The Sermons of Preacher J

Understanding Whoville

2009-11-08T12:11:24Z

Some time in the next couple of months, you will probably find yourself watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. At the very least you'll be reminded of it, hearing "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch" on the radio or in among the carols played in a store. Especially if you're in a store, you'll hear it while embedded in the materialistic side of the season and you might find yourself wondering "What's with those Whos? They put an enormous amount of work into their Christmas preparations, just like we do, and then they wake up on the big morning and find it was all for nothing. If that happened to me, I wouldn't feel like singing."

So let me reconstruct for you what happened that morning in Whoville after the Grinch hauled everything away. Now, the first ones up on Christmas morning are the kids. You know that. You've been that kid. And let's say that among the Who kids is a twelve year old who has read a lot of detective stories. We'll call her Nancy Drew Who. Young Nancy wakes up, sees the walls stripped and the goodies gone. (She probably doesn't look in the larder. Food is something kids tend to take for granted.) She says to herself "This is a mystery. I'm going to investigate it." She may be thrilled at the idea of being the first to stumble on a major mystery. It's a healthy attitude. She spends a little time in the house gathering evidence. Then she puts her coat on over her pajamas and goes outside. She notes the disappearance of all the outdoor decorations, but she doesn't go systematically through the village. Being a kid, she goes to her best friend's house. The best friend is also awake before any of the grown ups, with maybe a sibling or two for company. When they hear about Nancy's investigation, they of course join right up. They go to their other friends' houses. Their other friends join in. Pretty soon every kid in Whoville is part of the team. They determine that the missing goodies are not stashed anywhere in town. They find the tracks of the Grinch's sled. They follow those tracks out of the village.

This is when the adults get up. Now, imagine you're a parent and you wake up on Christmas morning to find that your decorations, your presents, your food and your children are all missing. What conclusion do you jump to? Why, that the children have been stolen along with the stuff.

They head for the home of the sheriff of Whoville. He is probably Nancy's dad and if he stopped to think about it, he might have a good guess about where the children have gone off to, but he has no time to think because he has to deal with all these panicking parents, who are listening to each other's wild theories and getting worked up into an even more intense state of hysteria than they were in when they arrived.

About this time, the young investigators, having found that a coat over pajamas is not really warm enough and turned back, straggle in through the gates. It's at that moment of passionate relief, when the adults discover that the children are not stolen, after all, that someone suggests standing in a circle, holding hands and singing.

For many families, the Grinch will show up this year, or already has shown up, in the form of job loss, business failure, repossession, eviction. For others, a little less unlucky, money will be tight as sales slow down and employers cut back on raises and bonuses. And for most of us the Lord isn't going to arrange a little Nancy-led reminder of how much worse it could be, how much we still have and, especially, the greater value of love in our lives as compared with material goodies. So we're going to have to remind ourselves. Pray for that. Pray to remember in the face of hard times that love stands with us, that love never quits, and that we are never as abandoned as we are tempted to think we are.

What do we mean by forgiveness?

2008-12-22T01:53:30Z

When Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"

Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

"The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded. "His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' "But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

~ Matthew 21:35

Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood ideas in Christian thought. We say "forgive and forget" as if they went together naturally. We urge people who have been wronged to deny their feelings, drop the charges, pretend the wrong didn't happen, and generally get out of touch with reality. And we imagine that this produces healing. But forgiveness is a much deeper matter, one which cannot be accomplished without God's grace. When you lay before God your grievance, the wound it left in your heart, all your feelings of rage and resentment and sorrow and deprivation, and you sincerely ask God to heal all of that, God will provide the healing. And that healing will go so deep that when it is complete you will be filled with Divine love for this flawed world and all that is in it, including the person who did you wrong and the wrong itself. Forgiveness in that sense, the conventional sense, will flow naturally from your soul.

So why is it so often said the other way around, with forgiveness producing healing? Well, it has to do with this odd little fact of human nature: on some level we know this will happen and if we are not standing in the triple virtue of faith, hope and love, we are liable to decide not to ask for healing because we'd rather have a grudge. How we love our victimhood! It's even said to give us moral high ground, as if unhappy emotions were some kind of virtue. Having a grudge tickles our pride, makes us feel important, and of course it can be used to get attention. Plenty of cheap, unhealthy, ultimately destructive thrills are available from a grievance. And when God heals us, he will take away, not the facts of what happened, but the story your flawed human mind built up around what happened. You just won't be mad anymore. So the real moment of forgiveness comes when you hold the possibility of healing up against the corrupt pleasures of grievance and you choose the healing. You can't have both. Once God has started to answer that prayer, the grievance has got its death sentence. It's just a matter of time.

Let's start with the body

2008-11-09T23:29:59Z

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."
- 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6, verses 19 and 20

Saint Paul calls the body a temple. He was specifically warning against polluting the body with sexual sin, but if Christians are to understand that statement as part of God's message to us, then we must consider all that it implies. So I want to start by pointing out that what makes a building a temple is not how well the builders built it, nor what secular or sinful uses it may have been put to in the past, nor what kind of shape it's in now, nor whether its looks meet our human, fallible, culturally limited standards of beauty. What matters is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, when it comes to our bodies, this is the most common mistake Christians make. We look in the mirror and we say "This body has pain. This body is the wrong shape. This body is slowing down as the years go by. It won't always do what I want it to, and sometimes it does things I don't want it to do. It makes funny noises and puts out funny smells. It needs constant maintenance: fueling it, exercising it, keeping it clean, keeping it dressed appropriately." Even if your body looks good by the world's standards, it has lusts. It has anger. It gets tired when you want to do stuff. Jesus said "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He said that to three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, at Gethsemane when he asked them to keep watch with him, just a few hours before his arrest, and they fell asleep. Even these men, who experienced the presence of Jesus in the flesh on this Earth, had trouble getting the co-operation of their bodies for His service. So no body, and I mean no flesh and blood body, is perfect.

Now I see some members of the building committee here in the congregation. If any of them find this building to be perfect, will they please stand up? I didn't think so. But does the imperfectness of this building reduce the ability of the Holy Spirit to be present here? You know it does not! The fact is that this perfection that we desire in our buildings and in our bodies is mostly a human fantasy, and not necessarily a very sane fantasy. In the international fashion industry, the preference for super-thin women has become so extreme that some countries have passed laws forbidding the couture houses from using models who show obvious signs of starvation in their shows. On the men's side, you have men using steroids and stimulants and other damaging drugs to give them an edge in competition, not only in athletic performances but in the bodybuilding competitions like Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe, where it's all about looks. And this does not even count the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who take up damaging diets and pay hard-earned money for risky plastic surgery to meet superficial, human, worldly standards of good looks. God is not hung up on the way you look! He may not be too happy if you alter your looks on purpose to distress people or to distress one particular person, but in that case his concern is less with the style of your hair than with the unloving state of your soul.

The thing to remember about your body is that, whether it's pretty or plain or ugly, whether it's a high-performance athletic machine or can't even get up the stairs, whether it's whole or missing some parts, whether you like or don't like its color or size or weight, it will die to this life. It is not given to you to be exercised and dieted and plastic surgeried into a superficial appearance of perfection. Nor is it given to you to be despised and thrown away for the sake of cheap thrills or out of indulging neurotic self-hatred. It is given to you to be a temple, a place where you meet Him and where others meet Him through your faith and your hope and your love.

So what I want to ask you to do at some time this week is to go into a room with a full-length mirror, a room where you can be undisturbed for fifteen minutes. Close the curtains. Turn up the heat. Then take off your clothes and stand before the mirror and look upon the temple of the Lord.