Sermon Tone Analysis

*Let's Get Personal*

*Psalm 23              May 27, 2001*

 

*Scripture: 1Sam.

17:34-40*

 

*Introduction: *

 

          Chances are that the title of this message, Let's Get Personal, may already have a tendency to put off some of you because getting personal is something you just don't like to do.

You don't like it when people pry into your affairs, assume knowledge they have no right to assume, or make unwarranted claims upon your commitment.

And there are times when you just want to live your life undisturbed.

But this can also turn a tragic twist, like the story about the discovery of Adolph Stec as reported in the Chicago Tribune on May 10th.

| /Copyright 2001, Chicago Tribune/Corpse in house for up to 4 years \\ Neighbors thought elderly owner left Date: May 10, 2001 \\ Page: 1 \\ Section: Metro \\ Edition: North Sports Final \\ \\ Author: Tom McCann, Tribune staff reporter.

For the last four years, many of Adolph Stec's neighbors figured the reclusive elderly man had abandoned his small, neatly trimmed bungalow in Jefferson Park to the growing weeds and bushes.

Over time, work crews came by to shut off his water, his gas, his electricity.

For years, the mailman bypassed his residence at 5339 N. Central Ave., thinking it was vacant.

Once in a while, a neighbor would mow the lawn or knock on the door and receive no answer.

But it wasn't until Tuesday morning that the developers who bought Stec's home at a tax auction three years ago finally stepped inside to find a man's body almost completely decomposed in his living room chair.

A newspaper from 1997 was at his side.

Police described the remains as "mummified."

It may take weeks for the Cook County medical examiner's office to identify the body, because little is left beyond skeleton and teeth.

But neighbors on Wednesday couldn't help but come to the conclusion that it was Stec.

"One day about four years ago he said hello from across the yard, and I never saw him again," said next-door neighbor Peter Vella, 66, as he was cutting his front lawn Wednesday afternoon.

"The grass in his yard got as high as 2 feet, so for two or three years I mowed his too.

I didn't want the neighborhood to go to pot."  Ronald Ohr of Glenview had assumed Stec's unpaid property taxes at auction in 1998 after Stec had failed to pay since 1996.

Only recently had the property been officially turned over to him.

He had been searching for Stec for months, even questioning his former landlords and looking for relatives with no success, said his wife, Jeanne.

That process usually takes two to four years, said Cook County treasurer's office spokesman Bob Benjamin.

Many buyers do not inspect their properties before taking possession, and Benjamin said it is not his department's job to go inside every home.

"More than 51,000 pieces of property go up for auction each year.

So going into houses, per se, is not our business," he said.

"It's their job to respond.

I don't have to tell you that this was an unusual case."

But on Tuesday, Ohr finally had a strong employee force open the door, his wife said.

"It was a pitiful sight.

He told me everything in the house was decaying and the walls were frozen and rotting," Jeanne Ohr said.

"There he was in the chair.

A calendar near him was dated to 1997."

"My husband couldn't go in himself because he'd be sick.

He immediately called 911," she said.

"But really, all we can do is feel sorry for the man.

It makes you appreciate the fact that you have loved ones."

For now, it's unclear exactly when he died or the cause of death.

Police said their only leads are the newspapers and mail in Stec's home that appeared to be as recent as February 1997, when Stec was 72.

Since that time, the house's gutters have fallen down and the front awning has drooped to one side.

People on the block would sometimes knock to find out if Stec was still there.

But he was a man who rarely seemed to make any friends, they remembered, usually greeting neighbors' hellos with barely a grunt.

"He really wasn't a very friendly man, not nice at all," said neighbor Cathy Rosario.

"So everyone just went on with their lives.

He must have abandoned the place, we thought."

Vella has lived next door for more than 30 years.

But he said that he and the other neighbors never noticed any sign that a dead man was inside.

Stec bought the Northwest Side single-level home in 1994 with his girlfriend, who died not long before Stec disappeared, neighbors said.

"The guy was a loner.

He was not unfriendly, but he just wouldn't talk," said neighbor Martha Diliberto, who said she remembered Stec having Parkinson's disease.

"The woman living with him died, and we thought he moved away.

He didn't know any one of us."

Letter carrier Pat Murphy has been assigned to the neighborhood for four years, and he said he has never ventured past the chain-link fence.

"As far as I knew, it was an abandoned property," he said.

About three years ago, Rosario saw a notice to shut off Stec's water on the doorknob.

More notices followed, but she said no one ever sought entry into the house.

Authorities said they were not sure if Stec had any relatives.

"How very sad no one worried," Rosario said.

"Even then, you'd think that it wouldn't take four years for the authorities to find out a person is dead."

Record Number: CTR0105100347 |

 

          The tragedy here is not single-sided.

It would seem that Stec didn't reach out to his neighbors and his neighbors didn't go that extra mile either.

And so we hear of a man who was dead for four years without a care.

We would think that in a city with as many people as Chicago, it wouldn't be that difficult to allow others to get personal with you or for you to be personal with them.

But we all know it doesn't work that way, don't we.

It's like an inverse principle – the greater the concentration of humanity (density), the less the concentration of humanity (caring).

For years now, the Canadians have prided themselves on being a people more compassionate than their southern neighbors.

And so most Canadians were appalled recently when it was reported that a 17 year-old girl lay all day long in a coma, naked and beaten in a parking lot in an upscale Montreal neighborhood, as passersby gawked and snickered without anyone even dialing 911 to help her.

Office workers looking out the windows commented to their co-workers to come see the peep show going on outside.

She made unconscious and feeble efforts with her arms to cover her nakedness, but everyone thought this victim was on drugs or drunk since she was just a street kid covered with tattoos.

Appropriately it has stirred somewhat a sense of national remorse for such indifference.

But it brings us back to the same issue, doesn't it.

Nobody wanted to get personal enough to care – really care.

| /Copyright 2001, Chicago Tribune/Apathy to beaten teen shocks Canada Date: May 18, 2001 \\ Page: 13 \\ Section: News \\ Edition: North Sports Final \\ \\ Author: Colin Nickerson, The Boston Globe.Dateline: MONTREAL She lay for hours in the chill drizzle, a beating victim, 17 years old, somebody's daughter.

She lay motionless except when her hands moved feebly in a futile attempt to cover her nakedness.

But the teenager was plainly a street kid; the tattoos told all.

Or at least told passersby as much as they wanted to know.

So for nearly three hours Saturday, no one bothered to place a 911 call for a squad car or ambulance to help the young attack victim, who remains in a coma.

Montreal police Thursday declined to release the girl's name.

But the case has slashed like a razor across the self-image of a country that prides itself on being more compassionate, civic-minded and peaceable than its southern neighbor.

"It was a serious attack, we don't think it was sexual, but it was very brutal," said a police spokesman, who seemed as stunned as anyone that a crime victim could lie helplessly for so long in broad daylight, ignored by pedestrians and clerical workers in the office building overlooking the parking lot on the edge of one of Montreal's more upscale neighborhoods.

The officer declined to comment on whether the attack victim might be in better condition had help been summoned sooner.

Police so far have no suspect in the beating.

Lines to radio talk shows from Halifax to Vancouver have been jammed by shocked callers giving voice to something like national remorse.

"This can't be Canada," said a sobbing woman who phoned a Quebec station.

"The indifference fills me with far more horror than the crime itself."

According to one newspaper account, workers in one office were ogling the grisly scene and making jokes about "a peep show outside," because the young woman was naked from the waist down and her hands were flopping in an apparent attempt to cover herself.

According to Montreal media reports, those people who walked by the young woman or glanced at her supine form from the office windows assumed that she was just stoned.

"Ignoring somebody so desperately and obviously in need is a despicable, disgusting act," said Randy Mohammed, a supervisor with Sun Youth, an organization that provides emergency assistance to down and out people in Montreal.

" . . .

you have to wonder if we're losing our capacity for sorrow."

One supervisor at Sitel Canada, a telemarketing firm whose office windows had a view of the woman, told his staff not to call police, saying he didn't want the office "involved," according to workers.

Peterson Frederick, the supervisor, was quoted by the Montreal Gazette as saying he assumed the woman was "out of it" on liquor or drugs.

Subordinates told the Gazette they were horrified, and have since anguished over whether their failure of nerve might have cost emergency medics a chance to revive the woman.

A distraught worker eventually made an emergency call.

Record Number: CTR0105180152 |

 

          These are things that must matter to us if we are to be the people of God.

And how can we be that kind of people?

We look to God himself as our example since the people of God are to be like him, to represent him to a world that is increasingly impersonal.

Others must see God in us.