Sermon - We Are What God Made Us

Preached on March 22, 2009 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC

Ephesians 2:1-10 John 3:14-21

Dedicated to Betsy; and always to the glory of God.

Author Ray Anderson stepped into a public restroom one day and saw, on the mirror, a message, written with soap in a slanted line. It said: “Judas, come home…all is forgiven.”

In the gospel of John, speaking about himself to Nicodemus, Jesus says that “God did not send his son into the world to condemn it.” And so let us recover the message that should always be at the center of our Christian faith and proclaim to all people: God is not out to get you. Counter to what you may have heard, counter to what you may have been taught to believe, counter even to what you may in the secret part of your mind be afraid of: God is not out to get you. That wonderful prophet of the restroom mirror was right: “come home...all is forgiven.”

God did not send his son to condemn the world, but to save it, even for people like Judas. The son of God came with forgiveness on his lips, instead of condemnation; mercy, instead of judgment; compassion, instead of vengeance. There were people who expected something different. There were a lot of people who expected the messiah to take care of everyone who had wronged them. They thought that God kept track of transgressions and would dispense punishment. But Jesus came as an answer to God’s bad reputation. To those who thought that Jesus would give their enemies what they had coming, Jesus said that what they have coming is mercy, salvation, new life, not condemnation.

To Judas, and to us, Jesus says “come home…all is forgiven.” In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul, or perhaps a follower of Paul, describes you and I like this. “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world”(Ephesians 2:1-2). Isn’t that an interesting way to talk about sin? He isn’t saying that we’re all terrible, destructive people, who leave hatred and hurt in our wake. He says that we can sin (which means separation from God), just by “following the course of the world.” What Paul is saying is that even regular people, leading regular lives are walking around dead.

Paul describes our spiritual state in terms of life and death: “Even when we were dead through our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). It reminds me of that movie The Sixth Sense, in which a young boy, played by the oh-so-cute and sincere Haley Joel Osment, is disturbed by his unwanted communication with people who had died. As he explained so memorably: “I see dead people.” And then he clarifies: “I see dead people, walking around like regular people…they don't know they're dead.” It’s just a ghost story, maybe. But those words of his - they seem to me like an astute observation about our lives, with language right out of the new testament. Dead people walking around like regular people, not even knowing the difference. Not knowing what it is to be made alive by the grace of God.

To be made alive requires a death. It requires the death of whatever it is inside us that keeps us from God. When our self-consumed interest dies, and we look with God's eyes to others, we are made alive. When the lie that are not lovable dies, when the conviction that we don't have anything to offer dies, when the stubborn refusal to finally come home dies, like it did for the prodigal son, like I hope it did for Judas, then we are made alive. Because finally, Judas, the prodigal son, you and I come to realize that we are what God made us. God made us alive. God made us, Paul writes, for good.

This movement from death to life is, for many of us, a long process, and we have to receive God's grace anew for each new challenge. That's one of the reasons we come back to the season of Lent each year. It's why we come back to the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter each year. Because when you are 17, the new life you need is a different gift than when you are 40, or 68. And in each new part of our life we are discovering the good for which God made us. People are doing this all the time. Let me tell you their stories.

When Beth Slevcove moved with her husband Joe from the suburbs into the heart of the city, she embraced urban life, even the noise and sirens and difficult parking. (This story is quoted and paraphrased from The Sun, August 2007). While the homeless people in the neighborhood made Joe nervous, Beth met them and called them by name. But there was one place that Beth steered clear of: the tattoo parlor across the street. The guys who ran it would sit around out front, and got into fights that would move into the street and stop traffic. They harassed women who walked by and intimidated the men. For two years Beth glared across the street at them from her window with dark thoughts.

Then one day she changed her approach. She got a tattoo. She walked across the street and marched inside. Manuel, who ran the store, was working on somebody’s back. Beth introduced herself as a neighbor and asked if she could watch. He said sure. After a while, she went outside and sat in front to study the world from their perspective. One of the guys asked what she was getting done, and she said “Love thy neighbor.” She explained, “you guys are my neighbors, and I’m having trouble loving you. You kind of scare me - you know, with all the fights that break out over here.”

He took her inside and announced, with complete sincerity, “Manuel, dude, we’re scaring our neighbors! We got to stop fighting.” There was an awkward moment there while Manual got defensive until Beth explained that she hadn’t come because she was mad, or to change them, but just to get a tattoo on her wrist with the words “love thy neighbor.” They settled on a design and style for the letters. “How do you spell thy,” Manuel asked shyly. “I didn’t go to school.”

From then on Beth would wave to the tattoo guys like they were old pals. No more fights broke out. The sidewalk felt safe. Four months later, when she ran into Manuel at an auto shop, Manuel turned to the mechanic and said “hey, this is my neighbor, the one I was telling you about.”

We are what God made us. We were made for good.

One more story before we close. (This next story is told by Philip Yancey in What's So Amazing About Grace?) This one is about Gordon Wilson, who was with his grown daughter in a town near Belfast, Ireland on Veteran’s Day in 1987 at a Protestant observance when an IRA bomb killed 11 people, including his daughter. It wasn’t so much different from much of the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, where extremists traded revenge attacks and bystanders got caught in the middle. A newspaper later proclaimed, “No one remembers what the politicians had to say at that time. No one who heard Gordon Wilson will ever forget what he confessed…His grace towered over the miserable justifications of the bombers.” What he said was this: “I have lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life. I shall pray, tonight and every night, that God will forgive them.”

Gordon Wilson became a leader for peace in Ireland. The Protestant extremists who had planned a revenge attack decided against it. With Gordon Wilson on the scene, such an attack would be politically foolish. Wilson met with the IRA, forgave them, and asked them to stop. He said “I know you’ve lost loved ones, just like me. Surely enough is enough.”

These are stories of regular people, much like you and me, who were made alive by the son of God who came to save the world. It would have been easy for them to act out of fear and hatred. In fact, that would have been the course of the world. But we were made for something else. We were made for a goodness that will come forth in surprising ways and will have amazing consequences. It will be as if we had been dead, and God made us alive.

We are what God made us, and God made us for good.