Sermon for Sunday, December 30, 2007

Thank You Notes

By

Rev. Jerry Herships

Luke 15:1-10

   ¹ Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ² And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." ³ So he told them this parable: ⁴ "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? ⁵ When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. ⁶ And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' ⁷ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. ⁸ "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? ⁹ When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' ¹⁰ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Christmas was five days ago. I now have to begin the task of writing my thank you notes. I don’t write a lot of them, but I like them each to be a little bit different, to reflect my personality and the personality of the gift and the sender. I don’t always like doing them but usually I don’t mind because it is a small price to pay for what I usually have gotten.

Today I want to spend some time focusing on something that many of you are familiar with.  It is something that a number of you have read more than once and it might even be something that you don’t think twice about any more. It’s the phrase on our wall, “God loves us right where we are and loves us too much to leave us where we are.” I think it is a good explanation of God’s love for us. I want to narrow the focus even more though. I just want to focus on the first half of that sentence. God loves us right where we are. Do you really believe that? That is where we need to start. In the deep down belief that God really does love us right where we are.

I think we can easily get caught up in the second part.  The “loves us too much to leave us where we are.” That is the part that we as Americans love to look at. It can be confusing. It can be viewed as the implication that there is more work to be done. We need to polish you up a bit.  I mean, yea God would take you like this, but… That is actually something we will engage with because I think it speaks to the idea inside many peoples heads that we aren’t good enough. I think this is where the thinking is for a lot of folks. It is the idea that you COULD be better. Now don’t get me wrong, I agree that this is a world that calls for excellence. It demands for us to try to be successful. More gadgets to be more productive. More time at the gym to have more muscle and lower body fat. More books to read and knowledge to gain so that we can be the smartest ones in the room. More hours at work so we can get the promotion and make more money and get a better house and a nicer car and afford better schools. Whether you think this is good or bad is not the point I am trying to make. I think we all know we live in a world that seems to DEMAND we work harder at everything we do. And there is the key. WE live in a WORLD. Yes it is true that we do. The thing is, God doesn’t live by these rules. God will take you right where you are. Period. The second half comes from us. God just wants you to be the best you can be. For yourself. Not so you can be acceptable. Be the best you can be because that life will bring you more joy. That desire to transform comes from inside as you get closer to God. It is a by product of the relationship, not a requirement of the relationship. Do you think God is some sort of cosmic personal instructor that is standing over you demanding one more rep of devotionals? “Three more Lord’s Prayer! No make that twenty!” Or that God is counting the number of scriptures you can quote by memory? “Quick Romans 8! Now!” Boy I hope not. I think I only got like two maybe three down. Not the best score for a preacher.

Now it is not that God is against those things. But do them for you because you don’t have to do them for God. You don’t have to get a spiritual merit badge in order for God to love you. Remember God loves us right where we are. Done. It is not based on what you do or don’t do. There is a name for this. It’s called grace. And here is the kicker: you don’t even need to believe you deserve it or not. It is kinda like the electricity in your house. Is the electricity still running thru your house even when the lights are off? Yes. All you have to decide is when you want to receive the electricity. You decide when you want to walk in the light. The opportunity is there every moment of every day. You just have to decide to take it. What a nice thought. The ONLY thing you have to do is receive it. It is actually even easier than that. You really only recognize that you already HAVE received it.

In today’s scripture lesson we see a battle of two types of people. The ones that do everything right and the ones that do everything wrong.  We begin by hearing that the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. As a lot of us have heard our senior pastor Harvey say, tax collectors and sinners were the lowest of the low. Tax collectors essentially sold their soul to the devil by working for the Romans to collect taxes from their fellow Jews. Sinners were basically the people that couldn’t keep the religious law. They were a motley crew of the unholiest.

In the other corner we have the Pharisees and the scribes. They were, (according to, well, themselves) the holiest of holy folks. They LOVE to point out who was in and who was out. They did this because according to them, they were ALWAYS in! That meant that someone else was always out.  And these people that were always out were the people that Jesus LOVED to hang around. Today you would find Jesus hanging out at El Chapultepec at Market and 20^th, or at the Lion’s Lair on Colfax with the homeless, the hustlers and the hipsters. Or Don’s Mixed Drink Tavern on 6^th.  All people searching, all people trying to find acceptance in a world that continues to reject them over and over.

That is what we discovered when a few of us went down to Don’s on Christmas Eve last week. Rev. Carolyn Waters from Christ’s Church down on Colorado Blvd. and myself and Rev. Cindy Bates got together and had a Christmas Eve service for almost two dozen people who gathered around the bar’s pool table and sang songs, read scripture, and had communion. Then afterwards, one by one, they came to each of us and in an informal matter of fact way, confessed their sins. It was these things that had kept so many of them from setting foot inside a church. They didn’t feel like they were worthy. We did our best to try to set the message straight. They were so thankful that we were willing to go to them.

And that was the real deal breaker with Pharisees and Scribes. JESUS ATE WITH THEM! He ATE with the sinners. To hang out with them was one thing, to eat with them was far worse, this meant that not only did they choose him, HE choose THEM. He picked them as his friends. Did you know that our word companion in its origin is com-panis, “with bread”. To eat with someone meant to choose to call them your friend. Jesus was passing up on having Brunch at the Brown Palace on Sunday and choosing instead to have a breakfast burrito at Pete’s kitchen at 2am. These were the people Jesus loved and accepted. They were the folks he loved then and they are the ones he loves now.

See I think most people think, regardless of what people might see on Sunday morning or in public, think if we saw the real them; the dirty kitchen, or the stacks of bills, or the way they talk to their kids or don’t talk to their significant other, we would recoil in horror. On top of this many people believe that God does know all of us, God does sees that side of us. This is what makes a lot of people think that God can’t possibly love them. They are half right. God does see all of us our good as well as well as our bad. And then like a super natural Bob Barker, God says, “come on down! I love ya!” Actually, what really happened was Jesus said, “Hang on, I’ll come to you.”

In this reading we hear about the “lost sheep” and the “lost coin”. We don’t hear a story about the “sinner sheep” or the “damned coin”. The problem is not the moral character of the sheep. Now some scholars do know thru their work that some of these sheep were baaaaddd. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. The problem is in the fact that the sheep has drifted away from the one that wants to care for it. In all likelihood, the sheep doesn’t even know it is lost. I can relate to that.  I have been so clueless for so much of my life. I probably still am but if I’m clueless, I don’t know it!

I feel like I am clueless sometimes when I think I know what will make me happy. For example, it is the week after Christmas and all through the house… is even more stuff we don’t need.  One week ago a lot of us were soooooo hoping that we would get a Wii. Got to have a Wii… That’s the way to be. THAT would make our life complete. You see this especially with kids. But here is the question; can anyone remember a single thing they got last Christmas? This stuff… it may make you happy for a while. But it comes at a price, and I am not talking about the Visa bill. The price is that it sets in place a pattern that maybe if I get “this” I will be happy.

I know I am not alone in feeling like for years (and even today at times) I based my worth on extrinsic forces. Job titles, gigs I had done, people I’ve worked with (Did I tell any of you that I know Jay Leno? If I haven’t, you’re one of the few.), money I’ve made, places I’ve lived (you would be amazed at how much mileage I’ve gotten out of the fact I have lived in L.A… granted, others could care less.) The problem was that when things were going great, my self worth was riding high. When I had gone without a gig for two months and was now folding jeans at the Gap, my self worth was shot. Don’t think I am out of the woods yet. I still probably take too much pride in the fact that I am at such a cool, vibrant church. That I work with great people, and that I have a neat job. Believe me some of you think wayyyyyy too much of someone with “Rev.” in front of their name. This can play a head game with me if I am not careful. I have to remind myself that God doesn’t care how many letters are before or after my name. Even now I catch myself striving. What about in 2010 when I am in full connection (a fancy way of saying I will be ordained to do the sacraments anywhere in the world… in case I want to jump on a plane and do a baptism in Guam.); or what about when I get my “own” church. THEN I will be really happy. THEN my achievements will make me acceptable to God. Now I don’t think that way completely, but it sneaks in. Ask yourself if you have ever been laid off if you felt the same when you had the title and when you didn’t. You might have felt different about yourself. God didn’t.

After Ken Blanchard wrote his bestselling book, “The One Minute Manager” he wrote a book called “We Are The Beloved.” Great book. He talks about people going thru two acts in their life. The first act is what we have been talking about here. He calls it achieve.  It is all about the “get”. He says the problem isn’t with the achieving or even the desire to achieve. It is when we put too much emphasis on the achievements. The other thing that is bad is that as we achieve more, we desire more of that feeling. Achievement is the crack of the corporate world. Those are my words not his. Act two is not about achieve it is about connect. It is about the relationships we have with people and with God. Many times it takes a pretty big hairy deal to knock us from one Act to Act Two. Loss job, death, divorce, mid-life crisis. Laura use to say I started having my midlife crisis when I was 24. I started asking early, “Is this all there is?”

Blanchard also talks about a third act. This is the act where act one and two come together. It is where achievements happen but not at the cost of relationship. They work together feeding each other, neither taking up too much space. I am hoping I am moving towards act three.

I believe it is in Act Three when we are back to working in the church but this time it is not to earn God’s love. It becomes more of a way of saying thanks for the love and acceptance God has already given to me. Dick Ling, a retired Catholic Priest in our congregation puts it this way, “How do I respond in Gratitude?” Isn’t that great? It isn’t, “I’ll do these things so that God will love me.” It’s, “God already does love me, I think I’ll send God a thank you note.” Each one of you has special gifts that are your own unique thank you notes. What kind of thank you notes are you going to send?   

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