1
The Message for Feb 21, 2016
Everyone Is Welcome
Luke 13:31-35
Rob Miller, Pastor
We are in week two of our Lenten series on the Five Guiding Principles ofthe Lutheran Church according to Kelly Fryer in her book,Reclaiming The “L” Word. Last week we consider the first principle,Jesus is Lord. Today we consider the second principle, Everyone is Welcome.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read,Jesus is my copilot. I wanted to pull that guy over and say, “Hey buddy… if Jesus is your copilot then you’re in the wrong seat.”
When we say that Jesus is Lord,we are saying that Jesus is the pilot of my life, not the copilot. Believing thatJesus is Lord and strange things will start happening in your life. Kelly writes. When Jesus takes the steering wheel of your life, look-out because he is going to take you places you never dreamed of going.
We find that happening in the Gospels. Mark’s Gospel is my favorite. It’s down to earth with no frills. Jesus is the most human in Mark’s Gospel. He has both feet firmly planted on the ground. What I really like about Mark’s telling of the Jesus storyis that it’s full of action with a sense of urgency about everything.
Consider this:
Jesus was baptized by John and immediately the Spirit descended on him like a dove.
Then the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.
Jesus called his disciples and immediately they dropped everything to follow him.
Going to worship one day Jesus cleansed aman who had an unclean spirit.
After worship that day Jesus went over to Simon’s house and healed his mother-in-law and she immediately served them.
In the morning there was a leper who came to Jesus and was healed immediately when Jesus said the words, “be healed.”
All of this happens in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. You can hardly catch your breath as you read Mark’s version of things. With Jesus things happen…
It’s like that in the Book of Acts too. You never know what’s going to happen next. The disciples who wereliving in the midst of it,didn’t know what was going to happen next either.
After Jesus had ascended into heaven, the disciples were gathered together one dayfor worship and suddenly the Spirit of God poured out on them with flames dancing on their heads, ready or not here it comes (Acts 2).
Paul was on his way to Damascus to round up Christians in order to have them arrested and killed for saying that Jesus is Lord. He probablythought he was doing God’s will, rounding up these Christ-like renegades. Paul refused to believe that Jesus is Lord. Then Jesus appeared in a flashing bright light and changed Paul’s plans forever (Acts 9).
Peter was sitting in prison one day arrested for preaching –Jesus is Lord. He was probably thinking that his days were numbered. When suddenly the Lord showed up and led Peterout of jail on a daring escapeso he could continue preachingthe message Jesus is Lord (Acts 12).
Kelly writes: When you confess with your lips and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, you better be ready for anything. Are you?
Here’s the truth about Guiding Principle #2 -Jesus, the Lord, welcomes everybody especially the foreigner, the excluded, the sad, the lonely, and the hurting. And that got Jesus in big trouble with the religious leaders of his day.
So if Jesus loved and welcomed everyone then who are we to exclude anyone? I know some churches do. We don’t. It’s that grace thing we talked about last week.
None of us deserve to be welcomed and loved by Jesus. We are saved by grace through faith, not because of anything we have done to earn it or deserve it.
God comes down to meet us all of us. God doesn’t draw a line and say,“I’ve come for you and for you and for youbut you guys over there you’re out of luck.” And if God doesn’t draw a line then maybe we shouldn’t either when it comes to God’s grace and love poured out for all.
Oddly enough, the only people Jesus lost his temper with - where the people who went around drawing lines about who should receive God’s graceand who shouldn’t.
Woe…. hold on there you scribes and Pharisees,hypocrites! Jesus yelled, for you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 23:13).
I don’t know about you butI don’t want Jesus to accuse me of locking people out of his kingdom. Jesus threwthe kingdom gateswide open for anyone to enter.
Those who are well have no need of a physician Jesus said, but those who are sick. Jesus came for those who need him the most.
And Jesus welcomed them with open arms. It didn’t matter what you did for a living, or where you were born, or whether you were a man or a women, young or old. It didn’t matter how messed up your life had become. In fact, the worse off you were,the bigger the welcome. Go figure.
Jesus put it this way,There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons (Luke 15:7).
Jesus turns everything upside down. He also warned everybody -- to back off when it comes to standing in judgement of other people. He put it like this,Do not judge and you will not be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned (Luke 6:37).
Jesus got right to the point saying,Take the log out of your own eye before your try to take the speck out of somebody else’s eye.
This was Jesus reminding all of us that our relationship with him starts at the foot of the cross. At the foot of the cross no one has anything to boast about.
At the foot of the cross,I dare not look around to see who is standing there with me. I’d be concerned that they would see me the way I really am, sinful and weak, standing there in need of God’s grace. AndIf I did look around,I would see a whole bunch of people just like me, sinful and weak, in need of God’s grace too.
Jesus said, Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens… (Matthew 11:28) We come to the cross to lay down our burdens. Everyone is welcome to do so.
As long as Jesus is Lord there can be no lines. So let’s not draw any lines here at First Lutheran about who is welcome and who is not. Everybody is welcome. Say that with me… Everybody is welcome.
We get that from Luther. He was a remarkable man. His name appears on many lists of the most influential people of the last 500 years.
Luther led the Reformation 500 years agohelping the Christian Church rediscover God’s amazing grace at work in people’s lives. He unchained the Bible,literal unchained the Bible from the pulpitand translated it into the language of ordinary people. He opened up the worship experience to everyone, insisting that people should be able to sing and pray in their own language and notjust Latin, which only the priests knew and understood.
Luther made sure that everyone had access to both the bread and the wine of Holy Communion. He set people free from the superstitious ideas about how to get to heaven and introduced them toGod’s grace and how God always comes down to us.
He put a priority on helping everybody, especiallychildren learning the basics of the faith from their parents. He reminded the church that it wasn’t some a pastor’s club but that every Christian is a minister. He said that we belong to the priesthood of all believers via our baptism. He encouraged pastors and nuns to get married and experience the holiness of everyday life.
Luther’s courage and clarity and commitmentto Christ changed the world.
But Luther was far from perfect. He had a terrible temper and a pretty foul mouth. He call supporters of the Pope “papal donkeys” only he used the “a.” He ate too much. He drank too much beer. He called women terrible thingseven for medieval times.
He wrestled with severe depression, often falling into spiritual funks for long periods of time. He friends often wondered if he would recover. Sometimes he said one thing and then did the opposite.
Five centuries ago he wrote some horrible things about the Jews and his words were used to justify the outrageous and unforgiveable actions taken by the Nazis during World War II. Luther could not have foreseen that his words would be used in such a destructive way.
All this is tosay that Luther had a fiery and combative nature. You didn’t want to cross him. He wasn’t a pussy cat. He was a bulldog with a temper. His bark was bad and his bit was even worse.
That’s probably why he was kicked out of the Catholic Church and labeled a heretic. He was seen as a trouble maker. The line was drawnby the Church in his day.
If we started to draw lines today,letting some people in and some people out of the Lutheran Church, Luther would probably be left out. Kelly writes: It would be a little embarrassing, wouldn’t it; to build a church that our namesake wouldn’t be allowed to join? So I say – “let’s not...”
As Lutherans we don’t have to draw lines. We believe that as God’s people, Jesus has set freefor life, free from sin and death and the devil and all that rotten stuff that messes up our lives. And yet we still struggle, better yet the struggle continues.
Luther and the Reformers came up with a way to describe our situation. We are simul justus et peccator. This is another Latin phrase worth knowing, because it comes to us from the Reformation.
It means that we are simultaneously saint and sinner. We are at the same time both holy and all messed up. I guess you could say that we are a holy mess.
We are set free from sin and at the same time we’re up to our ears in it. We are washed clean in the waters of baptism and every day we need our sins to be washed away againand again by those baptismal waters.
If you think about it, we are a motley crew. We are holy, set aside by God to do some remarkable and courageous things for Jesus’ sake and his kingdom, and at the same time every single one of us is such a mess.
We are just as likely...
- to run away as we are to see things through,
- to lie as we are to tell the truth,
- to gossip as we are to give to others.
- to say one thing and then do the opposite.
And God help us if anyone is writing down anything we say in order to use it 500 years later.
The other day I heard a song on the radio by Pink. Her song captures this mess we put ourselves in. The song tells the story of her life. It’s called “Don’t Let Me Get Me.” She sings over and over I’m a hazard to myself…
I can’t help but wonder how true that song is for each one of us. We are a hazard to our self. Listen and see if you can relate…
You now belong to 1.7 million people who have seen that video. You belong you are in. We are soooo often a hazard to ourselves. We are our worst enemies. We can be careless, and selfish, and greedy,and self-centered and who in the world would want us?
Well… Jesus does. Jesus loves sinners. And that makes all the difference. Jesus opened his arms wide on the cross and welcomes us all, every single simul justus et peccator one of us. We are “in” because Jesus makes it possible for us to be “in.” We belong because we’ve been welcomed.
Paul knew how important that was. That’s probably why he wrote to his friend in Rome challenging them to “welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you” (Romans 15:7).We are to do the same. We are to welcome everyone because everyone is welcome.
This week I invite you to invite someone to come to worship next week. Our topic will be - Love Changes People. Amen.