The Hope Laid Up For You In Heaven

Transcribed from the sermon preached July 14, 2013

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

 Scripture Readings: Amos 7:7-17, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37

 Amy Schumer has a skit about women taking compliments.  I edit it for presentation at church.  Brit you died your hair it looks amazing.  Oh no, I tried to look like Kate Hudson but ended up looking like a golden retriever.  But you, look at your little dress. Little, I’m like a size 100.  Each moment another woman comes up and they give her a compliment and she responds by rejecting it.  Finally, a woman comes up and one of the women says, I love your jacket.  And the woman says, “Thank you. All the other women freeze, then blow themselves up

Sometimes we don’t listen to the good stuff about ourselves, or we even try to deflect it or qualify it.  It is important to us that we be authentic and humble.  As Christians we do not want to pretend that our faith is certain, that there is no doubt in our faith.  So we tend to emphasize our ability to reason, as if someone should want to join the church on this fact alone.  Nor do we want to be arrogant.  Popular culture loves to portray the religious as stubbornly and ignorantly resistant to reason, and arrogant and unwilling to consider alternative points of view.  This is not to say that the Church has not given culture reason to disperse these criticisms.  All too often the Church has indeed been stubborn, ignorant and arrogant.  No question about that.  But in our attempt to honor the truth in these criticisms, and to prove we are different, our focus may shift from the truth, love and grace of the Gospel toward our critics and the issues they raise.  We may become focused more on proving what we are not than on being and honoring and giving thanks for who we are.  I suspect most people walk through this door because, though you may appreciate and value reason, and despite all the legitimate criticism and bias against the church in culture, and the conventional wisdom that individualism is good, your own heart and reason tell you that is not all there is.  We come in search of wisdom, grace and community and justice, the fruit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And we find it here at St. John’s.  God is here and the Holy Spirit moves in and through us to produce fruit.  This is a great church and God is working through you to make it so.

Criticism hurts.  The irony is that in our desire and attempt to avoid criticism, we often focus on it.  When receiving comment about our work, if nine people say good job, thank you, and one comes by and criticizes, we will often focus on the one.    If someone criticizes us, we may respond in several ways.  We may conspire against the critic, and work to prove why it is them instead of us who deserves the criticism.  We may, like the priest Amaziah in our Amos passage this morning, seek to run the critic out of town.  We may focus on proving that the criticism has no justification, by pointing out all the evidence to the contrary.  We may take the criticism personally, feel horrible about trying being unable to please everyone and look down upon ourselves.  Or we may see ourselves as victims: woe is me, I am always being criticized. Then we have to look for evidence of our claim that we are victims who are always criticized…we look for justification for feeling bad. We get side tracked and allow the critic to dictate the subject of our focus, and distracted from doing the best and being the best and honoring the best of who God calls us to be.

Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes the critic is God sent.  An Amos or a Jesus or an Aunt Martha speaks the truth to us and it hurts.  If the shoe fits, wear it.  If we are a nation where mothers must fear for their sons lives, not because they are into trouble but simply because they are black, then we have plenty of reason to be nervous and ashamed before a God of justice. Listen to criticism, analyze and pray, seeking discernment about how accurate and true it is.  To the degree it is true that our individual or communal lives have veered of the plumb line of God’s equal love and justice, then, by the grace of God we repent, adapt and change.  But then we move on, we move forward with confidence and grace. God loves us, calls us to love others, and when we fail at that God calls for repentance and then offers forgiveness of sins.

Now I fit this description of someone who doesn’t like criticism, of someone who may be distracted from my main purpose by trying to prove or justify myself, of someone who throws up a bunch of qualifications with my declarations of faith so that I won’t offend anyone for being me.  I like reason and want to prove I am reasonable.

But after all the reason, aside from tradition and Church doctrine, despite numerous attempt to not believe, despite periods of depression where faith did not seem to help, despite all of that, I still have faith and I am still grateful for that faith.  I love God. I love the relationship I have with Her Live would be so much smaller, so much shallower without Her. Jesus doesn’t say believe in God or believe in your neighbor, but love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. The biggest hindrance to faith in a loving and powerful God is the existence of unjust suffering, but I find myself with hope that surpasses reason, hope that surpasses my own ability and the ability of those around me.  Despite the fact that church is made up of fallible humans beings, and this church is funky is a hundred different ways, I find the community here precious.  I find you precious and you make me a better me.  I love the fact that you may be a graduate student studying community gardens, or an office decorator, or a financial officer, or a gardener, or a mother, or retired editor or forester, that you are eight months, 28 or 48 or 78 or 98 years old, a runner or a roller, this color or that, that you may be a baby who hasn’t learned to name things yet, or a librarian who categorizes and remembers everything, or old enough that you  sometimes call your children by the wrong name. I find it powerful that we get to celebrate birth and baptism, graduation, marriage and a new job with you, but since we are about loving each other through all of life we also pray and lament through the undeniable trials and tribulations of life, the difficulties of birth and child rearing, trouble with making ends meet, the pain of broken relationships, the injustice and violence of the world, the decline of ability, and the grief of death.

If we are all on our own, if it is all up to us, if to feel good about ourselves we have to be all good and all powerful, we have to be our own little god, then we are tempted to deny that latter part of life; we can only celebrate the good things and have to deny or hide from the difficult and painful things life inevitably throws at us.  We are tempted to cut off from people when we are down, or when our relationship with them reveals something about us that we would rather not see, or we justify or deflect blame.  But if the cosmic God loves all of life, all of us, and yet offers forgiveness and hope for a new day, this is hope for the whole world, and we can be open to the whole truth of life, the whole truth about ourselves, the whole truth about those we love, about those God calls us to love.  But not only that, because of the hope laid up for us in heaven, because of this faith in a mysterious God, the Alpha and the Omega, we are empowered to face the cold hard facts of this life which sooner or later, today or tomorrow will include our death, and the death those we love.  You see the acknowledgement of our fallibility and finitude is a cold hard truth, it is reasonable fact.  And it is the mystery of God’s love for us through Christ, the Gospel story, which enables us to not only face this dark truth head on, but with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, that we are prepared to endure it all with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to God, who enables us to share in the inheritance of the saints.        

 I trust in eternal life.  I believe that by God’s grace, so beautifully visible in the life of Jesus, testifies that the love of God is greater than the limits of this physical life.  I do not know what heaven looks like, or whether it is a place: a relative position in reference to other spaces we know; I cannot tell you exactly who will be there or what they will look like or whether we will retain our earthly sense of self in some way, but I just have this profound sense, and the Gospel tells us, that God’s grace and love are greater than our sinfulness or death.  And while I cannot say that I am not afraid of death, I believe my hope is greater than my fear. 

Said another way, God’s faith and love for you and me, in our life, is greater than our doubt of ourselves, greater than our sin, greater than death. Since sin and death do not cancel out faith and hope, we can look squarely at the truth of life, and still celebrate with joy and thanksgiving.  Even against overwhelming odds and evidence, we are empowered by God to be transformed, and to work for love, peace and justice.  You may not be a high priest, just a herdsman, a dresser of sycamore trees or a carpenter’s son, but the power of the living God will move through us to produce the fruit of justice and hope for this community and the world.  No need to be shy about it: Let us celebrate you, me and this community, for God does.        

Let me posit the idea that you are here because you have considered the variables in life with humility, and yet with the confidence of someone who can reason and make your own decision.  You are not certain about who or what exactly this God is, you are not an expert on doctrine,  but right here right now you sense a love that is larger than you and me, and so you love back.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ speaks a powerful truth to us for which we are grateful. It enables us to look the truth square in the face, to repent and receive forgiveness, and so to celebrate and give thanks.