If perfection is what you crave, don’t go near a
Christian church. The wonderful thing
about Christianity is the whole notion of forgiveness. Forgiveness means freedom and it is one of
the great promises that God gives to all of us.
It is easy to forget that. We
love to be self-righteous and point our fingers at those who don’t measure up. In this political climate, everyone is being
blamed for something. The poor are
called “lazy” and “takers” and are pointed to as the reason for a decline in
the economy because they take so much resource from the government. The rich are called greedy and are pointed to
as the reason that the one percent have it all and the rest of us have nothing. Finger pointing gets to be an art. The
problem is that after the finger pointing, not much is done.
I have
always loved the story of David and Bathsheba.
It points out in the strongest terms how God can use even the most
sinful of persons to accomplish God’s agenda.
David, the King, walking on the roof of his palace sees beautiful
Bathsheba bathing on the roof of the house next door. He sends to invite her to come to the palace,
which she does and David lays with her and she conceives a child. When David discovers this, he sends for
Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, who is fighting the Ammonites with
Joab. Uriah comes home, David tries to
get him to go home and sleep with his wife, but Uriah declines, saying that all
of his fellow soldiers are not home, but sleeping in tents. After a couple of days of this, David sends
Uriah back to the war with a message for Joab commanding him to put Uriah in
the front of the fighting and then to fall back so that Uriah will be
killed. This is done.
The part
that follows this story is the time that Nathan the prophet comes to David to
accuse him. Nathan tells David a story
about a man who had only a young ewe lamb whom he loved like a child. His master had a lot of sheep but when a
stranger came to visit, the master took his servant’s lamb, had it killed and
served it to the stranger for dinner.
David heard this story and said: that
man should die. Nathan immediately
pointed his finger at David and said: you
are the man and then recounted David’s sins with Bathsheba and Uriah. David got the point quickly. The story that is told about David is that
after his encounter with Nathan, he went back to his room and wrote Psalm 51,
that incredibly powerful confessing psalm that we use on Ash Wednesday when we
present ourselves before our God as the sinners that we all know that we are.
The beautiful part of this story is the fact
that as a forgiven sinner of the worst kind, an adulterer with Bathsheba and a
murderer of Uriah, David still is the one to lead God’s people through
difficult times and pave the way for his son Solomon, whose mother was
Bathsheba, to build the temple and create a wonderful time for his people.
There is
a more modern story similar to the one about David. John Newman was a British slave
trader who one day watched the slaves leaving his ship in America and those who
had died carted away. He was struck with
the horror of it and what he had done. Later he became an Anglican priest in England
and wrote the marvelous hymn Amazing
Grace, which told the story of his life and how he had been redeemed.
The
Grace of God is an incredible gift to humanity.
That we can all be loved and accepted for who we are, despite the things
that we have done is the message that this church has for everyone. We are the refuge from the judgement and the
nonsense that fills the rest of the world.
Our mission is to help the people around us to know how much that they
are loved by the God who made us all, and how this grace gives us freedom.
If you
want proof of that, look at the ministry of Jesus among the people in the towns
and villages through which he passed. Look
at the context of his life. He had just
lost his friend John the Baptist, his cousin, to the treachery of Herod who had
had him beheaded and destroyed. Above
all things, he wanted to get away for a while simply to grieve, but the crowds
wouldn’t let him. They followed him relentlessly because they needed his
healing touch. The Gospel story tells us
that he took his disciples across the Sea of Galilee but the crowds followed
him. He saw them coming up the mountain
and asked Phillip where they were going to get enough food to feed them
all. Thomas told him that there was a
young man who had five loaves and two small fishes, but that was hardly enough
to take care of the five thousand in the crowd.
Jesus took what he had, blessed it and broke it and told his disciples
to distribute it to the crowd. There
were twelve baskets left over. Some say
that there was one basket for each of the tribes of Israel. When the people saw this miracle, they tried
to seize Jesus to make him their King, but he fled up the mountain to get away
from them.
Notice
that there isn’t any requirement laid down by Jesus about who can get the food
and who can’t. There is no mention of
those who are good and those who are bad.
Everyone in the crowd is accepted and fed. Jesus overlooked every sin that those people
had committed and simply responded to their need.
That is why acceptance at our altar of everyone who comes to it is essential. We give the sacrament to all of you, everyone who comes. We spend some time confessing our sins and receiving forgiveness. Look at David's sins or John Newman's. Are your sins worse than theirs? David was cleansed and sent by God to be the leader of his people. John Newman became a priest. We are cleansed, fed and sent into this world with the message that God loves us all. When you find those out there who don't understand that, help them to see it. The way to do that is to love them the way that you find them, whether you agree with them or not. That might even help our politics.
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