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In today’s reading from John 1:1-18 NKJV In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (2) He was in the beginning with God. (3) All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (4) In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. (5) And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (6) There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. (7) This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. (8) He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. (9) That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. (10) He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. (11) He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. (12) But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: (13) who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (14) And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (15) John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’ ” (16) And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. (17) For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (18) No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
We hear “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.” In Genesis 1:3 we read: “Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” God said and the creation was. That is how the Bible shows us God, it is the way in which God reveals Himself to us, and it is the way in which we see that God keeps His word.
So many of us, want some kind of proof of God’s being, of God caring, yet that evidence is all around us and we don’t see it. There are schools of thought that want us to believe that God created the world and everything in it and then left it to its own devices, but scripture tells us that God acted throughout history. When God first created the world, He also created a man and a woman, in His own image they were created. We read this in the first chapter of Genesis, where God says: “Let us make man in our image…..male and female created He them.” He then goes on to put them in the garden to till it and to care for it. However there is more to it than that, God also was the one who came and walked with them in the garden in the cool of the evening. God did not create man and woman to be robots but to be God’s own companions. Why would God create a companion and then go off to someplace else and abandon His companion?
Later, when they sinned and God banished them from the garden, He was still around. When Cain killed his brother, God was there to judge the actions, and to mitigate the punishment. When man became so depraved that God grew weary of him and his activity, He also acted to save a remnant through Noah and his family. Is that a God who has forgotten about His creation? Again we find God calling Abram to come out of Ur and go to a land he was not familiar with, then walking with Abraham and talking with him in a personal way. We find that God came and ate a meal with Abraham and even that Abraham had a conversation where he was able to speak to God as you and I would to one another. Remember the conversation? “God would you destroy the city if there were 50 righteous people, or 40 or 10?” God spoke to Abraham as to a friend, as to a companion, as to one He loved. God came and wrestled with Jacob and called him Israel, that is one of those great stories in the Old Testament, God comes down to wrestle with His people, to talk with them and to help them to understand.
The Bible is full of these wonderful stories, stories that help us to understand God and that help us to see how the people of God have changed their own understanding of God through the centuries, reading today in Jeremiah 31:7-14 we find a wonderful example of God’s working with His people. In verses 10-14 we read:
Jeremiah 31:10 through Jeremiah 31:14 (NLT)
10″Listen to this message from the LORD, you nations of the world; proclaim it in distant coastlands: The LORD, who scattered his people, will gather them together and watch over them as a shepherd does his flock. 11 For the LORD has redeemed Israel from those too strong for them. 12 They will come home and sing songs of joy on the heights of Jerusalem. They will be radiant because of the many gifts the LORD has given them—the good crops of wheat, wine, and oil, and the healthy flocks and herds. Their life will be like a watered garden, and all their sorrows will be gone. 13 The young women will dance for joy, and the men—old and young—will join in the celebration. I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and exchange their sorrow for rejoicing. 14 I will supply the priests with an abundance of offerings. I will satisfy my people with my bounty. I, the LORD, have spoken!”
God did just that, He brought His people back from their captivity to again inhabit the land. Yet God’s people just as quickly forget that they are God’s people and sink, over and over again into apostasy. Not only the Jews of ancient times but you and I today. We forget that God is sovereign, that God is present, we don’t really want God to be present, except when it comes time to collect on the promises. Yes we want the goodies but we don’t want the responsibility of being a people set apart for a good work. We like to accept the gift of God, the life of His Son as our redeemer, but, since Jesus has already done the work we want to just rest on that, and go on and do as we please with no repercussions. It didn’t work for the people of Israel, it will not work for you and I.
The truth is that we look back at what God has done in the past for His people, Israel, and we think we are better than they are, that because Jesus died on the cross, all persons will be saved, all will be OK. We expect God to have infinite mercy without Justice, but that has never been so, and will not be so today either. God requires of those who would follow Him to do Justice as well as Mercy. For He is a Just God as well as a merciful one.
Just as God looked for the people of Israel to be changed into new persons, just as He looked for them to be holy, and to do justice to one another and to those who lived in the land, so to does He expect us to be holy and righteous. We read in Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus that God has adopted us into His family in Christ, that we have a purpose and that purpose is to praise God and to be His people. All of the gospel centers around our being God’s people, set apart for good works, and for holy living.
God tells us that we are His, because of the redemptive acts of Jesus Christ, and that we are to be a holy people, set apart, not to be a people of the society around us, but rather we are to influence that society so that it will be changed as well. We who have received the Spirit of God and have been transformed into the image of Christ, are also the recipients of eternal life in the presence of God, through that same Jesus Christ. We have received the gifts of the Spirit as we are told by Paul, and those gifts help us to live in a way that sets us apart and helps us to bring the gospel to those around us.
In remembering that past, and in looking forward to that future where we will be in the presence of our savior always, we will today renew our covenant with God and with one another, simply because we need to remind ourselves and each other who it is we are. We have taken on a name, we have taken on a task, and we have said that we will be the people of God. After we renew that covenant we will also partake of the communion meal, and have a time of fellowship together with one another, a time for us to renew ourselves and to remind each other that we are family, we have been adopted into the family of God and as such are brothers and sisters together in this journey toward the promised land.
Let us come together today, as we renew our covenant with one another and with God, and as we participate in the Eucharist understanding that we are moving toward a bright and beautiful future, because God has acted, is acting and will continue to act in the lives of His people. We are striving for perfection, perfection in love that we might perfectly reflect the love of Christ in our lives and for those around us. Let your light shine beloved that the world around you may come to know that Jesus Christ is alive and well right here where you are.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Matthew 15:21-28 14 August 2011
Jesus and the disciples have gone out of Israel to get some time away from the crowds. He has been talking to the people about the dietary laws and the fact that food is not what is wrong with people it is
their hearts that govern what comes out of their mouths. That is what defiles a person, the things they say to one another and about one another. He talks about the Pharisees as blind guides, people who do
not see what is wrong, they just know that they are the best and so everyone should follow them. Jesus says they are blind leading the blind and they both end up in the hole.
You might say that Jesus and the disciples are on vacation on the sea shore. I don’t know about you, but when I am on vacation, I like to be able to just relax, no pressure, no worries about anything, just
time to recharge my battery so to speak. Jesus had been under some real stresses in his ministry, the Pharisees and the Saducees wanted to get rid of him because he was teaching the people things that were moving them away from the laws that they had been teaching. Jesus was talking about grace and they had been talking about law and justice. Two different things, if you look for justice, then you get what
justice demands, if you instead receive grace then you receive what you don’t deserve, you receive a gift from God of justification. Your enmity with God is dissolved and you are justified, not guilty, better yet, innocent because the sin is no longer attributed to you.
So, here they are outside of Israel, no one here should know who Jesus is, maybe he can get in a round of golf, or some time in the pool, maybe do some fishing. However, here they are, walking along and this
woman comes up. She starts to cry out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, you son of David! My daughter is severely demonized!”
What? No one here should know who Jesus is, and yet, they do. This Canaanite woman is asking Jesus for help, for healing for her daughter, why? She is a gentile, this is not Israel, Jesus is here to
relax to have some time to recharge and get ready for more ministry in Israel. Jesus doesn’t even acknowledge having heard this woman. He doesn’t answer her at all.
Then the disciples come and say, get rid of her,she is making a ruckus, what they really mean
is look Jesus, this woman isn’t one of us, get rid of her, she isn’t a Jewish woman, she is a foreigner, a dog. Get rid of her. Now Jesus had been talking about grace before this. Hear what the teaching was
before they went to Tyre:
“Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” He answered them, “And
why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor his father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’” Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand:” (Mt 15:1-10 NRSV)11 it
is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”
After explaining to the disciples the teaching about food and what goes into the mouth versus what comes out of the mouth. They then head for Tyre and Sidon for a little down time. However, while they are trying to just relax, along comes this woman crying out for Jesus to heal her daughter.
Jesus now says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Meaning, sorry but you are not one of the people I was sent to, so I am not going to help you. She for her part, takes the part of
supplicant, she kneels before him and asks again for his help. His answer is really interesting, because it is what the disciples and many others were thinking about her. 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
WOW, where is the grace in that answer? I mean come on Jesus, you talk about the terrible stuff that the religious leaders do, and even try to get the disciples to think differently about these things, and then you say something really hard. It is not fair to take what is for the people of Israel, and throw it to you dogs. Dogs was a term used for those who were outside the people of Israel, these were the gentiles who lived in the area around Israel. Jesus was using the term however in a different way. He did not use the term for mongrel, but rather the term for small house dog.
I remember growing up that we always had a dog, we had a Belgian Shepherd which is a smaller version of the German Shepherd. He was a good dog and of course when we would sit down to eat in the evening, he would find a spot to lay down, under the table, and wait for the morsels to drop to the floor, he would not try to take anything that was on the table, but whatever hit the floor belonged to him. My brothers and I would always manage to drop a morsel or two during the meal as a treat for that dog.;
The Canaanite woman has a reply knowing that Jesus was not going to refuse her request. 27 She
said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” What a wonderful reply, she shows that she has the faith to come before the Lord, and ask for grace and receive it. What a wonderful picture this is for you and I, and all human beings across this earth. God offers grace to all who will accept the gift. Jesus gave himself for all who would accept his sacrifice for them. Jesus now grants her request for her faith has proven to be a great faith. This is also the beginning of the change in the ministry. This miracle was done in gentile country, Tyre, and for a gentile woman. It is the only time that Jesus goes into gentile lands and of course the only miracle as well.
The woman at the well and other miracles are performed in the Holy Land, because Jesus primarily came for the lost sheep of Israel, but his ministry, being carried out by you and I today, is for all persons, from all walks of life. All are welcome to come and look to Jesus for forgiveness and the grace of God for themselves.
The only prerequisite to salvation, is acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord. The disciples learned that lesson, although some of them had to be reminded after Jesus rose, like Peter in Joppa when God sent down that sheet full of animal life and Peter said he would not kill and eat for the meat was unclean. God said what God has made clean do not call profane. The story can be found in Acts the 10th Chapter. It is a lesson we all need to learn, that all who come to meet Christ, and to worship with us are welcome in our Sanctuary that they may indeed receive the grace of God in their lives as we have received in ours. Amen.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.” –Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781
We have worked very hard in this country to remove God from the public square, we restrict the first amendment right to free speech because the mention of God might offend someone, yet when we find a piece of art that has Christ in a bucket of urine, that is “free speech” and cannot be restricted. Galatians 6:7 (ESV) says: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.”
I have to agree with Thomas Jefferson, I shudder to think what God’s righteous anger and Justice might mean for this nation that was founded, like it or not, on Judeo/Christian principles which we are throwing away so that no one, except Christians, will be offended.
retiredpastor 