May 7, 2017In the Proximity of Grace

Matthew 11:2-62 Corinthians 3:1-6

Preface to the Word

Okay, let’s have some fun!

How many of you have read a Harry Potter novel, or seen a Harry Potter movie, or have a family member who has? You can blame or credit my two daughters for my getting hooked on Harry Potter a number of years ago. I thought this was just kid stuff until one day during a visit I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone from my daughter’s bookshelf and started reading it. I loved it and for years after reading that first book in the series, one or the other of my girls made sure I had the audio version of each new novel as it was released so I could listen to it as I commuted from Salem to Portlandevery day for work.

These stories introduce you not only to a young wizard named Harry Potter, but to a magical world that exists side-by-side with the world of humans, whom they refer to as “Muggles,” and is populated with fantastic creatures both delightful and deadly.

In the third novel, for example, in which a dastardly criminal named Sirius Black does the impossible by breaking out of the magical prison of Azkaban, the reader first learns about the dreadful creatures called “Dementors.” The Dementors guard the Azkaban prison and no one up to this point has ever escaped. The Dementors are horrible beings. They are long and wispy and shrouded in shredded black cloth with a hood covering their shadowed, faceless head. They float rather than walk. The only body-part you can see protruding from their long black sleeves are their hands, with long, skeleton fingers that end in long, claw-like finger nails. In the opening chapters of the novel, they scour the landscape searching for the escaped prisoner.

I want you to watch this clip from the movie “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and tell me what you notice when a Dementor comes near… [show video clip]

Did you see that as the Dementor approaches it gets cold – bone-chilling cold? Water freezes and windows ice over. You can see your breath. You can’t necessarily see this in this scene, but when a Dementor is close you begin feeling something awful inside of yourself. There is an overwhelming sense of dread and unhappiness. Terrible memories flood your mind and despair begins to engulf you. If one gets too near, you may actually sufferthe Dementor’s “kiss,” in which it sucks your soul right out of your body. It doesn’t kill you physically, but the resulting joylessness and helplessness one experiences after the Dementor’s kiss is said to be worse than death – you are without a soul for the rest of your miserable existence. Does sound awful, doesn’t it?

Of course, this is all fantasy. I’m just a muggle, but I’m pretty sure there are noDementors out there trying to suck the soul out of our body – at least not that I know of! And you are probably wondering why on earth I’m even talking about Dementors today. It’s because I’m wondering if, in real life, we can tell when we’re in the presence of a force or a spirit or an energy, either evil or good. Can you tell when you are in the presence of evil? Can you feel it when goodness comes near to you?Do you know when you are in the proximity of grace?

We don’t have to resort to fantasy to finds answers to those questions.

In fact, Gospels say that Jesus began his ministry with an announcement: “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news,” (Mark 1:15). The kingdom of God has come near. How were they supposed to know that the kingdom of God had come near?Was it something they could see?– something they could feel?– something they could point to and say: “Look, there is the evidence that the kingdom of God has come near”?

This is what I wondered as I reflected this week on today’s scripture reading from Matthew 11.Let’s hear that reading now…

Scripture Reading: Matthew 11:2-6

SermonI.

  1. John the Baptist was in prison and he sent a delegation of his disciplines to ask Jesus if he was the one to come or if they were to wait for another. In other words, had the kingdom of God really come near in Jesus? Based on his own assumptions of what the kingdom of God should look like, John just couldn’t see it in Jesus and he wondered if he should look elsewhere.

Jesus answered, “You go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.”

The examples Jesus gives can be taken literally, as the healing of physical infirmities. But they can also be interpreted metaphorically, for after all, we can be blind even though our eyes see images and we can be deaf although our ears hear sounds.

  1. This is the message I hear – “How can John wonder if the kingdom of God has really drawn near? Just look at the overwhelming evidence:

a. People who couldn’t see it before are being awakened to God’s redeeming grace. (Remember how John Newton put it in his classic hymn “Amazing Grace?” “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once as lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” That’s what happens when the kingdom of God comes near.

b. People who stumbled through life, who had “fallen” (in the larger sense of the word) and couldn’t pull themselves up, who were unable to carry themselves under the sheer weight of their lives, are now on their feet and walking through life with their heads held high.That’s what happens when the kingdom of God comes near.

c. People who were lonely, rejected, dispossessed, and disregarded (the lepers) are now included in a circle of love, redeemed, restored, renewed, and adopted into a family of faith. That’s what happens when the kingdom of God comes near.

d. The powerless and the poor, people with little influence or security for their future, the hopeless and harried have now been given the good news that God is on their side, that there is nothing in life or death that can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, that fear is overcome with faith, that the forces of death will give way to the resurrection, that the kingdom of God – like leaven – is now worked into the world and ferments and bubbles with the grace and justice of heaven.

“You go and tell John what you hear and see.” The kingdom of God has come near and it’s as obvious as it can bewhen you are in the neighborhood of grace.

  1. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I know there are people here today (hopefully most of us) who have experienced those “thin places” as they’re called in Celtic Christianity, where heaven seeps through into our everyday life, where we are kissed –not by a Dementor, but by the Spirit of God,and our soul isn’t sucked out of us but, in fact, it is filled with new life and joy springs up withinus and we know beyond the shadow of doubt that weare in the presence of God.

Does anyone want to say “amen” to that?

II.

  1. Now here’s the thing: People should detect these signs of God’s nearness whenever they come into contact with Christ’s people! That’s right! I want to read Eugene Peterson’s paraphrasingin The Messageof the words written by the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:1-6:

Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it – not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives – and we publish it. We couldn’t be more sure of this – that you, written by Christ himself for God, are our letter of recommendation. We wouldn’t think of writing this kind of letter about ourselves. Only God can write such a letter. God’s letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn’t written out with ink on paper, with pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It’s written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!

  1. We, my friends, are Christ’s love letter written with God’s living Spirit!Everything we say and do and are serves this purpose. Everything… buildings, budgets, staff, programs, ministries – these things represent the “equipment” we use to publish Christ’s love letter to the world. We must be careful not to confuse the publishing equipment with the letter itself. What matters above all is the letterwritten by God Spirit to the world in us!

Who we are, what we do, carries a message to any and all that “read”us. What I have come to appreciate about Roseburg FUMC and judging from the good news stories of new life and new hope being given to others through this church, as well as ourongoing desire to reach out with God’s compassion to the community around us… well, you know that you are Christ’s love letter with a message of saving grace, of hope, of redeeming compassion – the very message of salvation.

People who come near you realize they are in the proximity of the kingdom of God. May it be increasingly so.

  1. Legend has it that a stranger visiting a community in England in the late 1700’s asked an old Cornishman to explain the obvious morality and spirit of the villagers. The old man replied, “A man named Wesley passed this way.” My prayer is that is what happens whenever and wherever United Methodist Christians plant themselves in any given community. The whole community begins to change… blindness gives way to sight, those who are crippled by memories or fear or hatred are able to walk again, the outcasts are restored, those who cannot hear can hear and understand, the dead in spirit and hope are raised to new life and the poor hear good news preached to them. Because we’re there, God’s kingdom draws near and Christ’s love letter is shared with all.
  2. In his book, “A Wesleyan Spiritual Reader,”the now deceased United Methodist bishop, Reuben Job, recalls the time when it was pretty obvious that someone was a Methodist Christian.

Like their father in the faith, [John Wesley], Methodists were interested in such simple things as saving faith, the practical ways to keep that faith alive, and a living out of that faith in every aspect of daily life, both private and public…

Methodist life was marked by a deep and authentic personal piety that led to a broad and uncompromising social involvement. Methodists were known for their prayers and for their commitment to the poor and disenfranchised. This commitment resulted in persistent efforts to build houses of prayer and worship as well as consistent efforts to visit the prisons, build schools and hospitals, and work for laws which moved toward a just and peaceful social order. Not everyone agreed with or applauded the way early Methodists lived, but it did not require many at any one place to make a difference. Because they took their relationship to Jesus Christ with utmost seriousness, their life of prayer and witness was readily identified and often very contagious as many wanted what Methodists appeared to have. Among these Methodist gifts were a certain knowledge of their own salvation, an at-homeness in this world and confidence in the next, a living companionship with a living Christ, and access to the power of God that could and did transform the most broken and hopeless persons into productive, joyful, and faithful disciples. Such was the power of God at work in the way Methodists lived. Methodists believed that they were to be leaven that God could use to transform the church and the world.

  1. It’s a powerful statement, eloquently said. We draw strength and guidance from our history and heritage.

But did you notice that everything Reuben Job wrote about Methodists was put in the past tense? Oh, I pray to God that this is not just a past reality for United Methodist Christians and their congregations. For I believe that this is true: People can tell when they are in the proximity of grace, because lives start changing and new life starts springing up. I pray that this church will continue being written as Christ’s love letter for all to read, that we are commissioned to share the good news and carry on Jesus ministry, believingthat weare the ones to convince the world of the reality of the gospel.

  1. And I believe that wherever there are United Methodist Christians being true to their Wesleyan roots, they are going to make a difference – that through them, through us – God will transform the most broken and hopeless persons into productive, joyful, and faithful disciples.

Won’t somebody say “amen?”