2024 10 13 Proper 23B Pentecost 21B
Many who are
first will be last, and the last will be first…. Where are we in this picture
of the kingdom of God? We are
comfortable. We have everything we need
in this age and even most of what we want.
God has blessed this generation and our nation so abundantly. When God blesses us, it is so that we can be
a blessing to others. This message of
Jesus to the rich man to give away all his money to the poor always makes me a
little uncomfortable. How about
you? I’m grateful for the words Jesus speaks
that say, “for mortals it is impossible, but not for God. With God all things
are possible”.
Whenever we
come across the challenges of scripture, we need to remember that “Gospel”
means “Good News”. The Gospel of Jesus
is truly Good News, but many Christians accept the Good News that Christ came
to bring us eternal life… yay, we are saved…. And never actually worry about
this part about leaving everything and following God.
In this life
there are many people hurting, like Job.
They cry out to God and hear nothing.
We are the body of Christ and His spirit is with us – we are the hands
and feet of God on earth and most people will experience the answer to their
prayers through us. We, the children of
God, need to grow in faith, much like a child will grow, to look beyond
ourselves and to care for others.
What is it
that stops us from fully stepping out in faith?
For the young man in our Gospel story, it was his riches. For us, it might be our reputation, our
lifestyle, the comfort of our routine of work and leisure time, …or something
else. This Gospel message is not just
about a rich young man, it is about all of us.
Jesus knows
we are not perfect, which is why – as we read last week – he made purification
for our sins. This is the truth. God has made the way – and that thing which
was impossible, is now possible because Jesus has died to make purification for
sins… and he rose again. We have eternal
life through our union with Christ. What
more is there to say? Maybe I should
stop right here, this is the ultimate truth, and the absolute Good News, but to
stop here, would be to remain a spiritual baby who is not growing in faith and the
love of God…. Are we stunting our growth
because we are not stepping out in faith? When we are willing to truly follow Jesus,
life is a long way from ever being boring.
Even though we follow God, things WILL go
wrong. There will be times we hurt and cry
out to God like Job feeling that God has abandoned us. Last week we talked about the big question of
“Why”. Why do bad things happen to good
people? This is the question that runs
through the book of Job and in the end, we realized that why is a faithless
question. Asking “why” means we are not
trusting in God, and most importantly, we need to grow in our understanding of
how much God loves us so that we can continue in our integrity even when
everything goes wrong and we don’t understand.
I’m really not very good at this… but I’m on the journey, and we don’t
learn to walk in a day… it happens gradually, and it happens to be much more
achievable when we have God’s people supporting us.
I am
incredibly grateful for psalm 22 and the book of Job. Psalm 22 looks like it could have been
written by Job – but it wasn’t. The author
of the book of Job is unknown, but some traditional Jewish scholars attribute
it to Moses, but Psalm 22 is attributed to King David. This tells me that at least two great and
mighty people of faith struggled to understand and have faith in God when
things went wrong. In the biography of
Mother Teresa, she tells of a huge struggle she felt… a dark night of the soul,
when she couldn’t sense God. It is
natural to grieve loss and feel rejection, and perhaps what is common at these
times for the people of God is to feel that God has rejected us. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned
me?” These are the opening words of
Psalm 22 and they show us that the author is feeling like God has rejected
them. This is a rejection that
hurts. It is a feeling of abandonment
that cuts deep. I’m wondering if you
recall where else these exact words were cried out? When Jesus was on the cross
he also cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Everyone
feels this dark sense of God’s abandonment at some time in their life, even
when they are mighty people of God like David, Job, Elijah and many more. In our reading from Job, we see that Job
feels like he can’t perceive God – he can’t sense God in his life and he expresses
the wish that he would vanish in darkness.
Have you been in that place too?
So worn out with grief that you are maybe even angry at God and feeling
abandoned by God? These feelings are a
reality of life. We may have lost our
lifestyle or our loved ones. Even when
we’ve been faithful to God and through no fault of our own, bad things happen
and we feel hurt and abandoned by God.
So, what is God saying to us today, through these readings?
Jesus, who
also cried out, My God why have you abandoned me, is our high priest who is able
to sympathize with our weaknesses, because in every respect He has been tested
as we are, yet without sin – as the reading from Hebrews tells us. Last week we read that Jesus is the exact
representation of God and He made purification for our sins. In other words, God makes purification for
our sins. In other words, God
sympathizes with us in our weaknesses.
In all of
the Bible from front to back we read and learn about who God is. And we learn that he is compassionate and he
cares for all and so much so that he saves our tears in his bottle – is what
one psalm (56) tells us. And this same
God, in answer to the question about inheriting eternal life, says what the
young man expected… “you know the commandments; 'You shall not murder. You
shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false
witness; You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother.'" Our rich young man had kept these laws. Have we?
Another scripture tells us that if we have looked lustfully at another,
we have as good as committed adultery and if we have uttered angry words with
another, we have committed murder…. The
bar to perfection is higher than us. We
can’t keep it, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.
When we have
done, what we know is wrong we don’t want to be reminded of it and we deny or justify. As a teacher, I can’t tell you how often I
witness this. On Saturday I heard a
lady call out of her car as she drove past, “My body, my choice.” She was making a statement about abortion. No one was accusing her of anything, but
there was a peaceful, quite March for life taking place. Why would anyone be
offended by someone promoting goodness and life and advocating to save lives? Next time something causes us offense, I
challenge us all to stop and ponder, why?
Is it because it triggers some deep hurt in us where we have failed, but
refuse to admit it, preferring to justify our actions? We all fail.
We all sin and for any of us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is like a
camel going through the eye of the needle - impossible. The only way through is to get rid of the
baggage.
The eye of
the needle Jesus was talking about, is most likely the small gaps in the wall
that surrounded the ancient cities. An army
couldn’t get through, but a single person could without any baggage or armour –
and not with a camel. Grief and the
sense of God’s abandonment can cause us to harden our hearts to God. We carry the baggage of hurt and our hardened
heart is our armour. It is a heavy load.
We justify ourselves, saying, “I have
kept all the commandments- I go to church… Or, I don’t go to church but I’m a
good person.” We justify and make excuses instead of confessing our sin, or
like Adam in the garden of Eden, we put the blame elsewhere.
By our
actions, by our words or excuses and justification we can not stand as holy
before God and it is easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle
than for any of us to enter the Kingdom of God.
With mortals it is impossible, BUT with God all things are possible. Jesus made purification for sins…. It is finished..
He has accomplished it and we all are in the same boat so no one can boast.
We are NEVER
abandoned by God, no matter how deep we are in that dark night of the
soul. Feelings are not the fact. Jesus died so that we can be absolutely
assured of God’s love and acceptance. He
has made the impossible possible. But
let us partner with him, stepping out in faith, leaving all things and follow
him. We too lay down our lives and offer
our lives to him as a living sacrifice.
We pray it each week; Father, we offer ourselves to you as a living
sacrifice in Jesus Christ our Lord. Send us out into the world you love, ….. As we step into the path that God has
destined for us, let’s lay down the baggage that prevents us.
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