unworthy – Salvaged Faith

Sing! Play! Summer! – Amazing Grace

Posted on July 7, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Luke 15

I have a fantastic sense of direction.
If you drop me in a new place with a map, I can easily get my bearings and find my way.
When I think about it, I can’t remember a time that I have ever been lost… at least not while I was navigating!
I do lose things, however.
I misplace things all the time.
My attention slips for just a few minutes and I set something down and the next thing I know, it’s gone.
In fact, on graduation day at Simpson College, my family was helping me move out of the house. We packed everything up and loaded the boxes into my mom’s SUV and the plan was for me to follow behind with my brothers in my car.
My parents took off and all of us young folks helped my roommates finish packing and loading their cars.
We finished and went to head home ourselves, when I realized… I couldn’t find my keys.
They were nowhere to be found.
In a panic, we called my parents and they found them packed in the top of one of the boxes in their vehicle.
So I dropped my brothers off at the movie theater, while my boyfriend drove me halfway back to Cedar Rapids to meet my dad and the keys.
Believe it or not… that’s not the only time I’ve lost my keys while moving.
And, of course… I lost one of my monkeys this morning =) [reference to the children’s sermon]

Today, Luke’s gospel tells us the parables of the lost… the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son… the child who takes his inheritance and runs off, squanders it all and returns home.
A parable a short story that tells us a moral lesson… like the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not – the point is what we learn from it.
Luke groups these lost parables together, because he thinks it is key to who Jesus believes we are and how we are to live.
You see, at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus sat down for supper with some unsavory characters.
He was eating with tax collectors and sinners. Ooooo….
What? Does that not trouble you?
The idea that Jesus would sit down with a tax collector?
That’s probably because tax collectors today – while not our favorite people, are also not the unsavory villians of Jesus time.
But who might be?
What kind of people would we find it scandalous for Jesus to be having dinner with today?
What about drag queens?
Or Muslims?
White supremacists?
Or prostitutes?
Would any of those groups of folks make your feathers ruffle just a little bit?
Would you stop in your tracks and stare?
The Pharisees sure did.
They walked by the house where Jesus was having this grand old feast with a bunch of sinners and they started to whisper.
They started to grumble.
They started to complain… that fellow welcomes sinners!
And not only that – he eats with them!!!

And so loud enough so that they could hear – Jesus begins to tell these stories about the lost. About the shepherd that leaves behind the entire flock to seek out the one lost sheep.
The story about the woman who burns as much oil as a single coin was worth just to find a coin that was lost.

And when they found those lost things – Jesus said – there was great rejoicing…
In the same way God seeks the lost people of this world…
and God rejoices when they are found.
I may not know what it is like to be lost and not know my way home, but I do know what it is like to have lost something.
I know the desperation of seeking out that thing that I need – the thing that I love.
I know how important it is.
And so in some small way, I understand what it means for God to seek out those who are lost.
What is harder to understand is that I am someone who has been and who probably still is… lost.
We don’t like to acknowledge that we are sinners… that there are parts of our lives we still hold back from God.
We are fantastic at being being oblivious little sheep, wandering away from the flock and not realizing it.
Maybe it is a habit of telling lies, or the anger you harbor in your heart…
Maybe you like spending more time watching football than showing up to praise God…
Maybe you use and abuse the gifts of God’s creation…
Maybe pride has led you to believe you don’t need God’s help…
But whether we want to admit it or not, we are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
It is an ugly fact about each and every single one of us.
We can pretend it’s not so – but, maybe, at the very least, we can take comfort in the fact that we are all sinners.
We are in this together.
We have all fallen short of the glory of God.
And God seeks each one of us out anyways…

Today’s hymn of the day was the second most favorite song of the people of Immanuel… Amazing Grace.
It was written in 1779 by John Newton and his story reminds us of that simple truth that we are all lost… we have all fallen short… but that doesn’t mean God has given up on us.
Newton was born in 1725 and was taken to sea by his father who was a sea-captain. He rebelled, he drank too much, he got into trouble, and before he knew it, he was forced to join the British navy. He tried to desert, but was caught and had his rank stripped away.
Eventually he found himself serving on a slave ship, and caused a big stink among the crew, so they left him in West Africa – basically giving him to an African princess who treated him as a slave.
His father began to wonder where he was and sent out a rescue mission.
On the ship back home, a storm tossed the boat to and fro and they seemed to be sinking…
In that dark place, from rock bottom, with nothing left to lose, Newton began to pray and the ship drifted to safety.
He marks this day, March 21, 1748, as the beginning of his Christian faith.
As Diane Severance notes, “Only God’s amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God.” (https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/john-newton-discovered-amazing-grace-11630253.html)

Here is the thing, though.
Even after this moment, Newton wasn’t perfect.
He continued in his work as a slave-trader until the age of 39 when he eventually answered a call to ministry in 1764.
As part of his ministry, he began to write hymns, including Amazing Grace in 1779… a testimony of his own journey from wretchedness to salvation, from being lost to being found.
But it was not until 1788, thirty-four years after leaving the profession that Newton would renounce the slave trade and his role within it.
In 1788, he published a pamphlet, “Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.” He became an advocate for the abolition of slavery and lived to see it end in Great Britian in 1807.

In many ways, Newton’s story reminds me of that lost son… the prodigal son… the one who is consumed by drunkenness and tries to make his own way and utterly fails.
Like the prodigal son, the love of the father rescues him and welcomes him home.
Amazing Grace speaks to this personal journey of salvation.

But I also think about the rest of his journey and how eventually Newton came to understand that every single person upon this planet is a precious child of God, worthy of love.
That God will not rest until every person is found….
The final verse of Amazing Grace is actually not attributed to Newton, but I think it represents that shift in his own life from the first person singular, to the first person plural.
From “I” to “we”

I am reminded of a story told by Rodger Nishioka who as a Presbyterian was working alongside some Russian Orthodox folks in an ecumenical project.
He made reference to the “Parable of the Lost Sheep” when someone interrupted him and asked him which parable he meant.
For a moment, I imagine Mr. Nishioka thought these Russian Orthodox folks didn’t know their bibles very well.
So, he summarized Luke’s parable about the shepherd looking for the one sheep that had gone missing from the flock of 100.
The Russian Orthodox priest looked at him and said, “Oh! You mean the Parable of the incomplete flock.”
In their tradition, God was concerned about the one sheep that went missing, because without that one sheep – the 100 would not be complete.
God wants to seek out and find all of God’s children and our family is only complete when all who are lost are found.
We are incomplete.
The family of God is incomplete when we leave out the tax collectors and sinners.
It is incomplete when we turn our backs on the drag queens and white supremacists.
We are not whole until our siblings who are Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist are welcomed.
We are lost if we cannot sit down with Jesus and the prostitutes.

As long as we diminish the worth of another person and hold them at a distance…
As long as we believe that others are unworthy, unfaithful, or uninterested…
As long as we act in hatred or anger towards our siblings…
As long as we are unwilling to sit down and share a meal God’s family is incomplete.

Like the woman with the lost coin…
Like the shepherd with the lost sheep…
Like the father whose son has gone missing…
God seeks out every single one of us until we are found.
Even me.
Even you.
Even them.
Thanks be to God.

Hewbrews Part 1: Disposable People

Posted on October 4, 20091 Comment

The strange and frustrating thing about the lectionary – the three year cycle of readings that is used in many churches in the world – including ours… the strange and frustrating thing about the lectionary is that sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.

Each week we have a reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament, a Psalm, and a Gospel reading. And while most of the time they go together – with the same message and purpose, sometimes they just don’t seem to fit.

Take today for instance. Worldwide, we are celebrating the fact that as Christians we all partake of communion with one another. It is a day to remember that a Christian across the globe is our brother or sister in Christ – that we all partake of the one loaf and we all drink from the one cup.

In the lectionary cycle – today is also the day that we start exploring the books of Job in the Old Testament and Hebrews in the New. Until Thanksgiving, in fact, we will be going slowly through the book of Hebrews as we worship on Sunday mornings. But those readings have very little to do with the Old Testament reading from Job where Satan begins testing the faithful man by raining destruction into his life. It has very little to do with the passage from the gospels about divorce.

In fact, I couldn’t figure out how any of these things hung together – what we were supposed to make of them until I remembered a conversation I had with a patient of mine from Nashville

This patient, Adam, was struggling – deeply struggling with his worthiness before God. You see, Adam had cancer. And on this afternoon he was in a particularly deep hole of doubt and self-pity. On this day, the illness had gotten the best of him. And as I entered the room to visit with him he wanted to know why he couldn’t just die.

As we got to talking, I wondered what kind of comfort I could bring him. I couldn’t take the pain away. I asked him if he wanted to pray with me and he barely lifted his head as he spoke.

“I’ve asked Jesus over and over again to help me and he hasn’t,” Adam cried out, “how can he just let me suffer like this?”

As we talked more I began to realize that Adam was expressing a deep feeling of being forsaken by God. Forgotten. Thrown away. He felt like no matter how much he cried out, God wouldn’t listen.

Instead he was being punished. In his eyes, the suffering he was experiencing was God knocking on the door saying “see, I told you so,” and Adam was going to withstand that suffering. Whether it was sheer pride, or self-loathing, or the medications, he felt like he was being punished and he was going to take it like a man.

I remember asking him at one point: What if God’s just waiting for you to let go? What if God is just waiting for you to stop fighting him so that he can actually heal you? What if who you are fighting is yourself?

And then, I’ll never forget what he said. “Even if I do let go, even if I do admit he’s really there, I don’t deserve it.”

I have no idea what Adam’s past was. I don’t know where he thought that he failed.

I do know that I wanted to shake him and tell him that no matter how unworthy he thought he was, God wasn’t done with him.

God didn’t see him, and God doesn’t see us, as some disposable thing – made and then broken and easily thrown away. God saw him in the words of Psalm 8 as the one who was made just a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. It didn’t matter what he had done – God’s grace and forgiveness was bigger and stronger than his mistakes.

The amazing thing about the book of Hebrews is that while it is a text that portrays very vividly what Christ has done – it is humans who are the focus. Hebrews is about who God is yes, but about what God has done for us – how God acts because of us.

In chapter 1, we are reminded that while God has always been speaking to us – in various times and places – God chose finally to speak by his Son. This Son is the Word of God that is God and was God and spoke all things into being in the creation. Jesus, the Son of God, the Word of God, is God and is fully of all glory and honor.

But then in chapter two we compare this glory and majesty with what was created. This world, that we live in, was not given to angels or to demons, but to humans. Compared with the moon and the stars we are nothing – and yet God has made us a little lower than the angels and God has placed this world in our hands.

Here, the author of Hebrews turns our eyes back towards Psalm 8. We are reminded that Adam and Eve were made caretakers over the garden – over the animals and the birds and the fish and the land and the seas. This is our world – a gift, given to us by God for safekeeping.

And while chapter 2 verse 8 says that we are supposed to be in control, when we are sick. When natural disasters like earthquakes and tornados and floods ravage. When a brother or a sister harms us – the feeling of control slips between our fingertips. The reality that we experience however is that we feel completely out of control.

That is what my friend Adam in the hospital was experiencing. Completely out of control.

Hebrews tells us that while this world appears to be spinning out of control, we catch a glimpse of Jesus and we are reminded of how he poured himself out, became human – became one of us, and took the sins of the world with him through the cross. That becomes our reference point. That becomes our hope.

We are not disposable in God’s eyes, we are redeemable. As John 3:16 reminds us, For God so loved the world. God doesn’t abandon his creation – he loves it and he redeems it.

And through Christ, we become children of God. Or as verse 11 puts it – we all have one Father, one source – and Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

What I told my friend Adam is that it doesn’t matter if you feel unworthy or not. It doesn’t matter if you think you deserve help or not. Heck, we probably are unworthy and we are undeserving. There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s love. But God loves you anyways. You are not a disposable part of God’s creation.

Christ invites us each to the table because it is more complete when we are all here. And when we sit at this table, we look across and see our brothers and our sisters. And just as you are not a disposable part of God’s creation – neither are they.

Gathering at the table means that we speak the truth about those we have hurt. It means that we acknowledge that there are people in the world that we have treated as if they can be used up and easily tossed aside. They may be people we never see like sweatshop workers in Vietnam, or coffee farmers in Columbia, or diamond miners in Africa.

But they might also be people who are close to us, people whose lives we share on a daily basis.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus makes a plea with his disciples not to separate the bonds of marriage and to honor the lives of children. And in both of these instances, he is speaking against cultural practices that allowed spouses and children to be considered disposable people.

If your wife burnt your dinner, you could write her a certificate of divorce. If you didn’t like the way she wore her hair, you could write her a certificate of divorce. While this had been in part Jewish custom, Greco-Roman culture also allowed by this time that women could divorce their husbands in a similar manner.

The same was true for children. They were seen as not fully human. Until they reached a certain age they had no voice and no standing. They were non-persons who could be sold and traded.

But just as Christ doesn’t give up on us – doesn’t throw us out with the slightest irritation, so too are we supposed to love one another. The relationship between two partners in marriage does not entitle either one to see the other as disposable. The relationship between parent and child means that the parent should care for the child and the child should honor the parent.

That doesn’t mean that there won’t be brokenness in the body of Christ. We all know situations where divorce has divided a family. We all know situations in which divorce was the only way out of an unhealthy situation. We can all think of instances in which children were not cared for by their community.

And we bring that to the table. And we speak the truth about the ways we have failed one another through confession. And here we receive forgiveness. In this bread and in this cup, we are restored. Whether we deserve it or not. Whether we think we are worthy or not. You are not disposable in God’s eyes and this table is set just for you.