Sermon Easter 3B 2021
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ. I was drawn to our 2nd reading. God has a lavish love for us. We are God’s children. What we will be has not yet been revealed. But when Jesus is revealed, we will be like him.
Let us pray. Be with each one of us in the tension between being your children, not always living that out well, and waiting for Jesus to be fully revealed, when we will be shown to be perfectly whole. Guide us in this in-between time, that we may live and grow in your grace and goodness. Amen.
Here are some thoughts from a school chapel a few years ago that we will work on and expand. Holiness is not about being perfect. It is not about never getting anything wrong. It is not about being naively innocent. We can be bruised and battered by life, with all the stuffing knocked out of us, we can have done some bad things, but that doesn’t mean we are not holy.
Holiness is not something we achieve, certainly not by will power or ticking off commandments kept. God alone is holy, and we participate, we share in that. It’s not earned, it’s received. ‘To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or the will of the flesh or human will, but of God.’
In that participation in Christ, through our baptism, through being part of God’s family, gathered here, our mistakes or personal evil deeds are worked with and transformed so that they bring something good as well.
Through Christ, we are forgiven, and so we do the sometimes painful or embarrassing thing of allowing God to love me, as I am, not as I think I should be or could be. I am loved as I am.
Part of participating on the holiness and goodness of Jesus, is that I am not only forgiven, but I am also called to forgive. Forgiveness means giving up my right to take revenge, or to hurt the other person back. Where there is forgiveness, the cycle of payback is broken.
Forgiveness does not mean that something didn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that we go back to being besties. You may decide never to be around that person again. Finally, it’s about choosing not to be destroyed by what happened. It’s about letting God carry the hurt done to you. It’s about allowing God to remove the poisons from with you.
Forgiveness is about moving into a space of being more free to go on with your life.
Which brings us to forgiving yourself. How often do you have endless replays of something you did wrong? How often do you call yourself ‘idiot’ or worse? If someone else spoke to you that way, how would you react? Forgiving ourselves is vital. We need to develop practical ways of letting that stuff go through to Jesus, rather than getting stuck there.
Transforming. Our God does work with bad things, to produce good. Nothing is wasted in our lives. And we can change how we do things and approach things. Having a group around us, who hold us to high standards is important. Their strength and support as we struggle is vital.
We all have difficult or painful things in our experience. We have all done things we aren’t proud of. It is possible to regain innocence. Not in a naïve, childish way, but in a childlike way that acknowledges the hurts, but also can start to enjoy parts of life and appreciate people again, without manipulating or controlling or trying to own. Grounded in Christ, our spirit becomes big enough just to enjoy and respect and admire, without making it something improper or inappropriate.
Here is the what I suggested to young people. Let’s check it out.
When we’ve done something wrong, or have participated in something that didn’t turn out well, we own it.
We neither self-destruct, nor just blame it all on others.
We consciously place ourselves in God’s hands and we include the not so nice bits of us as well.
We entrust ourselves to God, and we ask for grace and mercy.
We stop being abusive to ourselves. We ask for help, by going to someone who has the skills and the experience to help us. 14 year olds can’t always help their friends the right way. Maybe our friends don’t have all the skills needed as well. Sometimes we do need the professional skills.
We work out good things to do next time, so that we get out of the hole a whole lot quicker.
Finally, we share with someone we trust who is a good person a little bit of the shame that cripples us up.
That is the promise, we are always in God’s lavish love, even if it does not feel like it at times. WE trust, and we keep walking forward, with courage, hope and faith.
Some 16th century Spanish poetry, from St John of the Cross,
When you looked at me
your eyes imprinted your grace in me;
for this you loved me ardently;
and thus my eyes deserved
to adore what they beheld in you. . . .
Let us go forth to behold ourselves in your beauty.
Our newborns feel secure, when they can see us looking at them with love. I think John of the Cross is saying here that God has loved us, and built our whole being around that. So then, we can start to love ourselves in the right way, in grace and mercy.
Maybe that is your God homework this week. Catch a glimpse of yourself in God’s love. You possibly don’t look at yourself in the mirror with God eyes, so you will catch glimpses of God looking at you, from the kindness, friendships, colleagues who value you, and family around you. Try to catch a glimpse of yourself in the beauty God has imprinted in each one of us.
