Sample Sermon

Sermon given the first Sunday of Lent 2009 by The Rev. Valerie Coe Lowder

Seeing Everything Clearly

Ephesians 3: 18 - 19
Mark 8: 22 – 26

Remember that you are dust, I said, as I marked your foreheads with ashes.  It might be a frightening thought – to some people -- a dismal thought.  You are dust, and to dust you shall return.  But I have always found it strangely comforting.  Remember that you are human.  Remember that you are tired, that you are limited, that you are fragile.  Remember that you need to slow down, that you need to rest, that you need to think and pray.  Remember that you don’t know it all.  Remember that you can’t do it all.  Remember that you really don’t understand, you’re really not in control, you don’t have to make it right all by yourself.  Relax.  Remember what you tend to forget.  Remember who you are. 

Richard Stearns was the CEO of Lenox, the company that makes America’s finest china and silver and other luxury goods.  He lived with his wife and five children in a 10-bedroom house on five acres just outside Philadelphia.  He drove a Jaguar, and flew first-class on business trips to Paris, Tokyo, London and Florence.  He sat on the board of his kids’ Christian school and attended a venerable suburban church.  He was very satisfied with his life, what he considered a “successful Christian life.”  Then one day, quite unexpectedly, he received a phone call from World Vision, a Christian relief and development organization, which was searching for a new president.  He didn’t really want to dedicate himself to dealing with poverty and disease and suffering.  It was way out of his comfort zone.  He had a very fine life.  But he couldn’t escape the thought that starving children were more important to God.  For weeks, he prayed about the call, and often his prayer was to “send someone else to do it.” 

But 60 days later he found himself in Uganda, in a thatch hut, talking to a 13 year-old boy whose name, like his, was Richard.  The boy Richard was trying to raise his two younger brothers by himself, because both of their parents had died of AIDS.  Not knowing what to say to the boy, the man asked him what he hoped to be when he grows up.  Even as he asked the question, he berated himself about how ridiculous it was to ask this of an impoverished child who had lost his childhood.  “A doctor,” the boy said, “so I can help people who have the disease.”  “Do you have a Bible?” he asked next.  The boy ran to the other room and returned with a book with gold-gilt pages.  “Can you read it?”  “I love to read the book of John,” the boy answered, “because it says that Jesus loves the children.”  Richard Stearns’ tears began to flow.  “Forgive me, Lord,” he prayed.  “Forgive me.  I didn’t know.” 

On the one hand, he did know.  He had a Bible, and he’d read it.  He knew that there are twelve million orphans in the world.  But until that moment, they had not come together.  The impoverished children were something less than people to him -- maybe figures or numbers, or indistinctly walking trees.  But then he made a connection with a boy named Richard, and he was able to see very differently. 

The miracle story in Mark 8 is a strange one, very earthy, very uncomfortable.  A blind man comes to Jesus begging for healing.  Jesus takes the man by the hand and leads him out of the village.  He spits in his eyes and lays hands on him.  At other times, Jesus heals with an authoritative word; but this time, healing is very bodily and even kind of crude.  I remember squirming under my mother’s thumb, after she had licked her finger, trying to get the sleep out of the corners of my eyes.  Jesus heals this man with some spit and some hands-on, down-to-earth help.  But he doesn’t do it cleanly or right away.  It is, like most of our healings, messy and incomplete. 

“Can you see anything?” Jesus asked.  “Not really.  Better than nothing, I guess.  I see people, but they look like walking trees.  Not very clear at all.  Not really what I was expecting or hoping for.” 

Sometimes Jesus heals with something like a miraculous word.  A person is remarkably converted and transformed, unrecognizably changed.  You may have had one of those bolt-out-of-the-blue experiences, when suddenly you found yourself to be a new creature, and everything changed, and what had been dark and obscure and confused became flooded with light, and everything was clear.  Sometimes that happens. 

But not usually.  Most of us require more than one conversion experience.  We are Christians, but not always recognizably like Christ.  We have faith, but it is clouded by doubt and fear.  We mean well, but we don’t always do good.  We are faithful, but not as faithful as we might be or hope to be.  We are fallible.  Our transformations are incomplete.  Our vision is still unclear. 

There is grace in the declaration:  You are dust.  There is humility in receiving the ashes of Lent.  It is good to be reminded and to remember that Jesus is not finished with us.  There is so much we don’t know.  There is so much for which we need to be forgiven. 

If we think we’ve made it, we’ve got it all together, we’re fine the way we are, that’s when we are likely to miss the holy moments that are life-changing, life-giving, life-affirming and healing. 

But when we know that things are not as they should be, then we may be willing to let Jesus do whatever he needs to do to us. 

Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, once prayed:  “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”  Are you willing to let God break your heart?  Are you willing to let Jesus lead you and touch you and spit in your eyes, if need be?  Are you willing to humble yourself, to become poorer, to change, in order to see as God wants you to see?  Lent is a time to give things up.  What will you give up for Jesus’ sake, if you remember who you really are, and what Jesus did? 

Salvation is often a messy and laborious process.  Thanks be to God!  Because we see the mess.  We feel tired and heavy-burdened.  But don’t despair.  This may be the best that we can do; but there is more that Jesus can do for us.  There is something clearly better.  Thanks be to God! 

Remember that you are dust, and don’t insist on having things your way.  Let Jesus have his way with you.  Jesus said, “I am the way.”  We have not arrived.  We are on “the Way.”  God is not finished with us yet.  Amen.