17th Sunday after Pentecost
September 11, 2016
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke
15:1-10
Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFgGNZN-41M
I don’t know about your family vacations, but in my
family growing up, even when we went on vacation, we still had to go to church
on Sunday. We went to church at the beach. If we were visiting relatives, we
went to our relatives’ church. One Sunday stands out in particular, for the
sermon. It was a United Methodist Church in the mountains of North Carolina and
it must have been July or August because the pastor was new and new
appointments always begin July 1. This pastor had decided to start at his new church
with a sermon series on what he believed. Just lay it out, so that the
congregation was clear on it and also reminded of our beliefs as Christians.
The particular Sunday we were in town, his sermon was on sin and he began by
saying, “I believe in sin.” It was an attention getter, and it’s why I’ve
remembered it 20 years later. Sin does exist, sin is real. As Paul writes in
Romans, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[1]
We are not perfect. And so God sent Jesus into the world, to save us from our
sin and make us right with God. Why do we need saving? Why do we need Jesus?
Because we’re really good at doing the wrong thing. We are good at saying the
wrong thing. We are good at keeping silent when we ought to speak. We are good
at jumping to conclusions. We are good at being suspicious. We are good at not
trusting. We are good at poor communication. We are good at focusing on
ourselves. We are good at ignoring and not helping our neighbor. Through the
prophet Jeremiah, God says, “My people… are experts at doing what is evil.”[2]
And that’s a pretty fair description of human nature. We’re good at messing up.
We’re usually especially good at our favorite sins. Which
sin are you an expert on? Or which one have you rationalized to yourself that you
don’t really need to change your ways? Are you often jealous, and say well, at
least I’m not like that? Do you have a quick temper, and say, well, something’s
got to be done, you can forgive me later? Do you hoard and not share what you
have by saying, I have to make sure I have enough and look out for number one
first? That fear of scarcity is how we justify all kinds of things. I only have
so much love. I only have so much time. I only have so much money. God, I can’t
love anyone else. God, I can’t give you more time. God, I can’t give you more,
because then I won’t have enough.
And
this is who the psalmist calls a fool, “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no
God.’”[3]
Another way of saying that we are good at living without God, or living as if
God didn’t exist. A seminary professor I knew reportedly said that most
American Christians today are “functional atheists,” as in, we live and act as
if we don’t believe in God.[4]
We don’t rely on God. We don’t talk to God, except maybe when we need
something. We live as if it makes no difference that God raised Jesus from the
dead. We live as if the most life-changing day was September 11, 2001, instead
of the very first Easter morning two thousand years ago when Jesus was
resurrected and defeated death and evil and sin once and for all. 9/11 is
certainly the day the world changed in my
lifetime. But the single day that makes the biggest difference in my life
was not about destruction and chaos; it was about resurrection and new life.
We,
like Paul wrote to Timothy, often act in unbelief.[5]
We act as if we don’t have faith. We act as if we can handle this all by
ourselves, thank you very much. We tend to believe more in the myth of
self-sufficiency than in the truth of Jesus Christ. We, like Paul, are the
chief of sinners.[6] We
are fools when we act as if our faith makes no difference in our lives. The
biggest problem is that it means we don’t need Jesus, and we are either
hopelessly lost, or else we have to save ourselves. One of my favorite stories
of 9/11 was how the first responders from the neighboring boroughs and suburbs
went to New York immediately to go help. New York was not left to save itself.
My mom’s cousin, who was an EMT in northern New Jersey, once shared how just
about everyone called in sick to work that day and went to go help in New York.
Their first thought wasn’t for themselves, it was for those who were hurting
and in need. Yes, they went with protective gear and were trained in how to
respond in emergency situations, but their training and their equipment isn’t
only to save themselves, it’s to save others as well.
When
we believe in self-sufficiency, then we are responsible for saving ourselves.
When we believe in Jesus Christ, then he
does the saving and we work with him in his work of saving the world. When we
are part of God’s family, then we are our brothers’ keepers.[7]
And when we remember this,
when we act as if Christ’s death and resurrection make all the difference in
the world, when we turn back towards God and look at God and not at ourselves,
well, Jesus says the angels rejoice and joy breaks out in heaven.[8]
We are good at messing up. We are good at doing the wrong thing. But Jesus. “Christ
came to the world to save sinners,” and that includes me, and that includes
you. If you don’t think you mess up, then you don’t need Jesus. And I don’t
know about you, but I mess up on a daily basis. I was reading a pastor’s memoir
who explained that she meets with potential new church members, she tells them
that at some point she is going to mess up and the church will let them down
and she’d like them to decide now whether or not they’re going to stay when
that disappointment happens. It’s too late for me to do that with y’all, but
it’s a practice I may adopt for the next church I serve. I will, at some point,
disappoint you, if I haven’t already. The church will, at some point, or
multiple points, disappoint you. Some people leave when that happens. This
pastor tells her potential new members, though, that if they leave, “they will
miss the way that God’s grace comes in and fills in the cracks left behind by
our brokenness. And that’s too beautiful to miss.”[9]
All of us are good at messing up. And Christ died to save all of us. He shows
us mercy when we act in ignorance or without faith. Thank God.
One
other sin we’re good at is judging other people’s sins. Yet in the parables of
the lost coin and the lost sheep, Jesus offers no reason why they were lost. He
does not say what kinds of sins the person committed before turning their life
around and changing their heart and their life. We know that Jesus often hung
out with those who were considered the “worst” sinners, the prostitutes, the
cheating bankers, I mean tax collectors, the drug dealers, the divorced, those
whose sins were not socially acceptable. And yet what we hear with the lost
sheep and the lost coin is that it doesn’t matter why they were lost, the
shepherd and the woman still went looking for them. God still offers
forgiveness. God still offers mercy. God still offers unconditional love. And
if you truly accept it, then it does make a difference in how you live. Don’t
live as a functional atheist. Don’t use God as vending machine, expecting to
get out in equal worth what you put in. when you were baptized you marked as
Christ’s own, which means the last word on your life is resurrection. It’s
grace, it’s love, it’s restoration, it’s going home to heaven and never being
quite comfortable here, because we’re looking for something more, which we’ll
only find in heaven.
Each
week, each day, we mess up. And yet Paul writes in Romans that “where sin
increased, God's grace increased much more.” God’s grace is greater than our
sin. Thank God. May God also grant us the strength and ability to forgive
others and offer them grace when they disappoint us and sin against us. Only
the first half of “forgive and forget” is biblical. We are to forgive, just as
we have been forgiven. We are to offer grace, just as God offers us God’s
grace. And those mess-ups become part of our story, just as they were part of
Paul’s story. Paul spoke against Jesus, attacked Christians, and was proud. And
Jesus showed him mercy.[10]
Paul never tries to white-wash or gloss over his shortcomings. He doesn’t try
to erase his previous life before Jesus blinded him on the road to Damascus.
Paul doesn’t forget it or pretend it never happened. He simply thanks God for
saving him, for offering him grace and mercy. Thank God for saving us, too.
Thank God for offering us grace and mercy, too.
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