Christ's Infinite Love and Very Hard Texts

A sermon by Rev Andrew Colman on  Proverbs 1:20-33 & Mark 8:27-38

These last few weeks, Rachel and I have been learning to paint. Inspired by our trip to Victoria, where my friend taught us how to blend paints to make a whole colour wheel, we've been hooked on learning the fundamentals of colour mixing and painting little wooden children's blocks and trees.

One of the secrets of painting that will make your block look like it is in 3d is you have to make sure the side in shadow is dark enough, the side in the light is bright enough, and the side that is in part shadow and part light is somewhere in between in proper relation to each other. Three very thoughtful strokes of a brush, and you have a block popping off the page. All of the other details, like its shadows, just help you to see that block more clearly.

However, if you get those greys wrong, either too dark or too light, you can add all the details you want. Dress it up as extravagantly as you can, but it's always going to seem off.

This is where we need to start with this evening's texts. We need to start with the very basics of our beliefs. One of the things that we say so often is that it runs the risk of losing meaning, like when we say any word 20-30 times in a row.

The place we need to start, the basic building block of our faith, is that Jesus came into the world and died for our sins, which, in some way or another, made us right with God so that we might have a whole relationship with God—in spite of all of our mistakes.

In his final hours, Jesus said, "Forgive them, Father; they know not what they do.”

St. Paul puts it like this in Romans.

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When we hold this as the centre of our faith - we can come to difficult texts like we heard tonight, that have often been used as weapons of guilt and shame, and engage with them without the fear that they are somehow the scriptures that will /finally/ disqualify from the Love of God.

Nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Jesus Christ—that is the building block, the cornerstone of our faith. When we get those colours wrong, everything seems off, and without it, everything crumbles.

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Now, that doesn't mean that when we come to challenging passages like these, we shouldn't feel moved; in fact, they should not make us feel some sense of discomfort.

They are, after all, very challenging texts.

From Proverbs: "Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices.”

And from the Gospel: "Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

They are texts that challenge the way we move through the world from a negative perspective. They talk about the consequences of our actions, which are both very popular and very unpopular in our culture today.

It is very popular to hold others accountable, especially for the unchecked abuses of power and oppression, and rightly so.

And it is very unpopular when it comes to holding our own actions accountable when they are hurtful to others,

especially when we don't think that those actions /should/ be hurtful or they are serving a higher purpose. Or it's just "me being me."

No, the thing with these texts is that they go in both directions -

they help us see the outer world through a biblical lens. They help us see the oppressions of the world and offer us foresight as to what happens when they go unchecked. The fall from Grace is messy and ugly and costs a lot! Consider the careers of the men brought down by the #metoo movement, consider the blowback on the church, as the truth about residential schools was being made known, and consider the life and dynasty of David after he took Bathsheba and murdered her husband.

In all of those situations, the scars will last a lifetime, not just a lifetime, but from generation to generation - and not only for the perpetrators - but especially for the victims.

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And these texts go the other way, too. The Biblical lens focuses on our own actions and the consequences in our lives and the lives of those around us.

That is the unpopular part, becuase most of us don't want to be confronted with the damaging things we've done in our lives and their consequeses.

It is also unpopular because when that message is isolated and pushed apart from the rest of the scripture, it turns into "Fire and Brimstone."

which ought to be unpopular.

So often, these messages come to as /the whole/ of the story, or when we are reading through the Bible - they jump out at us and /stick/ in our minds as we remember all of the things we've done that we should have left undone, or the things we've failed to do.

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But how many times have we been told not to cherry-pick verses from scripture?

It comes to us as a whole pie! Not as single cherries! And we get to eat the whole thing!

How crazy would it be if a whole cherry pie was put in front of you, and it somehow contained an entirely balacned meal and you just picked at just the edge where the crust was well toasted.

In context that, toastiness is a balancing piece to the sweetness of the cherries, but on its own, too bitter. You wouldn't want to

And you shouldn't want to eat a whole serving of that toasted pie crust.

But without it, the pie would be too sweet - sickly even.

But so often when we hear these hard scriputes and make them the whole story or remove them from the story as rule, everything get's knocked off balance in one way or another. The Good News of the Gospel is obscured or even totally lost.

So it might look something like this to come to these passages with a sense of balance

of them, the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

And

Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We can imagine these pieces put together like this.

The love of a parent runs very, very deep, and yet the actions of a child can cause a parent to be ashamed, but that does not mean that the child has been disowned.

In our broken world, yes maybe, but let's not project our brokenness on to the Love of God.

The Love of Jesus is infinitely deep, and yet the actions of a child can break his heart, and nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Love of Jesus is infinitely deep, and there are consequences for our actions, and nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Love of Jesus is infinitely deep, and there will be times when we feel like we have failed in every imaginable way, and nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I've heard it said recently that the church does not do a good job of teaching her people to pray.

Maybe this can be a prayer for us when we are in times of distress.

The Love of Jesus is infinitely deep, and actions have consequences. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Love of Jesus is infintly deep, ___fill in your particular source of distress here___, and nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This prayer invites us to dwell in the tension that is the Scandal of Grace.

That scandal is that nothing, nothing at all, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Combined with the fact that we as individuals and as a society can do terrible things.

And from those terrible things come terrible consequences.

It is when we walk with the Grace and Wisdom of God in our hearts, in our minds, and in our hands that the very opposite is equally as true.

It is true that nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord

and

We, as individuals and as a society, can do extraordinarily beautiful things.

And from those extraordinarily beautiful things come extraordinarily beautiful consequences.

Amen