Scripture texts: Ephesians 1:11-23, Luke 6:20-31
(I would be remiss if I did not give credit here to the writings of the late great Brennan Manning. His book The Ragamuffin Gospel is the current topic of our Bible Study at Canadochly and was a big inspiration for this sermon.)
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Ok, show of hands. How many of you are currently holding...
...a sinner card?
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...a saint card?
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And how many of you have figured out that you have both, depending on how you're looking at it?
Alright, next question. How many of us believe we are a sinner? Ok, why then don't we act like it?
How many of us believe we are a saint? Again, why don't we act like it?
To all of us fake sinners, I have spoken a great deal in my sermons of late, because we don't act like it. Sin is always something other people do. This, in many ways, has become our holy symbol.
The pointing finger. How dare you!
How dare you, poor lazy freeloaders! How dare you, rude obnoxious young people! How dare you, corrupt politicians! How dare you, workers of the sex trade! How dare you all!
- An
angry woman came up to my internship supervisor after funeral one
time. “How dare you, Pastor! You called my mother a sinner. She
never sinned a day in her life.”
- A
Tea Party activist went to rallies and protests, railing against the
evils of the welfare state. Then he found himself unemployed. He
immediately signed up for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and
the like. When he was asked about this, his answer, “Well, unlike
those other people, I deserve this help.”
- Many
atheists argue that all the world's problems will be solved if we
just dedicate ourselves to creating atheistic societies, atheistic
governments. Get rid of religion and there'll be no more war. No
more conflict. No more persecution. But when told about the two
times in history we tried that, Stalin's Russia and Mao's China,
both nations whose body count and butchery of dissent rivals that of
Hitler, they have nothing to say in response.
If we say then that we believe we are sinners, who then are we to dare stand in judgment over others? And yet, that's precisely what we do. ALL THE TIME.
To all of us fake saints, I have words as well. I'm curious about something. If we are such wonderful followers of Jesus, if we live day in and day out living out his virtues of compassion and mercy, why then are these things still true?
- A
million people will sleep on the streets tonight, between ¼ and 1/3
of them are veterans of our armed forces. We call our soldiers
“heroes,” but why then do we treat them so?
- One
in five children will go to bed hungry tonight. We say we are
pro-life. Why then do we let this happen?
- Countless
seniors each month struggle with a decision. Pay my rent or pay for
my medicines. Why?
If I am a saint, then they are not. They don't deserve help, only me and mine do. They only earn punishment. Either/or in a both/and world.
Doesn't matter how you flip the card, the ugly truth is we don't believe any of it. Not one bit. Our actions, our lifestyle, show the truth of it.
Why is it so hard for us to be honest about who we are and what we are? Why do we keep playing these games? Deep down inside, we all know the truth. We know what skeletons hide in our closets. We know what we've done to others. We know the blind eye we've turned to evil in our society. The apathy we've shown when injustice reigns. We know all of it and we hate ourselves for it.
As much as we mature and age over the years, in many ways, we are all still like schoolchildren. Desperately hoping that the more attention we throw upon others' faults, the less they will be able to see our own. Davey picks his nose. Let's all laugh at him, and then hope no one notices that I still suck my thumb and curl up with my blankie at night.
The funniest thing about all this is how we think we can fool God too. Look over there. Look at those people. Please don't look at me.
If the doors in the back of this sanctuary opened up at this very moment and Jesus walked it. If then he walked right up to you and looked you in the eye, what would he say?
I know what he'd say, because it's what he says time and time again in his holy Word. It's what he says time and time again through his sacraments of table and font. He says something so astonishing my jaw almost hits the floor every time I hear it. With him, standing there before me, with all my faults, flaws, sins, mistakes, idiocy, arrogance, and stupidity laid bare before his eyes, what he says is “I love you. I want you. I desire you. I adore you. Please be mine.”
We spend so much time and energy hiding and lying to ourselves, that we don't see what God is trying to do with each one of us. God pursues each of us like a desperate lover, like one who can't live without us. Us, you, me, the pathetic examples of humanity that we are. And he knows. He knows all of it, and yet still his desire, his hope, his passion for us never wavers.
That passion is so strong that he dared do things that gods never do. He came down from heaven and was incarnate as one of us. That's not all that unusual in the ancient myths; other gods did stuff like that too. But what happens next is utterly unique to Yahweh. He comes into our midst not to shower the worthy with his blessings, but the unworthy. He eats with sinners. He heals the broken and hurting. He calls to his side not the royal, the powerful, the wise, and the great, but the worthless, the nobodies, and the hated. Gods don't do that. They love the great and despise the sinner, or at least they're supposed to. That's how the old stories go, but not this one.
This god, our God, loves his broken and worthless creation so much that he does something else that gods never do. He submits to our idea of justice, where he is beaten, abused, tortured, and then executed on a cross. He lets us kill him. Gods don't die; that doesn't happen in the stories either, but it does in this one. He does this to say to each and every one of us, “I would rather die than live without you. So I will die so I can be with you.”
That death was no accident, no unanticipated twist of fate. It was the plan all along. Our god did something that's never been done before, not even in the fanciful stories of folklore and myth. He took on our faults, our brokenness, our sin, and received the punishment that we deserve for it. This death had purpose. It was to take away the consequences of our sin and to wash us in Jesus' blood so that we could be saints and live forever with him.
The death and resurrection of God incarnate as Jesus was, in many ways, a wedding ceremony, binding us together so that we never need live without one another again. The great lover that is God has won us for himself. He's won you, every last one of you, to be his forever.
A saint, according to Thomas Merton, is “not someone who is good, but rather one who experiences the goodness of God.” We are both sinner and saint, and that's okay. My friends, we don't need to play these games anymore. God showers his goodness upon us every day of our lives. He's seen the truth of who we are and what we've done, and he loves us anyway. He can't help it. That's who God is. That's what he does.
We don't have to pretend anymore. Yeah, I'm a sinner. Always have been. So are you. But because of Christ, because of how much he loves you and I and everyone else in this world, we are also saints. We are now a bride adorned with his goodness so that we never need be apart from him again. He's won us and made us his own, because when you love something as much as God loves us, you just can't help it. You'll do anything to have your heart's deepest desire. God died to have you and me. That's all we need to know. Amen.
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