Learning Gratitude

Sermon text for July 22, 2007:
Luke 17:11-19

The man lay hidden in the rocks just below the trail. His body was obscured from view by the scrub oaks that grew on the hillsides. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there, but slowly his senses began to return to him. The first thing he noticed was the buzzing in his ears, as if a dozen or so bees had taken up residence in his skull. The next thing was a bone chilling pain in his side that hit him when he tried to sit up. The pain was so incredible that he felt woozy and nauseous. And then he noticed his left leg. It was lying limply at an unnatural angle and the bone was sticking through his skin.

Fear gripped him when he realized how much trouble he was in. It was cold primal fear for his life. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going so the possibility of help coming anytime soon was remote. And the thought came to him with sickening reality – “I might die out here!”

He was never a very religious man, but he did believe in some ill-defined higher power. If he was ever forced to describe his relationship with this higher power he’d said something like, “I don’t bother God and God doesn’t bother me.” But from his position among the rocks the words of a prayer began to form. “God can you hear me? God I hurt so badly and no one knows where I am. God I don’t want to die. Please help me.”

The prayer was the last thing he remembered before waking in a helicopter while being flown to a trauma center on “Flight for Life”. Somehow fellow hikers had heard him moaning and discovered him several feet below the trail among the rocks. They waited with him until paramedics arrived.

Later when he described his ordeal to his friend he summed up the experience this way. “I sure am lucky those other people came by. I guess it just wasn’t my time to die.”

The woman was so depressed that life held very little meaning for her. Sometimes desperate thoughts crept into her mind and stayed there festering for days. “I am no good to anyone anymore. My family would be better off without me. O God what was it that I did that was so terribly wrong so that I am being punished this way?”

She didn’t get this way overnight, it was a gradual process, one step at a time. Slowly she withdrew from life. It started innocently enough with missing some of her children’s activities – a soccer game here, a band concert there. Then she started rebuffing her husband’s affections. She could no longer stand herself and could not believe anyone else could love her.

Finally one day she quit her job and from that moment she spent most of the time in bed in a dark room with the draperies shut. She no longer attended church, and she didn’t keep up with friends. It simply took too much energy to deal with people. Sometimes she cried for hours for no reason at all. Slowly her loved ones started to avoid her because the emptiness in her life sucked the energy out of them.

One day in desperation her husband forced her to see a Christian psychologist who prescribed a course of counseling, antidepressants, and prayer. As the fog began to lift she asked her church friends for prayer support and soon members rallied with prayer and other kinds of help.

Over a period of time the woman’s health returned and she began feeling like her old self again. She couldn’t believe how good she felt in comparison to the way she felt before. One day a church friend said to her, “I’ll bet you thank God everyday for healing you,” And the woman replied, “Well yes, I guess, but it’s really nothing more than I deserve.”

One day Jesus met ten lepers. They existed on the edges of society and often felt lonely, desperate, depressed and cursed. Dealing with the physical effects of the disease was hard enough, but the emotional effects were even worse. Because of their leprosy they could not have any intimate contact with their families. They couldn’t hold down a job, and they had to warn others that they were coming. Some wore bells around their necks so that the sound would warn others while some simply cried out, “Leper! Leper coming!” Their constant prayer must have been, “God save me. O God what will become of me? How can I live like this?”

One day as Jesus was traveling he was confronted by these ten lepers. They stood at the prescribed distance and asked Jesus for mercy. Just talking with a whole person was risky, but the lepers recognized something in Jesus which gave them the courage to risk rejection. Healing was probably too much to hope for – just a little mercy, what ever Jesus could do, would be sufficient. “Jesus Master, have mercy on us,” they prayed.

Jesus told the lepers to show themselves to the priests, which was part of a ritual that was required before they could re-enter society. On the way, they felt the leprosy leave their bodies and they were healed. They were healed, their bodies and relationships restored. But only one of them returned to Jesus to give thanks to God.

We will never know why the others didn’t return. Perhaps despite their prayerful request they thought of themselves as lucky instead of blessed. Or maybe they felt entitled to health because others were healthy.

Only one offered an appropriate response for the gift he received. Somehow he understood that he had received a gift from God. His healing was not luck or fate. It was not an entitlement – but a blessed gift that healed body, mind, and soul. This one returned to Jesus to express praise and thanksgiving.

It might have helped that the one who returned was a Samaritan and not a Jew. As an outsider he may have understood how unexpected and unmerited his healing was, while the Jews might have considered healing as part of the covenant.

But we are insiders. We are a part of the people of God who recognize that we are all wounded in some way and therefore on a journey toward wholeness. The Greek word that we translate “saved” also means “whole” so in our salvation we are moving toward wholeness. And we believe that one day we will be presented to God without blemish, or wounds that oppress body or soul.

The only question is how we will respond to our healing. Will we understand wholeness as blessing or entitlement? Is it what we deserve or pure grace? Maybe we ought to begin practicing for that day, by saying thank you to God with all that we are and all that we have.

Copyright © 2007 by Dwight R. Blackstock

Reaching the Holy Places Within

Sermon text for July 8:
Hebrews 10:11-25

One day I found myself standing in the remains of a replica of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. We were miles from Jerusalem in the middle of the Negev Desert, and the fortress we were visiting dated from the time of Solomon – approximately 900 B.C. Of all of the holy places in Judaism, the “Holy of Holies” that was contained in the Temple is without a doubt the most sacred. The ancient Jews believed that God lived within the Holy of Holies, surrounded by the Arc of the Covenant and other sacred implements. As I stood in this ancient replica of the Holy of Holies I had the eerie feeling that I had been there before.

In my imagination I could almost see a frightened priest standing before the altar of God offering prayers while preparing the sacrifice. It was a great honor for a priest to be selected to enter the Holy of Holies, and a priest might practice for a life time just to be ready if he was ever called upon to serve. While it was a great honor to serve in the Holy of Holies, it was also fearsome, because even the High Priest did not know what would happen in the presence of God.

The Priest stood before the altar of God hidden from the view of other worshipers by a thick curtain. As he prayed, he allowed the blood of the young ram or bull to run down the altar and into the fire. The blood made a sizzling sound as the blaze consumed it. The Priest hoped fervently that this sacrifice would appease Yahweh and guarantee God’s blessing for the coming year.

I don’t know, but maybe it was the hot desert sun that sent my mind reeling that day. Or maybe there was some lingering hint of holiness in the ruins of that once holy place. But I have often reflected on my experience that day because it is so different from what you and I experience in our relationship with God.

In the ancient system it must have been almost impossible to have a personal relationship with God. The priests performed acts of devotion on behalf of the whole people, so God must have seemed both distant and fearsome for the average believer.

But our lesson from the Book of Hebrews shows us that in Jesus Christ God began something new. The writer reflects on the old system of sacrifices with a sense of futility. The priests, he says, offer sacrifices day after day “that can never take away sin.” But Jesus offered a “single sacrifice for sins and sat down at the right hand of the Father”. So the implication is that in the crucifixion and resurrection a job that had been ongoing for generations was finally completed. Jesus made reconciliation with God a reality and when he was done, he simply sat down.

The writer goes on to talk about believers being able to approach God with confidence instead of fear, and by-passing the priest to perform our own acts of devotion. Because Jesus Christ has chosen to live within us, we have direct access to the One who is holy and our sacrifices are primarily inward. The only intermediary we need lives within us and he has bridged the gap that kept former generations separated from God. And so we are left with the image of an accessible God who welcomes us into the Holy places and who has removed the barriers that once kept God and humanity separated.

But some of the ancient fear and alienation remains long after Jesus removed the barriers. I know people who refuse to participate in the community of faith because they feel unworthy. I know people who refuse to pray because God seems so distant that they don’t know what to say. I know people who ask, “How can God love me after everything I have done?”

Maybe you know some people like that too. Maybe there is some part of you that still doesn’t feel worthy, or some part of your life that causes you to have reservations about drawing near to God. If so then this message is especially for you. The witness of the Book of Hebrews is that from God’s side the barriers have been torn down. There is nothing from God’s side that separates us from all that is holy. There is nothing from God’s side that wants us to hold on to fear. In the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus the curtain that kept us separated from God has been torn down. Now it is up to us to accept what God has done.

Of course the sacrifice of Jesus did not eliminate the need for priests altogether, but the role of the priest is changed. Now that we know that God is accessible to each of us, we are called to be priests to one another and to spread the message of the accessible God to all who will listen. As priests for one another we need to be present for those in our community who are afraid, or angry, or alienated from God so we can offer them the message of reconciliation.

Copyright © 2007 by Dwight R. Blackstock

There is Nothing More Important

Sermon text for July 1:
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15

Things were hectic at Mary’s house and that was an understatement. She was happy to be a stay-at-home mom, but sometimes she missed the orderliness of her job in a law firm. Hardly anyone went screaming up the halls there, and as far as she could remember no one had thrown wet toilet paper at anyone either.

She was in one of her moods today, wishing for a more orderly existence when a blood curdling scream came out of the girls’ room. Her two older children were harassing the baby again. He wasn’t really a baby, but a three year old – who usually could give as good as he got. But today they had tied him down with the bed sheets that Mom had just put on the bed that day. He struggled and screamed when they told him that they were going to pull the hair out of the bottom of his feet with the pair of tweezers. His oldest sister was gleefully clicking the tweezers together for emphasis. This had been going on all day – one thing after another. Chrissy fell into the pond, or maybe Bobby pushed her. The dog made a mess on the hall carpet; the ladder to the tree house broke while Bobby was still up there.

And poor Mary was close to tears. She ordered everybody into a time out in a different part of the house and when all was quiet she covered her eyes with her hands and took some deep breaths trying to regain some control. But she did not have time for this. Guests were coming to dinner, the table wasn’t set, and the meat had to be tended, too. This was an important dinner for her husband because the guests were new clients he was trying to woo. And everything right down to where people sat was critical. Mary used a special calligraphy program on the computer to write each name card beautifully, and then she put them in the exact spot that her husband told her.

Mary thought she had everything prepared. The kids were upstairs with a baby sitter. She called husband to come and carve the prime rib roast, only to discover that in the midst of all of the craziness she neglected to turn on the heat. The roast was raw and the dinner ruined. Tears of embarrassment stung Mary’s eyes. How could she ever face these people again? How could she make it up to her husband who was counting on her?

It is a crazy story, but my guess is that some of us here have had nightmares that parallel Mary’s dilemma. And in some ways the story of Mary is a retelling the story of Jesus from Mark chapter 7.

In Mark’s gospel there is almost always a large crowd around Jesus
and now he and the disciples are once again surrounded by a large crowd and everyone is eating. And the Scribes and Pharisees notice that the disciples had not washed their hands before the meal. For observant Jews washing before meals was an important ritual. It involved prayers and the washing of the hands all the way up to the elbows. They knew nothing of germs so what they were guarding against was the possibility that they might have touched someone in the market who was ritually unclean. That is someone whose life made them something you would not want to touch. Ritual washing guarded against the consequences of having made one’s self ritually unclean.

Jesus responded to the criticism rather harshly. He quoted Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrine.”

Jesus is saying that sometimes we get so wrapped up in things that don’t matter that we miss the point. And sometimes we take those things that do not matter and elevate them to the point of law and try to make everyone else do the same thing. In reality, touching a pagan would not make a Jew unclean, nor would accidentally touching a woman – one’s wife or someone else – disqualify a man from worshipping God. And if one is somehow made ritually unclean, that is, having a stain on the soul, washing the hands won’t change that. But the law said it did.

Jesus knew that sometimes believers get so busy worrying about things that seem urgent like ritual hand washing; that we fail to take care of that which is important – building relationships with one another. I sometimes wonder if some of the arguments we have had in the church over the last forty years have been over what seems urgent and that we have not taken care of what is actually important.
So what is happening in your life right now? Are you rushing to take care of what seems urgent only to allow important things to go unattended?

This morning as we come to the communion table we are taking care of what is important, though I fear some of us might miss the point altogether because our hearts are a million miles away worrying about things that seem urgent. Let me encourage you to focus here. There is nothing happening anywhere else that is more important than what we are doing. Here we do away with what is false and take part in the truth. Here we stop washing our hands up to the elbows and accept the cleansing that comes from Christ himself. It is easy to let events in life distract us, so take a deep breath and tell Jesus that you are here, and ready to receive him. That’s it. That is all that you have to do right now.

Copyright © 2007 by Dwight R. Blackstock