Mediating The Grace Of God
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle B
God is always mediated to us. God never comes to us directly and immediately. This is a good thing. If we experienced God in all of God's full glory, power, and love, we would be overwhelmed. This is why the story of Moses on the mountain with God, says Moses could see only God's backside, never fully face to face.
We must find our relationship with God through something else -- particular events, personal experiences, holy books, prayer and worship, and through people. We need to remember that all truth is mediated and never comes directly. Truth mediated through people is a common experience. The truth of medicine comes to us through doctors and those involved in the medical professions. The truth of modern science is mediated, as is the truth of music and the arts. The gift of the arts comes through musicians, dancers, actors, composers, playwrights, painters, and sculptors. The great things coming to us through them bless us.
Religion, including biblical religion has its mediators who put people in touch with a redeeming and sustaining God. We call them priests. Priests preside over worship services, counsel with people in crisis, conduct initiatory rites like baptism, offer prayers and blessings at times of marriage or death, teach the traditions of the faith, visit and encourage the sick, and have a deep concern for the sufferings of the poor and helpless.
Lately, priests in our Christian tradition have been at the center of attention in modern America. Some priests have been charged with sexual molestation of young children and teens. Their ecclesiastical superiors have often disregarded their offenses and failed to take seriously the gravity of this charge. In some Christian denominations, there is great controversy over the insistence that women be ordained as priests and pastors, while other denominations have lately openly received women as priests. Still more controversial has been one tradition's consecration of a bishop who is openly gay and in a committed partnership with another man. These are issues that invite our serious attention.
Lost in all this controversy is the abiding place of priests who humbly put us in touch with the mercies and mandates of God. Years ago, Bing Crosby played the part of a young priest in the movie Going My Way. In this sentimental idealization of parish life, this young priest teamed with the elderly senior parish priest, played by Barry Fitzgerald. It was a soothing and comforting portrayal of the lives and struggles of the priesthood and pastoral clergy. Yet it depicted a powerful illustration of priestly concern -- the young priest [Crosby] made God a redeeming force for a gang of rebellious juveniles.
In the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is portrayed as the priest above all other priests putting us in touch with God. Hebrews gives us a vision of Jesus who sets the example for all priests in the biblical tradition. In the fifth chapter of Hebrews, the author says Jesus is the ideal priest because: 1) he did not glorify himself, 2) he knew our human moments of feeling abandoned by God, 3) he turned his suffering into inspiring obedience, and 4) by implication, he called us to become priests putting others in touch with God.
On Not Getting In The Way Of God
Jesus is the ideal priest because he got himself out of the way, putting us in touch with the grace and power of God. In our text, "Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest," hints at the subtle temptation for lay or clerical priests to make themselves the center of attention. When we are a priest to someone who is pouring out their anguish to us, rehearsing their guilt, or simply voicing their personal despair, it is easy to center the exchange on us. We become interested in using this person's plight to bolster our self-esteem and our need to be known for having wonderful abilities. Some of us may even think that a telling of an instance of our being a priest to someone would make a good story in our next book.
One of the best things happening in the education of priests and pastors is clinical pastoral training. Using the insights of our religious heritage linked with the knowledge of modern psychology and psychiatry, present and future pastors are taught how to get their egos out of the way and become more helpful to those who come to them. Pastoral clinical training is often set in a hospital environment where the students work directly with people who are there because of fate or their self-destructive ways. Under the supervision of a trained chaplain or other leader, priests learn to listen to the pain and confusion of others, thereby helping them discover or rediscover the presence of God in their lives.
Perhaps the most important task of lay priests is to keep their clergy humble. The church has often glorified its ordained clergy and pastors to the point of their becoming unbearably arrogant and delighted to be the recipients of their congregation's attention and applause. Soon the life of the congregation centers on the promotion of the fame and abilities of their pastor. Then the ordained leader becomes corrupted and full of himself or herself instead of full of the humble Spirit of Jesus. This promotion of priestly and pastoral glorification eventually destroys the priest and pastor along with the congregation.
Years ago a talented young tenor, Mario Lanza, burst on the popular music scene. When he sang, "O Be My Love," with his strong tenor voice, millions listened enraptured. He sang all the ballads of the day and he was a sensation in movies and on the entertainment circuit. His close friends and companions fed him high-blown estimates of his popularity until he lost any critical ability to put their self-serving praise into perspective. He gave himself over to self-glorification and it destroyed him.
Somewhere there is the story of the pastor who asked his wife, "How many great preachers do you think there are in America?" With little hesitation she answered, "One less than you think!" Gifted pastors need congregations who "priest" them by calling attention to any hint of undue adulation or of basking in personal glory. This priest/pastor focus does not sell well with discerning people, and it is an obstacle to any real mediation of God to others. Thus, Jesus sets the standard for the priesthood of laypersons and the clergy alike.
Our Seasons Of Abandonment
A second reason our text gives for depicting Jesus as an ideal priest is his sense of abandonment by God. Calling up the memory of Jesus' prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, Hebrews says, "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears." Suffering standing at the edge of unbelief is a strong qualification for putting others in touch with God's salvation. A pastor once asked the Christian literacy advocate, Frank Laubach, if he could come and join his team. Laubach sensed that this man came from a comfortable, suburban parish where he preached to a rapidly growing congregation. He was filled with the American idols of success and security, shielding much of the world's suffering. Laubach told him, "Take a trip around the world and have your heart broken by what you see. Then come and offer your services." Most of us need something like that to enable us to broker the grace of God to others.
Henri Nouwen, that perceptive spirit of our time, said only the "wounded" can heal the wounded. He didn't mean that we ought to go out and attempt to get our spirit broken by the pains and sufferings of life. We don't usually need to do this. Even our comfortable pastor wanting to join Laubach's mission could find much to break his spirit all around him. He could find people who were struggling with grief and sorrow. He could discover many experiencing abuse in their formative years, resulting in emotionally and psychologically crippling distress. Some nearby would be terrified by severe physical illness. Others would suffer the lack of a mature theology helping them to mesh with their modern world. Others could easily be found who are dragging around loads of guilt for breaking their marriage vows. Some could be seen coming face-to-face with the disturbing reality that their chase after success and security is a fraud. A few he could find might be in pain from taking a courageous stand for social injustice and for the cause of the poor, the racial minorities, or the sexually different. And even his upscale congregation would be hurting because they were victims of these same social ills. These human hurts on his doorstep could qualify him to minister to those like Jesus, who feel abandoned by God.
One of the wonderful organizations in our world is Alcoholics Anonymous. It was founded on the conviction that those who have suffered the terrible anguish of alcoholism are the best qualified to help other alcoholics into sobriety. Their success bears out our point. Those who have been to the depths of life's despair and returned have an unusual skill for saving others from destruction.
New Testament scholarship reports that Jesus' words were the earliest collection of the memories of Jesus. His immediate followers remembered what he said about God's love and how they could find hope for their lives and for human destiny. For a time, it was enough to remember and ponder these words, but later, even these wonderful words weren't enough and so they began to recall the agony of those last days in Jerusalem. They remembered Jesus sensed the powers of Pilate and the high religious officials were closing in on him. It was apparent to him that he was on a trajectory toward death. Even more painful than this, his close followers began to show signs that they might desert him, which they eventually did. Memories of his desire to escape his fate were written down. While they were not around at the cross, they thought he must have uttered the opening words of Psalm 22 as life was slipping away from him, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?" In reconstructing these moments, some from memory and some from creative imagination, the disciples authored the Passion story in a way that had the strange power of putting them into a saving relationship with God. This is why we reenact those terrible moments in our worship for Holy Week as Lent draws to a close. Jesus' suffering joined to our suffering for others becomes our qualification for mediating the redeeming feature of God to others.
We Owe Our Life To Others
We close this Lenten sermon by gathering up all that we have said by affirming our indebtedness for our salvation to others. This is the meaning of, "Christ died for our sins." Even though we may have great difficulty with this statement in its unnuanced, simplistic form, it is utterly true. Salvation comes to us from outside us. Salvation is not self-generated, coming out of our own powers and wisdom. We must not imply that Christ's death is only to bring forgiveness and mercy. This is a part of what is meant. But Christ's death means more than this. When we say, "Christ died for our sins," we are confessing that our remembrance of his giving up his life for us, breaks up inward sin that keeps us from wanting to love God and live the godly life of caring. This sin, as Paul describes it, is like a computer virus, rendering us incapable of having the strength to get beyond our despair about humanity and ourselves.
Moderns are often resistant to this admission. Our culture seductively tells us our destiny and salvation is within our immediate grasp. Our cultural ideal is the self-sufficient person, the mythic hero of the American western cowboy lore. The late movie actor, John Wayne, lived out such an image for us. He made us feel that we could muster up the strength and courage to overcome anything. We have been made to believe that accepting help expresses weakness and tarnishes our self-esteem. We are the three-year-old who suddenly pushes our parent away, preferring to take full charge of zipping up our jacket. We don't want anyone to help us. Or recall an old television commercial where the exasperated housewife shouts at her mother who was trying to help her on one of those bad hair days, "Please, mother, I'd rather do it myself!" To accept help at the vital center of our life's struggles often comes off as weakness and helplessness.
We, who ponder the sufferings of Jesus during that last fateful week of his life, already know that we are quite deficient in saving ourselves. The Prayer of General Confession forced the worshipers to confess, "There is no health in us." The shallow optimists resist this claim. Yet, our Christian tradition may be both more realistic and more effective in delivering us from the death-dealing despair that comes with the normal and the extraordinary pains of life. A little reflection on the sufferings of Jesus can become a saving moment for us -- not just once and for all -- but in repeated doses. Jesus' priesting is a continuously saving event. The unknown author of the letter to the Hebrews had it right: "He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him," to all who let the mediated salvation of God take over.
We must find our relationship with God through something else -- particular events, personal experiences, holy books, prayer and worship, and through people. We need to remember that all truth is mediated and never comes directly. Truth mediated through people is a common experience. The truth of medicine comes to us through doctors and those involved in the medical professions. The truth of modern science is mediated, as is the truth of music and the arts. The gift of the arts comes through musicians, dancers, actors, composers, playwrights, painters, and sculptors. The great things coming to us through them bless us.
Religion, including biblical religion has its mediators who put people in touch with a redeeming and sustaining God. We call them priests. Priests preside over worship services, counsel with people in crisis, conduct initiatory rites like baptism, offer prayers and blessings at times of marriage or death, teach the traditions of the faith, visit and encourage the sick, and have a deep concern for the sufferings of the poor and helpless.
Lately, priests in our Christian tradition have been at the center of attention in modern America. Some priests have been charged with sexual molestation of young children and teens. Their ecclesiastical superiors have often disregarded their offenses and failed to take seriously the gravity of this charge. In some Christian denominations, there is great controversy over the insistence that women be ordained as priests and pastors, while other denominations have lately openly received women as priests. Still more controversial has been one tradition's consecration of a bishop who is openly gay and in a committed partnership with another man. These are issues that invite our serious attention.
Lost in all this controversy is the abiding place of priests who humbly put us in touch with the mercies and mandates of God. Years ago, Bing Crosby played the part of a young priest in the movie Going My Way. In this sentimental idealization of parish life, this young priest teamed with the elderly senior parish priest, played by Barry Fitzgerald. It was a soothing and comforting portrayal of the lives and struggles of the priesthood and pastoral clergy. Yet it depicted a powerful illustration of priestly concern -- the young priest [Crosby] made God a redeeming force for a gang of rebellious juveniles.
In the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is portrayed as the priest above all other priests putting us in touch with God. Hebrews gives us a vision of Jesus who sets the example for all priests in the biblical tradition. In the fifth chapter of Hebrews, the author says Jesus is the ideal priest because: 1) he did not glorify himself, 2) he knew our human moments of feeling abandoned by God, 3) he turned his suffering into inspiring obedience, and 4) by implication, he called us to become priests putting others in touch with God.
On Not Getting In The Way Of God
Jesus is the ideal priest because he got himself out of the way, putting us in touch with the grace and power of God. In our text, "Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest," hints at the subtle temptation for lay or clerical priests to make themselves the center of attention. When we are a priest to someone who is pouring out their anguish to us, rehearsing their guilt, or simply voicing their personal despair, it is easy to center the exchange on us. We become interested in using this person's plight to bolster our self-esteem and our need to be known for having wonderful abilities. Some of us may even think that a telling of an instance of our being a priest to someone would make a good story in our next book.
One of the best things happening in the education of priests and pastors is clinical pastoral training. Using the insights of our religious heritage linked with the knowledge of modern psychology and psychiatry, present and future pastors are taught how to get their egos out of the way and become more helpful to those who come to them. Pastoral clinical training is often set in a hospital environment where the students work directly with people who are there because of fate or their self-destructive ways. Under the supervision of a trained chaplain or other leader, priests learn to listen to the pain and confusion of others, thereby helping them discover or rediscover the presence of God in their lives.
Perhaps the most important task of lay priests is to keep their clergy humble. The church has often glorified its ordained clergy and pastors to the point of their becoming unbearably arrogant and delighted to be the recipients of their congregation's attention and applause. Soon the life of the congregation centers on the promotion of the fame and abilities of their pastor. Then the ordained leader becomes corrupted and full of himself or herself instead of full of the humble Spirit of Jesus. This promotion of priestly and pastoral glorification eventually destroys the priest and pastor along with the congregation.
Years ago a talented young tenor, Mario Lanza, burst on the popular music scene. When he sang, "O Be My Love," with his strong tenor voice, millions listened enraptured. He sang all the ballads of the day and he was a sensation in movies and on the entertainment circuit. His close friends and companions fed him high-blown estimates of his popularity until he lost any critical ability to put their self-serving praise into perspective. He gave himself over to self-glorification and it destroyed him.
Somewhere there is the story of the pastor who asked his wife, "How many great preachers do you think there are in America?" With little hesitation she answered, "One less than you think!" Gifted pastors need congregations who "priest" them by calling attention to any hint of undue adulation or of basking in personal glory. This priest/pastor focus does not sell well with discerning people, and it is an obstacle to any real mediation of God to others. Thus, Jesus sets the standard for the priesthood of laypersons and the clergy alike.
Our Seasons Of Abandonment
A second reason our text gives for depicting Jesus as an ideal priest is his sense of abandonment by God. Calling up the memory of Jesus' prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, Hebrews says, "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears." Suffering standing at the edge of unbelief is a strong qualification for putting others in touch with God's salvation. A pastor once asked the Christian literacy advocate, Frank Laubach, if he could come and join his team. Laubach sensed that this man came from a comfortable, suburban parish where he preached to a rapidly growing congregation. He was filled with the American idols of success and security, shielding much of the world's suffering. Laubach told him, "Take a trip around the world and have your heart broken by what you see. Then come and offer your services." Most of us need something like that to enable us to broker the grace of God to others.
Henri Nouwen, that perceptive spirit of our time, said only the "wounded" can heal the wounded. He didn't mean that we ought to go out and attempt to get our spirit broken by the pains and sufferings of life. We don't usually need to do this. Even our comfortable pastor wanting to join Laubach's mission could find much to break his spirit all around him. He could find people who were struggling with grief and sorrow. He could discover many experiencing abuse in their formative years, resulting in emotionally and psychologically crippling distress. Some nearby would be terrified by severe physical illness. Others would suffer the lack of a mature theology helping them to mesh with their modern world. Others could easily be found who are dragging around loads of guilt for breaking their marriage vows. Some could be seen coming face-to-face with the disturbing reality that their chase after success and security is a fraud. A few he could find might be in pain from taking a courageous stand for social injustice and for the cause of the poor, the racial minorities, or the sexually different. And even his upscale congregation would be hurting because they were victims of these same social ills. These human hurts on his doorstep could qualify him to minister to those like Jesus, who feel abandoned by God.
One of the wonderful organizations in our world is Alcoholics Anonymous. It was founded on the conviction that those who have suffered the terrible anguish of alcoholism are the best qualified to help other alcoholics into sobriety. Their success bears out our point. Those who have been to the depths of life's despair and returned have an unusual skill for saving others from destruction.
New Testament scholarship reports that Jesus' words were the earliest collection of the memories of Jesus. His immediate followers remembered what he said about God's love and how they could find hope for their lives and for human destiny. For a time, it was enough to remember and ponder these words, but later, even these wonderful words weren't enough and so they began to recall the agony of those last days in Jerusalem. They remembered Jesus sensed the powers of Pilate and the high religious officials were closing in on him. It was apparent to him that he was on a trajectory toward death. Even more painful than this, his close followers began to show signs that they might desert him, which they eventually did. Memories of his desire to escape his fate were written down. While they were not around at the cross, they thought he must have uttered the opening words of Psalm 22 as life was slipping away from him, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?" In reconstructing these moments, some from memory and some from creative imagination, the disciples authored the Passion story in a way that had the strange power of putting them into a saving relationship with God. This is why we reenact those terrible moments in our worship for Holy Week as Lent draws to a close. Jesus' suffering joined to our suffering for others becomes our qualification for mediating the redeeming feature of God to others.
We Owe Our Life To Others
We close this Lenten sermon by gathering up all that we have said by affirming our indebtedness for our salvation to others. This is the meaning of, "Christ died for our sins." Even though we may have great difficulty with this statement in its unnuanced, simplistic form, it is utterly true. Salvation comes to us from outside us. Salvation is not self-generated, coming out of our own powers and wisdom. We must not imply that Christ's death is only to bring forgiveness and mercy. This is a part of what is meant. But Christ's death means more than this. When we say, "Christ died for our sins," we are confessing that our remembrance of his giving up his life for us, breaks up inward sin that keeps us from wanting to love God and live the godly life of caring. This sin, as Paul describes it, is like a computer virus, rendering us incapable of having the strength to get beyond our despair about humanity and ourselves.
Moderns are often resistant to this admission. Our culture seductively tells us our destiny and salvation is within our immediate grasp. Our cultural ideal is the self-sufficient person, the mythic hero of the American western cowboy lore. The late movie actor, John Wayne, lived out such an image for us. He made us feel that we could muster up the strength and courage to overcome anything. We have been made to believe that accepting help expresses weakness and tarnishes our self-esteem. We are the three-year-old who suddenly pushes our parent away, preferring to take full charge of zipping up our jacket. We don't want anyone to help us. Or recall an old television commercial where the exasperated housewife shouts at her mother who was trying to help her on one of those bad hair days, "Please, mother, I'd rather do it myself!" To accept help at the vital center of our life's struggles often comes off as weakness and helplessness.
We, who ponder the sufferings of Jesus during that last fateful week of his life, already know that we are quite deficient in saving ourselves. The Prayer of General Confession forced the worshipers to confess, "There is no health in us." The shallow optimists resist this claim. Yet, our Christian tradition may be both more realistic and more effective in delivering us from the death-dealing despair that comes with the normal and the extraordinary pains of life. A little reflection on the sufferings of Jesus can become a saving moment for us -- not just once and for all -- but in repeated doses. Jesus' priesting is a continuously saving event. The unknown author of the letter to the Hebrews had it right: "He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him," to all who let the mediated salvation of God take over.
