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"Jesus, God’s Image Changer" Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler
– March 3, 2013 Centenary United
Exodus 32:7-14; Matthew 5:43-48 Historically, the
Lenten season is a time of self-reflection.
It is a time when we put under our highly individualized
microscope our attitudes, the words we use and the quality of our
relationships. Most of the
values we live by have come from the teachings of Jesus.
Where did Jesus learn what to teach his disciples?
What Jesus created was a window through which to view his
understanding of God. What can easily be
/overlooked during our period of self-reflection is how dramatically the
image of God changed when Jesus began his ministry.
Jesus distanced himself from the often moody, fear evoking
tyrannical descriptions of
God that the early writers had learned from their ancestors.
The Old Testament
and the New Testament lessons were deliberately chosen for today because
they clearly demonstrate a sharp contrast of how writers in each time
period understood the nature of God in completely different ways.
For example, we can hardly imagine that Moses was the person who helped God to regain composure, actually preventing God from following through on punishing the Jews with a display of out-of-control rage. Listen again to Moses Lord, why should
you be so angry with your people, whom you rescued from According to the
Scriptures, God listened to Moses.
“God changed his mind and did not destroy his people.”
(Exodus 32:14)
The early writers
had little insight into the creative spirit of God that Jesus would
reveal centuries later through his own life. (John 17:25-26)
Not only did Jesus bring a totally different image of God, he
also pin-pointed for his
listeners where God can be found.
The direct
pipeline to God is within us.
(Luke 17:21) The Old Testament
is filled with “Thou-Shalt-Nots.”
The Gospels, however, are filled with glimpses into the potential
of what we can become as the lights-in-darkness that we discussed last
Sunday.
We literally have the potential
to reflect the nature of God.
(John 17:22-23) What does it mean
to reflect the nature of God?
What can we take home with us today that will make a difference
in how we participate in our tomorrows?
Our Gospel lesson points the way.
Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who are unkind
to you so that you may awaken to the understanding that you are part of
God’s family.” (Matthew 5:44-45) In our passage this
morning, we learn that we cannot be conditional in our responses to
people by first determining the
quality of their attitudes.
Jesus said that we cannot love only those who love us.
We cannot be tolerant only of
those who are tolerant of us.
Then he told his listeners something that was more challenging to
consider. Jesus said, “You must be
perfect – just as God
in heaven is perfect.”
(Matthew 5:48) Was Jesus out of
his mind? How can anyone be
perfect? We are flawed
creatures and all of us know that.
We have talked about
perfection in here at other times.
Perfection is a judgment we make about the quality of some
experience. That judgment
can vary from person to person.
Perfection is a very relative term.
What is seen as perfect
for one person may be a total nightmare for someone else.
What did Jesus mean? Jesus said, “God
allows the sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and God sends the
rain to fall on those who do good and to those who do evil.”
The secret to
perfection in our lesson is
to treat everyone in the same way that God does.
When we begin to
experiment with our ability to do this, we soon discover that we are
actually practicing what our ancestors knew thousands of years ago. We
know this practice as the
Golden Rule -- Treat people
the way you want to be treated.
This teaching appears in slightly different forms in every major
religion in the world. Why is it that this
consistent attitude toward others is seemingly impossible to achieve?
One of the biggest
problems we have is that we personalize what other people say and do
instead of allowing people to be exactly who they are and where they are
in their understanding of life. On Ash Wednesday, I used the following as one of my brief meditations.
I asked God to take
away my judgmental attitudes.
God said, “No, it is not for me to take them away, but for you to
give them up.”
I asked God to
grant me patience. God
said, “No. Patience is a
by- product of challenging experiences.
Patience isn’t granted, it is learned.”
I asked God to give
me happiness. God said,
“No, I have given you a world filled with everything you could possibly
need. Happiness is a daily
positive attitude that no one can give you.
Happiness comes from a joyful spirit that understands that no
one or anything is capable of
raining on your parade unless you surrender your joy to that
rain-maker.”
I asked God to make
my spirit blossom and mature. God
said, “No, You are the one responsible for your own pace of growth.
I only reserve the right to prune you from time to time, giving
you the potential to increase your
fruitfulness.”
I asked God to give
me all the things that would help me to enjoy life.
God said, “No, I have given you life so that you may enjoy
all things.”
I asked God to help
me love others as much as he loves me.
God said, “Ahhh, finally you have discovered a
goal in life that is not too difficult to reach.
Love people exactly as you find them and you will understand the
nature of my love. Perhaps unkind,
rude and irritable people are sent to us so that
the angel living under our
skin can enjoy some practice-time of loving them just as they are.
Perhaps this is also the reason why God created us to be in
relationships with each other.
We do not have to look
very far to realize that abrasive
agents for polishing our
particular diamond can be
found everywhere. When
we find people that we would rather avoid, we tend to keep our distance.
Jesus would say to us, “Love them because that is the way God
loves you.” Think about all the
requests to which God said, “No.”
Think of how polished our listening skills could become when we
no longer feel the need to fix
someone that we cannot fix,
or to heal the raw emotions of someone that we cannot heal.
Think about how someone else’s drama does not need to constitute
an emergency for us. Think about how healing it is for us to love people without a host of strings – like expectations, like feeling responsible for their happiness, or like feeling guilty because we cannot meet their needs. It is interesting that God does not become embroiled in anyone’s dramatic upsets or needy circumstances. God gave us everything we need to figure out our own destinies. God loves us, knowing that our struggles make us stretch in our quest to become stronger. God loves us, knowing that we can learn from our mistakes. Jesus showed
humanity what God was like by teaching that our Creator offers us
unconditional love. For
God, love is a one-way street.
God’s energy only flows away from its source.
When we love all others in spite of what values they display, we
find ourselves loving people just as God loves them.
If
we were incapable of consistently loving others in this manner, Jesus
would never have invited us to follow him. |
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