February 21,
2016 - 2nd Sunday of Lent
We
passed out rocks on Ash Wednesday as a Lenten discipline. If you’d like to join
us in this practice, come up and get a rock right now or at any time during the
sermon. You are invited.
My rock reminds me of the ways I
neglect my faith. I hold it and think of
things that draw me away from Jesus.
I also hold my rock and remember
that the Holy Spirit is with me. I hope
you’ll take a rock and carry it everywhere from now until Easter Sunday. Be aware distractions and ask God to remove
them. Be aware also of the presence of
God.
This morning we will see another way
this rock can serve a reminder in our lives as Jesus’ disciples.
Think of one or two people you do
not want to see at church and write the names down. Everyone turn those names in and we’ll make a
master list and give it to our ushers.
They will man the door. If anyone
on your list shows up, they will put up a stop sign. The “unwanted’s” will be rejected at the
church door. But be careful. You may be
on someone else’s list. The ushers may
have to escort you out. Or me; I may be
able finish this morning.
Anyone have Coach K on your
list? We live in Chapel Hill. We’ve got
to keep the unacceptable people out.
How about someone in a disreputable
occupation? We’ll ban bookies,
telemarketers, and sensationalist fraudulent faith healers. Who should we stop at the door?
On a
more serious note, has someone hurt you or taken advantage of you. They betrayed you or gossiped behind your
back. Maybe the damage is lasting
damage. Could you stand and sing songs
of praise alongside one who has caused so much pain and fear?
What is someone is neck-deep in
pornography? It’s hard to imagine that person in church. He doesn’t belong.
When the Pharisees saw Jesus at Levi’s party,
they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners”
(2:16)? Jesus is a holy man, but he parties
with the unclean, the unrighteous.
Why?
In the early 1960’s Will Campbell made his
way from his humble beginnings in poor, rural Mississippi to Yale Divinity
School. He became an aggressive civil
rights activist and ended up back in the south where his Christian faith was
tested when he saw white Christians reject black people at the doors of their
churches.
Newspaper editor P.D. East agreed with
Campbell’s politics of racial equality but rejected his faith. He dared Campbell to succinctly express the
Christian message. “We’re all rebellious
losers,” Campbell said, “But God loves us anyway.
P.D. East was unmoved. Episcopalian priest Jonathan Daniels was a
friend to both men and a fellow civil rights activist. He murdered in broad daylight by Thomas
Coleman, a Southern sheriff. To East,
this was evidence that there is no God.
Relentlessly he attacked Campbell’s definition of faith.
Was
Jonathan Daniels a rebellious loser? He asked.
Everyone is a sinner, including Jonathan
Daniels. So yes, he has rebelled.
Fine. East continued his assault. Is
Thomas Coleman a rebellious loser?
The murderer?
O yes. Yes that murdering sheriff is a loser (Campbell thought of other
words I won’t say).
Then, the unbeliever, editor P.D. East,
nailed the Baptist minister Will Campbell to the wall. Who
does God love more, the murdered Jonathan Daniel who died fighting for equal
rights, or his murderer, the sheriff, Thomas Coleman whose job is to uphold
justice but is perpetuating injustice?
Who does God love more?
Will Campbell wanted to hate Thomas Coleman,
but in the midst of that hot emotion a light went on inside his heart. God’s grace isn’t grace at all until it
extends to all sinners include the worst among us.
Will Campbell, civil rights activist resigned
from the national council of churches and moved to rural Tennessee where he
bought a farm. He became an apostle to
rednecks. He knew many who were fighting
for civil rights. He never let go of his
believe in racial equality. It is a
Gospel imperative to work for justice in the name of love. But he did not know anyone who was trying to
penetrate the hearts of people in the Klu Klux Klan with the love of
Jesus.
He knew how evil the Klan was. But he also knew the people in the Klan were
sinners far from the love of God, as lost as people could be.[i]
Who do we want to reject at the church door? Klansmen?
Members of ISIS? Sex
offenders? The Pharisees asked, “Why
does Jesus eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
The Pharisees were keepers of Israel’s law, the
experts on the scriptures. Their
diligence was a gift to the community until that diligence led them to care
more about upholding rules than helping people find their way to God. When social mores mattered more than people,
then the Pharisees went too far.
A few years ago I met a Korean woman, an
academic. She was headed to North Korea
officially as a visiting scholar there to train North Korean scientists. But, she told me, her real purpose was to sneak
Bibles into the country. If she got
caught it could mean years in prison, totally cut off from family and
friends.
She went for the same reason some people sign
up to be prison chaplains. She went
because the North Koreans are from the love of God. Some Pastors do not serve in churches or as
hospital chaplains or in campus ministry.
They sign up to do their ministry inside of prisons. Their congregations are full of felons. Why serve there? These individuals are far from the love of
God. They do this for the same reason
Will Campbell was a missionary to the racists he spent so much of his life
fighting. Those racists are far from the
love of God.
Tax collectors were Jews who became rich
working for the Romans collecting tolls.
The Romans had a fixed amount people were to pay. The tax collector could force people to pay
higher amounts and pocket the difference.
The people of Israel were broken under the oppression of Roman occupiers
and their own fellow countrymen, added to their pain by working for the
oppressors.
Indeed, why would Jesus have table fellowship
with them and with people who worked in unclean and unsavory professions? Those tax collectors like Levi, and sinners
like Mary Magdalene, needed God. “Those
who are well have no need of a physician,” Jesus said, “but those who are sick
do. I have come not to call the
righteous, but sinners.”
The Pharisees are already upset about who
Jesus is with. Now, they don’t like what
he’s doing. The disciples of John the Baptist are going without meals as a
spiritual discipline. They’re
fasting. The disciples of the Pharisees are
fasting. Everyone fasting. Jesus, why aren’t your disciples fasting?
Why are you eating with those people, Jesus?
Why are you eating at all, Jesus?
Jesus welcomes the peoples rejected at the
door. He is the Savior and His arrival
is the onset of the new age. His arrival
means the Kingdom of God is here.
There is time to fast, but not when we are in
Jesus’ presence bodily. We don’t fast in
the Kingdom of God. We don’t wear our
funeral clothes on Easter Sunday. The
coming of Jesus is a signal that God offers life to – to the worst of sinners including us.
To appreciate it, we have to love the tax
collectors we’d rather keep away. We
each have our lists, those people we want to reject at the door. When we hold on to those lists, we are old
wineskins, stretched out, cracking, inflexible, not ready for the new,
expanding truth of God.
New wine was still fermenting. It expands.
That’s why the skins to hold is have to be flexible. When we come to Christ, we are filled and
stretched. We don’t know what he’s going
to do in our lives. We don’t know the
tax collectors and sinners he’s going to call us to love. Never mind that we are as sinful and lost as
those we think we can judge. Stiff old
wine skins cannot enjoy the Kingdom of God.
To enjoy the kingdom and live it up at Jesus’
dinner party, we move from rejection, to welcome. We open the closed doors of our hearts. We throw away our gavels of judgment and open
our arms for embrace. We can only do
this by the power of the love the Holy Spirit puts in us. But when we are Spirit-filled, there is no
limit to how much we can forgive, how greatly we can love, and how
magnanimously we can welcome people we used to despise. Hate in us is melted by the warmth of Jesus’
grace and it becomes love because of Him.
Now you have your list – those people you’d
prefer go somewhere else. That is your
prayer list for the next 6 weeks. Pray
for God to do wonderful things in the lives of the names on the list. I know.
This is a list of people who are not nice. Hold them up before God.
And start a new list. This is one is of people you’re going to
invite to church. It is an invitation to
drink the new wine Jesus gives.
The rock that reminds us of obstacle to faith
and reminds us that the Holy Spirit is with us also reminds us to pray for
those people we just don’t like. It is
hard to do this, impossible without God’s help.
But the Holy Spirit gives that help.
Hold onto your rock, pray for clarity, appeal to the present Spirit, and
Pray God will bless the people on your list and that they may find their way to
the party Jesus is throwing.
AMEN
[i] P.
Yancey (1997). What’s So Amazing about Grace? Zondervan Publishing House (Grand
Rapids), p.141-145.
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