Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro/scripture
Scripture
Pray
My first week of being a pastor in Houston I had to figure out how to do hospital visits.
I went with another pastor and he confused the heck out of me.
Then I went back the next day to do them on my own.
Splashed with water.
I really did not like hospital days for many reasons.
What I realized is that in doing so something began to change in me.
God began increasing my heart for people that my fear of messing up subsided and my pride started to wilt.
I realized that in these visits I was actually experiencing a love that was surprising.
Have you ever felt that?
When you are giving something, a meal, some money, some of your time and you actually feel like you have received a gift?
What is going on there?
This week I was asked to help with the tragedy at the dentist office a week and half ago.
And lead a funeral service for Dr. Blake Sinclair.
Background:
Jesus does not meet anyone’s expectation.
Even the ones who were behind him.
John the Baptist is arrested and he is starting to wonder if maybe Jesus is not the one he thought.
Which I understand....even 99% sure would look different when you are arrested and likely to be killed.
So John send a couple of people to Jesus...
Which by the way, how would you like to be the messenger that is sent to Jesus and goes.... uhmph…is this it?
Jesus responds by showing them the signs of his identity.
all the people around him being healed.
Go back and tell them what you see:
the blind receive sight
the lame walk
those with leprosy are cleansed
the deaf hear
the dead are raised
good news proclaimed to the poor
Prophetic promise of Isaiah that this would be the sign of the Messiah.
Marks of the kingdom breaking through....not what we measure church upon.
Then Jesus talks about John the Baptist:
John was different.
He dressed different, ate different.
Talked different.
He was the one sent to tell of the kingdom breaking in.
And some responded but some rejected and all thought he was strange.
Jesus says later it will be the same for him.
He will be called a drunkard and a friend to tax collectors and sinners.
This is what is going on with this little mini parable that he gives....
The accusation here is that the Jesus people are not performing in societal expectations.
Even the misunderstood John the Baptist is misunderstanding Jesus and the way things would look.
A few observations here about mercy
Mercy is misunderstood
Jesus is is constantly accused of doing things the wrong way.
Mercy is constantly being accused of something it is not.
Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors not because he is affirming a broken way of life or because he is somehow condoning sin, it is exactly the opposite.
He is going to the sick and inviting them to healing and restoration.
We live in a culture where we are prone to insulate and protect what we have.
We live in a culture where we work hard and earn our way.
We are conditioned to believe that someone who is poor or homeless or even physically challenged that they made that choice.
We also reduce mercy to random acts of kindness like mercy is just some whimsical charity that we offer to the less fortunate.
Mercy is to see people with the eyes of God and to love them.
Mercy is about inviting people to ponder their own inherent worth.
In the gospels this is what Jesus ministry was about and it confused everyone.
And when our churches today are about this work it is confusing too.
Confusing to the world.
Also want you to see something here: Jesus was not just establishing a church where the lame, blind, lepers, deaf, and poor were welcomed.
No Jesus was about healing and restoring.
Mercy is given
And yet, mercy of this sort is not just something we turn on today.
We cannot wake up tomorrow and have what it takes to love our enemy or to love the person that is so different than us.
God has to give us that very thing.
I spent the last couple of weeks focusing on Augustine for school.
So you are going to get some Augustine today.
St. Augustine was one of the most brilliant minds in the world.
Not just of his day and not just within the church but ever.
He was bishop in North Africa and faced some heretical movements in the church.
They forced him and the church to really work out some of the things we believed about God.
There was a man named Pelagius in the 5th century and more importantly a movement called Pelagianism.
They believed that we had the ability to choose good and choose evil.
That maybe God reveals to us what is good but then it is up to us.
Angel and devil on either shoulder…this is pelagian thought.
Augustine is going to come down really hard on this idea because it underestimates the corruption of the soul of sin.
He found that even as he chooses good, he is still prone to all sorts of shortcomings.
Augustine knew that he must pray for God to “Grant what you command, command what you will.”
Meaning for example when it comes to mercy, it is not something that we just turn on.
God must give it to us.
And in giving it to us then he can command it.
We think the Christian life is we come to Christ and then we just live some good lives.
Hopefully we read scripture and pray a little.
No God has given you of his Spirit but now God wants to help you align more with that Spirit.
We do that by showing up:
means of grace
repentance
John Wesley understood this about mercy.
Acts of mercy to the poor and the lost were a means of Grace.
We get the Wesleyan view on that in a wonderful letter that John Wesley sent to Miss J. C. March in the year 1775.
He encourages Miss March to press on in her faith until she knows by her own experience “all that love of God which passeth all (speculative) knowledge.”
He then asks her bluntly if she is willing to know how to dedicate her life more and more fully to God.
He says,
And are you willing to know?
Then I will tell you how.
Go and see the poor and sick in their own poor little hovels.
Take up your cross, woman!
Remember the faith!
Jesus went before you, and will go with you.
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