Canada Day weekend was spent at the lake and at the neighbour's where we had a great Canada Day Party. In fact, I have been at the lake for most weekends because I get to spend more time with my Luv Bug. I also get to golf with Luv Bug's dad and spend quality time with my gang.
The one weekend, I didn't go to the lake was on July 7-8 when I went to the Ogema Fair and the Wood Mountain Rodeo. Yes, they still remember me in Wood Mountain even though it was 40 years ago that I lived there. I went to the rodeo dance on Saturday night and the rodeo on Sunday.
This past weekend, I wore one of my regular hats as a preacher wannabe. I preached a shock and awe sermon at my home church, Resurrection Lutheran. I am going to post my sermon below.
Sermon for July 22
Jesus Love the Little Children: "All" the Little Children of the World
I have
chosen the epistle text for today’s sermon.
The verses in Ephesians 2 that intrigued me are: His purpose
was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making
peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God
through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and
preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through
him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
One
new humanity out of two. I guess if you
were a gentile, you were on the outside looking in.
In today’s
sermon, I am going to shock you, confuse you, challenge you, hopefully, I won’t
bore you.
I am not a
theologian and I am not a spiritual giant.
I am a seeker who is trying to figure it all out. It seems the more I learn the less I
know. I must confess that I have been on
a journey lately. A journey of faith. I have asked some hard questions of God. About salvation, gender, sexual orientation,
what is heaven, what will happen to people who have never heard the gospel,
what will happen to people of other religions, denominations, cults,
sects. Is God out there? Is God in here? What is sin?
Where is heaven? Is there a hell? I think if everyone here was honest with
themselves, you would likely agree you don’t have it all figured out. Furthermore, I am sure that everyone of you
has a different set of beliefs about who God is and what he requires of us. Many of you probably would be hard pressed to
explain your faith to others even your closest friend or your spouse. Yes, we
are all on a different faith journey. We
are all over the map. Even though we are
in a Lutheran Church, where we are justified by grace through faith, I am sure some would say you’ll get to heaven
at a future date if you keep the 10 commandments and live a good life. Oddly enough, most of us could not recite the
10 commandments. I am sure you have a few ideas about who will get to heaven
and who will burn in hell. Again, we have some very different ideas on heaven
and hell. Some of us are able to recite a stock answer about our beliefs, but
we doubt what we are saying and would not likely be able to defend our position
with conviction. We have a mind that
divides people with walls. We sort people.
Saved and unsaved, sheep and goats, black and white, gay and straight, …
the sorting is endless. In the midst of
this sorting, we have built walls between ourselves and others.
I would
like you to think about a wall that you are experiencing in your life right
now. Hold it in your mind. Now, I’d like us to think about conflict like a
brick wall that is built between us and that person or group of people. How do
you build a wall? One brick at a time. Each of those bricks are moments in time.
They are actions taken, words spoken, love withheld.. Brick after brick is laid
down until, sometimes the wall is so high and so thick that it seems impossible
to change.
Can you see
that wall in your mind? The question for us today is, “How can we break down
this wall?”
The Apostle
Paul wrote this letter from prison. It is important to note this fact because
the reason he is in prison is directly tied to our topic. Paul was in trouble
because he was accused of breaching a wall.
The Temple
that sat in the heart of Jerusalem was a series of walled in courtyards and in
the center was the Temple itself. Only priests were allowed inside the Temple,
because this represented the very presence of God. Even then, only one priest
was allowed to go into the Most Holy Place, and that only once a year. Then the
next courtyard was called the Court of Israel. Which meant that only
circumcised male Jews were allowed to come in here. The next courtyard was the
court of women. Again, only Jewish women were allowed here.
Then, way
out here, on the side, was the Court of Gentiles. If you were not a Jew, you
were not welcome here.
Imagine
what our worship space would be like if it were under these rules. We’d have a
big curtain around the altar, and only Pastor Then only male members of this
congregation would be allowed to sit in the pews. Female members of the
congregation could stand in the Narthex and look in. Everybody else could stand
outside if they wanted.
Enter Paul.
He had been out traipsing around the countryside, interacting with Gentiles. He
even brought some Gentiles back with him. He was accused of bringing one of the
Gentiles into this space. That’s why they wanted to kill him.
When Paul
speaks of a wall of hostility, he is not just speaking in the abstract. He’s
talking about this physical representation of the division and exclusion of
people from the community of God’s people.
Let’s look
at what he says. This passage can be broken down into two main parts. A before
and an after.
In the
before part he says:
So then,
remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by
those who are called “the circumcision”—a physical circumcision made in the
flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time without Christ, being
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of
promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Here’s the
key phrase in the whole passage: But now
Something
has changed because of Jesus. Look at how central Jesus is this section. Notice
the passage reads:
in Christ
Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has
broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has
abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in
himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might
reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to
death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who
were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have
access in one Spirit to the Father.
You see,
this is the Gospel. This is the good news. Jesus has put to death that
hostility through his death on the cross. You know we say this all the time,
but have ever asked how that works? What really happened?
Think about
it this way. The biggest wall of hostility in the universe is the wall built
between us and God. If anyone had the right to be hostile toward us it would be
God. But God looks at us. He looks at you and says, “I have died to the wall. I
have died to your sin and the many times you have hurt me and others. I forgive
you, and I love you.”
And as he
looks at us with that eternal love, all the bricks just vanish.
And then
Jesus looks at the walls of hostility that still remain between us and says,
I’ve knocked this down. I have proclaimed peace. What about your wall today?
Look at each of those bricks. Each of those hurtful things that you want to
cling to. Once you were defined by them. Once there was the other person far
off on the other side, and you on this side. But now. Because of God’s love
demonstrated in Jesus, and through the power of God’s Spirit moving between us,
we can let go of the past, forgive the bricks, and work toward the future of
peace in the presence of God.
Many times
we hide behind these walls and use them as an excuse for not loving the way
Jesus called us to love.
We
need to remove the walls between people.
Unfortunately, the Christian Church has rebuilt the walls that Christ
tore down. We have not solved the
problem already resolved by God. Humans
have never really done diversity very well.
We see people in terms of good and bad, sheep and goats, saved and
unsaved, black and white, … But we need to see our foundational oneness.
Ephesians 1:4 For he
chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and
blameless in his sight. In love 5 he[b]predestined us for adoption to
sonship[c] through Jesus Christ, in
accordance with his pleasure and will.
“For it is by him that we
have life and we move and exist; so also some of the wise men among you have
said: “Our lineage is from him.” Acts 17:28
The goal of the spiritual journey is to move toward connectedness
and relationship while honouring diversity, not by building walls.
Certainly, we need to make connections with:
1.
Family and friends
Then even deeper connectedness with people outside our immediate
circle such as people of different:
1.
Races
2.
Religions
3.
Economic classes
4. Gender
5.
Sexual Orientation
Ultimately, we can and will experience full connectness as a union
with God. Without connectedness, we
don’t exist as our true selves. Becoming
who we really are in Christ, is matter of learning how to become more and more
deeply connected. For the last 2 years,
I have been reading daily meditations from Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk and
mystic. According to him, God in us has
to see God in others. Jesus is the
living icon of this integration. He
holds all things in unity. God is
one. God is whole. Everything in creation is holon a Greek word
meaning: something that is
simultaneously a whole and a part.
A part that mimics, imitates,
replicates, and includes the whole. As
humans, we have been unwilling to see the divine image in those we deem to be
inferior or unworthy…so called sinners, heretics, LGBTQ, people from other
races and ethnicities, the poor, those with disabilities, and non
Christians. Once the Great Chain of
Being is broken or denied, and any one link is not honoured and included, the
whole vision God intended collapses.
Either we acknowledge that God is in all, or we lose the basis for
seeing God in anything, including ourselves.
God is for everybody and the divine DNA is in all or God would not be
God. In Christ, humans are driven and
drawn to higher levels of conscious union and the ability to include, and to
forgive others for being other. Jesus did away with a stingy, excluding view of
God. We are created in the image and
likeness of God from the moment of our conception. The Creator gives us our core identity as
sons and daughters of God from the beginning.
Again Ephesians 1:4-5 Life gives us opportunities to discover our image
and our likeness to God and furthermore, our soul finds its fullness and we are
consciously connected to the whole. Yes, Richard Rohr certainly gives us
something to think about. I will leave
your response up to God to determine whether you accept his faith perspective.
To
conclude, I challenge you to think about the walls you have built in your life.
Ask God to give you the strength to smash it. Jesus has smashed it already.
Just let yourself see it dissolve. One brick at a time, let’s let the walls
fall down.
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