Good Friday message of cognition

This sermon has been taken from "The hopeful Priest" written and preached by Rev Matthew Lawrence. Please note, I have edited parts of the original to fit into this space. I would like to change his question a bit and ask instead "how have you failed Jesus today, or within the last hour?".

"Today we are being led into the great mystery of our religion; one that has at its heart a living paradox, a paradox captured in the name itself: Good Friday.

This is not a religion for people looking for easy answers. The answer is found in paradox.

And today, we come to the revelation that is by means of our failures – to use an old fashioned and poorly understood word, our sinfulness -- that we find our greatest joy.

So we ask this question: How have you failed Jesus lately?

One of the wonderful things about our religion is that it is built on the fact that we have all failed Jesus.

This makes us different from a lot of religions these days – especially some of the more recent inventions – the religions of success. There are a lot of religions of success blooming in our world; hundreds of, yes, successful churches that preach nothing but how to be successful: successful in love, in money, in your career, in whatever you desire.

But our religion is not about that. It’s not about magically bending the space-time continuum so that you might be successful. Our religion is really about failure. And it all begins here. It begins with the simple fact of our God; our Lord and Master, hanging on a cross and dying ...because we failed him.

Some years ago, Ted Turner was vilified in the press because he said Christianity is for losers. Well, he was right. Losers like Jesus . They mocked him on the cross. He was a joke. A failure. That’s our God.

And then there’s Peter, the favored disciple, the rock upon which the church is founded, who in the moment of truth betrayed Jesus.

What does that say about this religion? It says that it’s okay to talk about failure here.

So how have you failed Jesus lately?

Does that question make you uneasy? Do you feel a little resistance bubbling up inside? Is it difficult to look at how you’ve failed?

It’s okay. The beautiful thing about our religion is that we don’t have to get defensive around our failings. We don’t have to pretend. We don’t have to walk around like we’re perfect, like we’re without sin, that we’re oh so successful and we’ve got it oh so together.

We begin with this fact – that we have failed Jesus. We all have. Every one of us.

Our dirty little secret has been revealed; our cover is blown; there is no hiding the fact. We have betrayed him. We have failed.

How have you failed Jesus lately?

Now for a lot of people this is why they are not Christians. Who wants to walk around feeling like a failure all the time? It sounds too much like the old time religion, where the preacher is constantly scolding his congregation and making them feel bad about themselves. Who wants that?

And of course, if the preacher is doing nothing but scolding and pointing fingers, it’s time to find a new preacher. That would be like going to an AA meeting and having the moderator of the meeting say, “I’m the only one in here who isn’t an alcoholic! What’s wrong with you people!?”

No, the point is that we’re all in this boat together. All of our heroes are in this boat. Every one of the saints; every apostle; every guru and yogi and Master – we’re all in this together. It’s called the human condition.

We live in a confused, angry, and violent world. A world that desperately needs to come to terms with its failures. We are armed to the teeth; we are on the brink of global shortages in food and water and oil and we are armed to the teeth.

And when I say these things it’s not because I want you to feel guilty. It’s only because our guilt has been taken away on the cross; it’s only because Christ, on the cross, pronounced his forgiveness, that we are able to remove guilt from the equation. We are forgiven -- get over it! It isn’t about feeling guilty! And if that’s true, we can look at the world with open eyes: we can begin to see the world with compassion instead of debilitating guilt.

It’s only in an unredeemed world that blame gets thrown around.

But in this redeemed world, we can see with eyes of love instead of blame, or guilt, or anger, or self-recrimination.

God is on the cross; all he asks of us is that we regard him.

In the unredeemed world, it’s all up to us; we feel so responsible for it all; since we can’t accept failure we have to fix it – all of it; we feel so guilty for it all, and so the only way we can get through our day is to put on these enormous opaque blinders to convince us that we are not failing. We block out the victims of warfare and gun violence ; we block out the starvation caused by drought and global warming; we block out the genocide in Darfur; we block out the presence of homeless men and women and children living right outside these walls. We put on all of these blinders that reduce the world to the narrowest little thread of what we can bear – forgetting that God is bearing it for us; God is on the cross, not us. God is the one saving the world – not us.

And here’s the beautiful paradox of that – that only by allowing God to save the world do we stand a chance of making a difference ourselves. Because in the unredeemed world we are too busy running around trying to change everyone; in our desperate need to fix everyone we run from place to place with our agendas in hand; we join in the blame game; we give voice to our anger; we send missiles at people in our desperate drive to change them; we bombard the world with our success-driven fears and plans and schemes; and somewhere along the line we simply stop listening; we stop seeing the hurt and the pain; we forget what it means simply to have compassion.

Whether we’re talking about your relationship to your children or you neighbor, or our country’s relationship to the Middle East or Africa, the same principles apply.

We can’t expect our country’s politicians to understand all this. They live in a difficult world. But we can pray for them; as we also pray for those who are on the receiving end of our plans for them; pray that we might all learn the beautiful paradox of failure; and the truth of the cross, in which Jesus saves the world, so that we can be free simply to love the world, as we are loved."

AMEN.

Have faith in God, Forgive to be forgiven

20 Now in the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.
21 And, Peter remembering said to Him, "Rabbi look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered away."
22 So Jesus answered and said to them, "have faith in God.
23 "For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea' and does not doubt in his heart, but believed that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.
24 "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask for when you pray, believe that you will receive them, and you will have them.
25" And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.
26 "But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses"

-Mark 11 20:26

Love

While visiting Kelowna, I ran into a really neat used bookstore called "First try books". In there I found many treasure, one that i picked this quote from. Enjoy!

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love NEVER fails. (NIV)" - A love worth giving, Living in the overflow of God's love by Max Lucado.

Ask, Seek, Knock..revisited

"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you: seek and you will find: knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds: and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." - Luke 11:5

Jesus, says this so easily. I guess the easy part is the faith, that is not mentioned here. One can ask till one is sore, and seek till their eyes fall out and knock till their knuckles are red, if one doesn't have faith in their heart, nothing will happen from asking, seeking or knocking. So then, I wonder, what happens to us of little faith? Is the outcome as Cake sings in his song "Sheep go to heaven, and goats go to hell." :-)

Serenity, Courage, and Wisdom

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference" The Holy Bible

There is a different take on the above lines:
"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me." - Author Unknown

Ask, Seek, Knock..

"Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened". - The Holy Bible

I think the above words have tremendous power. They apply in every situation in life. Often times, I have been fearful or shy of asking someone for something, or about something. I thought I was burdening them, or that they would refuse to help me. The chances these outcomes may occur are possible, I will however never find out, unless I step outside of my box, act inspite of my fear, and simply ask.

I also think "seek and you will find" has a lot of truth in it. It doesnt promise a desired outcome, it delicately nudges us to find the truth, whatever that may be, no matter how contrary to the current expectation or belief. If we seek, we will find.

Have a nice day all!

Compassion

Chosen by God for this new life, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humilty, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offence.
Colossians 3:12 THE MESSAGE