A sermon from Sunday

Sermon for 24th October 2010 Lerwick

Some people have said that the problems with society today is that it has no awareness of how sinful it is, and it should be the churches place to be telling society how sinful they are and how they can make amends.
Should such a society therefore repent then things can come right again.
I meet a number of people who believe that the problems they face today are the result of them doing something wrong in times past, sometimes years past. It is thought that punishment is being meted out for past sins.
(Jeremiah touched on this syndrome in last weeks reading which it is worth pointing out comes much later on in time than this weeks reading from Jeremiah.)
Perhaps this is an age old issue on both a personal and community point of view.
Should the church therefore preach more about this sinful nature than it has, have we, to wander into the topic raised by Jeremy last week, become too attuned to our culture today and not enough counter cultural?
Jeremiah’s people really did believe that things were wrong in the nation, (they had just been invaded by the Babylonians) because they had strayed from God’s ways and not observed His laws in their land. Indeed the prophet’s role was to point this out to them. Drought was also seen as a direct punishment from God.
Jeremiah’s people had allowed their feet to wander without restraint and now they were paying the price……
Sometimes I wonder if we still live with this frame of mind of straightforward rewards and punishments, the eye for and eye and tooth for tooth mentality. I have mentioned this syndrome before in sermons about do good and be rewarded, do Bad and feel the pinch.
But is this perhaps too simple a way of reckoning things?
Beware!
The Pharisee felt he had done everything right, the “I” came straight to the top, and yet did God hear his prayers?
He was always in church, he did everything he could, he gave regularly and sacrificially, he even did things he did not need to do….. and God chose to hear the cry of the other, the sinful tax collector!
Surely there is something wrong here?
The church that Luke was writing to was not too dissimilar to ours today. A mix of people from various backgrounds, and with various financial resources. Last weeks story about the widows constant prayer prevailing over the unjust judge would have encouraged the poorer members and reminded the more wealthy of their need to help others in need. Yet today’s story immediately puts the self righteous in their place as the prayer that is “seen worthy” is the prayer of the person who centres themselves on the undeserved mercy of God (we call that “Grace”)
Jeremiah, like Daniel, aligns himself with the people. He is the one who has sinned. There is no getting away from that. And despite this recognition over and over again, he is able to say that,
“You O Lord are in the midst of us, and we are called by your name; do not forsake us”
Last week Jeremy quite rightly helped us to see that Prayer is about our ongoing relationship, it is not about how frequently we ask, or about what we ask for..It has more to do with being alongside growing into each others likeness, being His people and He being our God.
It is often tempting to talk of sins as if we were able to make a list of the wrong things we have done, either corporately (though this often does not feature) or individually (and of course we can always make a longer list for someone else sometimes!) and miss the point that it is is Sin that is important not “sins”. Being sinful is the place we find ourselves in, and it is God who redeems us from this place because he is alongside us and calling us to be like him.
Perhaps perversely therefore the one who thinks they have sinned more, as well as the one who thinks they have done more right things, are both likely to have their prayers un heard.
We are seen justified only when we grow closer to God in a close and loving relationship and realise that he is indeed in our very midst and not some distant potent puppeteer that has nothing much to do with us except in a controlling omnipotent sort of way.
The Mighty fall, and the humble are lifted high.