serve as a reminder to us that the biggest rock any of us should first fit fully into our lives is the rock of faith in Jesus Christ.

Now this particular reading seems, seasonally, very out of place. Some of you have successfully avoided ever hearing an account of Christ's crucifixion by simply never attending a service on Good Friday! What's the deal with sneaking this in now?

On the liturgical church calendar that is, in a tradition of observing particular seasons of the church year with specific themes and readings for each season today is designated as "Christ the King Sunday." Today we are asked to recognize the eternal and divine Sovereignty of Christ.

So why this "Good Friday"- type reading? Because we need to understand: Jesus is a very different kind of ruler. Not an earthly king who rules over people with an assertion of power but a humble sovereign who chose to live...and die...among human beings.

Next Sunday begins a new church year, starting with the Season of Advent. The course of those weeks before Christmas will lead us to a remembrance of how the angels sang to the shepherds that there is good news of great joy for all people. "Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, Christ the Lord." This Savior came, lived, died and rose again so that each of us might come into a life-giving relationship with the Living God!

A lot of people avoid Good Friday in order to avoid the images of the crucifixion. It's upsetting to hear how Jesus was betrayed, rejected, mocked, abused and treated as a criminal. But as the details of our reading today should remind us, there is an important lesson for our lives in the life and death of Jesus: in the midst of one of the most horrifying experiences anyone could have – much less the Messiah, the Anointed One of God – still Jesus keeps his focus on the main thing: God is still God; God is in control; God's will will prevail.

Jesus never lost his head. Jesus never lost his heart. It was only because Jesus kept the main thing the main thing that he could love his enemies – even on the cross; forgive those who put him there – even on the cross; reach out to someone in need with comfort and acceptance – even on the cross. Jesus practices what he preaches – even on the cross. He does what he has taught his disciples to do – even on the cross. Jesus prays for his abusers – even on the cross. Jesus prays for his betrayers – even on the cross. Jesus refuses to do evil – even as evil is done to him on the cross. Jesus put the big rocks in the jar first; he kept the main thing the main thing – even on the cross.

That's not the case for most of us, is it? Many of us do not have the big rocks in our jars. Why is that? I don't think we, as human beings, set out to live lives that are empty and off-center and unbalanced...and yet we often end up that way.

Once a farmer was describing how it is that sheep come to get lost from the flock. He said, "They just nibble themselves lost." They go, he explained, from one tuft of grass to another, until at last they've lost their way. Generally speaking, a sheep doesn't stand up one day and proclaim, "I denounce the farmer!" and run off into the woods; it slowly nibbles its way along, not paying attention, until "all of a sudden" it's lost.

I think that may be what happens to people, too. We start "nibbling" at life, going after an appealing idea here, an attractive preoccupation there, until "suddenly" we find ourselves wandering around in a place where the green grass has all run out.

Too often, people don't properly identify what the "main things" in life really are and make the wrong choices about which rocks need to be put in first.

It happens to people like Kirk Bains, a driven executive who had always lived for "the deal;" his life's pursuit was making money. When he developed incurable cancer, though, he began to assess the big rocks that were missing from his life. "I never really cared about the world's events or its people," he says. "I had no interest in creating something – not a product or a partnership with a person. And now I have no spiritual equity. No dividends coming in. Nothing to show in my portfolio."

Failing to properly identify "the big rocks" and put them into our lives first has all kinds of consequences. There are people who go through life at odds with a spouse, a parent, a child, an old friend...because they're waiting for "them" to apologize first. There are people who are going to stop drinking or doing drugs "soon" – and end up sick, dead or in prison before "soon" ever comes. People who are going to pursue their real dream – their "calling" – when things "settle down," when the kids are grown, when finances get better, when they get a chance...but they never do. There are people who desperately want to find Mr. or Ms. "Right" – but are never willing to do the hard work of change it takes to become Mr. or Ms. "Right" for themselves. There are people who will spend their lives nibbling from one tuft of "spiritual" grass to another, while wandering farther and farther away from any real, meaningful relationship with God. It's not too late for us to see what Kirk Bains only came to see in the end – and what many people never do see: that the judgments we make about what rocks to put in first determine what kind of lives we live.

It's time to start being decisive about the big rocks and the little rocks. And when we start picking out the big rocks, it's time to make sure that we start by putting into our lives the biggest rock of all: the one who has been called "the Rock of Ages" – Jesus Christ.

If the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, then what, about Jesus, is the main thing?

* The "main thing" is that when Jesus died on that cross, we were no longer separated from God by sin. In this broken and troubled world, Jesus is the bridge of connection between us and God.

* The "main thing" is that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, overcoming the power of death forever. We don't know what that eternal life will be like, it's true. And frankly, I'm suspicious of people who talk as if they can measure the temperature of hell and describe the furniture of heaven. The Bible only gives us a handful of metaphors and allusions about life after death. But it really doesn't matter. We have the promise that Jesus will be there, and isn't that enough?

* The "main thing" is that, in the meantime, the human struggle entails suffering. Period. Struggle for justice? You'll suffer. Struggle for peace? You'll suffer. Struggle for truth? You'll suffer. But the "main thing" is that you won't ever suffer alone. God suffers along with you. The "main thing" is that if God is for us, who can be against us?

* The "main thing" is that we are never alone...because there is no place in the universe we can go, there is no sin we can commit, that will put us out of reach of the grace of Christ's sacrifice or the gift of God's love.

Those are the really "big rocks." All the rest is filler. Get it right. Anchor your faith to the "Rock," and all the other rocks will fall into place. Amen.

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