This was written for the Wanda UMC on November 17, 2019!!

Earlier this week I ‘shared’ a ‘post’ on Facebook that showed a number of kids/people varying in the colors and styles of clothing, varying in height & weight, and, we would assume, varying in their ideologies, cultures, and ways of thinking, all entering a ‘Public School’… and all of them were coming out the same shade of gray, the same style of clothing, and, again, we assume, the same ways of thinking and behaving… Right down, it would seem, to the same exact outlook and expectations on and from life, itself!

The person that I had shared it From had written a lengthy piece about how the schools in the United States no longer attempted to educate our children about the ‘Hows’ and ‘Whys’ of life, or how to think and reason-through issues as they might arise, but had all been transformed into mere youth ‘stamping-stations’, teaching, usually by rote or memorization, just enough to get them graduated, or Worse, enough to ‘Place’ well on all of the aptitude tests that our government requires today! However, when I shared it to my ‘feed’ I didn’t realize that none of that persons comments had posted with it… It was Only the picture!! Still, my son responded, “Flowers are Red!”

How many people here this morning understand that reference?

Harry Chapin was a singer/songwriter whose heyday occurred in the early ‘70’s when songs such as “Cat’s In The Cradle”, “Taxi”, and “I Wanna’ Learn a Love Song’ gained him world-wide recognition and success. And though, much like ‘Mozart’, his personal life may not have been exemplary, his song-writing and story-telling was, at least to me, nothing short of genius! One of his early songs tells of a very young child in school drawing pictures of flowers with every crayon color in the box, when the teacher comes up to him and berates him for, A, it not being time for art, and, B, not drawing the flowers ‘correctly’. “Flowers are red, young man, and green leaves are green! There’s no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen!” But the kid responds, “There are so many colors in the rainbow! So many colors in the morning sun! So many colors in the flower, and I see every one!”

So, of course,

“The teacher put him in a corner. She said, ‘It’s for your own good. And you won’t come out ’til you get it right and are responding like you should. Well finally he got lonely… Frightened thoughts filled his head… And he went up to the teacher… And this is what he said, and he said

‘Flowers are red, and green leaves are green
There’s no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen”

Now, this song is on a collection I have of his ‘greatest hits’, and I had given another set of them to my son when he was still in high school… So, when he said that ONE short three-word phrase… ‘Flowers Are Red’, I knew exactly what he was referring to! And, YES, he had the entire concept and meaning of the meme that I had posted Dead-On!! But ONLY because we BOTH knew and understood the reference!!

OK, with That in mind, do any of you know the significance of the number ‘451’? What if, instead, I said ‘451 degrees Fahrenheit’? Anyone? Well, how about as a title, ‘Fahrenheit 451’? Ray Bradbury’s book was first released in 1953, and was required reading for many of us, and as late as 14 years ago, still was… Unfortunately, I can’t speak for today! ‘451 degrees Fahrenheit’ is the temperature at which most paper, especially book paper, starts to burn! And in the world created… or foreseen?… in Bradbury’s book, firemen are sent out to find and Burn books!

Guy Montag is the name of one of these firemen, and he has begun to question Why they are burning all of the books. He manages to sneak some away, one-at-a-time, and hide them in his house. He had begun asking ‘questions’ at work about why they did what they did, and when did it start, and the whole concept has him so upset he decides to not go into work one night. To his shock… and, we might, well, imagine, his dismay!… the Fire Chief, Captain Beatty, stops to check in on him!

Sitting on Montag’s bed (with a book hidden under the pillow!), the chief starts to explain…

 

“When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I’d say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule book claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then–motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.”

Montag sat in bed, not moving.

“And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radio, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of pandering norm, do you follow me?”

“I think so.”

Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”

“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten or twelve line entry.”

“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything except pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”

“Empty the theatres save for clowns and furnish the rooms with glass walls and pretty colours running up and down the walls like confetti or blood or sherry or sauterne. You like baseball, don’t you, Montag?”

“Baseball’s a fine game.”

“You like bowling, don’t you, Montag?”

“Bowling, yes.”

“And golf?”

“Golf is a fine game.”

“Basketball?”

“A fine game.”

“Billiards, pool? Football?”

“Fine games, all of them.”

“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and super-organize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere.

“Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank [goodness]. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade-journals.”

Yes, but what about the firemen, then?” asked Montag.

“Ah.” Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. “What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.”

 

Isn’t it amazing… no, Sad, and amazing… how close all of this comes to describing our society today? We may not have actually ‘banned’ All books… Yet… but how many places Have banned, and even Burnt, books in the past? Yes, it was a tool of the Nazi’s to gain & maintain power and control… but you DON’T have to go back that far. Wikipedia list some 4-500 major instances of books being burned throughout history, but the most recent was just this last October in Georgia… Yes, Georgia, U.S.A.!!! But as Bradbury wrote, we don’t Have to burn books anymore… we just refuse to acknowledge they exist… and ignore them!

Let’s read another passage from Bradbury’s book. Montag has secreted a book out of his house and makes his way to an old, unemployed college professor trying to remain hidden on the fringes of the society he finds himself in. The book Montag brings, hoping to gain an understanding of it, is the Bible… perhaps, we are told, the last remaining copy of it in North America… or even the world!!

The professor opens it, reading, and begins…

“It’s as good as I remember. [OH], how they’ve changed it – in our ‘parlours’ these days. Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs.”

 

What, do you suppose, would our ‘Captain Beatty’ have to say about our verses this morning?

 

1 Thess 5:1-11

“Now concerning how and when all this will happen, dear brothers and sisters, we don’t really need to write you. For you know quite well that the day of the Lord’s return will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. When people are saying, “Everything is peaceful and secure,” then disaster will fall on them as suddenly as a pregnant woman’s labor pains begin. And there will be no escape.

 “But you aren’t in the dark about these things, dear brothers and sisters, and you won’t be surprised when the day of the Lord comes like a thief. For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night. So be on your guard, not asleep like the others. Stay alert and be clearheaded. Night is the time when people sleep and drinkers get drunk. But let us who live in the light be clearheaded, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.

“For God chose to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us. Christ died for us so that, whether we are dead or alive when he returns, we can live with him forever. So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”

I mean, Where would we be if we did Not have these Words… and how many almost-countless others… to guide us… to Strengthen us… to give us hope when surrounded by despair… or Joy when we feel God’s presence in, and with, us?!?

About these verses in particular, The Life Application Commentary tells us that, “Paul warned Christians not to be surprised by Christ’s return. The only way for believers not to be surprised is to be morally ready and spiritually vigilant at all times. Knowing that Christ’s return will be sudden and unexpected should motivate us to always be prepared. We are not to live irresponsibly — sitting and waiting, doing nothing, seeking self-serving pleasure, or using the time until he returns as an excuse not to do God’s work of building his kingdom. No one should develop a false sense of security based on precise calculations of events or let their curiosity about the end times divert them from doing God’s work. Are you working, serving, and waiting?”

 

Many years ago, as I worked with the youth-group at Wesley Chapel, up north, I tried to get the kids to watch the movie that had been made of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ during a sleep-over at the church, but couldn’t get them to sit through more than 15 minutes of it… they just Flat Refused to watch it! By coincidence, some of them had a teacher at school who handed them the Book of it soon after to read for class! Again, they argued the point… “WHY?!?” they cried! “What does it have to do with US?” At least the teacher had the authority to Make them read it… though I suspect some used the ‘Cliff Notes’ to just pass the class… which, unfortunately, is what the Point of the book is all about… the ‘dumbing-down’ of America!!

As an example… for many years, that same youth-group had Worked through-out the year to raise money for their mission trips each summer. Each of these trips would take them to different places around the country and have them interacting with and actually Helping others! Along with the usual car-washes and dinners throughout the year, one of their traditional fundraisers each fall was to go around raking leaves for people. One lady, every year, had them come to her farm to do the leaves and pull-off all of the clematis that would cover her shrubs every year… That ONE project took All of us most of a day, and it was Hard work… but she always gave them several hundred dollars for doing it!!! And there were a number of other members who always looked forward, and even counted on, their coming to clean-up the yards every fall… again, it was a Lot of work, but it was also a fun time of working together and interacting with each other… it also taught them HOW to work, how to be responsible, and was a MAJOR money-maker for the group!

When I started preaching every week at the Lynnville UMC, time-constraints forced me to back away from working with the youth, and the Pastor was able to put-in a couple that he could control. They stopped doing ALL of the work-oriented projects and started selling donuts and flowers, and such for their fund raisers… and the monies raised were used for them to go to a camp, instead of going on a mission trip!! Within two years the youth-group, a part of that church for decades, had disbanded, due to lack of interest and participation!

There are those who want to blame all of our ‘troubles’ on ‘government’ or ‘Big Brother’… (Yes, THAT is from a Different book!) But I put it to you that is the PEOPLE who allow it! It is every one of you… and you… and Me… who have failed to pay attention to, and Allow… all of what is happening in the world today!

I counted ten Bibles sitting on my desk at home, All different translations, and the reference program that I use has 15-20 different translations, total, in it! And, yes some of my earliest physical copies are worn, dog-eared, and even torn, in places… but others look almost brand-new!

How many are sitting in your homes? Are they well-read and worn, treasured necessities in your lives? Or are they sitting on a shelf, or even a table, looking impressive for others to see?

Because, whether we blame the government or ourselves for all of this apathy and neglect, our ‘dumbing-down’, not only of our children, but of ourselves… The Ultimate blame lies with Satan! And if we continue down this path, we ALL Lose!!

Remember, Paul tells us to, “…be on your guard, not asleep like the others. Stay alert and be clearheaded. Night is the time when people sleep and drinkers get drunk. But let us who live in the light be clearheaded, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.

“For God chose to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us. Christ died for us so that, whether we are dead or alive when he returns, we can live with him forever. So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”

And ALWAYS Remember… Flowers are NOT all Red!?!