In his best-selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes that sometimes “We are more in need of . . . a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a roadmap. We often don’t know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it. . . . But an inner compass,” he says, “will always give us direction” (p. 101). According to Covey, your inner compass should be a set of core principles that give your life direction. Principles, for Covey, “are deep, fundamental truths that have universal application” (p. 35). Covey cites the following list: fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, and encouragement. Those are all good things. But I’m not convinced that Covey’s principles are deep enough, fundamental enough. So this morning I’m going to propose a different set, a much shorter one, and a thoroughly biblical one that I believe should serve as the four points of your inner compass that will give you direction no matter what kind of terrain, no matter what kind of conditions, you might encounter in the future.
I have a compass that reminds me of my core principles. It is a simple, tarnished metal cross. I wear it over my robe on Sunday mornings. My mother gave it to my father as a gift when he was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he died in 1984, she passed it on to me. For years it hung in my office at Furman University as a memento, of sorts, and over the years I came to think of it as a compass. This cross is my compass. It reminds me of who I am and who I am called to be, where I have come from and where I am going. And this morning, I’d like to use it as a visual aid to identify four points for a principle-centered Christian life.
At the top point of my compass, instead of putting an “N” there for “north,” I put a “G” there for “God.” Because whatever else happens, whatever goes right or wrong in our lives, we need to take the most fundamental orientation of our direction in relation to God. Your life after graduation is going to take you places and put you with people for whom God is not relevant at all. God does not matter for them. And some of them will even be down-right evangelistic about their godlessness. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. But what it does mean is that they do not orient their lives by as fundamental a principle as you do. Somewhere along the line, they decided that they would orient their lives by some lesser principle than Ultimate Reality or Transcendence or Holiness Itself or the one who created the world, the one who sustains the world, and the one who redeems the world from its disorientation.
But in putting God at the top point of your compass, there is one piece of wisdom you need in order to protect yourself from a common disorientation that occurs with some people who understand that God is the most important point on their compass. As most of you already know, the needle on a compass points to “magnetic north,” not geographical north. And depending on where you are on the earth, there can be several degrees of difference—sometimes as many as fifteen degrees in the continental U.S—between magnetic north and geographical north. This phenomenon is called “magnetic declination” or “magnetic variation.” And it provides us with a very important warning: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the needle of your compass points directly to the sum total of the reality of God. In theological terms, the sum total of the reality of God would be geographical north. But your needle only points to magnetic north: who you understand God to be. And there is always more to God than any of us or all of us together can possibly imagine or understand. Your needle points in the right direction, but it is also off by a few—or more than a few degrees—at the same time. There are people in our world who speak and behave as though magnetic declination does not exist on their theological compasses. They think that they understand God fully and completely. Real damage is done in our world by people who orient their lives to God with the arrogant assumption that they have God so completely figured out that the God they are pointing to is God’s own self and Ultimate Reality.
Don’t become one of those people. When you move on from this place, listen carefully before you join up with another Christian community, a church or a student religious organization or a Bible study. Maybe even ask them what they would say about the difference between God as they understand God and the sum total of God in God’s self. If they insist that it is one and the same, or if they don’t understand the question, look for another group, because those folks don’t understand the essential theological equivalent of “magnetic variation.” The “N” on my compass is “G” for God, in primary relation to whom I should always orient my life but whose sum total, whose ultimate reality, lies always beyond human grasp and beyond human understanding.
The entire sermon is as follows:
Welcome to the next stage of your journey! Welcome to the next leg of your life. Whether you are graduating from high school or college or graduate school, the course that you have been following is about to change. In the next few days or weeks or months the territory that most of you will be in will be different, for some of you, quite different, from the now familiar ground you have been covering recently. Now the truth is, the graduates are not the only ones among us who are facing major changes in our lives. Others of us are staring down the barrel of big changes in where we live or with whom we live or where we work or with whom. Some of us we are facing changes in our family or our financial situation or our health. So what I’m saying to the graduates this morning I’m saying to the rest of us, too, but I’m saying it most directly to the graduates.
When you are setting out for unfamiliar territory there, are several things it would be a good idea to have to help you find your way, to help you stay on course, to help you keep your direction. Most of us probably think first of a map. As long as you have a good map, one that accurately represents the territory, and as long as you stay on the roads or the trails represented on the map, it’s a handy thing to have. But the problem with most maps is that sooner or later, you are going to find yourself in an empty spot on your map. When you find yourself in a place you can’t find on your map, your map’s not a whole lot of use to you.
The Bible is like a map. From Genesis to Revelation, it is a triptych from creation to consummation, from the beginning of all that was and is to its end. On the grandest possible scale, the Bible shows us where we come from and where we are going. What the Bible doesn’t always do so well, though, is show us exactly where we are. There are places in the territory of your life that are empty spaces in the Bible. It’s fine to ask, “what would Jesus do?” but the Bible never shows how he behaved on a date or at a fraternity party. If Jesus had just taken one spring break trip, we would have that territory covered in our map. The Bible doesn’t tell us how to pick a college or what to major in when we get there. Should I get married, and if so, when and to whom? There’s a lot of territory that doesn’t show up on our map. That doesn’t mean our map is no good or unreliable. It’s just that the Bible is more like a globe than a topographical map. A globe shows us the big picture, the world and its continents and their countries and a few major cities. Even if Greenville were to show up on a globe, Greer and Mauldin and Simpsonville, Anderson, Easley and Travelers Rest, not to mention Pumpkintown and Possum Kingdom, aren’t likely to be there. The Bible shows where we come from and where we are going, but it doesn’t show us every place along the way that we are going to find ourselves.
So we need more than the Bible; we need a compass also. In his best-selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes that sometimes “We are more in need of . . . a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a roadmap. We often don’t know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it. . . . But an inner compass,” he says, “will always give us direction” (p. 101). According to Covey, your inner compass should be a set of core principles that give your life direction. Principles, for Covey, “are deep, fundamental truths that have universal application” (p. 35). Covey cites the following list: fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, and encouragement. Those are all good things. But I’m not convinced that Covey’s principles are deep enough, fundamental enough. So this morning I’m going to propose a different set, a much shorter one, and a thoroughly biblical one that I believe should serve as the four points of your inner compass that will give you direction no matter what kind of terrain, no matter what kind of conditions, you might encounter in the future.
I have a compass that reminds me of my core principles. It is a simple, tarnished metal cross. I wear it over my robe on Sunday mornings. My mother gave it to my father as a gift when he was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he died in 1984, she passed it on to me. For years it hung in my office at Furman University as a memento, of sorts, and over the years I came to think of it as a compass. This cross is my compass. It reminds me of who I am and who I am called to be, where I have come from and where I am going. And this morning, I’d like to use it as a visual aid to identify four points for a principle-centered Christian life.
At the top point of my compass, instead of putting an “N” there for “north,” I put a “G” there for “God.” Because whatever else happens, whatever goes right or wrong in our lives, we need to take the most fundamental orientation of our direction in relation to God. Your life after graduation is going to take you places and put you with people for whom God is not relevant at all. God does not matter for them. And some of them will even be down-right evangelistic about their godlessness. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. But what it does mean is that they do not orient their lives by as fundamental a principle as you do. Somewhere along the line, they decided that they would orient their lives by some lesser principle than Ultimate Reality or Transcendence or Holiness Itself or the one who created the world, the one who sustains the world, and the one who redeems the world from its disorientation.
But in putting God at the top point of your compass, there is one piece of wisdom you need in order to protect yourself from a common disorientation that occurs with some people who understand that God is the most important point on their compass. As most of you already know, the needle on a compass points to “magnetic north,” not geographical north. And depending on where you are on the earth, there can be several degrees of difference—sometimes as many as fifteen degrees in the continental U.S—between magnetic north and geographical north. This phenomenon is called “magnetic declination” or “magnetic variation.” And it provides us with a very important warning: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the needle of your compass points directly to the sum total of the reality of God. In theological terms, the sum total of the reality of God would be geographical north. But your needle only points to magnetic north: who you understand God to be. And there is always more to God than any of us or all of us together can possibly imagine or understand. Your needle points in the right direction, but it is also off by a few—or more than a few degrees—at the same time. There are people in our world who speak and behave as though magnetic declination does not exist on their theological compasses. They think that they understand God fully and completely. Real damage is done in our world by people who orient their lives to God with the arrogant assumption that they have God so completely figured out that the God they are pointing to is God’s own self and Ultimate Reality.
Don’t become one of those people. When you move on from this place, listen carefully before you join up with another Christian community, a church or a student religious organization or a Bible study. Maybe even ask them what they would say about the difference between God as they understand God and the sum total of God in God’s self. If they insist that it is one and the same, or if they don’t understand the question, look for another group, because those folks don’t understand the essential theological equivalent of “magnetic variation.” The “N” on my compass is “G” for God, in primary relation to whom I should always orient my life but whose sum total, whose ultimate reality, lies always beyond human grasp and beyond human understanding.
That’s why a second point on my compass is identified with an “F” for “faith.” In 2 Corinthians 5:7 the apostle Paul says, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” The book of Hebrews calls faith “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” On our compass, then, faith is our complete confidence in God that God can and will see us through, no matter the terrain or the conditions.
The gospel narratives show faith to be an orientation of throwing oneself on the mercy and the power of God to change our lives for the better. In Matthew 9:2, a group of people carry a paralyzed man to Jesus, and Matthew writes that “Jesus saw their faith,” and healed the man. Jesus saw the way they were throwing themselves and this one whom they loved on his mercy and power; that was their faith. Later in the same chapter, “a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years . . . touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well’” (vv 20-21) . And when she does, Jesus turns and says, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well” (v 22). A third story in the same chapter has two blind men following Jesus and “crying loudly, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David!’” He asks them, “’Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to him, ‘Yes, Lord’. Then he touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith let it be done by you.’ And their eyes were opened’” (vv27-30). Now on the surface of it, these three stories are about physical healing, but in the gospels physical healing is everywhere and always about spiritual realities also. As a spiritual reality, faith is the assurance and the conviction that God is able and willing to give us the capacity to walk on; God is able and willing to stop the bleeding in our lives; God is able and willing to give us the sight we need to see beyond where we are to where we must go. Faith is our complete confidence in God that God can and will see us through in life and in death, no matter the terrain or the conditions.
The third point on my compass I designate with an “H” for hope. Paul says of hope something quite similar to what he says about faith. In Romans 8:24 he says, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what (is already) seen?” The book of Hebrews calls hope “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (6:19). That’s a great line, and it alone would justify “hope” being one of the principles that guides our lives: “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” Don’t confuse hope with “optimism” or “looking on the bright side.” Hope is something far more profound. Hope is what sustains us when there is every reason for pessimism. Hope is what nourishes us when we can see nothing but darkness. 1 Peter 1 tells us, “By [God’s] great mercy [God] has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (v 3). Notice the language of “new birth” and “resurrection.” Hope is all about facing death, both literal death and the figurative death of failure and the mess we make of our lives sometimes. Hope is the capacity to see beyond the turmoil, the difficulty, the suffering, the pain of the moment. Hope is the sure and steadfast anchor of our soul that insists that neither the mess we make, nor the failure we experience, nor death itself is the final word. Hold fast to hope, for there is life after mess, there is life after failure, there is life after death.
The final point of my compass, the one which sticks down into the ground, is “L” for love. Like “God” and “faith” and “hope,” love a sermon in itself, a whole lifetime of sermons, but you will be happy to hear that I don’t intend to preach them all this morning. Paul calls love “the greatest of these” three, faith, hope and love (1 Cor 13:13). “Pursue love,” Paul says (1 Cor 14:1). Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God and the second like unto it is love our neighbor as our self. Jesus also taught us that we should love our enemies: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’” (Matt 5:43-44). If hope is the anchor of our soul, then love is the anchor of our ethics, our behavior. It is the fundamental orientation of our attitudes and our actions in the Christian life. Love is the basis of the Christian life because it is the fundamental orientation of God who “so loved the world” (John 3:16). “Let all that you do be done in love,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:14.
So there you have it. The four points of the compass: God, who is always and everywhere the one in relation to whom we orient ourselves, as the needle of a compass points to the north; faith, which is our assurance and our conviction; hope, which is the anchor of our soul; and love, which is the ground of our ethics. So you have your map and you have your compass. But the great news of the Christian life is those are not all you have for your journey. Because when Jesus says, “Let them take up their cross,” he also says, “follow me.” Not only do you have the cross as your compass; you also have Christ as your guide. “Follow me,” Jesus says. Covey’s paradigm of principle-centered living that provides an inner compass is a good idea. But in the Christian life we have more than a map and a compass; we have a guide also.
In Hebrews 12:2 we read these words, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” Jesus the pioneer, the archegon, the Greek text says, “the one who blazes the trail” for us, our guide and constant companion in whatever terrain or conditions we find ourselves. “I am with you always,” Jesus tells us, “even to the end of the age.” The greatest testimony of the Christian life is not that we rely on a roadmap, the Bible, or even on a compass, the cross, but that we make our way through life in the personal presence of the Risen Lord, Jesus the Christ who is our savior and our friend. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” it means that we will never be alone. For there is no place we can go that the presence and love and redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ cannot reach. The trail that Christ has blazed for us leads through life and even through death so that whatever mess we make of our lives, whatever failure we experience, whatever manner of death we die, neither mess nor failure nor death is the final word.
As you go from this place and this time, take up your compass, the cross, and stay close to your guide, Christ, and in all things, may God bless you and keep you, may God’s face shine on you and be gracious to you, and may the light of God’s countenance be lifted up to you and give you peace. Amen.
This material is Copyrighted © 2002 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
1 comment:
Since hearing you deliver it five years ago, this has remained one of my FAVORITE sermons! I'm so glad you posted it. -CWC
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