Monday, April 20, 2015

Morality Does Not Equal Reconciliation With God.

3 Easter - Year B
April 19, 2015 
Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36-48

Bishop Doyle has said that the church does not have a mission, rather, "God's mission has a church" in order to live out that mission.  God's mission is to reconcile all things to himself, and that is the mission that the church was formed to live out.  Sometimes, however, we lose our way and forget what God's mission is.

Not long ago, I spoke with a young woman who had grown up in the church and then fell away from the church during college.  This was largely because she was with a campus church group for a while, but when she revealed to them that she was not a virgin, they told her that she was no longer a Christian, and they kicked her out.  They did a very effective job too, because she is now not a part of any church and barely even nominally Christian.  They replaced God with their morality and put it in the place of God's mission to reconcile all things to himself.

I wonder if they had John 3:1-7 in mind when they kicked this young woman out of the church.  "Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness.  Sin is lawlessness.  You know that he was revealed to take away sin, and in him there is no sin.  No one who abides in him sins.  No one who sins has either seen him or known him."

Well, I guess that just clears everything up.  They were right, and the young woman should have been kicked out!  Except that the passage doesn't clear everything up, and they were wrong.

When we sin (not simply break a rule - Jesus broke rules to do what was right), when we harm someone else or ourselves, then we're not really living into God's love.  When we harm people, when we sin, when we miss the mark, not abiding in God.  We're not living into God's way of being open-hearted with ourselves, with each other, and with God.  That's what John is saying.

What did Jesus say God's way was, the way that was to be proclaimed to all nations?  In Luke 24, Jesus told his disciples that God's way is "repentance and forgiveness of sins".  That is God's way, God's mission for which he made the church, to reconcile all things to himself.

You can't do that if you kick someone out for messing up.

We can't replace God with a moral code.



Now, moral codes are good as far as things go.  They help guide us in living such that we don't harm people.  I had a conversation with this young woman who had been kicked out of her church for not being a virgin, and talked about why the rule or the way of not having sex before a loving, committed marriage might be a good way to live.  You could end up with a child you didn't want.  The child is still a blessing, and things could work out great, but life is hard enough without making it more difficult.  Sex without the commitment and covenant of marriage can be done without truly honoring the other or oneself.  It can be done just to get your jollies off, and can harm a potentially good relationship when expectations, honor, and love aren't shared.

So we have this rule, this way of life, but when we break it, as many Christians do, we're not removed from the church.  We're not removed from Jesus.  We're shown that our actions probably weren't the best, and we're given repentance, and forgiveness, and grace, and, love and mercy so that we can fully honor each other.

God's mission is to reconcile all things to himself through repentance and forgiveness.  If all it was was to follow the rules, then we have no need for Jesus.

So as we live our lives as disciples of Jesus, we're going to continue to strive to follow some good rules, good morality and ways of life in which we seek to honor one another and not to harm one another.  We're also going to continue to mess that up, and we're going to break the rules.  We're going to not be moral all the time.

When we do so, we're still Jesus' church.  We're still that group of people through whom God is living out his mission here on earth, that mission for which we were formed, to help reconcile all things to God, to live out and proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins, and to embody God's grace and love here on earth to each other, to those we know.

For God's mission has a church, and we are that church to live out  and proclaim God's mission of reconciliation, forgiveness, and love.

Amen.

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