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| SERMON 2nd Sunday of Lent February 28, 2010 The Rev. Charles W. Messer |
| 667 Mount Road, Aston, PA 19014 610-459-2013 |
| Small Parish - Big Heart The little church you've been looking for! All are welcome! |
| Our Mission: To worship the Lord To serve the community To grow the church |
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35 |
He would say that it didn’t matter who was running, it could be a monkey in a
business suit, and as long as the monkey.
Pop voted in every election from Roosevelt on, always voting democrat.
Pop was a teenager in the early years of the Great Depression.
His father left home leaving behind my great grandmother to raise five children
alone in southern Alabama.
Poor, uneducated, and blind in one eye Pop’s opportunities to make life better were
few and far between.
Pop would later tell me that the best thing to happen to him was joining the Civilian
Conservation Corps, a government initiative of the Roosevelt administration that
took poor, unemployed young men and put them to work around the country.
Pop learned to be a mechanic working on heavy machinery, a skill that would make
his living for the rest of his life.
The CCC camp did for Pop what he couldn’t do for himself and he never forgot that.
From then till he died, Pop always voted Democrat – no exceptions.
That kind of loyalty, that kind of fidelity, that kind of faithfulness isn’t a choice made
out of a careful study of Democratic policies or certain politicians but a choice
made out of personal experience – a chance given at a better life, a chance that
would’ve been impossible without the help of someone else.
The only response for such unearned goodwill is loyalty, fidelity, and faithfulness.
The Bible is the story of God doing for humanity what it couldn’t do for itself.
The story of God is a story of grace.
The lives of faith recorded in the Bible are lives lived in response to God’s acts of
grace.
No where in all the Old Testament is that evident than in the story of Israel’s
deliverance from slavery in Egypt.
Remember the story?
The descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were living as nomads in the land
of Egypt.
They multiplied and grew prosperous until Pharaoh could take no more and
enslaved all of the Israelites.
Next week we’ll hear about how God appeared to Moses in the burning bush telling
him to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt.
Pharaoh was stubborn and wouldn’t let the people go.
God sent 10 plagues to until Pharaoh had had enough and the children of Israel left
Egypt.
But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and chased Israel to the Red Sea.
They were trapped.
All seemed lost.
They were certain to die unless God intervened.
And God did.
The Red Sea parted and the Israelites passed through from death to life, from
slavery to freedom.
From the clutches of certain death, Israel is rescued.
God did for Israel what they couldn’t do for themselves.
For Israel, this Passover from death to life is God’s ultimate act of grace.
How could they respond, a mere thank you card wouldn’t suffice.
Their only response is worship, faithfulness, and obedience to God.
It is in this atmosphere of gratitude that we find theTen Commandments.
Their thankfulness to God would be demonstrated by observing these Ten
Commandments; their worship would be articulated by their obedience to the law
because of what God did for them what they couldn’t do for themselves.
The Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights, and heavy
obligations.
For many, religion is just that, commands one has to obey or else.
For a whole lot of others, religion is doing our best to keep God from punishing us.
How often we’re chained to the business of religion because of the rigors we place
on ourselves in our relationship to God.
Religion for most people is understood as a value system of do’s and don’ts, a
rigorous structure of things to avoid and to shun.
Religion is the first to condemn and last to forgive. It’s burdensome and tedious.
Religion suppresses individuality and squelches creativity.
It’s cumbersome and complicated.
It’s right or wrong, black or white.
Religion isn’t a belief in someone or something but a responsibility, a duty to meet
specific requirements in order to placate the god we have created for ourselves.
Some of us genuflect to the god of fundamentalism whose inherent fatalism and
tight-fisted dogma enables us to see the world in do’s and don’ts, good and evil,
the saved and the damned.
Others of us nod to the god of liberalism and relativism whose non-committal
nature allows us to belly up to the god buffet and build our own deity who makes
no demands of us and who comes and goes as we like.
There’s religion and then there is faith.
The life of faith is lived out of gratitude.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever
believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world but to save it.
Obedience is no longer a burdensome task but a free offering of worship in
response to God’s graciousness.
Obedience is inextricably tied to repentance. Through our gratitude we see that the
way we’ve treated others and how we live is offensive to the graciousness of God.
I love the American way of life. I love my television, my grill, I love rolling through
the drive thru at McDonalds and getting a double quarter pounder with cheese and
super sized fries and a coke at any time of day. However, I might be enjoying the
best of life at the expense of others. This week while I was preparing for this
sermon, I came across some numbers that was disturbing: we spent 28 billion at
McDonalds in 2009, we spent 22 billion dollars on makeup and aftershave.
Now, I’m not saying we should give up McDonalds and make up, but I wonder what
else we could be doing with our disposable income. 10 billion dollars delivers clean
water everywhere. 18 billion dollars feeds the planet.
How does God feel as a father when he sees some of his children enjoying the best
of life while the rest of them suffer? Someone once described the way God might
feel this way: Imagine you’re a parent of three children. The oldest is was able
to go to the best schools, excelled in everything he did, became very successful
and made mountains of money. Your middle child struggled and couldn’t provide
for her family and was starving. The youngest was even worst than the middle
child, she was crippled with disease and unable to afford medical care and
medicine. How do you think you would feel about your oldest child in light of the
other two?
The life of faith is a heart open to the wideness of God’s mercy and all-
encompassing love for all people.
The life of faith is lived out of an experience of God doing for us what we couldn’t
do for ourselves.
Understanding the Ten Commandments as a set of burdens overlooks something
essential, namely they are prefaced not by an order – “Here are these Ten
Commandments. Obey or else!” – but by an announcement of freedom, “I am the
Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery.”
The life of faith begins in the good news of what God has done in each of our lives.
Obedience to God is our expression of gratitude of God getting into the guts and
messiness of our lives bringing grace and peace to our lives.
Like my grandfather who forever voted for Democrat because of a chance given for
a better life, so too our life is shaped by our experience with God.
First comes the experience of being cared for, the experience of being set free,
preserved in the form of personal experience.
Then there follows the life shaped ethically around that profound experience of
God doing for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves.
It is out of what God does for us that we give our obedience, our fidelity, and our
worship.
Amen.
To contact us: Calvary Episcopal Church 667 Mount Road Aston, PA 19014 610-459-2013 OFFICE The Rev. Charles Messer, Rector Fr. Chuck: frmesser@calvaryepiscopalrockdale.org Website: mail@calvaryepiscopalrockdale.org Office: calvaryoffice1@verizon.net |
