Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
You may not realize this, but so many of our common English language metaphors came directly from scripture. When some one is a good citizen, dependable and reliable, we say “He’s the salt of the earth”. The image comes from Jesus’ own lips in the Sermon on the Mount. We tell someone to “turn the other “cheek” when we want to give a thumbnail sketch of someone who overlooks injustices or is patient in suffering. Tonight, we have a familiar one that come from St. Paul. He speaks of “a thorn that was given me in the flesh”. This thorn refers to something that caused him real trouble. He never specifies what it is, but is caused him real distress and created separation between himself and God.
Many people have speculated about this thorn in Paul’s flesh. Some say it was a character defect – perhaps he was quick tempered or could be arrogant at times. From the evidence he left behind, Paul was a brilliant man. Really bright people often grow impatient with people who aren’t as quick to “get it” as they are.
Others have suggested that he had a personal weakness and was prone to giving into temptation when it came his way. Perhaps it was strong drink or another temptation of the flesh. We don’t know. It is better that we don’t because then we can project our “thorn” into his “thorn”.
How does the evil one get to you? The Satanic always seems to find our weakness. Are you envious of the success of others and enjoy running them down? Are you stingy and ungiving, often led by fear that there won’t be enough? Do you spend time on the internet visiting sites that are unhealthy and that draw you away from the true commitments that you have made and could give you really enhanced life? Do you hold grudges?
As a student of psychology, I learned from Freud that all of us have places of brokenness, powerful hurts from the past that will not heal, or defects of character that we cannot change and always seem to conspire to defeat us. You don’t have to talk to anyone for very long before they return to these conflicts or pains, because they always seem to repeat themselves. Any conflict that is unresolved resurfaces and causes psychic stress. The past shapes and hold us.
I was at a preaching workshop on Monday and one of America’s best preachers, told a story in a sermon that resonated deep in my soul. He was angry at one of his children and he hurled out some venom at her. “Nickie you are nothing but trouble”. Their relationship changed and he could never take back the impact of those words, no matter how much he apologized. The damage was done.
I remember hearing hurtful words from my Dad. They left their scars. I promised God and myself that I would never do anything like that if I were given the privilege of having a child to raise. Once one of mine was trying to help me in my garden, I was pressed for time and I said, “Please let me do this by myself. This is Daddy’s time to play. This is where I play”. My child left me to play and never came back. We all blow it from time to time, I fear, and fail the ones we love the most. I wish I could undo the day, I wish I could have kept my pledge to never hurt my children. But I am sinful flesh. We are all sinful flesh. We will hurt others. There is no escape.
The miracle and mystery of the Christian faith is that it is in our very sin that God meets us. I can not take back my words. I can not re-write my history and whiteout the parts I’d like to edit. That is why God becomes a human being. Jesus takes on our sin. Jesus takes our sin to the cross. Jesus absorbs our sin into his own body so that sin’s effects can be extracted from us.
Only God can do that.
That is the miracle of grace. God gives the world, and us of the world, a perpetual fresh start. St. Paul says it so beautifully in 2 Corinthians 5: “for our sake God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”.
Tonight we have a bunch of nails up here. They represent the sins of the past that each of us has willfully committed. We may have inflected pain on others, not just the white washed sins from which we so easily excuse ourselves. They represent the sins of the systems of which we are a part, the intransigent quagmire of Middle Eastern politics which ensnares and entraps the whole world. They represent all the “sins” which demonic forces use to enslave all of us, both the ones we benefit from and the ones which ultimately steal life from all of us.
We give to God tonight all that separates us from God and from each other. We give it knowing that Jesus accepts it, obliterates it, and gives us healing and wholeness in return.
Thanks be to Jesus; Thanks be to God.
Pastor John