Where are you in the Strip?

How many of you grew up with “Peanuts”?  Not the ground nuts that people are allergic to but Charlie Brown and his crew?  From as far back as I can remember Charlie Brown has been a part of my life, when I was a kid a part of our Christmas traditions was to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, as I got older the Peanuts strips in the paper, black and white through the week and colour on the weekends was something that I read religiously.  My best friend collected the Peanuts collections and when we were at University he decided that he was too mature for Peanuts and BC and gave me all his books.  Not sure what he was saying about my level of maturity. In 1990 when we moved to Australia I gave them away but Charles Schulz’s creation was an integral part of the first thirty years of my life.

And when we started promoting this series I would be willing to wager that each of you had a favorite Peanuts memory that came to mind.  Perhaps Snoopy as the famous WW1 Ace chasing the Red Baron, or Charlie Brown with his kite stuck in the tree, Linus with his blanket or crabby Lucy and her fledgling Psychiatric practice. 

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s going to be a long four weeks. 

It was last March during our “Sermons from Seuss” series that Colin approached me and asked if I had thought of using Peanuts for a series and he reminded me the panel where Charlie Brown reveals his idea of happiness.  “The secret of happiness is to own a convertible and a lake. If the sun shines, you can ride around in your convertible. If it rains, you can say, ‘At least the rain will fill up my lake.’”

So here we go, the Peanuts gang were the creation of Charles Shultz.  Schulz was born in and raised in Minnesota, and very early in life was given the nickname Sparky by his uncle.  He was brought up in the Church of God where he eventually taught Sunday School and contributed single panel comic to the denominational magazine between 1956 and 1965.   Later in life he defined himself as a secular humanist but his Christian background continued to be evidenced in the stip

Sparky always had an interest in drawing but that wasn’t recognized by everyone, his high school year book rejected drawings that he submitted during his senior year. 

After high school and a stint in the US Army during the Second World War Schulz set out to make a living with his drawings, but it wasn’t until 1950 that his strip, originally called L’il Folks was accepted by United Feature Syndicates and became the most successful comic strip of all times eventually earning Schulz 30 to 40 million dollars a year.  A little trivia, at its peak the strip was featured in 2,600 papers in 75 countries and 21 languages.  Schulz refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that “it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him.”  And during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday; reruns of the strip ran during his vacation, the only time reruns occurred while Schulz was alive.

The original title for the strip was “L’il Folks” but the publishers felt that it was too close to the name of a couple of other strips and renamed it “Peanuts” a name that Schulz never liked. 

And most of us can find ourselves in the Peanuts gang.  It is like a little snapshot of society.  I don’t mean the physical resemblance but in their attitudes and your attitudes.  And just as you can find most of the Peanuts gang in any gathering of folks I think we can find most of them in the twelve who Jesus called Apostles.  And apparently I’m not the first person to stumble on to this. 

There are two things that I truly believe about attitudes.   Number one is that our lives will be shaped by our attitudes.  And number two is that we each have control over the type of attitudes that will shape our lives

Where you go personally, emotionally, spiritually, academically, vocationally will be determined in the most part by your attitudes.  And once we realize that, once we realize that we are in control, and that circumstances aren’t, then that gives us the power to determine our destiny.

Now there may be people here today who disagree with me.  That’s ok, I’ve been disagreed with before and I will probably be disagreed with again.  But that doesn’t change the fact that in life, less is dependent on what happens to you and more is dependent on how you react to what happens to you.  I have seen people go through similar traumatic situations, one person going through the ordeal, the other person growing through the ordeal. One person becomes bitter one person becomes better. 

So, if it’s not the circumstances that dictate the outcome what is it?  It is the person’s attitude. How they determine that they are going to handle that situation.

You ever read this book?  It’s called “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”  Have you ever had a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day?  Sure you have, we all have them.  You can’t control the circumstances that come your way, but you can control how you respond to them.

Leo Buscaglia writes “There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control.” 

So the question is, what type of attitude do you have?  How are you going to face life and what it has in store for you?

There are the Downward Lookers. You ever met someone who is always down?  It seems that they are perpetually seasick on the journey of life.  It doesn’t matter what happens they know things are going to get worse. 

Probably most of us would agree that Lucy fits this description to a “T”.  Lucy’s main mission in life is to be the voice of doom.  Nobody can do anything right and she seems to thrive on raining on everybody and anybody’s parade.  Lucy was first introduced on March 3 1952 and was several years younger than Charlie Brown and the rest of the cast when she first appeared.  However, through the marvels of comic strips she quickly aged to catch up with the rest of the L’il folks.  Lucy is best known for distributing five cent advice and pulling the football away as Charlie Brown goes to kick it.  If you had to describe Lucy with one word it would be “crabby.” As a matter of fact her little brother Linus once said “Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.”

While I was pondering who seemed to fit this spot in the Apostles I first thought of John and James the Sons of Thunder, you might recall it was the brothers who wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy a village that wouldn’t listen to them, but then I realized the boys might have a problem with impulse control but they weren’t negative people.  On the other hand it seems like every time we see Thomas he’s down and trying to pull others down with him.

Other than being named the first time we get a glimpse into Thomas’ character is when Jesus’ friend Lazarus dies and Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to visit his dead friend’s family.  Some of the disciples try to dissuade Jesus from going because of the mounting opposition to his teaching in Judah and Thomas pipes up and says John 11:16 Thomas, nicknamed the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let’s go, too—and die with Jesus.”  At the end of the Last Supper when Jesus tells his disciples that his time has come and he reassures the Apostles that he is preparing a place for them and he reassures them that they know where he is going.  And Thomas says in  John 14:5 “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”   And of course where Thomas is best known is after he misses Jesus’ first resurrection appearance and he has to choose between believing that Jesus is dead or alive, and he says that without absolute proof he is going to stick with his belief that Jesus was dead.  

When John Crosbie was in federal politics he referred to Prime Minister Paul Martin as a “Nattering Nabob of Negativism.”  Originally it was Spiro Agnew who used the term in reference to the press, but of course he didn’t actually pen it, that was done by his speech writer William Safire. 

When my friend John Symonds was pastoring the Yarmouth Wesleyan Church he must have had one of those guys in his church because I heard him describing someone and he said “If the angel Gabriel came down he’d put on dark glasses and shoot him for a crow.” 

Lucy and Thomas were nattering nabobs of negativity they were down and wanted everybody else to be down with them.  But you don’t have to be. 

There are the Upward Lookers Although there are a few in the gang who seem to have a fairly upbeat outlook on life, the one who first came to mind for me was Peppermint Patty.  First introduced to the strip in 1966 Peppermint Patty is the resident Tom Boy.  She never met a sport she couldn’t master and while academic’s seem to be a bit of a challenge for her she never lets it get her down.  Accompanied by her side kick Marcie while calling Charlie Brown Chuck and referring to Snoopy as the “Funny looking kid”.  Patty is always game for the next challenge.

If I had to claim a favorite Apostle it would be Peter.  He was impetuous and sometimes short tempered but regardless of the circumstances he was either up or getting up.  He was the first to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah he was the one who jumped out of the boat and walked on the water, the first to offer to die for Jesus and even after he had denied Christ he was the first to the tomb after hearing about the resurrection.

In the book of Acts it is Peter who is standing up in front of this crowd and that bursting to tell them the Good News about Jesus.  

It was almost as if both Peter and Patty had heard and heeded the words of Sugar Ray Robinson who said  “I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.”

You say “But Denn you don’t know what my life is like, I have every reason to be negative.” 

He had it all, a successful career, a wonderful life, adoring fans, everything a man could want. And then in one minute it was all over, he was doing what he loved, jumping competitively   when his horse stumbled pitching him to the ground and then it was all over.  Christopher Reeves went from being a Superman to being a quadriplegic who even needed a machine to breathe for him.  I would think that Christopher Reeves probably has some pretty good reasons to be negative to have a downward attitude but listen to what he said: “You play the hand you're dealt. I think the game's worthwhile.”

You get to choose how you are going to look at life, will it be with an negative attitude, always able to find a problem in every solution, always able to spot the dark cloud that comes with every silver lining or will it be with a positive attitude?  Will you be a part of the problem or a part of the solution.  Will you light the candle to chase away the darkness or will you be the one who blows out the candle to prove how dark the room is?  Only you will decide that.

There Are The Backward Lookers  Some people just can’t seem to leave the past.  They are always focusing on what used to be and how wonderful yesterday was. 

In thinking about what character from Peanuts would fit that description my mind immediately went to Schroeder.  He was first introduced May 30 1951 and he was the first character whose infancy was recorded in the strip and obviously the first to experience a time warp that brought him up to the same age as the rest of the gang.  And whenever we see Schroeder we see him with his toy piano, a piano that plays amazing complex arrangements.  But for Schroeder nothing will ever compare to Beethoven.  He is so caught up in the music of 1800 that he can’t see what’s happening around him.  While he was leaning over his piano an entire world passed him by.  Much to the chagrin of Lucy who is helplessly in love with Schroeder. 

When the twelve are mentioned we hear the name Simon the Zealot.   Zealot wasn’t Simon’s last name, the Zealots were a revolutionary group in Palestine who wanted to return Israel to the way it was 400 years before.  Depending on who you spoke with they were either nationalists or terrorists.  But the thing I discovered was they really didn’t have a plan.  They thought if they could force the Romans to leave then everything would be all right, that if the oppressors would just move on then it would be like the old days and everything would be perfect.

And Simon and Schroeder are like some folks I know who seem unwilling to leave yesterday, or probably closer to the truth to leave their memories of yesterday.  Which of course should come with a warning label that says “Any resemblance between these memories and the actual events is purely coincidental.”

You see most of our yesterdays are coloured by nostalgia and it was George W. Ball Secretary of State under John F. Kennedy who said “Nostalgia is a seductive liar.”

We can become so caught up in the past that not only can’t we see tomorrow we can’t see today.  You can’t live in the past, and you can’t change the past.  One of the great things about starting Cornerstone from scratch was that we couldn’t talk about how great things were back in 1953 or 1983.  We had no past, but we do now.  We been worshipping together for almost eighteen years and it’s sometimes easy to say, “Why I remember when so and so was coming here, and the difference it made” or “I remember when we were still meeting at the Lion’s Den  and only paying $48.00 a week rent”  Let’s not forget the past, but let’s not dwell there.  Lee Iacocca said “Yesterday ended last night!”

And the same holds true for your personal lives.  As wonderful as yesterday may have been, it is yesterday.  Yesterday may be a nice place to visit, but you shouldn’t be living there.

Philippians 3:13-14 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

There are the Forward Lookers If there is a dreamer in the Peanuts strips it would have to be Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s dog.  We were first introduced to Snoopy on October 4^th 1950 just three days after the introduction of the strip.

And you think of all the ways that Snoopy has appeared through the years, in his mind he’s been Joe Cool, an attorney, tennis player and great novelist, but the most memorable image that Schulz would give us would have to be Snoopy sitting on top of his doghouse, pilot's gear pulled over his eyes, charging through the skies in search of the elusive Red Baron.   Snoopy was a dreamer who was always looking at life the way it could be.  Why couldn’t a dog win the Christmas house decorating contest?  Why couldn’t a dog save the world from the villainous Red Baron?  Why couldn’t a dog have a Zamboni on his water dish?

Snoopy clearly epitomized the words of George Bernard Shaw who said “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”  

If you are looking for the apostle who always seemed to be looking ahead it would have to be Peter’s brother Andrew.  From the beginning it was Andrew who saw a future with Jesus.  When John the Baptist pointed at Jesus and said “Behold the lamb of God” Andrew was the first to follow.  The first five apostles all had connections to Andrew and it was Andrew who brought his brother to Jesus saying “I’ve found the Messiah”.  In the account of the feeding of the five thousand it was Andrew who brought the boy with the five loaves and two fish to Jesus.  Not because he believed there was enough there to do the job but he believed that with five loaves and two fish Jesus could do the job.

What are your dreams?  You do have dreams don’t you? John Barrymore said “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” How do you picture your tomorrows?  Regardless of our past the future stretches out before us like a giant sketchpad waiting for us to make our mark.  What is the picture going to be? What are your dreams for your life, your family, and your church?  Where do you want to be six months down the road, a year, five years ten years?  If you can’t see it now you won’t be able to have it.  Before your dreams can come true, first you have to have dreams.

Look ahead; for the first ten years of our existence we dreamed of having a building of our own and here we are.  And then after we built the church we dreamed of filling the church and we here we are.  And you understand that part of that dream was to have multiple services are here we are.  But that was only a part of the dream the dream wasn’t just to build a church; it was to build a Church.  That is a community of people who come together to worship Jesus, to support and love one another and to reach out to our communities to introduce more people to Jesus. 

And Denn couldn’t build this building by himself, it took the partnership and sacrifice from God’s people to make it a reality. And it will be the same way if we are going to build “the church.”  The relationships that will need to become a reality will need to be built by you.  And that won’t just happen on Sunday morning, during the grip and grin and it won’t happen in the lobby after the service.  Where it will happen will be Monday through Saturday in living rooms and kitchens.  At small groups and potlucks, at pool parties, going to movies and dinner and eating burgers on your back deck.

From day one the purpose of this church was very clear, we were put here to help depopulate Hell.  That is our dream that at the end of the day there are more people who know Jesus and are going to heaven because this church was here.

But that one can’t only be Denn’s dream it’s going to have to become the dream of all of us.  And that’s only going to happen as we seek God’s face and what he wants us to do to reach people, to determine what we need to do to honour God and fulfil his will. 

Sometimes in life it’s hard to determine what your attitude is because of outside circumstances.  You say: “But Denn you don’t understand what I’m going through.”  Maybe not but Jesus does and as believers we don’t have a something to keep our eyes on instead we have a someone Hebrews 12:2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

Circumstances and people may disappoint us, and they may try to rob us of our faith but Jesus is constant.  Keep your eyes centred on him.  How?  By reading his word, by spending time in prayer, by worshipping with his people.