This is the text of a sermon I delivered on July 16th of 2017 at a Presbyterian (USA) church.
The scripture readings are listed below. I recommend you read them before the sermon, as I do not always quote them as I exegete the text. Scripture in the sermon is taken from the NASB translation.
When I was first discerning my call to ministry, I struggled with a sense of unworthiness. When God reminded me of the direction he had for me, it interrupted my plans and challenged my very worldview. Isaiah’s response to his call resonates with me because I had a similar prayer. “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips And I live among a people of unclean lips, For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”
I did not see the glory of God in a vision, but I saw it in the Church I was called to serve. Now, everyone knows that Christians aren’t perfect. If someone gets the notion in their head, we’re pretty quick to remind them otherwise, whether we want to or not. But to be called to ministry is to be a constant representative of the grace of God in the world, and I could barely see it in my own life, let alone the world around me.
Before I dedicated my life to ministry, I was going to study law. I wanted to be the prosecutor who convicted the guilty, a man who would destroy the lives of those who destroy the lives of others. There is a poetic justice in that sentiment, but very little room for God’s mercy. I harbored a bitterness in my heart towards humanity because I could not see the good in it. My mental predisposition towards despair and condemnation was not only dangerous for my own mental health, but also threatened to corrupt my opportunity to minister about the light and the love of Christ.
I’ve come a long way from this destructive thought in these six years of preparation. It has not been an easy road, but it has been one of great fruitfulness, and I have been blessed to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in my journey. As I have grown in faith and felt the peace of the God in my life, the messages of the prophets have become enriching to my mind and soul. Although there are great condemnations and judgements, the prophets always look forward to hope and restoration granted by a faithful God to His chosen people.
The words of hope in the prophets are critically important to us today, even as they were to the diaspora of Israel. Just as the remnant of Israel was restored by the faithfulness of God, we have the gift of mercy through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This gift is more significant than God choosing to ignore our sins. We are called through the history of God’s people to be a community that lives grace into the world. Just like Israel was set apart and sanctified to do the will of God as a testament, we are also invited into this holy calling, not because of our flawless characters but because of the power of God in our lives.
This is not always an easy calling. Like I said, Christians are not perfect people. Our mistakes repeat themselves, and we find ourselves unable to serve God with the faithfulness we desire. The world is a difficult place to be faithful in. We struggle to get along with people who say terrible things about us and treat us poorly because we still have our human natures, which cause us to stumble. More painfully, we are called change the way we live our lives despite our own inadequacy. It’s a task we cannot accomplish except by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Contrition, repentance, and forgiveness requires us to live lives that reject the sin and corruption of the world. While God’s grace is freely given, and nothing we do does or can earn our salvation, we as a Church are called to be the body of Christ, a reborn people who serve faithfully even as we struggle with the brokenness of our humanity.
We will not be perfect people. Even Paul, the founder of the Gentile Church, in his earnest and fervent service to God, still struggled in sin. In Romans 7:15-19 he writes: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.” We are entirely incapable of the holiness required to live in perfect relationship with God.
Even as we hear homilies on grace, and listen to messages of hope and reconciliation, we struggle to live righteous and holy lives. We serve our own interests, and when our neighbors ask for help, we often hesitate, asking if it is our duty to take care of the other. The hospitality I have received in my time here indicates that these two churches I have had the pleasure to serve, and the community in general, do not struggle as much as some of the other parts of the Church, but we must remain vigilant against callousness and apathy. It is still tempting to build fences around our churches and our communities and build walls against the outsider, to place our own needs over the needs of others.
We hear other Christians do damage to the Church with uncaring words, but we remain silent. One of the greatest sins a Christian can commit is to slander or mislead another Christian. When words of exclusive grace and legalistic judgement roll from our mouths or from those of others who profess to follow Christ, we are tempted to remain comfortable, and allow the Body of Christ to be poisoned by the seeds of division and strife. One of my fellow ministers here is a professing and faithful member of the Roman Catholic church, and the condemnations of his tradition by other Christians undermine the mission of his ministry to this community and the unity of the Church as children of God. We quickly judge the shortcomings of other churches and groups without acknowledging that they are functioning as the ministry of God in the world, even where we have fallen short in answering our call.
Perhaps our failings are more personal. The members of the Church are still susceptible to the sins of the world. Dishonesty and deceit are deeply damaging to the community of the faithful. While we are unlikely to use the unfair scales and weights that the prophets condemn, we often seek to find a way to make our business dealings more beneficial for us at the expense of what is right. We do not bow down and worship idols in the image of false gods, but we often value wealth, beauty, success, and comfort over humble service to God. We do not kneel before Asherah, but our lives are often corrupted by dependence on alcohol, drugs, pornography, television, social media, or any number of other distractions from the world God has made for us to engage with and serve. We do not commit the abomination of offering our children to Moloch, but we often chase after some unholy thing, some profane distraction, and turn our eyes away from the glory of our God and our Savior, running to the things that hold us in chains- then we wonder why we are thirsty, why we are weary, why we feel so hollow and vacant.
However, even as we stumble and fail, there is still hope. Paul continues, in Romans 7:25, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” We are forgiven abundantly through the gift of Jesus Christ and the atoning and redeeming blood of our Savior. We don’t need the Church to make us feel miserable. The world does that already. Our plans fall apart, our families are divided, our health fails us, and death enters our communities. The world is full of futility and despair and atrophy. When we look to the world, we drink in the poisonous lies of a fallen creation, the deceptions of those who reject God and refuse His grace. The world is a painful place, one that rends our hearts and souls as we see the pain and the loss and the grief around us. But it does not need to blind us to the hope and wonderful gifts God gives us.
The sending of the Holy Spirit to the Church on Pentecost is a powerful image, but more than just being an image of the community and a sign of God’s power, it is a promise of faithfulness from a God who desires us to live fully. I had a pastor growing up who had a personal paraphrase of John 10:10. He would repeat, every time he got the chance, “The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I came that you may have life and have it to the max.” I thought the line was cheesy, but it certainly worked, because I remember it years later. However, there is something profound in the simplicity of Pastor Curt’s statement. God does not seek to destroy our lives to or stifle who we are, but to liberate us from the sin and darkness that prevents us from living the lives we have the potential, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to live.
God’s grace and God’s mercy prevail over even the darkest sins. The famous hymn, Amazing Grace, was not written by a saint in a monastery after a life of righteousness, but by a former slave trader who was convicted in his spirit but found grace in service to God. Although we often think of John Newton’s conversion as a sudden and dramatic thing, he resisted God’s will, and remained a member of that vile trade for several years before he retired from seafaring and began to study theology, eventually writing the hymn which has been a beacon of hope to the Church. God refused to allow him to slip away from the conviction that he was called to serve despite his sin. John allegedly wrote, “How industrious is Satan served. I was formerly one of his active undertemptors and had my influence been equal to my wishes I would have carried all the human race with me.” From a man whose bitterness threatened to consume his life and encouraged him to corrupt others without remorse, he was transformed into a devout minister and used by the Holy Spirit to inspire many to come to life. His journey was not a sudden transition from sinner to saint, but one marked with struggles, and relapses, and disappointments, just like our lives. Even so, grace, amazing grace, abounded and his work led to not just a thriving congregation, but a spectacular hymn which has sustained many Christians through dark and trying times for centuries. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear, and Grace my fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear the hour I first believed.”
I doubt anyone here has sinned as spectacularly as John Newton, but even if one of us somehow has, there is no sin so great that the mercy of God cannot overcome it. The mercy of God for the repentant is unlimited, and he will pardon abundantly. We are not slaves to our past or to the fallen nature of our past selves, but rather freely invited to live in the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We are all invited to the table to sit in the presence of God. Despite all of our wanderings and our struggles, our brokenness and our pain, we are still welcomed by a God who will pardon abundantly. Receive the mercy God offers and live life to the fullest.
Let us conclude with three lines from a Kyrie Eleyson of the medieval Church. Kyrie Eleyson translates to “Lord have mercy”, and each verse ends in English with “have mercy on us.” The Kyrie Eleyson is the only Greek preserved in the Latin mass and consequentially the western Church. With these words, we pray the prayers of our Christian ancestors, as necessary for us now as for them. This kind of prayer is used as an intercession, in the same liturgical location as our prayer of confession. I’ll read the excerpt in the original beautiful Latin and then in English.
Kyrie, rex genitor ingenite, vera essentia, eleyson.
Christe, lux oriens per quem sunt omnia, eleyson.
Kyrie, expurgator scelerum et largitor gratitæ quæsumus propter nostras offensas noli nos relinquere, O consolator dolentis animæ, eleyson.
Lord, King and Father unbegotten, True Essence of the Godhead, have mercy on us.
Christ, Rising Sun, through whom are all things, have mercy on us.
Lord, Purger of sin and Almoner of grace, we beseech Thee abandon us not because of our Sins, O Consoler of the sorrowing soul, have mercy on us.
Prayers of the people to follow.
The text for the Kyrie is from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation.