A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

BREAK THE MOLD

John 4ff., preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, February 24, 2008

A Methodist church was trying to help a needy family in the neighborhood. The family claimed that they did not have clothing fit to wear to church. So the church collected enough money to buy the entire family beautiful new clothing. When they still did not show up at the little Methodist church, someone went to see them. "After we bought you those nice new clothes, we thought you might come to church." The mother answered, "Oh, we really like the clothes. In fact, after we put them on we decided we looked so good, we would go to the Congregational church."

Our text is about changes that bring God in closer to our lives. We are of course talking about changes for the better. Making a change is theoretically possible for everyone, but I believe that this may not be completely true in practice. Though my last name is Lacey, all the other names in my family line for a while back, are not like that. They are Reinecker, Bucher, Nitschke, Kleinline, so I have some experience to support me when I say it just may not be possible for a good, old-fashioned German to change. It’s like we are genetically programmed to refuse adaptation. There is only one way, and it is my way, which reminds me of the time a long-time member of a church scolded the new pastor for his radical new ideas and changes: “Reverend,” he said, “if God were alive today, He would be shocked at the changes in this church!" The truth of the matter is that being hard-headed isn’t the highest virtue on God’s list. Being able to follow where God is leading is. And where God leads today may not be exactly mapped out by the past. The Lord doesn’t owe any of us an explanation. God doesn’t have to support the new path with evidence to back him up. All things come and all things go, but only God remains the same. So do not be conformed to this world’s way, but be conformed to God’s will. Find the strength to say, “Yes” to what is required today. If it is faith that is needed, then have the faith. If it is kindness, then have the kindness. If it is strength, then be the strength that God new day necessitates. It may be that it is your trusting response that puts God’s will into play. It may just be your willingness to step forward that changes everything for your family, your work, your community, your church. Let us be those who carry God’s banner forward.

What we want to see this morning is that nothing should stand in the way of us doing what we are supposed to.

We have all heard of the Ivy League colleges. Perhaps some of us were fortunate enough to have attended one of these superb schools. It so happens that the so-called Ivy League colleges have little or no ivy on their walls anymore. Why not? They had to take it down. The ivy was destroying the mortar between the bricks of their buildings. The pride of tradition is too expensive if it is bought at the expense of the needs of today and tomorrow. However, we see all kinds of people clinging to traditions, even though the cost may be extremely high. Tradition can give us a strong sense of identity and can help tell us who we are, but it can also be depended upon too much. In fact, it would be a sad life, if never, not once did God break in and invite the person to experience life beyond what has already been proscribed and prescribed. This would certainly not be the God that Jesus manifests in his ministry. If you have any doubts whether this is true, just listen again to that woman at the well’s question: "How is it that you a Jew would ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" What is she saying? She is saying that this interaction has been proscribed as completely off limits, and it has been so for hundreds of years. Now that’s tradition. Now that’s: “It’s never been done that way before” thinking. And yet Jesus is doing it. But why? Boundaries aren’t all bad, right? Of course not, but they aren’t what God lives and died for, are they? I mean Jesus didn’t hang nailed to a cross in order to keep things as they were, now did he? He wasn’t prosecuted and persecuted, beaten and bloodied so that our prejudices and partialities, our bigotry and blaming could continue ad infinitum. As scripture says, “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall… thus making peace … through the cross….” Ephesians 2:14-15 Find in Christ the call of a bigger God and a better hope. Seek in your own heart the peace that courage gives to those who are taking a new step. Let your faith turn you to face forward and walk Christ’s walk.

In John 9:1-7, Jesus sees a blind man, and his disciples ask him a crucial theological/sociological question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus’ answer is an answer that seems to make sense, but only at a quick glance. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me….” This doesn’t make all that much sense, because it just makes us ask: Are all blind people born so that God’s works are revealed or just this man? Then what about all the others? Was it their parents who sinned or him or herself? His answer doesn’t answer anything about blindness in general. First of all, I wish we could have heard the inflection or tone in Christ’s voice. I imagine he was exasperated, tired of this inability to see, the incapacity to break the mold and get beyond the categorizing in God’s name. Second, the answer is not a “good” one because it can’t be. He refuses to be trapped into a mold that can’t contain the truth. It is the question that is inadequate, not the answer. You see, Jesus’ answer is to point away from the “problem” person, the blind man in this case, and instead point at everyone else, point at everyone else who is pointing at the problem person. It isn’t about him or her or them, it is about you and us. He isn’t the problem. This blind man isn’t the issue. Your blindness is the issue. So Jesus tells them to do God’s works. Don’t worry about if they sinned or not, or who sinned or not. Instead, do the works! Do God’s works!! Don’t worry whether the wall is high enough and whether the boundaries are holding. Do God’s works. Forget about theories. Forget about condemnations. Do God’s works. If Christ didn’t concern himself with the boundaries of his day, we are under no obligation to do so either. The only obligation we are under is to do God’s works.

Sociologist and evangelical Christian Tony Campolo tells a powerful story about a friend who’s a pastor of a church in Brooklyn, a run down, beat up area of the city. This friend got a telephone call one day from the local funeral director who said that he had a funeral that nobody wanted to take. None of the ministers in the area wanted anything to do with this funeral. The man had died of AIDS. This friend, Jim, took the funeral. Tony Campolo asked Jim, “What was it like?” He said that when he got there, there were about 30 homosexual men. They never looked up at him. Their heads were down and they stared at the floor the whole time he spoke. After the funeral service was over they got into the waiting automobiles and went out to the cemetery. He stood on one side of the grave with the undertaker and the homosexual men stood on the other side. They were frozen in place like statues. They seemed to be motionless. Not a nerve or sinew moved as he read Scripture and prayed. They lowered the body into the grave and Jim pronounced the benediction. He turned to leave and then he realized that none of them were moving. He turned back and asked, “Is there anything more I can do?” One of the men said, “Yes. They always read the 23rd Psalm at these things and you didn’t do that. Would you read the 23rd Psalm?” Jim said, “Certainly.” And he did. Another man spoke up and he said, “There is a passage in the 3rd chapter of John which says that the spirit of God goeth where it leadeth and you cannot tell on whom the spirit of God falls. Could you read that passage?” And he did. And then one of the men said, “Would you read to me and to all of us that passage that talks about the love of God, that nothing can separate us from the love of God?” And Jim said, “I turned to these men and said, ‘Neither height nor depth nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come, neither life nor death, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’” Jim said nothing was more thrilling than to say to these men, who had been so ostracized and hurt by the church, that God still loved them and that nothing could separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus their Lord.

Do you believe that is true? I hope you do. I hope you do for yourself as well. Now the way I see it, there is no fine line between practicing sin and continuing to sin. The first is what many people think homosexuals do, but not themselves. The second is what everybody does, regardless of gender, color, religion, and sexual orientation. We commit sin practically continually, in small ways at minimum. And somehow there is the belief that God forgives committed sins but doesn’t forgive practiced ones. In other words, one type of sin is forgivable because it isn’t practiced, but it is “only” committed, as in committed regularly, since it would be true that we all unfortunately sin regularly in thought, word, or deed, in what we think, say or do or what we leave unsaid or undone. However, goes this line of thinking and theorizing, because certain people “practice” theirs, God can’t forgive it. It’s like this: we only commit the sins of greed, sloth, envy, lust, pride, gluttony and/or anger but we don’t practice them, so therefore we can be forgiven it. And we actually think this is going to impress God? This is what you call splitting hairs, and it is also a huge gamble when it comes to God. Because what if God does split hairs, and what if all this time what some Christians have been doing is practicing hatred rather than just committing hatred? Fortunately for them and for all, God doesn’t split hairs between practicing and committing. Nowhere in the bible is that distinction ever made. Now I am sure the Lord wouldn’t mind if people stopped practicing hatred and starting committing themselves to love instead. Let us not be those who have just enough religion to cause us to hate others but let us be those who have enough Christ to make us love one another. Jonathan Swift

Let God’s spirit in, and thereby unburden your heart from having to keep track of how bad other people are. Commit yourself instead to doing God’s good works. This is the true worship of God, a worship that doesn’t require temple nor church. Wherever you practice Christ’s faith, you are walking on holy ground. Help the poor, feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, aid the sick. Be fearless for God’s new day. Build on God’s dream of a brighter tomorrow. Bring forth God’s word, share in Jesus’ ministry, and let the Spirit’s power pour out from your life and from this church.

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