(Sermon by Pastor Michael D. Schultz 01/21/07)

INTRODUCTION:

In the course of delivering a sermon, there’s always the risk that if the preacher gives an example of something, people feel just a tiny bit obligated to do what was suggested.  For example…

Back on July 23, 1989, on the day that I was ordained as a pastor, the pastor who preached the installation sermon made a brief comment that, instead of walking out after the church service and occasionally saying something like, “That was a nice sermon, pastor,” people might rather want to simply say, “Thank you,” in recognition of the fact that complimenting the pastor isn’t really the point at all as compared to expressing appreciation for a much needed message from God.  “Thank you.  That was God’s Word and I needed to hear it.”  After that installation sermon, there was one friend of mine who walked out of church and said, “Thank you,” for the whole twelve and a half years that I was there.

Now don’t get any ideas this morning.  There need not be a flood of thank-you’s at the back of the center aisle as you leave.  This is only an illustration, merely an example that reminds us all, whether we feel that the message was a home run or a called-out-looking third strike, whether the hymns were all our favorites or we felt they should be ripped from the book and burned, whether the order of service was familiar and well-loved or unfamiliar and not so well-loved, I’m here because, apart from the personality or style of the pastor, God promises to give me what I need.  It’s a concern for all of us, isn’t it?

Getting What I Need From A Church Service

If Jesus himself conducted the service or delivered the sermon, would thoughts arise… “He was a little bit off today.”  Or: “It was an ok sermon, not great, but ok.”  Not unlike last week, not unlike next week, and not unlike a Saturday Sabbath long ago in Nazareth, this morning the pulpit is Christ’s.  The words are his.  Beyond strong coffee and setting the thermostat too low, how will all eyes be fixed on him, all our attention riveted to what he says, so that we get what we need from this service?

It will start with seeing myself as God describes me.

“Mom, Dad, I’ve decided what I want to be when I grow up.  I want to be a beggar.”  No one aspires to that.  But to get what you need from this church service, you’re going to have to be one – a beggar.  I have nothing to bring to the table.  God says I have to be perfectly good.  I am anything but.  Like the church sign next to a building that’s going up in Loganville – the fun worship experience – this isn’t sounding fun so far.  But if I’m going to get what I need, I have to be the poor person who has no goodness to give to God.  That is you and it is I.

Seeing myself as God sees me?... Incarcerated.  Ask John McCain what it was like to be a prisoner of war.  The enemy owns me and unlike a recent television hit called Prison Break, I am not the hero who breaks out.  The devil and the death sentence I have deserved are stronger than I am and I can’t pull off the handcuffs or tunnel my way to freedom.  If I’m going to get what I need today, I first need to feel the steel around my wrists and the cold concrete walls and the lack of sunlight.  Whoever sins is a slave to sin.

The blindness you hear about as Jesus reads from the Isaiah scroll is the kind of blindness you’d have if you were dropped into a maze the size of America, all mirrored walls.  All you could see was two words etched into every wall at eye level – damning guilt – and what you couldn’t see, what you could never see was a way out of that guilt.  That’s the blindness that’s ours if we’re going to get what we need from this service.

Finally, shame is in the picture, the kind of shame that beats up on you, the kind of shame you’d have if your worst sin were pasted across the front of every newspaper in the country and on the opening page of Google and Yahoo.  But this is not a single day occurrence.  It keeps pounding away at you.  And it’s not shame before people, it’s shame before the Almighty. 

If all of this is getting what you need from a church service, maybe your reaction is, “No thank you!”... Stay tuned.  Next week we’ll see plenty of that in “Jesus Preaches in Nazareth – Part II.”

For now, to get what you need from this service, listen to Jesus’ sermon theme.  It was a classic: Isaiah was talking about me!

You’re broke? You have no goodness to give to God? I’ll change that.  I give you my perfect goodness.  You’re imprisoned and you can’t beat the wrap of your own sins?  How’s this – I did your time.  I served your sentence.  It was hell and death, but I went through it to spare you from it.  You’re blind? Can’t find your way out of your own guilt?  Watch your step – those mirrored walls have come crashing down.  Follow me out of that maze – I am the way.  Shame?  Let me tell you about shame.  Your shame became my shame.  There’s none left for you.  You can stand before God exhilarated and confident that he will never turn you away. 

Getting what I need from a church service?  It starts with seeing myself as God describes me, spiritually poor, imprisoned, blind, battered.  It finishes with seeing Jesus as God describes him, chosen by God to be our goodness and our righteousness, to be our curse and our get out of jail free card, to be our light and our sight, to be our clear conscience and our greatest joy.  

Will you get what you need from the church service held last week, next week, this week?  Try this - Once every fifty years the Israelites had a year unlike any other, the year of jubilee – all land holdings were restored to the original owner, all slaves were released from servitude, all land rested by lying fallow for the year.  Maybe once in a lifetime, possibly twice you were able to observe and celebrate the year of jubilee, an extraordinarily great year. 

But the crosshairs on the scope of the year of jubilee were aimed straight at Jesus.  Every time he speaks to you from the pulpit, every time you receive his body and blood with the bread and wine, every time he consoles you with real, God-has-forgotten-about-it forgiveness of your sins, it’s the year of jubilee - that level of joy not once every five decades but every single day.  What you need to get out of a church service Jesus delivers, every time.  He is the homerun of the sermon, he makes the hymns sing, he is the heart of the order of service.  He is what you need, and in these church services of ours, he is what you get. Thank God for that!

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