Are We Too Broken To Be Saved?
Good Morning Friends,
When the bag containing the gift of pottery slipped from my friend’s hands onto the tile floor, the note that sounded indicated that the bowl had been broken. He felt bad and was forgiven. But as I think about that event I also think about how way too many of the expressions of mainline churches and God’s people seem as cracked bowls….broken. Surely people are brought to brokenness by divorce, rejection, pride, death, financial loss, anger, fear, rebellion, willful sin and failure. And sometimes the church is part of the brokenness. But the potsherd can be recreated by the potter. Sometimes it has to lose its identity and sometimes the pieces can be reused by the maker. I wonder if the church can be mended in much the same way. Regardless friends, God loves us in our brokenness and expects us to be transformed into the image of Christ never the less. We are to look like Jesus. We are to sound like Jesus. We are to act like Jesus. And if we refuse to do this we remain deformed in the image of the world…broken. So we look for God’s response to our brokenness as we look with new eyes at our life and what we call church and its cracked and shattered pieces. And so we explore today a confession of our condition between connectedness and brokenness. Today we explore parts of a new confession and seek Jesus in validation of its words for the potsherds need to be taken to the potter to be reformed. Here we acknowledge the Unity of God and a hope in the Unity of the Body of Believers as well. And today we ask if it is a flaw or a feature. Today we look in the mirror. Today we ask if we are to remain deformed or continue to reform. Today we ask honestly about unity, even as we seek reconciliation, and justice. And here we wonder about the challenges for diversity in the Middle East and even in our own county and country for we know this is difficult and contentious. Friends, loving others is so hard. So today we come to Jesus and ask: Are We
Too Broken To Be Saved?
Scripture: This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.
Jeremiah 18:1-6 (NIV)
“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making? ‘Does your work say,’ He has no hands’?
Isaiah 45:9 (NIV)
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:1-6 (NRSV)
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
Luke 10:25-28 (NRSV)
because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”
Romans 10:9-10:11 (NRSV)
Message: A young Catholic man enters the confessional booth one day and says, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have committed the sin of vanity. Twice a day I gaze at myself in the mirror and tell myself how good looking I am.” The priest opens the window, takes a good look at the young man and says, “My son, I have good news. That isn’t a sin. It’s simply a mistake.” Well, that is a joke that reflects one definition of confession but there are other ways to look at this situation for confession is no joke but it does have other meanings. You see to affirm that Jesus is Lord is not to admit wrongdoing but is also a confession. And in the Presbyterian Church, to confess can also mean to state clearly and concisely what you believe to be true. And so a “confession of faith” is a statement of belief. The Nicene Creed, and the Apostles’ Creed are perhaps the most well-known. But there are others. A dozen in total that have been added over the years. Some confessions are born out of longstanding tradition, some originate in a time of crisis or change, but all Confessions attempt to interpret the scriptures faithfully, and answer the questions, “What is the church called to be and do in this time and place?” The Confession of Belhar is the most recent Confession and it was just adopted by the Presbyterian Church of the United States this summer. It was written as a protest against the system of apartheid and one has to wonder why it is being adopted by the PCUSA as a confession now unless the work in not yet done. The first and foremost of Belhar’s three themes is Unity. We will focus on that today. The theme takes its inspiration from today’s scripture reading in Ephesians. “We believe in one holy, universal Christian church, the communion of saints called from the entire human family.” Here are a few excerpts of the Confession of Belhar:
“We believe…that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God’s Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which must be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God must continually be built up to attain; that this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered, and accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted.”
“Therefore, we reject any doctrine…which professes that this spiritual unity is truly being maintained in the bond of peace while believers of the same confession are in effect alienated from one another for the sake of diversity and in despair of reconciliation.”
“We reject any doctrine which explicitly or implicitly maintains that descent or any other human or social factor should be a consideration in determining membership of the church.”
“We believe…that the variety of spiritual gifts, opportunities, backgrounds, convictions, as well as the various languages and cultures, are…opportunities for mutual service and enrichment within the one visible people of God.”
“We believe…that we suffer with one another for the sake of righteousness; pray together; together serve God in this world; and together fight against all which may threaten or hinder this unity.”
“We believe that this unity of the people of God must be manifested and be active in a variety of ways: in that we love one another; that we experience, practice and pursue community with one another; that we are obligated to give ourselves willingly and joyfully to be of benefit and blessing to one another; that we share one faith, have one calling, are of one soul and one mind; have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope; together come to know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ…”
Suffice to say that though Christ’s work on the cross is done, our work, who have homogeneity in our pews, has hardly even begun to witness what God has planned. Yes in some ways we are reformed but perhaps in more we are still reforming under the creative hand of the Potter.
Pray we are transformed by the Holy Spirit. Pray we gaze upon the person of Christ as we pray. Pray we introduce Jesus to other people through his image in us. Pray that even though our brokenness limits our functionality it is not absolute. Pray still for emotional healing. Pray still for physical healing. Pray we move beyond doubt to trust. Pray we find the blessing in the brokenness. Pray we have the courage to change and to seek God’s help in the process. Pray the veil is removed and we gain new perspective. Pray that we reflect Christ. Pray we are filled with His Spirit and are transformed into something new. Pray we never feel broken beyond repair. Pray we demonstrate a visible unity so the world might believe. Pray we lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in the bond of peace and love without forfeiting reconciliation and justice. Pray we realize that Jesus prayed that we would be one. Pray we realize that all creatures of our God and King are called to praise the Lord. Pray we not forget to confess Christ in our seeking of Unity, Justice and Reconciliation. Pray we are made whole by the Potter.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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