Action!

MEDITATION: “Action!”
I John 3:16-24
May 3, 2009 Dr. Dennis Ginoza

Words are funny. They can make you laugh, they
can make you cry, they can motivate you,
they can cut you down, and they can build you up.

Here are some good words: Next! Nice going! Thanks
a million! You’re so right! Wow!

“If you really want to know who
your friends are, just make a mistake.”

Mr. Kresge of the Kresge chain stores gave one of the
shortest speeches at a college commencement. At Yale
University, he got up and said: “I never made money
Talking,” and he sat down.

Dag Hammarskjold give us these words of wisdom:
“It’s more noble to give yourself completely to one
individual than to labor diligently for the salvation
of the masses.”

Stephen Covey cites that most problems of organizations
stem from the difficulties of individuals at the very top—
between two partners in a professional firm; between the
president and owner. So he says, it is more noble to give
yourself to an individual.

Stephen Covey is right. Most of our problems come from
individuals. Remember the Hatfields and the McCoys.
This was a civil war between two families in Kentucky
and West Virginia. This feud kept going over a $l.75
fiddle and a stray razorback hog. By 1882, this feud got
worse. Three McCoy brothers killed Ellison Hatfield,
because he had insulted them. (Remember what I said
about words). “Devil Anse,” the head of the Hatfields
rounded up the three boys, tied them to the bushes, got his
rifle and put 50 bullets through them. After that, it became
life after life. The women also got into the act. This didn’t
end until the second decade of the 20th century. Almost
30 lives had been taken.

In I John chapter 3, verse 18 it is written, “Little children, let us love, not
in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
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Jesus is teaching us here that words can be empty.
If you say one thing and do another, then your words
mean nothing. Your words need action.

When Jesus saw the crowds, 5,000 of them, and he
had compassion for them. He fed them with five loaves
and two fish. When Jesus saw Bartimaeus, the blind man,
he had compassion so he placed his hands on Bartmaeus
eyes and he was healed. And Jesus took the ultimate
action, he gave his life for us, for you and for me.

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but
in truth and action. Last week Beth Bulger told me
a neat story. Her husband Randy Bulger, at his baseball
+practice, gets all the players together and he offers a prayer.
Last weekend Randy couldn’t be at the practice. At the
Baseball practice, his son Colton jumped in and offered the
prayer. The two other coaches are not religious so Colton
took the lead. Now, Randy has the kids offering the prayer.

In all of our lives, little seeds are planted. Those seeds will someday
will bear fruit. When I was in college, whenever I went to town
to shop, I would walk by the Methodist Church. The parsonage
was right next to the church. If the pastor, Rev. Gerald LaMotte
would see me, he would say, “Hey, Dennis, how’re you doing?”
So we’d talk. Then he would say, “Let’s go inside and pray.”
One Sunday, at the Central Methodist Church, I was baptized. I was
a junior in college. What I have learned is that, little acts of kindness
will go a long ways. Rev. LaMotte died last year. I got a letter from
one of my college friends in Iowa who attended his funeral and it was
mentioned that Rev. LaMotte had touched three persons that entered
the ministry. One of them was her husband, Jim Stiles, who is a
pastor in Mason City and, yours truly, Dennis Ginoza.

James Dobson says, “Values are not taught, they are caught.” One
day our son Jeremy said to me, “Dad, remember when you
used stop and pick up trash, it used to embarrass me. Guess
what?” He says, “I’m doing it now.” When Jeremy was at
Pacific University, he organized a recycling project for the
school. He was proud and he said, “Dad, that was big!”

All our lives, we are influenced by people. Like little drops of rain,
a small push here, one small sacrifices, a prayer on your
knees – they all become one large act of love. When I first

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came to this church, I went to visit Frank Cardiff and I’ll
never forget what he served me. A shrimp cocktail and cheese.

When I went to seminary, I studied basic courses in Old
Testament and New Testament, systematic theology,
the psychology of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud,
the history of Christianity, exegetical study of the Bible,
Quakerism and Methodism, Shintoism and other
world religions. I studied Joseph Fletcher’s
Situation Ethics and Harvey Cox’s Secular City. I studied
church management, preaching, counseling and Greek.
I took a course on monastic communities with a Roman
Catholic priest. I did eleven weeks of Clinical Pastoral Education:
at the Long Beach General Hospital working with women
alcoholics and at Pacific State Hospital with the mentally
challenged. Then I wrote a doctoral dissertation on Christian
Agape as the Basis for an Ethical Norm.

In all that I have studied and all that I had done, it comes down to Jesus’ commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” John says,
“No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his
friends.” (John 15:13) Without love, we are nothing.

Once a reporter was covering the conflict in Sarajevo (what was
then Yugoslavia. He saw a little girl shot by a sniper. The
reporter threw down his pad and pen and stopped being
a reporter. He rushed to the man who was hold the child.
He helped them both in his car. As he stepped on the
Accelerator, the man said, “Hurry, my friend, my child is
still alive. A moment later, “Hurry, my friend, my child
is still breathing.” Minutes went by, “Hurry, my friend,
my child is still warm.” Finally, “O God, my child is
getting cold.” When they got to the hospital, the child had
died. As the two men were washing theirs hands and
clothes in the lavatory, the man said, “This is a terrible task
for me. I must go and tell her father that this child is dead.
He will be heart broken.” The reporter was surprised. He
looked at the man and said, “I thought she was your child.”
The man said, “Yes, they are all our children. They are
also God’s children as well, and he entrusted us with their
care in Sarajevo, in Somalia, in New York City, in Los
Angeles, in Perry Georgia, and in Washington, D.C. (I add: Fallbrook).
Action! Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard
seed, the smallest of seeds that will grow into a tree.”