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Closer to God than you
could get on your own
Reflections on the
lessons
for the Seventh Sunday after The Epiphany
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Isaiah 43:18-25
Psalm
32:1-8
2 Corinthians 1:18-22
Mark 2:1-12
You should have known me when I was first ordained a decade ago. What I didn't know could fill volumes.
And yet, in the inexplicable ways of people and churches and clergy, there were an astonishing number of people who asked me things. And listened to my answers.
And they seemed to consider the answers -- even as I was stymied by my inadequacy and the lack of experience and seasoning that towered over my attempts at discussing life and faith and the presence of God with people twice my age, and people with lives a hundred times more complicated than my own.
I had one of the first great
revelations of my ordained career.
I learned that my work is not about me,
it's about God.
I learned that a clergyman's most important job is to stay out of the way and let the living God move freely and powerfully through the places where we try to serve.
The truth is, bad priests try to summon God and administer grace to people. Good priests just keep trying to move the furniture out of the way and let God happen unimpeded.
I don't like to use language that suggests special powers or magic or the like within ten sentences of my own name. But today's lessons made me think about one of the very many times -- this one a long time ago -- when I was bowled over to hear something coming out of my own mouth that I certainly couldn't attribute to experience, or understanding, or insight. So I had to attribute it to God, one of the many times I found myself offering something I certainly didn't have to offer in the first place.
I'll be brief:
A woman of a certain age, a parishioner and a friend, came to my office one day and embarked upon a conversation unlike any other we'd ever had. Her recent (second) marriage had hit the rocks for the first time. And she was worried. But she couldn't have been any more worried than I was. As she told me a tale of feelings and circumstances that I had read about in books but certainly never felt in my bones, I panicked. What could I say?
But, to my complete astonishment, when the time came when I had to say something, I heard myself telling her that the pattern for Christian life is Jesus. And Jesus, in turn, shows us how people can intentionally try to live not like human beings only but in the imitation of God. God loves everyone, I was surprised to say, not because of how we are, but because of how God is.
That's what God does -- loves.
Because God's integrity, God's personality, God's being is
to love unconditionally.
Don't decide whether your husband's behaving well enough for you to love him. Just say to yourself "I love him because of who I am, not because of who he is."
I wondered wherever that could have come from.
She left.
Eleven years later they 're still
married.
Happily, it seems.
From Isaiah:
"You have burdened me with your sins, but I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake."
From Paul:
"God does not say Yes and No. In him it is always Yes. God has put his seal upon us and given us a Spirit within as a first installment of more fulfillment to come."
From Mark:
A sick man's friends scramble over a crowd of skeptics to come close to the man who shows how to be a godlike human being.
They are open to God's present action -
- God's new thing never seen before -
- no matter what form it takes.
And God's power breaks into life once more,
and once more people aren't paying attention.
They're looking backwards for something else, overlooking something new.
These three stories tell us plainly
as can be that the faith in these healing stories is not our
faith in God,
not our faith in Jesus;
rather, the faithfulness throughout it all is God's own
faithfulness to who God is
and how God acts.
If you stop trying so hard to
prevent it,
God will forgive your sins.
God will break down your estrangement from God.
Salvation, the Bible's great teaching insists,
is not a reward for good behavior
but purely a matter of God being true to the divine
nature.
Ritual confession is a sometimes
thing ,
seasonal, used on appropriate occasions.
Today's lessons tell of God's burning desire
to come in and bind us together
and draw us closer to him.
The power to forgive sins,
to erase barriers,
has nothing to do with the words priests say
after we confess our sins together.
The forgiveness of sins lies in the
power of communal love
that trusts in God's determination to love
I speak the absolution alone,
yes.
But I'm speaking on behalf of all of you when I do it.
What I'm really saying is
we're all here
along with all your true and
positive friends and relatives
to knock a hole in the
roof
and, together, get you closer to God
than you could get on your own.
And won't you return the favor for us, too?
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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