Sermon; 1892 BCP, 4 Trinity; Luke 6:36-42

Last week I preached on the “lost” parables of Jesus – that is, the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

There are two points from that sermon that carry over well to this week.  The first is that this place is not a resort for the righteous but a hospital for the sick.  The job of the Church is to offer forgiveness and absolution.  The Church should be a place where sinners are healed, the lonely are welcomed, the hungry fed, and people of all sorts and conditions are offered shelter from the storm.

We shouldn’t come here because we think this is the place where good people go.  We shouldn’t come here for social interactions with people we like.  We SHOULD come here to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.  We should come here to be fed with the spiritual food of the Body and Blood of Christ.  We should come here to participate in, and partake of, holy mysteries.  We should come here because we are sinners in need of forgiveness and restoration.

But when we talk about sin, there’s a human tendency to vilify others who either commit sins we wouldn’t normally commit or who commit sins we DO commit but try to deflect away from ourselves by loudly pointing out the sins of others.  And we don’t have to look very hard to find those.  People who aren’t faithful in attendance, or don’t pledge at appropriate levels, or help out with the life of the church, or do nothing for the spread of the kingdom, or have too many vices to name, or covet what their neighbors have, or use God’s name to gain political power and persecute those whom we hate, or, or, or.  Earlier in the service we recited the Ten Commandments and asked God to have mercy upon us and to write all these laws on our hearts.  Even so, I am sure people break at least three of these every day, maybe more.  We’re very good at pointing out the faults of others.

We’re also good at making excuses for our own sins.  We justify ourselves by saying things like, “Well, at least I haven’t killed anyone,” or, “I don’t covet my neighbor’s house, I just use it as motivation to improve my own life,” or, “We haven’t been in love for years,” or, or, or.

Are we really sure that our own sins are that small and the sins of others are that large?  Jesus seems to think otherwise.  Deal with the logjam of sins in your own life before trying to correct the behavior of others.  To borrow from the Exhortation, judge yourselves, repent of your sins, and amend your lives before trying to get others to live up to your expectation of holiness.

Because if we are here, then we are all everyone of us sin-sick souls in need of repentance, forgiveness, and amendment of life, which can be found in this hospital of Christ.

A second point was on changing our perspective.

Instead of seeing people as lost souls in need of saving, what if we changed our perspective and saw them as valuable people whom we need.  What do we lose that we search diligently for?  We tend to lose things of value or that carry some importance for us.  We lose things we need.  In searching for those who are lost, we aren’t searching to save them, we are searching for them because they are needed in this place to help make the Kingdom of God complete.

That’s a completely different perspective than seeing “the lost” as miserable sinners who need saving. 

Instead of “inviting” people to church because they need Jesus, what if we recognized their skills and talents and presented Saint Luke’s as a place that needs what they have to offer.  What if we said something like, “We are a gathering of people trying to follow the example of Jesus as best we can, and you can help us do it better.  The skills you have are a perfect example of how Jesus showed us to love our neighbor; it would be great if you could work with us to help us grow.”

Invite people to church because WE can learn from THEM.  Invite people to church because WE could be so much better if they were A PART us rather than seeing them as people who need saving.  It just may be that we are the people who are saved because we were willing to see how others could help us.

In doing these things – recognizing that we are all sinners and that there are people out there whom we need in here – we are not judging or condemning.  Through merciful acts of accepting people for who they are, they might come to see themselves as valuable and loved for no other reason than they were made in the image of God.  And then, hopefully, this good measure of all of us together, pressed down and shaken, will have this place running over with goodness.

Amen.