The One Who Humbles Himself!”

 A sermon based upon Luke 18: 9-14
By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
November 10th, 2019

There was a very lost, wicked, rebellious man who decided it would be good for business if he went down to the church and joined it. He was an adulterer, an alcoholic, and had never been a member of a church in his life.

But when he went down to the altar to join the church, he gave public testimony to the church that there was no sin in his life, and that he had grown up in the church, and they readily accepted him as a member.

When he went home he told his wife what he had done, and his wife, a very godly lady, exploded. She excoriated him for being such a hypocrite, and demanded that he go back to the church the next week and confess what he really was. Well, God used his wife to really break him, and he took it to heart.

The next Sunday he went back to the church, walked down to the front again, and this time confessed to the church all of his sins. He told them he was dishonest, an alcoholic, an adulterer, and he was sorry. They revoked his membership on the spot. He walked out of the church that day scratching his head and muttered to himself: "These church folks are really strange. I told a lie and they took me in; and when I told the truth they kicked me out!"  (As Told By James Merrit).

Jesus once told a story of two men in a similar situation who got totally different results.  One man tried to talk himself into God's kingdom, but he didn't make it.  The other man tried to talk himself out of God's kingdom and he got in.  What creates this strange difference; a good man doesn’t get in, and a bad man, a scoundrel, does?  Why does it turn out this way?  Luke makes it plain who Jesus told this parable about and for. In verse v.9,  Luke explains: "Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others."  The main point: trusting in yourself will not get you in.  Trusting God completely, will get you in.   So now that you know the main point, let’s move on to some details you might have missed.

I’M NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE (v. 11)
Let me ask you:  Do you ever look at people who don't go to church, and think you are better than they are because you do go to church? If so, Jesus is talking to you.
Do you ever look at people in prison, and think you are better than they are because you are not? If so, Jesus is talking to you.
Do you ever look at people who are divorced, and think that you are better than they are because you are not? If so, then Jesus is talking to you.
Do you ever look down your nose at anyone for any reason, and think you might be better than them? If so, Jesus is talking to you.
I promise you, every one of you will find yourself somewhere in this story today. And in this sermon, you are also going to learn, surprisingly, I might add, what does impress God, and what doesn't. 

First, we want to talk about what doesn’t impress God.  To do this, this parable helps us move beyond the many complex faces and feelings we have.   We are looking into the human heart for what is universal among all of us.  I found an example of this on, of all places, on Netflix, after a friend recommended I see watch a show.

Of course, it’s getting harder to find good things to watch on TV these days, but the story of an Orthodox Jewish family is an exception.  In these two series of episodes, called Shtisel, a young Orthodox Jew is struggling to find his life’s calling and the love of his life.  His story reminds us that feelings and emotions like love, and longing to live with meaning and purpose, are universal, but they can also be very complicated too.  Especially for those who think everything in life should be viewed in right or wrong, or ‘black and white’, feelings can be both simple and complicated at the same time.

Jesus’ story about ‘Pride’, often entitled, the Pharisee and the Publican, should be seen a simple, but also a complicated story.  What I mean by ‘complicated’ is that most of know already, that there is there is a good way to have pride in yourself, just like there is a bad way to be ‘prideful’ about oneself.   It is good for your self-esteem, and your self-image to ‘take’ pride in who you are and what you can do.  But there is also a bad way to be prideful about yourself, which is exactly what Jesus’ story, or parable is about. 

How a person can quickly move from good self-esteem to wayward pride, comes from the well-worn story about a 5th grader who came home from school so excited.  She had been voted "prettiest girl in the class." The next day she was even more excited when she came home, for the class had voted her "the most likely to succeed." The next day she came home and told her mother she had won a third contest, being voted "the most popular."  But the next day she came home extremely upset. The mother said, "What happened, did you lose this time?" She said, "Oh no, I won the vote again." The mother said, "What were you voted this time?" She said, "most stuck up."

This story reminds us why Jesus’ story about pride matters?   It reminds us why it’s so important for us to get ‘pride’ right.   A lack of self-esteem and self-worth can lead to very negative self-image and a downward path of self-destruction.  Most people living negative lives, lack good self-esteem.   Having the wrong kind of pride about oneself, can be also be self-destructive; not only to ourselves, but also to others, and to our relationship with God.  When you think too highly of yourself, you can get the ‘big-head’; you can forget that you are human, your ego gets over inflated, and you living without a sense of reality about yourself and the world.   In this story, the man’s selfish- pride had made him too big for his spiritual britches. As C. S. Lewis once said, "A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and of course, as long as you are looking down, you can't see something that's above you."

Having a good sense of pride and self-respect, rather than a negative or overinflated one, is a balancing act.  It’s a lot like riding a bicycle.  You have to make sure you keep your eyes on the road ahead.  You’ve also got to think about where you’re going, and to make sure you stay upright.  This is what Jesus’ parable attempts to display: how we can get ‘pride’ right, and how we might get it wrong.

This Pharisee’s attitude reveals pride in its worst form.  His selfish pride promotes such a narrow view of self in leads to other forms of sinning.  This is why, in the Christian understanding, pride ranks at the top of the list of Seven Deadly Sins. Not only is pride destructive self, it leads to destructive behavior that hurts others. Like a noxious weed in the garden, pride grows, spreads, and chokes out all life around it.

However, pride does not start out looking down on others.  It starts with a narrow, misguided, illusionary view of self.  Girolamo Savonarola, the great fifteenth-century Florentine priest, was said to have noticed an elderly woman worshiping at the feet of the statue of the Virgin Mary outside the city's cathedral.  When he realized she came every day, Savonarola said to a colleague, “Look how devout she is. She so reveres the Blessed Mother.”

“Don't be deceived by what you see,” the other priest replied. “Many years ago the artist commissioned for the statue chose that woman as his model. She was a lovely young woman with a look of innocence on her face. The statue was completed decades ago and every day that woman has come to WORSHIP HER OWN IMAGE.”

So, what’s wrong with this Pharisee, other than he has a really big, ego?  Well, it all starts with an appearance of what is good and right.  The Pharisee appears to do everything right.  He has a lot going for him, too.  He’s good.  He’s not greedy for money.  He’s honest.  He’s just the right kind of fellow, except for one thing.  He thinks he’s better than everyone else.

He just may even be better than most people, but he because he knows it (or thinks it), he’s become the worst kind of fellow.   Selfish pride is pride of the worst kind exactly because it’s only focused on self.  Selfish pride fails to consider the other.  It sees only the good in one’s self, and fails to look for any good or value in anyone else.  This narrow view not only destroys any hope for community, it also limits the work of God’s love.   It’s the kind of pride that keeps us from seeing what God wants us to see.    It doesn’t see the other person as someone God loves unconditionally, simply because they are God’s creation.   In other words, selfish pride only sees what the self wants to see.   Selfish pride fails to see what wants us to see and to feel what God feels.

Seeing beyond ourselves may be the most important need, not just for Christians, but also for churches today.  Churches who are stuck only thinking about themselves, even trying to ‘save’ or persevere themselves, are caught in a downward spiral of decline.  The only way out of this decline, say the experts, is not to fix oneself, but to focus on what God sees, who God loves, and what God has called us to do; and to move beyond thinking only about ourselves.  A church stuck on itself, is a church that is stuck in a culture that goes along with this Pharisee and can’t be justified as healthy, holy or helpful.

In a recent study of businesses who are also, like churches dealing with constant change and transition, one author says that organizations should learn to think of problems as challenges instead of threats.  In other words, focus on the need, the challenge, not only yourself.  The business who are only thinking about being on top,  and seen their business as in competition against another, will is only doing more to harm its business.   It hurt’s its own business, because it has think only about itself, and not about its mission.  Recently I saw a TED Talk about why the Wright Brothers where successful inspiring others to work with them at achieving FLIGHT.  All kinds of people were attempting it, at the time.  The Wright Brothers had less money.  They had people working for lower salaries.  They had less skill and information.  There were scholars at Harvard and other elite schools who knew so much more.  How did the Wright Brothers do it?  It was not about ‘head’, but it was about ‘heart’.  The Wright Brothers failed many times, and they were not afraid to admit it, to face it, and to learn from it.  Also, because the Wright brothers’ focus was not on being first, not on making money from it, but it their focus was on ‘believing’ is what they were doing, it was ‘heart’ that enabled them to do what others could not.   As the Ted Talk speaker said, ‘Because the Wright Brothers answered the question “why” (Belief) first of all, they were able to get to the ‘what’ (Flight) before all the others https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en.

By getting ‘stuck’ on himself, it was ‘who’ this Pharisee could not see that was most self-destructive.  By being ‘stuck’ on himself, he couldn’t see beyond himself, and he couldn’t see what and who he needed to see. Selfish pride is self-destructive because it creates an isolated, insulated, individual world that cuts itself off from the life; the life of reality, and the life of others, whom we, as social creatures, all need to be in relationship with to survive, and to thrive.

This Pharisee’s saw no one else.  He needed no one else.  His vision of life became short-sighted and it shorted out.  Isn’t that what a ‘short circuit’ is?   It’s which the flow of electricity gets stuck and can’t continue to flow as it should because something creates resistance.  In order to flow, the current must continue to flow freely, running through all its circuits rather than getting stuck in one place.   In the same way, God has created humans to keep looking around, to keep seeing life, not just through our own view of ourselves, but by seeing others and focusing God’s love for all.

Recently a respected pastor in NC died of a brain tumor.  He had been recognized for leading his church in Durham to see the needs of immigrants and to respond as a church to those needs.  In order to do this, he once wrote about how he had to face himself, his own prejudices, and ask his church to consider the biblical call to welcome the stranger.  One thing he discovered, which is what we all discover when we go on mission with God, is that we can’t begin to think about the neighbor, if our only focus is on ourselves, our own desires, needs, and opinions.  We have to also try to ‘put ourselves some elses moccasins’.  In this way, it wasn’t just that the Pharisee only saw good in himself, but Jesus mentions his great failure because the Pharisee couldn’t see the good in the other.  He failed to  recognize both the good and the need beyond himself.

HAVE MERCY ON ME A SINNER (v. 13)
If the Pharisee only saw himself, what is really so different with the ‘publican’ or the sinner?  Wasn’t he only focusing on himself too? What makes this sinner a better person in God’s eyes?  The Pharisee only sees himself as good.  This sinner only sees himself as bad.  So, what’s the real difference?  Aren’t they both just focusing only on themselves?  What is it that Jesus sees in the sinner that he didn’t see in this self-described ‘saint’?   Besides that, we all know that negative self-esteem isn’t good for you either, just like too much ego.  Just like people should over inflate their self-image, people also shouldn’t carry around such heavy guilt and negative thinking about themselves.  What ‘good’ does Jesus see in this fellow who appears to be too hard on himself?

Before we get to an answer, let’s look more closely at this ‘sinner’ and how he prays.  While the Pharisee ‘stands’ while he prays, the ‘sinner’ won’t even look up.  He bows his head.    While the Pharisee ‘thanks God’ for ‘not being like other people’, the ‘sinner’ goes straight to the heart of God, saying, “God, have mercy on me, a sinners!’  The Pharisee is thankful for what he thinks he is and has.  The Sinner faces what he knows he is, and isn’t?   In short, the Pharisee prays a ‘fake’ prayer and needs nothing from God, but the sinner’s prayer is ‘real’, honest, and has nothing, unless God delivers him.  The Pharisee doesn’t need God for anything.  He does it all himself.  The Sinner needs God in everything.  He is completely and utterly dependent upon God’s mercy, grace and love. 

With a closer look, you come to understand that it’s not that this ‘sinner’ is negating himself, but what he’s really doing is ‘putting himself’ completely into God’s hands.  He’s surrendering himself, so that he can move beyond himself, move beyond his own good, or in this case ‘bad’ deeds, so that now, he can be used of God.  In other words, in this fellow understanding of himself, he’s a sinner, just like everyone else is a sinner. In his own view of life, there are no chiefs and Indians, good or bad, saint or sinner, but everyone is an Indian, everyone fails, and everyone is a sinner.  Jesus lifts up this ‘sinner’ above the ‘Pharisee’ because, like him, and before God, and God’s perfect righteousness, everyone stands of prayer, of love, of mercy, of understanding, and in need of forgiveness from God, and from the other.  The theme song of the sinner who understands our human limits and dependency upon God is: “It’s me, It’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer?

THIS ONE WENT DOWN JUSTIFIED…. (v. 14)
So, now that we see the difference; that the Pharisee could only see himself, was stuck on himself, and couldn’t see his need of God, and that Sinner, by humbling himself, faces the reality that everyone ‘stands in need’ of God’s mercy and grace, what does this matter?   We are told in the text, that the sinner ‘went down justified’, but what does that mean?

Practically, we’ve already said, haven’t we?   The one who ‘humbles’ himself is the one who completely depends upon God, so that he or she is able to get themselves out of the way and are now able to focus on others.   Recently, in our first Dinner Church Bible Study, we were talking about how one Church in Seattle, was able to start a new form of church, that was really an old form of church.  As a decline church, it started to realize it’s face it’s decline because it realize that it wasn’t trying to ‘rescue’ people.  Only when it became a church able to move beyond itself, was it able to focus on the most needy people in its community and then find God’s blessing and purpose that rejuvenated its ministry. 

One of the question that was asked in the book we were studying,  “Welcome to the Dinner Church”, was simply this: “Do you see God’s Church as primarily being in the rescue business?  Why or Why not?

One of the answers that was shared was that “ it has been difficult for churches to be in the business of rescuing others, because we are still too busy at having to rescue ourselves?”   What do you think that’s about?  Is it because preachers keep putting guilt trips on us, or we keep putting them upon ourselves?  What is it that keeps from getting involved in God’s mission?

Many years ago a man conned his way into the orchestra of the Emperor of China, although he could not play a single note. Whenever the group practiced or performed, he would hold his flute against his lips, pretending to play, but not making a sound. For years he received a good salary and enjoyed a comfortable living.

Then one day the Emperor requested a solo from each musician. Well, the flutist got very nervous. There wasn't enough time to learn the instrument. He pretended to be sick, but the royal physician wasn't fooled. On the day of his solo performance, the imposter took poison and killed himself. The explanation of his suicide led to a phrase that found its way into the English language: "He refused to face the music."

The way to move on with your life and with the life God has for you is to ‘face the music’.  You can face the music now and be a part of the heavenly band. Or you can face the music later and be kicked out of the orchestra.   But when admit your need of God, and how day by day you depend on Him, this is what impresses God and it’s what fits us for work in God’s kingdom and on God’s mission.  Again, the great truth in the life of this ‘sinner’ is that he was casting himself on God, once and for all.   He went home justified because he left everything there.  When he left everything in God’s hands, realizing he could never justify himself, he could ‘get up’ ‘justified’ and ready to serve God in focusing God’s call and mission.  The Pharisee could never get this far.  He was stuck where he was, because he was stuck on himself.

This brings us to the question this text raises for us?  Where do you see yourself in the mirror that Jesus paints?  Do you show up as the person who has everything you just the way you want it, because you are holding something back?   And because you hold back, you can’t move forward in the flow of God’s love that starts with you, and then moves toward others.  Or, are you the person who is willing to lay everything on the ‘altar of God’ holding nothing back?

Once, a King of Israel, Saul won a battle, but lost the main ‘war’ because he ‘held back’ what he should have dedicated completely to God.  The prophet pointed out his failure, but it was too late.  But what Jesus’ story is telling us is that it’s never too late, as long as you have today, to ‘confess your sins’, to ‘cast all your care upon’ him, and know that he cares for you.  This form of humility is not to beat you down, but it’s to set you free, so you can have a healthy view of self, and you are ready follow Jesus in the mission and purpose he has for you.

Today, you can ‘go home’ justified too.  In order for this to happen, you must first, humble your true self before the God who forgives unconditionally.  He forgives, not only because he loves you, wants to free your from your sins and failures, but he forgives you because life is not only about you, it’s also about those you will see when you start to move beyond you.   Will you come and give yourself to God, so he can use you in all that God still wants to do to bring love, life, and hope into the world?  Please, don’t hold anything back that will keep you from receiving all God has for you!  Will you come?   Amen.

RICH MAN…POOR MAN

A sermon based upon Luke 16: 19-31

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

November 3^rd,  2019

This parable reminds the approach to evangelism that was once popular in America, by the name of “EE” or “Evangelism Explosion.   It was an approach intended to demonstrate the latest techniques for saving souls and building bigger churches.   The strategy for this approach was to make cold calls in the community - door to door - seeking converts for Christ.  According to this technique, the evangelists were armed with two memorized questions, which sooner or later, were to be introduced into the conversation.  The first question to be asked was, "If you were to die tonight are you assured that you would go to heaven?" "Yes," "No," or "I don't know," would suffice as an answer. The second question, however, was the most important one, "On what does your assurance rest?" The only acceptable answer was faith in Jesus Christ.

Robert McClelland*,  tells of using this approach and going up to a door where a very gracious and charming couple were at home and invited us in.  After the pleasantries were exchanged, in which we learned that the husband was a professor of psychology at a large university, eventually, the first question - the one about dying and going to heaven - was introduced into the conversation. "If you died tonight would you go to heaven?" asked the evangelist.

"I don't know," replied the woman pleasantly, "and we don't really care." This is the kind of answer no evangelists every wants to hear.  Is didn’t fit the rehearsed answers.   All that was left for the expert to do was either accept the fact that the matter was a dead issue for our hosts, or to decide to argue with them, trying to convince them of its importance.  In any case, in that situation, they never got to second question.  Because the question of ‘eternity’ didn’t resonate with them, there was no good way talk about Jesus could have easily been inserted into the conversation.  The evangelists had to leave unsuccessful, wiping the ‘proverbial’ dust off of their feet.

Very often, we in the church have been preoccupied with getting to the next life, whereas most of the world has been preoccupied trying to survive long enough to get through this one.  For this reason, the major focus of most interpretations of this parable, has been about facing the reality of ‘hell’ or the future eternal judgment of standing before God.  The point being that:  Good guys will win; bad guys will lose!  Believers will be rewarded. Non-believers will be punished.  If you believe in and know Jesus, you’re on your way Heaven.  Know and trust in Jesus, and you know you’ll miss ‘hell’ for sure.

What people miss, in this parable, is that the focus is not on what happens after you die, but the focus is what you should be doing while you are alive.   In this story, human destiny is determined, not by trusting Jesus as your savior, but by having the kind of attitude Jesus was teaching about others. The rich man in Jesus story, whether he believed in or God or not, was not the issue; but that he walked right past poor Lazarus every day, having no compassion for him; that was the issue.  Lazarus' needs were obvious. The rich man’s obligation was also obvious.  But the rich man felt nothing.  He felt no sense of obligation in looking for Lazarus, for seeing Lazarus, nor for helping Lazarus.   

Again, it was not his lack of religion, nor his lack of faith in God that got his ticket punched to the wrong destination, but it was his lack of regard for Lazarus.  This person who had the wherewithal to help, didn’t do a single thing, and that’s what got him his ‘ticket’ to ‘torment’. This was the single point Jesus made: living in luxury while others suffer without what they need, and you not lifting a finger; will get the finger from God pointed straight back at you.

FEASTING LAVISHLY EVERY DAY (v. 19)

What we must see, first of all, is that the major point of the telling of this parable is about instruction on how to make it into the next life, but it is a story told about how to live in this one.  Jesus wants us to live in this world wisely, responsibly, and charitably.   He doesn’t want us to ‘waste’ the good we have made, or been given, only for ourselves and our own luxury.  We are gifted to be ‘givers’, not ‘takers’ only.

The issues that Jesus sets before us are larger than putting stars in our individual crowns. Human suffering is not a matter of indifference to God. Indeed, it is a matter of eternal importance. God's concern for the well-being of others here on earth follows us to the grave and beyond. Old Jonathon Edwards had it right! In the last analysis a person's business is with God.  But God is less concerned with our sinful bumps and warts than with changing our hearts and filling them with an understanding of the physical and spiritual needs of people around us. The question the Bible continually asks is, "What is the focus of your life?" Do we live for ourselves - our comfort, our security, our salvation - or for others? Micah, the prophet, prompts us with the correct answer. "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)." That demand did not change in all the years separating the Old from the New Testaments. Jesus merely gave it visibility and clarity when he told his followers to feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, and clothe the naked.  To love God is to love the neighbor.  Remember? The eternal question to be asked, here and hereafter, is simply, "How are the neighbors doing?" Their welfare must be of genuine concern to us because it is to God.

The question that the parable raises for us is, "What are we going to do with the struggles of people in our world? How are we going take part in shaping history? What legacy do we leave for the neighbors who come after us?" Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that for Christians the only ethical question is, "How shall the next generation live?" We are stewards of our time and place in history, both globally or locally. We are not to live only for ourselves, but we are responsible for passing ‘life’ and ‘resources for life’ on to someone else.

HE LONGED TO BE FILLED…BUT… (v. 21)

The purpose of the parable, then, is to direct our attention to the serious business of living in this world, which determines what happens in the next.   This parable not only focuses on the rich man’s capacity to care, but it also focuses on the real need that is always there, right before our very eyes.  Here it was the ‘need’ of the poor man who ‘longed to be filled with good things’ and it was also the ‘need’ of this rich man to understand his obligation to care, to see, and to help.

Indeed, this parable warns about letting our attention wander too far away from what is really happening right around us; under our very noses.   Our lives are short.  And if you have ‘made it’ and you ‘have it made’, the time is even shorter to get you to see what you need to do with what you’ve been given.   None of us have all the time in the world to do something.    A sudden turn of events reminds us that we are not eternal. A serious accident. The discovery of a lump while taking a shower. Our lives are bounded by birth and then by death--- our death—your death. Soren Kirkegaard said the earnest thought of death can be life's greatest ally. When we begin to do the arithmetic of life, it brings a sense of urgency to take it seriously.  No matter how ‘rich we are’, when we realize how ‘poor’ we all are, and we feel the ‘longing’ for life, we get in touch with what is real and what is most urgent in his life.

A woman in the hospital was weeping after being told she was terminally ill with cancer. When a friend sought to console her she replied, "I'm not weeping because I'm dying. I'm weeping because I never lived."   It is this kind of ‘mature’ insight that the rich man needed, just as much as the poor man needed food.   It the lack of this kind of insight that keeps us following a culture that asks us to keep buying what we don’t really need, squandering our time and our treasures only upon ourselves.   But it is the kind of insight this ‘rich man’ had, that should also ‘shock us’ into feeling what other people are going through to realize our own obligation to help.  When we miss ‘feeling’ what “Lazarus” felt, we not only miss the ‘joy’ and ‘adventure’ of reaching out to someone,  but we also best of what life is about, and we may, like this rich man, miss the only chance we have, now and forever, to be the person God has created us to be.

In one of his novels, Nikos Kazantzakis speaks of the American friend of Zorba the Greek. He is reminded over and over of the adventurous life which has eluded him. He is both intrigued and threatened by Zorba's dances in the middle of the night. They lure him to leave the safe havens of caution and custom in order to depart on great voyages to another world. Yet he is unable to respond. He sits there motionless and shivering. He is ashamed. He has felt this shame before whenever he caught himself not daring to life into the sheer recklessness that life has called him to risk.  But never did he ever feel more ashamed than in the presence of Zorba. Ashamed and fearful! Two sides of the same coin.

It’s is certainly a ‘fearful thing’, as Scripture says, to ‘fall into the hands of a living God’, but it could be even worse to ‘fall into the hands of a dead one!’  Do you understand what I’m saying?  In this story we find a ‘poor’ man who needed help, and we have a ‘rich man’ who didn’t even notice.  We don’t know ‘why’ the rich man didn’t notice the poor at his door, but what we know that a living God will hold him accountable for doing something; and he didn’t.  We also know that a ‘dead god’ or having ‘no god’ holds you accountable for nothing; and that’s all there is too; after you die, there’s absolutely nothing.

And it’s easy, as a person of privilege, or a person of means, or a person who has made it, or who has everything they need, who can live isolated from the pain of the world, to live, like God is dead, only living for now, turning our eyes and constantly and continually looking the other way, being content at being thankful for what we have and doing nothing for others who hurt.  But Jesus will have nothing of this.  He says that a person who has everything they need can still be missing what qualifies as ‘really living’ in this world, and for certain, they also are missing what guarantees life and hope in God’s world to come.   Here, Jesus isn’t belittling having faith in God, but Jesus is explaining what having faith in Jesus Christ means: learning to feel what God feels, and to see what God sees, which will cause us to respond people who hurt, who hunger, and who are helplessly in need.  

To respond to a world where ‘the poor are always with us’ is a big calling; perhaps the greatest Christian calling of all---to preach to and to be good news ‘for the poor’.  This call to heal and to help is daunting, demanding, and it can be draining and difficult; especially for a rich person.  It not only asks something of what we have, it can also make us feel ‘ashamed’ we can’t do more, and make us ‘fearful’ that we haven’t done enough.  You are inviting ‘pain’ into your own life, when you follow Jesus and follow him into the ‘pain’ of the human need.   But following Jesus into the reality of human need is the only guarantee of a ‘future’, both in having faith and in gaining life.  It may be scary to have to ‘look’ into the eyes of a person who hurts, but it is even more tragic and scary, to look into the ‘eyes’ of people who have lost the ability to care.

When a young flying student was practicing takeoffs and landings, after one particularly rough landing, something on the order of a controlled crash, he commented to his instructor, "That was a terrible landing."  The instructor’s reply contained the wisdom of the ages:"It's always good landing if you can walk away from it."

God is not interested in the style of our landings.  When we stand before our Creator to render an accounting of our lives, God's concern will not be with our sins nor our shortcomings.  These are foregone conclusions. They are simply part of the cost of living the great adventure.  No, God's concern will be with our ability to walk away from the landing of our lives with a sense of having lived right, not just well; that we gave it our best shot and tried to leave the place a better world than when we came.  That’s what learning about Lazarus’ needs is all about.  Learning how to live, right.

BEING IN TORMENT… HE LOOKED UP… (v. 23)   (STOPPED)

In the end, this parable reminds us that life is serious business.  How we live, not just that we stay alive, is serious business, because we have only one life to live; one chance to land and to get it right.   As the very selfish, rich man, blinded by his own success, woefully found out, there are no second chances.   We only have a few years to life our best life, which includes seeing and responding to human need.   We have three score and 10 years, the Psalmist says, or even if by reason of strength (and the luck of the draw) we have four score, yet we are soon gone. We fly away like a sigh.

The lesson to be learned is that we can miss our future rest in the bosom of Abraham, not by being actively evil, but only by being inactively indifferent.  In other words, the rich man didn’t go to hell based on what he did wrong, but because of this one thing he didn’t do right.   He didn’t think about the hurting person at his own driveway.  He wasn’t supposed to live to get rich or stay rich, by kicking the person who was down; or by only step over him.   No, he missed what God had for him, because he wasted his life by only seeing his own wants and by only helping himself to what he had to give.

Jesus warned elsewhere, "If you save your life, you will lose it. Only if you give it away, will you find it."  You can debate the economics or logic of this teaching, but we the paradox is always true.  As a person who lives and dies, you only get to ‘keep’ what you actually give away.   What you ‘give’ is all you can ‘take’ with you.

The cross of Christ reminds us that he chose to die. He was not a victim of circumstances, nor was he a tragic hero. He could have died in bed of old age. But instead, Jesus chose to live by giving and by ‘dying to himself’ every step of the way. "My hour has not yet come," he kept saying during the days leading up to his final journey to Jerusalem.  Finally, during the last meal with his disciples, Jesus uttered the words that must have popped their eyes open, "The hour has come (John 17:1)." The words burst forth, not as a death knell, but the glorious climax to a life intentionally lived to help others.  When Jesus invites us to take up our cross and follow him he also invites us to live for something big and to die for a reason. We only go around once, and Martin Luther King Jr. put it well when he said, "Until we are willing to die for something, we're not fit to live for anything."

Kurt Vonnegut has written some superb lines which catch the amazement and delight of life's miracle.  "God made mud ...God got lonesome ...So God said to some mud, 'Sit up! ...See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills,the sea, the sky, the stars.' ...And I was some of the mud that got to sit upand look around ...'Lucky me, lucky mud.' "  But with our the gift of life comes the responsibility and opportunity to live right. God does not call us to right living to just to make us feel guilty and to get us into heaven; but God calls us to live life right, so we can have life; now and forever.  Guilt for the sake of guilt is ‘sick guilt, and it immobilizes us.’ It is what Archibald MacLeish calls "the sick scent of dung under our fingernails."  But healthy guilt comes from realizing what we need to do to take life seriously. The cup of opportunity that life hands me to drink is, of course, different from the one that it hands you. Lazarus was not sitting at your door or mine but someone else is sitting there!  There are things we need to see and hurts we need to respond to, to live the kind of life God calls us to live.   True guilt, healthy guilt, motivates us rather than incapacitates us. It comes, not from comparing cups, whether we are rich or poor, but from the realization that we need to accept the cup that is ours.

"But heaven! What about heaven?" someone is probably asking.  In Jesus' view, heaven projects us forward, into God's time and space, and is flows out of a life lived wisely, responsibly, charitably, and faithfully, here and now.   How we live in this world does impact what happens to us in the next.   What we believe is not just about what’s in our heads, but it’s about what’s in our hearts, and how we live outwardly from what comes from deep inside. 

Apparently, if we take Jesus’ parable literally, self-consciousness survives death and we live either with regrets or with joy at responding to the opportunities offered us.  “To whom much is given, much will be expected.” That point was most graphically made by Jesus in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). To one person ten talents are given, to another five, and to another one. The distribution is not equal, yet each is expected to invest in responding to the needs of the world out of their own resources , so that the Landlord will benefit.   Those who do what is right, good, and needed, are put in charge of greater wealth. The one who fails in his stewardship of life and others, by hiding his wealth, (or by wasting it too), will discover what will is taken from him. The good news is that if God will entrust responsible people with even greater responsibilities in the world that is still to come.

It would be nice if we could finally say,  "And they all lived happily ever after."  It would be nice, if I could say “God’s love wins, in the end, and everyone gets in, so that we all finally be changed by God’s love.   But Jesus - always the realist - was not in the business of telling fairy tales or giving all his parables happy endings. He knew that we live by the choices we make. The ending of the story, therefore, is ours to write. Jesus simply said, "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!"   Amen.

(* I owe much of this message to ideas given to me by Robert McClelland).

“Your Brother Is Here…!”

A sermon based upon Luke 15: 11-32  CSB

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

October 27th, 2019

"Amazing Grace" is one of America’s favorite hymns. It is an old one too. It goes back to the 18th century, written by John Newton, who was on the sea from the time he was a little boy. When he was a young man he became the captain of his own ship, a ship that brought African slaves to the colonies to work the plantations.

Back in England, between voyages, he went to hear George Whitefield preach and was converted. He realized the evil of his occupation, left it, and became a pastor in the Church of England and served the rest of his life as the rector of a little church in a town called Olney. Newton wrote a number of hymns which were printed in a collection called the "Olney Hymns," which is one of the classic collections of hymns in the Church, and "Amazing Grace" was one of them.

It is astounding, this song’s popularity. Back in the 1960's Joan Baez sang it. During one of her concerts, she held her audience captive, tears coming down the faces of so many people, as she stood there on the bare stage, in her bare feet, with the light on her, hands at her side, standing there quietly, singing all the verses of this plaintive, Appalachian tune, "Amazing Grace." For those present, it was a stunning moment.

It’s also amazing, this song’s popularity. It often appears in movies, or at public events that are not even church events.  For even people who are not members of churches, and those who do not profess faith, find something in this hymn that connects with them.  This hymn is over two hundred years old. It is uncompromisingly Christian in its language. It is evangelical in its message, reflecting John Newton's experience of being found. "I once was lost, but now am found."   Some say,  the key to this songs  popularity, is because it defines the most basic Christian understanding of our relationship with God: God seeks us.

Of course, God is experienced in different ways in different religions. In some religions God's majesty and God's sovereignty are emphasized.  In others religions it is God's righteousness that is emphasized.  In still others, it is God's hiddenness and the mystery of God's being that are emphasized.  In the Christian faith, it is God's love that is  emphasized:  “For God so loved the world….”.  Other religions also understand that God calls us to love, but what is most unique in Christianity is that God is seeking us.

As Hugh Montefiore, a Jewish biblical scholar and an Englishman, said this is what makes Christianity different from Judaism.   “Most of what Jesus taught, was taught before him by the prophets, especially in their the ethical teachings.  Much of what Christians believe is shared by people elsewhere in world, as most religious teachings are universal.  But in Christianity, the one affirmation that is most unique, is the proclamation that God seeks after us (M MARK TROTTER).

FATHER, GIVE ME….  (v. 12)

But being sought by God has it most intentional Jesus’ most famous parable, we call ‘The Prodigal Son’.   Here, Jesus not only pictures that God seeks us like a Shepherd seeking one lost sheep, or a woman frantically searching for one lost coin, but he Jesus also understands that God is like loving Father, who is waiting for his children to come back home, where they belong.  God is a waiting Father.  God is waiting, because in life, we are free, to go and to live as we please. 

Freedom is both a wonderful and dangerous thing.  Freedom is wonderful because as we grow into adulthood, we get choose to live our own lives the way we want.  We get to choose our own path, use our own talents, and make our own life out of our own decisions and hard work.  This kind of ‘freedom’ can make you glad to be alive and proud of your own accomplishments. 

But this kind freedom can also be dangerous too.  It can be dangerous because we can make bad choices in life.  We can make bad choices that take us to dead ends and leave us nowhere.  We can end up nowhere because we have listened to bad advice, or we got lost in wayward desires, or we can get devoured by forces stronger than our own.   Freedom invites to a wonderful, but also a wild world.  By ‘wild’ we mean untamed, unpredictable, and often deadly, as in a ‘dog eat dog’ world.

This is what happened to the ‘prodigal Son’.  As he grew up, he decided he would live better, if he would leave to go out on his own.  He thinks he would enjoy his life better without his current responsibilities.  He wants everything now.  Like so many who have had life ‘handed to them’, he has come to believe that ‘the grass will be greener on the other side’.  He hopes that living by his ‘own’ choices, without the burden of life’s responsibilities, would be a better choice.  He desires freedom---freedom from his father, freedom from his family, and freedom from the responsibilities that have been passed down to him.  He is ready to strike out on his own.  He wants all of life, especially the fun, now.  He decides that he doesn’t have to work and wait, but he can live lavishly and luxuriously today, living out all his wants and desires.  This is why the ‘prodigal’ goes to his Father and says, ‘give me my share of the estate I have coming to me… (v.12). His idea of life, is ‘I WANT IT NOW!’

The point that Jesus makes, is a point very much worth making in a ‘free country’ like ours.  Freedom is good, and it can be our best friend in life, but freedom can also be dangerous, and it can become our worst enemy.   Because we are free, we can become our own worst enemy.   This is at the heart of Jesus’ parable of this ‘lost son’.

HIS FATHER…FILLED WITH COMPASSION (v 20)

Into this world where we are ‘born free’, come a God who seeks to save us.  Jesus understands God just as this ‘waiting’ and ‘worrying’, and finally ‘joyful’ Father who has compassion and full forgiveness for his wayward child who comes home. 

Again, what is most unique about Christianity is not that God saves sinners, for most all religions have a view of salvation, but the good news of the gospel is that God himself came into the world ‘to seek and to save the lost’.  God doesn’t wait for sinners to shape up before he came.   This is the gospel ‘point’ that the Apostle Paul couldn’t get over .   It stopped him in his tracks.   Paul understood, as a ‘Pharisee of the Pharisees’ that he could, by being good enough, and working hard enough, that he could find his way to God.  

But the great surprise, which was the surprise of the gospel, is that Paul finally came to realize that even his ‘good was not good enough’.  It was when he became humiliated by his own ‘lostness’ that the true God was revealed to him.  When this true, loving, seeking, and calling God came to him, Paul found his true self and his true calling in life.  So ever since Paul met the searching, seeking, and calling Jesus on the Damascus road,  this became his message to preach to the world: God has come to seek and save us; not just from the wildness of the world, or our lostness in the world, but this God has come to save us from the ‘lostness’ within ourselves.  This is the gospel. That is the good news.

And ever since Paul since this message came to Paul, he made it his mission in life to help people to understand not only what happened to him, but he also wanted people to know what could happen to them.  This can happen to you, especially when we realize that we have become lost, and are not worthy of God’s attention, or that God never could ever speak their name. God would never know me. This could never happen to me.  But it can, it did.  It still does.

There is a wonderful story about Maya Angelou, the great writer who ended her career teaching at Wake Forest University. She was an active member of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. She wrote that years earlier when she first came to San Francisco as a young woman she became sophisticated. She said that was what you were supposed to do when you go to San Francisco, you become sophisticated. And for that reason she said she became agnostic. She thought the two went together. She said that it wasn’t that she stopped believing in God, just that God no longer frequented the neighborhoods that she frequented.

She was taking voice lessons at the time. Her teacher gave her an exercise where she was to read out of some religious pamphlet. The reading ended with these words: “God loves me.” She finished the reading, put the pamphlet down. The teacher said, “I want you to read that last sentence again.” So she picked it up, read it again, this time somewhat sarcastically, then put it down again. The teacher said, “Read it again.” She read it again. Then she described what happened. “After about the seventh repetition I began to sense there might be some truth in this statement. That there was a possibility that God really loves me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew if God loved me, I could do wonderful things. I could do great things. I could learn anything. I could achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person, with God form a majority now.”

There are many people who are just like that. They think it is unbelievable that God would know me, that God would love me, that God would know my name. Just the grandness of it, as Maya Angelou says, that God would really love me. But that is the gospel. He seeks you until he finds you. She found that God found her, in San Francisco.

Jurgen Moltmann, a famous German theologian, was in the German army during World War II. He was captured by the British and placed in a prisoner of war camp in Scotland. It was there that God found him. It happened through two incidents. The first was in reading scripture. The chaplain of the camp gave Bibles to the prisoners. Moltmann said they were hoping to get cigarettes, but they got Bibles instead. He read the Bible, and he read the psalms. He said, “I was dumbfounded.” He was like Paul on the Damascus Road, dumbfounded, knocked down. He said, “The words of the psalms were the words of my own heart, `Hear my prayer O Lord, and give ear to my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as my fathers before me.’”

Then he turned to the New Testament and read of the passion of our Lord, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” He wrote, “I knew with certainty this is someone who understands me. I began to understand Christ because I realized Christ understood me. And I began to summon up the courage to go on living.”

The second incident came when some Christians visited the prison camp. Paul was knocked down on the Damascus Road, dumfounded, then led to Damascus. There the Christians came to Paul and ministered to him. I believe it was through their love that God changed the life of Paul. So Moltmann, after being dumbfounded by grace in the scripture, was visited by Christians who asked to see the German prisoners.

They were from Holland. Moltmann said, “I was afraid to go see them because I had fought in Holland. I was there at the battle for the Arnheim Bridge.” The Dutch students said to the German prisoners, “We are here because Christ has sent us here. We will tell you that without Christ we wouldn’t even be talking to you.” Then they told of the Gestapo terror, of their homes being destroyed, of losing their Jewish friends. Then they said this. “Christ has built a bridge from us to you, and we come across it to greet you. Now you come across and confess your guilt and seek reconciliation.”

Which they did. They all embraced. Moltmann wrote, “It was a richly blessed time. We were given what we did not deserve, and received the fullness of Christ, grace upon grace.”  Amazing grace! How sweet the sound  That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.

OLDER SON… BECAME ANGRY… (V. 28)

There is so much to rejoice about in this great parable, but you’ll never fully understand this great story Jesus told, until you understand that it doesn’t have a completely happening ending.  The whole reason Jesus told his story was because ‘religious’ and ‘righteous’ people where grumbling about Jesus spending too much time ‘welcoming and eating with sinners’ (15:2).  Jesus ends his story with the grumbling, complaining elder brother, who is upset because his ‘brother’, has a ‘party’ thrown for him, while he has done all the work, and like Rodney Dangerfield, ‘gets no respect’.  Why would Jesus focus his ministry on sinners, rather than focusing on those who are doing all the work?

Here’s a question that brings this parable home to us ‘church folks’.  We think the church is about us, but God wants the church to be about them.   Jesus came for them, ‘not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’.   ‘Those who are well, don’t need a physician.  I have come to those who are ill, sick, and hurting!  These are words we read throughout the gospel of Luke, especially.  The work of Jesus is not about us, but it’s about us, caring, waiting, working, and seeking ‘them’. 

One of the major issues in church life today, is ‘how can we survive?’   It’s hard for a church to survive, when we focus on ourselves, because we are a ‘dying breed’.  But if we ever learn to focus on them, there will always be someone, somewhere, lost, in need, hurting, needing help, needing to be found, and needing to find someone who cares about them, as a person, not because of what they did or didn’t do.   Can we learn to care about ‘them’?

Evidently, Jesus believes that not only sinners can change, but Jesus believes that religious, righteous people can change too.   What will it take for someone to care about them?  Well, Jesus also taught us, that it will probably take a ‘dead body’.  When we survey what is happening around our world, with all the rising suicides, the school shootings, mass massacres, and the increase awareness of mental illness, and person pain and brokenness in our world, we see all kinds of ‘dying’, ‘hurting’ and ‘dead bodies’.  This is what it took for some Jews to finally get it, and become followers of Jesus to seek and save the lost. 

I wonder sometimes, if we’ve seen enough, to know that ‘lostness’ is right here, ready for us, not just to criticize and complain about, whether we’ve seen in these ‘dead bodies’ the same kinds of needs and hurts that Jesus saw: that the God of love is a ‘seeking’ and ‘saving’ love; and that now, in this world, in our time, and this moment, God has brought his saving mission right up to our own door step, so that we can open our hearts to love someone who has lost their way?

Our world, in it’s freedom, is increasingly losing its way.  There’s no doubt about this.  But what caused Jesus doubt, and me too, sometimes, is whether there is enough love in us religious, righteous, established types, to be the kind of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ who joins God on his mission to ‘seek and to save’ and will get excited about a lost child coming home. 

What you will feel, think, and do, can make a difference.   Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955), of the Royal College of Surgeons, claimed that if 300 individuals were taken out of human history, we would still be living in the Stone Age. But it is also true that if you add to history a handful of people and let get what they wanted, like Hitler, or Stalin, or Osama bin Laden, we would find ourselves back living in the Stone Age.

We live in the age of ‘Me’; no doubt about that.  Our world and the world markets established upon making people rich, happy, successful, so you, the individual, can have what you want.   But what we often forget, is that unless there is a “WE”, there really can’t be a “ME”.   Just as the idea of being free to live and choose as a ‘me’ is born out of the hard work of people pulling together and working hard as “WE”,  in the same way the ability to continue to live ‘free’ as we “ME”, still depends on us being ‘WE”.   Without living with the sense of “WE”, we lose the ability to be a “ME”.

Biblical faith insists on living on a two-way street, a ME/WE highway: faith is individual, but faith is also communal.  Faith is about us, but faith following Jesus requires a team of people working together.   Let me end with an example of how following Jesus to ‘seek and save’ the lost means becoming both a ME and a WE people.   This is really what the story of the Prodigal Son is about.  That lost son could have survived without the ME of those who ‘loved him back’; and that elder son, would never learn what love means, unless he learned to be someone who loved, just for the sake of loving. 

The ME/WE story I want to end with, goes back to one of the biggest one-time gifts in the history of US philanthropy: the 1.7 billion gift of Joan Kroc (1928-2003), the wife of the founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, which was given to the Salvation Army  (This story and final idea comes from a sermon by Len Sweet). 

When Joan was a small child, her father abandoned the family and left her mother to figure out how to feed the family. In Joan’s memory, these were difficult, dark days. But she remembers one beacon of light in the midst of those difficult times. Every Friday night an officer from the downtown Salvation Army would visit their inner-city home, carrying in his arms two bags of groceries. Sometimes he would come in and play with the kids, giving them a father figure to relate to as well. Without that one Salvation Army officer showing up with those groceries, she doesn’t know how they would have made it each week.

So when it came to decide how best to invest the billions left her by her husband, she remembered that Salvation Army officer and his faithfulness to a needy family. And before she died she handed a billion dollar check to Salvation Army General Linda Bond. Today you are seeing in the poorest parts of town beautiful “Kroc Centers” going up to bring health and happiness to needy kids because of one person who was faithful to his mission.

 By the way, when that Salvation Army officer died, he had no idea what he had done. When that Salvation Army officer died, he thought he had just had an ordinary ministry and been an ordinary officer. He didn’t think he had done anything special as a Salvation Army officer.

Sometimes the greatest blessings of your life you will never know about. Sometimes the greatest impact of your life will not be revealed in your lifetime. Sometimes your faithfulness will bear fruit long after you and I are gone.

It’s not about recognition and reward. It’s only about serving Jesus as an individual ME in the context of a communal WE.  This communal kind of “ME/WE” love is what Jesus was trying to teach about in his parable.  It’s the kind of seeking love of WE that can save the ME that gets lost, for whatever reason.  But it is also the kind of seeking love can also save the ME, who is lost in his own heart, not because he did something wrong, but because he did everything right, and missed the greatest party of life, which is the party of celebrating God’s saving, seeking, love.   Surely, we don’t want to miss a party like this.  It’s a party that accepts God’s invitation,  hearing God’s call to mission with these words:  “YOUR BROTHER, or SISTER is here….”    Amen.