Honesty - Matthew 7: 1-6 and Matthew 5: 43-48

There is a skill to writing a book or a script for a movie. In general terms, the craft usually involves one of the main characters, if not more, being called into a time of challenge, that is neatly resolved by the time that we reach the end. Sometimes these challenges are forces from the outside, like an epic journey a hero needs to take. But I think perhaps the more relatable challenges are the ones that come from the inside. Those where the character, and us by extension need to wrestle with feelings or doubts. 

One of the plots you see coming up time and again in such stories of challenge are ones where folks are either lying or are lied to. It may be a lie of omission - something that is conveniently left out, but when discovered blows up. Or it could be a purposeful lie, sometimes with good intentions like protecting people’s feelings, but these often blow up as well. 

Isn’t this true in our own lives as well? When we aren’t honest, either about things great or small, it often comes back to bite us. 

Yet, we don’t talk about one particular type of deception very often - self-deception. Last week we talked about self-examination, a spiritual practice that helps us realize that we are in need of confession and God’s mercy and grace in our lives. But in order for self-examination to truly change us, we need to be honest with ourselves. We need to face our inner battles. 

Whenever we face an eternal threat in our lives, we often have two choices - fight or flight. We either hold our ground and face that threat or we flee in the opposite direction. Different times in our lives, call for different reactions. There is no one size fits all for all the situations we may face. 

But internal battles? Those are a bit harder. We often don’t fight them or flee from them, we ignore them, until they get so bad that we can no longer do so. And when our internal wounds and struggles start showing up on the outside, we don’t just ignore them, we start to try to convince other people that they don’t exist. Have you ever said (or heard someone else say) “I don’t have a problem with….(fill in the blank)” Our self-deception becomes down right dishonesty. 

Our brothers and sisters in twelve step programs understand this, perhaps better than the rest of us, with the steps that they work through, starting with admitting that we are powerless and that our lives have become un-manageable. 

That’s at the root of our dishonesty - is it not? We would rather ignore what we are facing when we cannot manage it, and we are so fearful of others realizing our flaws and shortcomings and sin, that we try to manage them and their perceptions of us, then face what is in front of us. 

Jesus cut through all of that with his teaching found in the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew about judging others. Why do we judge others? Because we don’t want to own up to the sin in our own lives. Jesus is a bit tongue in cheek here, when he is talking about folks who are badgering their neighbors about removing the speck in their own eye, when they have a log coming out of their own. 

There are certain scriptures that I would love to see illustrated and this is one of them. A person swinging around with a log coming out of their eye, who can’t even reach out to wipe a speck out of someone else’s eye because of it - a ponient image. 

Jesus goes on to say that we need to first address the sin in our own lives before we go around complaining about our neighbors. Judging our neighbors. 

Instead, in Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus invites us into a different way of living. What could be called a more honest way of living. Jesus begins with the ancient teaching from scripture to love your neighbor and have your enemy, but then he flips it on its head. First, he doesn’t try to convince people that they don’t have enemies. In ancient times there were enemies around every corner it seemed like. Instead, he tells people to pray for not just their enemies but those who persecute you. 

Why in the world would Jesus say this? What is he trying to get at? I think if we are honest, praying for our enemies is really hard. And sometimes those prayers start out in such a way to ask God to validate what we are feeling or to excuse our behavior towards them. But. But if we persist in praying it becomes really hard to despise someone we are regularly praying for, even if it someone we consider our enemies. 

There is an old adage that we hate in other people what we hate most in ourselves. As we pray for another person, we also find healing for our own demons and what we need to confess. The adage may not be true in every situation, but it always invites us into a place to deeply reflect upon what we dislike about the other person and what they says about us. 

Our faith isn’t just about loving those who are like us and who we enjoy being around. Our faith manifests itself in loving even our enemies. Even those whom we struggle with. Our faith is a place where we both offer and receive forgiveness, which is the key to internal and external peace. But that forgiveness is really hard to get to without being honest with ourselves about where we start.

Honest about the fact that many of us do struggle with judging other people - trying to put them into neat categories instead of embracing fully who they are. We need to confess that judgment is God’s alone, not ours. We do not have the right to condemn others when that log is still coming out of our own eye. We can’t be scolding our enemies, when in our hearts we are enemies to others. 

There are so many sins that we are blind too, brothers and sisters, and maybe just maybe this Lenten season as we pray for our enemies, we can start to realize some of that sin in our own lives instead of running away from it or ignoring it or lying about it. So I’d like to create space for us to do just that this morning. Space to be honest with ourselves and honest with God. Let us take time for the next few minutes to be in silent pray, asking that God help us realize the log in our own eye, whatever it may be. Taking time to pray for those who we have been struggling with, deeply and sincerely praying for them. Who knows how it just may change even our hearts this Lenten season…..

Self-Examination - Psalm 51

There is a school yard game entitled “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar” that goes something like this, one child accuses another from taking a cookie from the pretend cookie jar and then the accused says, “Who me?!” To which the group answers “Yes, you!” “Wasn’t me!” “Then who?”, in which another child is accused of stealing the pretend cookie.

It seems like a silly game, but isn’t that what we do in our adult lives as well? When we know that we have acted in a way that is contrary to the will of God, instead of examining our own hearts and asking for God’s forgiveness, we start to look around and draw attention away from ourselves in any way that we can, towards what we perceive to be the sin of someone else. 

The events leading up to Psalm 51 where a bit like that. David was not in the place that he should have been at the appointed time. In the season when other Kings were off in battle, he sent his troops off without him while he stayed behind. While there, he caught sight of woman bathing. Instead of looking away, he let his heart lust after her, to the point where he sent guard over to her home to bring her back to him. He impregnated her. 

What was a bad situation became worse as he tried to divert what he had done - covering it up so that no one would know. He sent for the woman’s husband, who was where he was supposed to be at the time, out in the field in battle. He tempted the man to sleep with his wife, thinking then he could cover up his wrong doing. Only men didn’t sleep with their wives until the battle was over, so David sent him back to battle with a note to the commander to position this man to make sure that he was killed in the midst of the fighting. David then took the dead man’s wife to be another one of his wives. 

But it wasn’t until the priest Nathan confronted David and told him the story of man who had stolen another man’s sheep, that he let his heart be broken open. David was so focused on trying to cover up his sin, running from it, ignoring it, that he never took time to reflect on what he had done and to ask God for forgiveness. 

This Psalm is that moment for him. The moment of crying out to God for cleaning and mercy. All too often, we want to hide the truth of how we have sinned even from ourselves. So we keep ourselves busy, thinking that if we don’t have to slow down, then we won’t need to consider what we’ve done. It’s like we think that we can outrun the guilt.

Or we think that if no one else recognizes the sin in our heart, then it must not exist. We get preoccupied with how we look to other people, what they think about us, how righteous we appear, when really we are shattered on the inside. 

We need a space in our lives for self-examination. Sometimes other people help us enter into that space, as Nathan did with King David. But we need space in our lives to pray that God break open our hard hearts and help us set aside all that has been distracting us, so we can confess the sin in our lives and in our hearts. 

The truth is we cannot confess that which we do not see. We need to be aware of the sin in our lives in order to acknowledge it and ask for God’s forgiveness. Enter self-examination. The spiritual practice of self-examination is paying close attention. Paying attention to those places in our lives where we need mercy, where we need to be washed anew, and cleansed of our sin. 

And friends, if we are honest, sometimes self-examination is painful. It’s why we get so caught up in our routines and keep so busy that we do not have time to examine ourselves. If left to our own devices, we would rather not do it. We would rather hide, like Adam and Eve did in the garden so long ago, or play the metaphorical game of “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar” - pointing a finger at anyone but ourselves, telling others that they need to confess, all the while avoiding confession ourselves. 

In order to place ourselves in an attitude of self-examination we need to realize three things. First, we can never earn or deserve God’s love, instead it is freely given to us as a gift through Jesus Christ that we need to accept. Sometimes part of that running away from confession problem, is trying to rack up “good points” with God. We think if we do enough good in the world, then it cancels out our sin. Now, I am a big fan of us loving our neighbors, as Jesus said that this was part of the greatest commandment, and John Wesley even made it into one of the three simple rules that we have to guide our lives as United Methodist - do good always, but trying to prove we are a good person is not the point. The point is allowing the saving love of Jesus Christ to transform us. 

King David was known as a man after God’s own heart, but that didn’t excuse him for the way that he acted or the sin that he committed against God and his neighbor. The good did not cancel out the bad, like an ethical math equation. Sin is sin. There is no sin that is worse than another and when we sin, we need God’s grace which comes to us through Jesus Christ. Not by our own works. It is only God that can cleanse our heart of sin, not all of the good that we do in the world. 

Second, we are all sinners. Rev. Adam Hamilton had an interesting sermon over Advent where he essentially said that if anyone considers themselves to be perfect to come and let him know, because he would love to learn from them. We, ourselves, are not perfect. In another sermon at Providence Church in TN the guest preacher asked if anyone consider themselves to never screw up, to be completely free of sin, and you could hear the chuckled through the audience. Why did they laugh? Because they acknowledge that even on their Christian walk, we still screw up. Why? Because we human, we are a fallen people.

Until we acknowledge that we are sinners, fallen, and need of God’s grace, it’s really difficult to confess. That’s when we slip into the temptation of looking at the people around us and saying things, aloud or in our hearts, like “I’m so glad I’m not as bad as a sinner as them.” Not true. Sin is sin and we are all in need of the forgiveness of the cross, every single day of our lives. 

Third, God examines our hearts. Psalm 139 is one of my favorite Psalms, which was referenced in our call to worship this morning. It essentially says that there is no place where we can go where we are outside of the presence of God. Friends, God looks into our hearts and wants to free us from the baggage and sin that we are carrying there, but we need to continually hand our hearts over to God, because all too often we snatch them back. 

It is the Holy Spirit that allows us to engage in this discipline of self-examination, and really its something that we should be doing daily. It’s not just examination for examination’s sake, rather its a space to ask for God’s forgiveness. To look closely and see the sin and the unforgiveness that has taken root. 

So that’s what we are going to do this morning. I would invite you to flip your bulletin over and you will see a space for reflection on the back today. I want you to take just a few seconds and write down one sin that you want to hand over to God this day. One area in your life where you are in need of confession. Now this is for your eyes only, no one else’s. Now I want us to pray together over that sin, asking that God cleanse us. Would you join me in the prayer that is printed on the back of your bulletin…. Amen. 

Forgiveness - Luke 15: 11-32

I enjoy movies. It doesn’t matter if it is at the movie theater or watching at home, there is something about the storytelling in movies when it is done well that can capture the heart and the imagination, drawing you in. 

In 2009 the movie Invictus came out. I saw it about a year later, and again this past year as part of a class that I was taking. It tells the story of Nelson Mandela as he came to lead a deeply divided South Africa, uniting the country through the sport of rugby. 

Mandela had spent 27 years in jail. Four years after his release he was elected president of South Africa. There were racial tensions. But what struck me both in the movie, and what I later learned about the life of Nelson Mandela, is that he strove to live with forgiveness in his heart. In one scene in the movie, all the people from the previous administration are packing up their boxes, assuming that they are going to get fired, only to have Mandela call them all together and say as long as they were working to bring the country together they could stay. 

Time and time again, it came out that this was who Mandela was - someone who strove to bring people together even if it meant having to forgive people. Even those who imprisioned him. 

For the next several weeks as we journey through the season of Lent together we are going to be focusing on what it means to be a people who are both forgiven and who are forgiving. Archbishop Desmond Tutu once wrote a book entitled “No Future without Forgiveness”, which in and of itself is a profoundly true statement. But there is also no Christianity, my friends, without the forgiveness of Christ. 

We often think about the season of Lent as a time to give something up or start a new spiritual practice so we can draw closer to our Lord, but at its heart, as we move towards the cross, is not the story of Lent also one of forgiveness? For the life, death, and resurrection of Christ all point out that we are broken people in need of forgiveness, forgiveness that can only be offered by a Savior. 

In the Gospel of Luke we find this story, that we often describe as the parable of the Prodigal Son. It starts out in a way that would have absolutely shocked its first listeners - with a son demanding his share of the inheritance from his father. In other words, the son is standing there telling his father, in not so many words, that he would be better off if his father would just die, so he could get what’s coming to him. Why? Because he feels that it belongs to him.

This would be akin to spitting in his father’s face - a sign of profound disrespect. A son who disowned his own father before heading out and spending all that he had, all of his inheritance, on foolish things. Only he didn’t think long term and not too soon afterwards a famine came, meaning that he had nothing. No food. No place to live. No job. No money. And in his mind, no family. 

Then he did something that shocked the original Jewish audience even more - he took the only job he could find, as a pig farmer. Now pigs were considered to be unclean animals, and anyone who worked with them would have been ceremonially unclean. So here is this son who had engaged in inexcusable behavior, dishonoring himself and his family by what he said and defiling himself by his job. He had hit rock bottom. This young man would have been considered one who had sinned more than anyone could have ever imagined. 

In all stories there is a moment that changes things. For Nelson Mandela it was when he was released from prison and again when he heard that people were trying to organize around rugby in a way that would tear the country apart instead of bringing it together. That moment for the Prodigal Son can when he realized that life is not meant to be lived in this way, yearning to eat the scraps of pigs, and decides to go back home, back to the place where he left, and beg for forgiveness. He is so ashamed of his behavior that he doesn’t even plan on begging his father to take him back as a son, rather he wants to be taken in simply as a servant. Perhaps some of the hardest words we ever have to say in life are those when we admit that we have screwed up. Admit that we have hurt someone we love. Admit that we did not make the right choice. Admit that we sinned against God.

So he walks the long road home, all the while rehearsing what he is going to say to his father in hopes of begging for forgiveness. Only the unexpected happens. For while the son is still a long way off, the father sees him and starts to prepare for a celebration. This is perhaps my favorite part of the Parable of the Prodigal son - the celebration. I truly believe that the Kingdom of God rejoices whenever a lost child returns from the world of sin. And the father embrace his son, welcoming him home, for he once was lost, but now was found. 

This is where we often end the story, the younger son was in need of forgiveness and then was offered it by his father, but the story continues as the elder son, the faithful son, the one who thought that he always did everything right and never broke a rule, came home in the midst of this celebration and he is so mad at what is taking place that he refused to celebrate. Pointing out how he has done everything right, but had never received a reward, yet here is one who has done everything wrong and was getting a fattened calf killed in his honor. To which the father replies, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

The truth is friends, that both the younger and the older son were in need of forgiveness. It’s easy to point out the sin of the younger son, and perhaps that is why the parable often refers to him by name in the title. But the older son also needs forgiven, for he was a hard heart. 

We, too, are in need of forgiveness. There are so many ways that we alienate ourselves from God and from each other. And the first step, which the younger son did and the older son did not, is realizing that we are in need of forgiveness. For the younger son that came when he found himself with no money, no place to call home, and working a job he never imagined himself doing. For each of us, rock bottom, or recognizing our deep need for God will be different. But when we do have that realization it can lead us to the foot of the cross, where we can admit that we cannot deal with our own sin, and we hand our lives over to Jesus Christ.

The starting point of all forgiveness isn’t us - it’s God. The father in this parable. We were once far from our Heavenly Father, separated by sin. But now we are welcomed into the Kingdom in loving arms. This is the Father we pray to. The one who loves us unconditional, with an eternal forgiveness. The one who reminds us that while we may want to stop being God’s child, disowning Him, he will never stop being our Father.

And it is this forgiveness, that originates from God, that Jesus lived into on the cross. That is what we are journey towards, brothers and sisters. Jesus even forgave those who crucified him, telling the father that they do not know what they are doing. 

What are you in need of forgiveness for this day? Take it to the foot of the cross? What is weighing as a burden on your heart? Hand it to Jesus. Knowing that our loving God is waiting to embrace us with open arms when we humble ourselves enough to ask for forgiveness. Amen. 

Nahum: The Justice of God - Nahum 2: 1-13

When I was in youth group, the Easter Sun Rise service was always one that was designed and led by the youth in the congregation. For a few years my parents served as youth group leaders and under their tenure we would plan a worship service that highlighted the groups musical gifts and other talents, but for the sermon portion of the service we would put on plays. Now I must confess that I don’t remember very many of those plays, but I do remember one in particular where God was serving as judge saying that he needed justice for the sin that had been committed in the world, sin that had broken the convent and broken his heart. The person who was on trial tried to give a list of excuses, all of which failed. But in one powerful moment, Jesus stood up and simply uttered one sentence “I paid the price”. Justice had been served on the cross. 

But that wasn’t the understanding of justice during the time of Nahum. Or at least not completely. We talked a bit last week about how Nineveh (ie the Assyrians) were oppressing the people of Israel. But the truth is, even though Nahum is among the more hopeful prophecies for the Israelites, in parts of it, especially at the beginning God through the prophet is convicting them for their sin as well. There is punishment for all sin, including the sin of Israel, which is written about more in prophets like Jeremiah and Micah,  but the time of their punishment is drawing to an end. Wholeness and integrity will soon be restored to the people, if only they seek to keep God’s covenant and remember God’s promises. 

Which brings us to chapter 2of Nahum today, where the prophecy turns to Nineveh itself. God is essentially saying to this nation that sees itself as powerful that all that power they think they have, its going to end. In fact, they will be completely shattered by God. For the Lord is going to raise us the people of Israel, the people they had been walking all over and oppressing, and they will ruin the Assyrians. 

Why are the Assyrians being told they will be ravaged? Because they have oppressed Israel, yes, but also because of the sin of their bloodshed and conflict against other nations as well. They will essentially be punished for their cruelty and greed. 

God goes as far as to say that he is against the Assyrians, so they will be cut off from the earth and all of that power and might that lead to them conquering others - that will be no more. 

The truth is no one, not Israel, not the Aysrians, not any other people, nation or tongue can live outside of the power of God. And that power is also reflected in the justice of God. God must deal with sin in one way or another. The sin of the Assyrians is that they committed crimes against other people and that made them enemies of God. The sin of Israel is that they forgot the heart of God and broke covenant with their God. And all sin, no matter who commits it, must be punished. 

The righteousness and justice of God go hand in hand, but that is so hard for us to grasp as people sometime. It is hard for us to compute in our brains how God can be one hundred precent righteous and one hundred percent just and one hundred percent loving and one hundred precent merciful all at the same time. And because we can’t understand that it our heads, we sometimes get it mixed up in our hearts. 

For example, often when we think about justice we think about punishment. Consider that play that I shared a few minutes ago - we think of justice in terms of court rooms and rules and punishment when we break the law. In fact, we often think of justice as punishment. The Israelites were probably cheering when they heard this prophecy from Nahum that the Assyrians would be defeated and get what was coming to them. 

But when we look at it through the lens of Christ, we find that God also offered love through Christ as the penalty for our sin, and Christ the son speaks to God the father in our defense. 

So what in the world do we do with something like the second chapter of Nahum? We need to remember to look at the whole of scripture not just bits and pieces to understand this God who is beyond our comprehension. 

I was in a few different plays when I was younger and another one that I remember took place at the Presbyterian Church in Clearfield when I was in middle school. The topic - Jonah. You remember the story of Jonah, right? God sent Jonah to the people of Nineveh with the message that they were going to be punished for their sin. It took Jonah a long time to get there, which is another story for another day, but Jonah did eventually make his way to Nineveh and share this message from God. Only the people repented! They cried out to God to forgive them. And surprisingly to Jonah, as he sat back and waited for God to strike the people of Nineveh dead, God forgave them. In this story we found that God would be a source of salvation to those who turn to him. 

So we can’t take the prophecy of Nahum to mean that people never have the chance to repent, because that’s not what we see throughout scripture as whole. But what we do see all throughout scripture is that sin separates us from the heart of God and God as a God of righteous and justice demands payment for our sins. Payment, that we believe came in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. 

But here’s the thing about God’s justice my friends. It also requires us to act with justice. And by that I do not mean justice that punishes people or justice that judges where people are at in their walk with God, for that is God’s justice and power for him alone. Instead, I mean the type of justice we heard about in the call to worship this morning. The hard justice that Christ speaks of that requires to make sure that people are treated with dignity and respect. For the justice of God is both a justice that shows itself in punishment for what is wrong and doing the right thing for those in need. 

So we need to show up for people with his justice that may not look like the justice that we have in our minds, and doing so we lead people to God who seeks to save the lost and transform hearts, just like happened in the scripture of Jonah. 

In Hebrew the words for Justice and Righteous come from the same root. Friends, may I suggest that we have enough people who try to claim the justice of God as their own in this world, just like we have enough people who try to claim the power of God as their own. The punishment of God is for God alone to figure out. But this justice that can transform the world by the way we act - friends, we can have a part in that. A part of rebuilding a hurting society and praying for the restoration of God to come. Is that work that we are interested in as the church? Are we willing to be a people of justice? Amen.