Sermon August 12: "Did you hear ...?"

FPC - Willmar

Sermon

August 12, 2012

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Gossip is a wonderful thing.  It is truly – and literally – a devilish delight.  Sometimes we revel in it.  Sometimes we just roll around in it like pigs in mud.  Sometimes we use it to get at someone that we just don’t like.  Sometimes it’s based in anger.  Sometimes it’s just plain mean.  There’s too much just plain meanness in this world.

A woman was bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies. She was rushed to the hospital, treated, and left in a room to wait for an autopsy report on the dog. Only then would she know whether or not she might have rabies. An intern on duty that day thought he should explain the seriousness of the situation to the woman. She asked him a lot of questions, and by the end of the interview, the intern realized that he had told her more than he intended to tell her. She was visibly shaken.

Later when he came by to look in on her, she was sitting on the side of the treatment table, writing. She would pause occasionally and stare out into space, then resume writing. The young doctor was sure he had upset her so much that she was writing her will, or funeral instructions, or some other equally grave document. He went back in to try to calm and comfort her. He asked if she were writing her will. "Oh no," she said, "Just in the event I have been infected, I'm making a list of the people I want to bite before I die."

Human beings have an enormous capacity for meanness, bitterness and hostility.  We just don’t want to let go.  Sometimes our whole self worth is tied up in denigrating others and holding on to grudges forever. 

Paul reminds us: “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need….
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God….
Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

Of course sometimes we try to get around it by saying that someone hasn’t just insulted us, they’ve insulted God and therefore we don’t have to forgive them and we’re free to bad-mouth them.  Let me tell you something: God will take care of Himself quite well.  Don’t try to disguise a malicious tongue by saying that you’re defending God’s honor.

That’s what the Pharisees tried to do when they grumbled against Jesus.  “Who does he think that he is?  He is an affront to God.”  Jesus said, “Stop grumbling among yourselves.”  

God didn’t send down the bread of heaven to nurture our bitterness and our wrath and our anger.  God became incarnate as a human being in order to bring us the good news that we have been set free to return to God.  God sent us the bread of heaven so that we might be nurtured in our gratitude to God and our love for one another. 

That gift, that sacrifice, that Jesus who came to restore our life with God and take away all the barriers that we in our prideful sin have erected to hold in our bitterness and anger and separate ourselves from one another and thereby from God, that free gift is the basis of all that we have to be grateful for. 

Certainly we should be thankful for our health, our social and political freedoms, our relative wealth in relationship to the rest of the world, our families, our communities, but all of these can be taken away in the blink of an eye.  There is only one gift that the world cannot take from us, and that is the freely given gift of the love of God.

When we have recognized that gift and the impact that it can have on us and on the world, then we are finally in a position to understand and value the bread of life which will provide us with nurture and strength to accomplish those things which God has willed for us, for our joy, and for our salvation.

 

When pursuing the will of God becomes your first priority, then suddenly you will be filled with the grace of God and the joy of the Holy Spirit.  When communicating the love of God to another person becomes your reason for being, then you will be overcome with the presence of God in your life.

Everyday in Kandiyohi County there are hundreds if not thousands of people in need.  Every day there are people in this congregation in need.  They are lonely; they are sick; they are dying; they have been broken by the weight of life; they have been crushed by a spouse or a lover or a child or a parent; they have been betrayed and abused by someone close to them. They have needs that God can fill if we will bring them – if we bring each other – the love and grace of God through the vessels of our lives.

But I’m not talking about social work, I talking about Christianity.  You need to find in your own life the meaning of God’s gift to you, the source of your gratitude to God, the understanding that the world cannot take away the only genuine blessing that you have ever received.  That blessing is there for you whether you are rich or poor, healthy or sick, alive in America or living in Nigeria.  God has sent you a gift that is yours for the taking and God has sent you the bread of heaven that is more nourishing than all the devilish delights with which the world may tempt you. 

It starts in your own life when you recognize the cost that God has paid to bring you a gift.  It starts in your own life when that recognition at the core of your soul generates a love for God that is driven by gratitude and the knowledge that you have received so much more than you could ever deserve or ever repay.  Fed by that gratitude you try to help others understand.  You try to share with others the love that God has given to us all.  Fed by that gratitude you recognize that you must do only that which is needed for building up the reign of God and never tearing apart the lives of others.

When you recognize that love in your soul you will see that the love that frees you is also the bread that will nurture you to accomplish it all.  When you can pray with the ardor of the ancient Irish poem:  “Be my vision, O God.  Nothing else matters.  I don’t want riches or fame.  I only want you as my treasure; you alone in my heart. No matter what happens to me, for better or for worse, you are my heart, you will always remain my vision.”

Don’t waste God’s gift to you on a life pulled down by bitterness, anger, and just plain meanness.  As Paul put it, “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit.”  Seek God’s joy.  Seek that presence of the God who gave all for you and provides you with the food that will carry your soul through all the fires of this world, all the snares of Satan himself.  Seek that gift which has been given.  Eat and find nourishment in the heaven-sent bread of life and raise up the kingdom of God.  As Jesus promises in the Gospel, it is he himself who will raise you up on that final day.

Amen.