Sermon Tone Analysis

A Common Problem for All of Us:

You see,

We Like What Is

New.

We like things that are. . .

Fresh — Edgy — Pushing the limits — Re-imagined — Refreshed — Revitalized or Re-energized.

Those are exciting words, the kind of words that are designed to make us want the latest and best, and to move away from what we have and be re-directed to what we don’t have.

If we don’t have what is the latest thing, the latest fashion, the latest shoes, the latest car, the latest kitchen gadget, the latest accessories, the latest camera or phone or computer or flat-screen TV, or the latest game in our Play Station or Xbox, you get the idea, then we are supposed to want that.

Not what we have, but what we don’t have.

That’s a salesman’s tactic, it’s why you never want to give an unsolicited caller any extra time to wear you down about something he is selling that he wants you to think you need, even though 15 minutes ago you didn’t think you needed it.

Or, if you are ever bored in the middle of the night and have the TV on, all of those infomercials selling a new kitchen knife or better pressure cooker, or set of pots, or whatever.

Walk through Kohls or Target or Macy’s or just the aisles inside the mall and you will be bombarded with so much new that you don’t have.

OK, so

What’s New About What’s New?

Often, we can’t make any real use of the newest features in the latest gadgets anyway.

I mean, if we are driving a car that is maintained well, it gets us from one point to the next point safely and usually on time.

Now, if we decide that what we really need is a fastest, prettiest, cutest, quietest, loudest car that is being sold, for only a few hundred dollars more in payments, it gets us from one point to the next point safely and usually on time.

Just the same as what we had.

I do a lot of cooking, and I am taken by the imagination of people what design the gadgets and tools and all that go into a kitchen.

I have a lot of those things.

Only I have one rule: It has to be something I will use regularly, and must be useful right away.

But, I have to admit, I’m not always successful.

Mostly, but not always.

I know this from long experience and overloaded storage shelves.

Newer is Not Always Better.

Let me show you an example.

This is a wire whisk.

It is super useful for stirring things up without dragging out an electrical appliance.

If you are feeling fit, you can use it to whip of egg whites into a meringue, or cream into a nice desert topping.

I uses whisks a lot.

I have a few shapes of them.

I have the standard balloon whisk.

I have that in a few different sizes, from one that is fit for a teacup to others that are large enough for my big bowls.

I even have one that is silicon coated to use with hot and messy stuff.

I also have an egg whisk, a very round shape at the business end.

I have a spring whisk, the one most homes always had to stir puddings while they cook, scraping the bottom of the pan while continuing to stir the pudding.

And I have a gravy whisk, one that some of you also may have, it looks like a spring that is made into a circle, with wire inside the spring to hold it that way, and the handle comes up at a 90* angle.

It works so well when you are stirring up the dark bits from the roasting pan and getting the flour mixed in and pulverizing and lumps of flour so you end up with a smooth gravy.

But then I have this one.

I saw it in the online catalog when I was ordering some glassware for our cupboard.

Isn’t it just the coolest thing?

It is a regular balloon whisk, but more than that it is a whisk with a whisk inside of it.

And there is another whisk inside of that!

Now, I’m not a complete idiot.

I bought it at a really good sale price.

But then I couldn’t wait to put it to use.

So, I had s cake I wanted to stir up.

I put my stuff in the bowl, and started to stir it up with my cool new whisk.

Well, the bottom of the whisk inside the whisk barely touched the top of my batter, and when I was really stirring, it didn’t touch at all.

And the whisk inside the whisk inside this whisk didn’t have anything to do.

I tried it later on pumpkin pie, stirring up a full mixing bowl of pumpkin custard with pumpkin and eggs and milk and spices and all, and it worked as far as all the pieces getting wet in the whisk.

But it soon bogged down, and when I took it out of the bowl, all the pumpkin fibers had clogged up the inside whisks.

Absent mindedly, I did what made sense at the time.

I took the whisk and tapped it firmly on the edge of the bowl to knock off the stuff that was tangled in it.

Some of the more astute among you are already picturing what happened next.

I rapped this whisk on the side of the bowl, and some of the tangled pumpkin went into the bowl, but it seems like most of it just took a ride on the down stroke, and like a kid jumping off a swing set in the park, it bounced back up and splattered all over my face.

It’s a really cool whisk, alright, but not one I can use in my kitchen.

So since I brought it to church, I’m going to donate it to the church kitchen!

Not out of spite.

I think it will work really well for stirring two-pound packages of cocoa powder into 42 cups of water.

I don’t do that in my kitchen at home, but we do it here for the Christmas parade.

And there won’t be pumpkin guts on it when you try to shake it clean.

Just watch out for the rebound.

So, if newer isn’t better, then maybe. . .

Older Must Be Best

Our problem of wanting what is new goes against the other principle of life, the side of things that makes us strangely conservative with short memories.

Those of us with quite a few winters in our lives have this flip-side of the problem.

We have a yearning for what we used to have.

For most of us, even if we really aren’t into cars, we are captured by the shapes and sounds and shine of Classic Cars that have been restored.

We usually are fascinated by the museums of the automobile, or the aviation museums with restored warplanes, the military museums of guns and artillery and tanks and rockets.

We might go to an airshow, and be more attracted to the older planes still flying than the modern marvels that are really holding our borders secure.

It is really something for us to walk around on the Queen Mary in Long Beach harbor or the Battleship Iowa at the Port of Los Angeles, looking at the sheer massiveness of what tons and tons of steel welded together can be like.

This was when they really knew how to build stuff.

These were ordered, designed, built and used in a time frame of months, not years.

And if they haven’t been scrapped and recycled into shelving or highway barriers, they are still proudly standing with us today.

The flip side of wanting what is new is the even more expensive side of wanting what is old, but we want it . . .

Restored

Reconstructed

Returned to Greatness

Returned to Glory

Or Reformed by adding the right upgrades.

We forget that there are things we have forgotten about the golden olden days.

We forget that on the car, brakes used to be barely adequate, and wore out quickly.

Those big old engines used a lot of gasoline, that used to be cheap but now is out of our budgets.

Most new sets of tires these days last longer than engines or transmissions lasted on those older cars.

Plus, there are all those safety features that have been added over the years.

At first the car companies didn’t want to put in seat belts because they didn’t want people to think of their cars as unsafe.

Then, they started to see the value of making them a selling point.

But by that time, people thought they weren’t really needed, and didn’t want to wear them.

Everyone had a story about someone’s uncle or cousin that died in a car fire because of being stuck in a seat belt.

Still, the statistics were letting us know that fewer people were dying on our highways.

The laws were changed so you have to wear your seat belt.

Only now that means the shoulder belt too, that digs into your neck if you are a certain size.

But even more people survived serious car crashes.

So seat belts and shoulder belts are new and better, but a pain to always wear.

It’s true, if you don’t crash you don’t need it.

But if you do, you’ll be glad you have it.

We forget the problems that our parents and grand parents and great-grandparents endured in the golden olden days.

You only have to be in your 20s to start to get nostalgic about certain things.

By the time you are in your 30s and 40s you are thinking about the golden olden years as so much better.