Sunday 03/03/13 RWJ/Pottersville UMC
Sermon: “Jesus wants
the real deal”
Scripture Lesson: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Gospel Lesson: Luke 13:1-9
Good morning brothers and sisters! What a joy it is, as always, to be
worshipping with you all here this morning. This morning, we continue to travel
into this Lenten Season together. In this Lenten Season of the Christian
calendar, we are all preparing our hearts and our minds for the death and the victorious
resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this season, we reflect upon all that Jesus
has done and continues to do for us. In this season, we consider what can give
up, what we can give away, or what we can change about ourselves for the better.
This morning, as we continue into this
Lenten Season, we continue to move towards the day that Jesus would give
himself up for us all. This journey to the cross on Calvary finds us here this
morning, as we come together to praise God and to grow in our faith in Jesus
Christ.
For me, in this time of Lent, I am
working to examine myself, my behaviors, and my life, to make sure that I am doing
everything I can to serve the Lord fully. To make sure, that I remove any and
all barriers between God and myself. While this won’t fully happen until we are
in glory with Jesus, in this Lenten Season we can work to further allow God to
have more command over us. We can also work to further rid ourselves of un-holiness,
and work to become more like Jesus. As a young person, and as a young minister,
I have come to this realization, however. No matter where we are at with our
faith walks. No matter where we are at in our own process of knowing Jesus
better, “Jesus wants the real deal”. Jesus wants you wherever you are at, and
he wants you fully.
Jesus doesn’t want just “Sunday
morning Christians,” who go to church, but whom many of the un-Christian people
look at as being too perfect. Jesus wants us right where we are at, and wants
us stains and all. Jesus can see us, and he knows everything about us, and he “wants
the real deal”.
In my life time, I have met church
pastors who did everything possible to be perfect, but inevitably they would
make a mistake, as we all do. After all, it isn’t possible to be perfect, as
only Jesus can be perfect. In this way, I think that we should try our best to be
like Jesus, but we should realize that we will fall down. That we will fall
down over and over, and that Jesus will forgive us each and every time that we
fail. In fact, I have met so many new Christians, people that our new to the
Christian faith that have had a powerful conversion experience. They quickly
develop a passionate faith for Jesus Christ. Then in no time, these new
Christians, like all Christians, fall down or fail in some way. I have seen some
of these new people to our faith come in all excited, and then leave bitter and
burnt out. I have heard new people to the faith say, “Paul I just can’t live up
that standard”. “Paul I am just not good enough to be a Christian”. “I just can’t
be a church goer”.
I had a student tell me a couple of
weeks ago, “Paul you are the real deal”. I then said to the student, “What do
you mean that I am the real deal?” He said, “Church people have always come
across to me as perfect people, and I would never go into a church, because I
wouldn’t feel good enough”. This statement really spoke to me, and then the
student said, “If your churches were closer to here though, I would probably go
to one of them”. I then said to the student, “Why would you go to one of my
churches?” He said, “Well Paul, I believe in God, but am far from where I think
I need to be in knowing Jesus, or in being a church person”. I then said, “No you’re
not, just be the real deal”. “Jesus wants the real deal, scars, stains,
blemishes, and all”.
We are not perfect, in fact, we are all
sinners, who have been saved the blood of Jesus Christ! All of us are broken,
and all of us are still welcomed into the house of the Lord. This is because
Jesus Christ meets us where we are at, and the change of our hearts is what
Jesus wants. So don’t ever let anyone ever tell you that are not good enough
for church, or that you are too much of a sinner. This is the house of the
Lord, and all people are welcomed to worship in this place, as we move towards
heaven together. Jesus “wants the real deal”.
We cannot lie to Jesus, we cannot
trick Jesus, for he already knows everything about us. As I heard an older
pastor say once, “Jesus knows all about us, he loves us just the same”. I mean
after all, if Jesus can call me, a broken sinner to be a minister in his
church, than what can Jesus not do with you if you let him?
You know, I have really been enjoying
our Lenten Bible Study, that we have had the past two weeks. Of the many things
that we discussed last week in the session, one thing stood out to me, as I was
writing this sermon. This one thing was a story about a new preacher in a
Southern town. The preacher said in the Lenten Bible Study book, “Every morning
I had to walk over to the post office to get my mail, and every morning for two
years, ol’ Charles Smith would be sitting on the porch of the post office,
whittling. Every morning as I walked by, he would cut his eyes toward me and
say, “Nothin’ against you yet, Preacher, nothin’ against you yet!”
You see when the expectation is that we will never fail or that we will never
make a mistake, people will then often instinctually look for a mistake in us.
People start to say, “What makes him think that he can be the pastor of this
church?” “What makes him so perfect?”
This is exactly the mentality that I
think has plagued many Christian Churches for so long. That we think we have to
be perfect. Now I think that we need to try to become perfect like Jesus daily,
but this is very different than just acting perfect, or acting "holier-than-thou,"
when we and everyone else knows we are not. I have
had pastors I have known in my life that tried to be perfect so well in fact,
that I was convinced that they were actually robots. That a church parishioner would
literally take the pastor out the closet on Sunday morning, plug them in, and then
dust them off. Certainly they couldn’t be real people, like me, there were too perfect
to be real people.
In the scripture reading from this morning
from 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, it said, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers
and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed
through the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same
spiritual drink”. So we are all in this together. The scripture went on to say,
that “God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the
wilderness”. The scripture went to say to live morally, to not test Christ, and
that “God is faithful”. The scripture concluded that, God “will not let you be
tested beyond your strength, but with the test he will also provide the way out
so that you may be able to endure it”.
It is the old statement that many of
us have heard, “God will not give us more than we can handle,” and that “God is
faithful”. The reality is that none of us can be perfect like Jesus, but with
God’s help we will keep trying, because “Jesus wants the real deal”. Jesus
doesn’t want fakers, or pretenders, he wants all that we have. He wants the
real deal.
The Gospel of Luke reading from this
morning said, Jesus said, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all
parish as they did”. Jesus wants our repentance, he wants our devotion, and he “wants
the real deal”. Jesus wants us to ask for forgiveness and put our trust in him.
In fact, if we are not the “real deal” for Jesus, then what good is that? We
can come to church, we can sing the hymns, but if we don’t really know Jesus,
than of what worth is this?
So I say, the Christian Church is a
community full of sinners, and all of us are broken people. All are welcome to
this place, as we all seek to move towards glory together.
I would like to close this morning’s message with a short statement that
I read on a Christian website called the Barnabus Network. This short statement
is called “Not Good Enough For Church? Here is what it said: "I
couldn't possibly come to Church. I'm not holy enough". When I first heard
that comment, I wanted to cry. Then I wanted to scream. Then I wanted to
apologize. I wanted to ask the person who made that comment, to forgive the
Church for communicating the idea that we have to reach a certain level of
holiness before we qualify to visit a Church let alone join a Church.
For someone to say that
they are not holy enough to go to Church is like saying that they are not well
enough to go to the hospital! Think about it for a moment. The primary
qualification for admittance to a hospital is sickness, not health. In fact,
good health would disqualify a person for admittance to a hospital. The primary
qualification for involvement in a Church is personal need, not self-righteous
achievement. The Head of the Christian Church, Jesus Christ, said it better
than anyone else. "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
To belong to the
Christian Church is not a claim to have "made it" or to have entered
a superior realm that is "holier-than-thou". On the contrary, so far
as I am concerned, belonging to a Church is an admission that I am a needy
person who is finding that my deepest needs can be met by God through my
involvement in that community of faith.
May God forgive those
of us in the Church who have allowed or promoted the idea that holiness is a
requirement if a person is to be accepted into the Church. Such a concept
denies and betrays the attitude and actions of Jesus who welcomed those who knew
they were anything but holy. In fact, it was the people who prided themselves
on having achieved a high level of personal holiness who put themselves on the
outside by refusing to acknowledge that they needed deep inner healing and
forgiveness.
It's more than time
that the Church once again became a place of acceptance and wholeness where
weary, broken and despairing people find healing and new life. In other words,
where they find Jesus among His people.
Brothers
and sisters, we all know what sin is. We all know what we are supposed to do,
and what we are not supposed to do, but we are all sinners. We all fall and we all
fail, and we all need Jesus. We all need to repent, and all we need to be
filled with the love of the Lord, because “Jesus wants the real deal”. May we
draw closer to Jesus and become ever more like him, in this Lenten season.
Amen.
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