Words We Know, But God Doesn't
Sermon
Hope For The Weary Heart
Second Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter Cycle C
Native Texans know the place as "the hill country." Not like the high rolling plains of the Edward's Plateau of the Panhandle, nor like the dense piney woods of the southeastern border with Louisiana, and certainly not like the God-forsaken desert mountains of the Big Bend, the hill country is Texas. Home to both Willie Nelson and the LBJ Ranch, there the landscape is marked by rolling limestone hills, dotted with cedar and blue bonnets. There, the air is clear and fresh, and this is why the hill country is home to something else: the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas at Austin. The observatory produces a radio program called Star Date; you can listen to it on National Public Radio.
Had you been listening this last week, you would have heard the news for which we've all been waiting: On its journey through the heavens, the earth was going to reach the place where its orbital path crosses the point where both the northern and southern hemispheres are equidistant from the sun, the place which comes twice a year when night and day are of equal length. At this time of year astronomers call it the spring equinox. We just know it as spring. It is that wonderful, amazing time of the year when new life happens: through the dead, brown undergrowth poke shoots of green -- crocus, daffodil, and all the rest. Trees bud; grass grows; for with the warmth of the sun life returns and surges.
Even if it wasn't real, we would create it in our heart and imagination, for we cannot live without the promise of newness. If all we knew and would ever know was only bleak, cold, and ugly lifeless days, who would want to go on? So it is that "in the bleak midwinter as frosty wind made moan, when earth stood hard as iron and water like a stone" ("In The Bleak Midwinter," Christina Rosetti), we waited. And now the waiting is over. This earth we call home finally got there.
The issue, of course, is how do we get there. Not the earth, but us -- our lives, dried up, hard as iron, stony cold, lifeless and making moan -- how do we get there, to the place and time when light banishes darkness, deadness is transformed into life, and new beginnings come; how do we get there?
There aren't any of us here that don't want to know the answer to that question. It may be your own failures that hold you in their grip, all the ways and times you've messed up, and they just won't let go of you -- and you won't or can't let go of them. It may be your disappointments and lost, wasted opportunities -- all the things you could have done, all the times you might have had -- but didn't, and now they haunt and taunt you. The deadness you know may be from icy relationships, once warm and filled with hope and possibility, but now as lifeless as the weeds in your flower beds.
Whatever it is that has finished us off and crushed any sense of joy in living out of us, we know those moments, those places. And knowing them, being there, we'd like to be somewhere else and know something else -- like, be in a place of surging new life and know new beginnings. We'd like to hear someone say, "The longing and waiting are over; new life is ready to burst forth!"
Right, we may have trouble saying it, but God doesn't! This is God's glorious, life-renewing Good News for us today. God's intention and power to renew knows no limits, and certainly not ours. We may say we're finished, dead, frozen, lifeless, and without hope, but those are not words God knows; God isn't finished with any of us yet!
Whatever else Scripture is saying to us today, surely it is saying this. When Paul says that we are a new creation in Christ, that the old has passed away and the new has come, this is exactly what he means. It is what God has done for us in Christ, and it makes a huge difference in how we live -- today, tomorrow, and all the other tomorrows. It means that within us is that constantly renewing, creative power of God's love that is always at work transforming us, transforming the places of cold deadness into places of surging life.
How is this? How is it that we get to this place? Listen again to Paul, and let him teach us, for there is no better teacher. This is because if there was anyone who ever knew both sides of it -- deadness and life -- it was Paul. He knew what it was like to live in the midst of his own failures and disappointments, all of the bad choices he had made. He knew the struggle of trying to make sense out of what often looks like one senseless day stretching into another one. Paul knew about dead-end living, and he knew his own inability to do anything about it. This is what he means in the text when he talks about "the human point of view," or literally, "looking at things according to the flesh." What he means is "looking at life without being transformed by the renewing power of God in Christ Jesus." That perspective is looking on life and living it left to ourselves and wrapped up in ourselves. Then we see only the "same old, same old." We see only our predicament of failure and our impotence to do anything about it. Then we know only one meaningless day after another; we know only the "should haves" and "could haves," all of the dead-end living we've created for ourselves. And we hear only our own cries of despair and desperation, that we're finished, and all we will ever see, know, and hear is what we see, know, and hear now.
Paul knew, however, that God doesn't know those words; God has something else to say to us. And you will notice that the emphasis is on God: God takes the initiative; God reaches to us, even when we cannot reach beyond ourselves; God bridges the gap we cannot, and like the Father in Luke's story of the Prodigal Son (which really is misnamed; the story should be called the story of the Forgiving Father), God -- always waiting, always watching for us to come home -- runs to embrace and renew, saying the words we so desperately long to hear, "I'm not finished with any of you yet!"
As Paul himself discovered, the word is spoken in Christ. Through love divine and grace amazing, we are healed, set free from ourselves and our failures, made new. Oh, sure, we still struggle. Paul knew this; he knew that we are not fully completed by the grace of Christ, that we are living in the midst of the old creation in terms of the new one God has brought about in Christ. We are still human, and so, in Paul's words, we often fall back into looking at things from a human point of view. But, praise God, God looks at us differently, and with love, in and through Christ, renews us for the living. No wonder Paul took his ministry so seriously. If you have heard these words, how can you keep them inside, how can you not want someone else to hear them?
How about us, in this time and place, do we hear them, really hear them, words of hope and new beginnings? Or, do we hear only ourselves, or perhaps everyone else saying, "Give it up! You're finished; there will never be anything any different; you will never be different!"?
Listen! Listen ever so carefully, with expectation and hope reborn within you, for God really is saying something to us this day, saying something that will transform our lives and liberate us from the winter of our discontent.
God is saying, "I'm not finished with you!" It is a distinctly personal word. You see, God doesn't just care for the few, or special, or privileged. God cares for each and every single person! So God's renewing and life-giving power in Christ is for you, for each and every one of us. God isn't finished with any of us, and God is ready and willing to make each of us into something new; it is a personal word, distinctly for you.
God is saying, "Your past is wiped away." Really. There really are no limits to God's power to renew and transform life. It does not matter what you have done, or where you have been; it doesn't matter how far you've run from God or from yourself. It doesn't matter how much ugliness is in your life, God sets it aside; God's love erases the past and creates a new, fresh future for every single one of us!
God is saying, "You can be new!" Wouldn't you want to be? Wouldn't you like to make a new beginning -- not just today, but every day yet to come, to let newness surge through you? God says it is real; it is real for us because there are no limits to the renewing power of grace. Even today does not limit grace, for God promises the power and presence of Christ to be with us each day -- this one, as well as all those to follow. God isn't finished and never will be, until all humanity and all creation are held within the embrace of the One who never, never stops loving.
This is news for which we've all been waiting. The moment has come. On this "star date," and every star date of our lives, God has crossed our path. This is the place and time when light banishes the darkness we have known and deadness is transformed into life. In God's power we are brought to this place, and the waiting -- for us -- is over. Now only God waits and listens for the words we really do know. They are simply, "Yes, Lord; I'm coming home."
Had you been listening this last week, you would have heard the news for which we've all been waiting: On its journey through the heavens, the earth was going to reach the place where its orbital path crosses the point where both the northern and southern hemispheres are equidistant from the sun, the place which comes twice a year when night and day are of equal length. At this time of year astronomers call it the spring equinox. We just know it as spring. It is that wonderful, amazing time of the year when new life happens: through the dead, brown undergrowth poke shoots of green -- crocus, daffodil, and all the rest. Trees bud; grass grows; for with the warmth of the sun life returns and surges.
Even if it wasn't real, we would create it in our heart and imagination, for we cannot live without the promise of newness. If all we knew and would ever know was only bleak, cold, and ugly lifeless days, who would want to go on? So it is that "in the bleak midwinter as frosty wind made moan, when earth stood hard as iron and water like a stone" ("In The Bleak Midwinter," Christina Rosetti), we waited. And now the waiting is over. This earth we call home finally got there.
The issue, of course, is how do we get there. Not the earth, but us -- our lives, dried up, hard as iron, stony cold, lifeless and making moan -- how do we get there, to the place and time when light banishes darkness, deadness is transformed into life, and new beginnings come; how do we get there?
There aren't any of us here that don't want to know the answer to that question. It may be your own failures that hold you in their grip, all the ways and times you've messed up, and they just won't let go of you -- and you won't or can't let go of them. It may be your disappointments and lost, wasted opportunities -- all the things you could have done, all the times you might have had -- but didn't, and now they haunt and taunt you. The deadness you know may be from icy relationships, once warm and filled with hope and possibility, but now as lifeless as the weeds in your flower beds.
Whatever it is that has finished us off and crushed any sense of joy in living out of us, we know those moments, those places. And knowing them, being there, we'd like to be somewhere else and know something else -- like, be in a place of surging new life and know new beginnings. We'd like to hear someone say, "The longing and waiting are over; new life is ready to burst forth!"
Right, we may have trouble saying it, but God doesn't! This is God's glorious, life-renewing Good News for us today. God's intention and power to renew knows no limits, and certainly not ours. We may say we're finished, dead, frozen, lifeless, and without hope, but those are not words God knows; God isn't finished with any of us yet!
Whatever else Scripture is saying to us today, surely it is saying this. When Paul says that we are a new creation in Christ, that the old has passed away and the new has come, this is exactly what he means. It is what God has done for us in Christ, and it makes a huge difference in how we live -- today, tomorrow, and all the other tomorrows. It means that within us is that constantly renewing, creative power of God's love that is always at work transforming us, transforming the places of cold deadness into places of surging life.
How is this? How is it that we get to this place? Listen again to Paul, and let him teach us, for there is no better teacher. This is because if there was anyone who ever knew both sides of it -- deadness and life -- it was Paul. He knew what it was like to live in the midst of his own failures and disappointments, all of the bad choices he had made. He knew the struggle of trying to make sense out of what often looks like one senseless day stretching into another one. Paul knew about dead-end living, and he knew his own inability to do anything about it. This is what he means in the text when he talks about "the human point of view," or literally, "looking at things according to the flesh." What he means is "looking at life without being transformed by the renewing power of God in Christ Jesus." That perspective is looking on life and living it left to ourselves and wrapped up in ourselves. Then we see only the "same old, same old." We see only our predicament of failure and our impotence to do anything about it. Then we know only one meaningless day after another; we know only the "should haves" and "could haves," all of the dead-end living we've created for ourselves. And we hear only our own cries of despair and desperation, that we're finished, and all we will ever see, know, and hear is what we see, know, and hear now.
Paul knew, however, that God doesn't know those words; God has something else to say to us. And you will notice that the emphasis is on God: God takes the initiative; God reaches to us, even when we cannot reach beyond ourselves; God bridges the gap we cannot, and like the Father in Luke's story of the Prodigal Son (which really is misnamed; the story should be called the story of the Forgiving Father), God -- always waiting, always watching for us to come home -- runs to embrace and renew, saying the words we so desperately long to hear, "I'm not finished with any of you yet!"
As Paul himself discovered, the word is spoken in Christ. Through love divine and grace amazing, we are healed, set free from ourselves and our failures, made new. Oh, sure, we still struggle. Paul knew this; he knew that we are not fully completed by the grace of Christ, that we are living in the midst of the old creation in terms of the new one God has brought about in Christ. We are still human, and so, in Paul's words, we often fall back into looking at things from a human point of view. But, praise God, God looks at us differently, and with love, in and through Christ, renews us for the living. No wonder Paul took his ministry so seriously. If you have heard these words, how can you keep them inside, how can you not want someone else to hear them?
How about us, in this time and place, do we hear them, really hear them, words of hope and new beginnings? Or, do we hear only ourselves, or perhaps everyone else saying, "Give it up! You're finished; there will never be anything any different; you will never be different!"?
Listen! Listen ever so carefully, with expectation and hope reborn within you, for God really is saying something to us this day, saying something that will transform our lives and liberate us from the winter of our discontent.
God is saying, "I'm not finished with you!" It is a distinctly personal word. You see, God doesn't just care for the few, or special, or privileged. God cares for each and every single person! So God's renewing and life-giving power in Christ is for you, for each and every one of us. God isn't finished with any of us, and God is ready and willing to make each of us into something new; it is a personal word, distinctly for you.
God is saying, "Your past is wiped away." Really. There really are no limits to God's power to renew and transform life. It does not matter what you have done, or where you have been; it doesn't matter how far you've run from God or from yourself. It doesn't matter how much ugliness is in your life, God sets it aside; God's love erases the past and creates a new, fresh future for every single one of us!
God is saying, "You can be new!" Wouldn't you want to be? Wouldn't you like to make a new beginning -- not just today, but every day yet to come, to let newness surge through you? God says it is real; it is real for us because there are no limits to the renewing power of grace. Even today does not limit grace, for God promises the power and presence of Christ to be with us each day -- this one, as well as all those to follow. God isn't finished and never will be, until all humanity and all creation are held within the embrace of the One who never, never stops loving.
This is news for which we've all been waiting. The moment has come. On this "star date," and every star date of our lives, God has crossed our path. This is the place and time when light banishes the darkness we have known and deadness is transformed into life. In God's power we are brought to this place, and the waiting -- for us -- is over. Now only God waits and listens for the words we really do know. They are simply, "Yes, Lord; I'm coming home."
