The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for September 16, 2007

Texts: Luke 15:1-10/1 Timothy 1:12-17

Title: “The Most Basic Question of All”

              Yesterday two of the teams with the proudest histories in collegiate football, the University of Michigan and Notre Dame squared off in Michigan.  Though these teams have faced each other numerous times in the past, this year’s contest will be footnoted for posterity for the most undesirable reason.  Both teams took the field having lost their first two games, something unprecedented over the several decades the two schools have met.  As if that were not bad enough, Michigan lost its first game in an upset that many commentators are ranking as one of the biggest, if not the biggest, upset of all time.  Notre Dame, on the other hand, suffered its two losses by margins greater than twenty points, after losing the final two games of last year by those same margins.  In its entire history Notre Dame has not strung together four such losses.

              Never have the fight songs of Michigan, “Hail to the Victors,” and Notre Dame’s “Victory March” been sung with such a weak echo than the first two weeks of this collegiate football season.  As the cameras panned the stadiums, the pain, and yes, grief, of the fans of those two schools was expressed in just about as many ways as pain or grief can be expressed.  You say, “those folks ought to get a life.”  Well, you need to know that for many of the supporters Michigan and Notre Dame, football IS life.

              No, the University of Michigan and Notre Dame are not accustomed to losing football games. With no such experience to draw upon, the players, coaches, and fans of those schools find themselves at loose ends.  The refusal to believe that they could jarred off their pedestal, has let to the inevitable questions of why they have fallen, to speculation about the job security of the two head coaches.

               Accustomed to walking with a swagger, the Notre Dame football player or fan is always ready to announce his connection with his school. Winners want you to know they are winners. In the case of a football team, or for that matter any other sport’s team, sales of team apparel and memorabilia always tracks the success of that particular team.    

              The United States is to the family of nations what Michigan and Notre Dame are to collegiate football, a perennial winner.  Any debate there? Do we not take it for granted that we will be among the elite on every scale by which nations are measured?  Though our nation has been jarred by some setbacks along the way, forcing us to undertake steps to correct real, or perceived failures, setbacks of any real substance are seldom experienced. 

              Swagger?  We Americans carry ourselves with a certain swagger. Though we may dismiss that characterization, I believe the perception is widely shared by citizens around the world. An example dating to another time. The Second World War saw England become a staging area for the Allied assault on the axis powers.  For the vast majority of the British, but in time also for the French and other nations on the continent, this would be their first exposure to Americans.  Noteworthy for the Europeans was the swagger maintained by the American GI.  First impressions gained as a result of the war have only been reinforced in the postwar era.

              Winners swagger, that swagger grounded in the way they perceive themselves.  As a fan of University of Michigan football, that person perceives herself in a certain way relative to the football program.  She is a winner.  Losses should not happen, and if they do, the causes should be identified immediately, and corrective action taken. No obstacle should stand in the way of the victory I deserve.  It’s my right.  Nothing else is acceptable.

For life’s perennial winners whether they happen to be football powerhouses, or the best and brightest in any respective field, victories, after a certain amount of time, become viewed as an entitlement, with anything less than victory unacceptable.

              Those who market the goods we purchase market those goods to winners, or those who aspire to be winners, assuring us that winners deserve only the best, be that our toothpaste, our pain remedies, or our beer. Winners reinforce their standing by driving the right car, using the right credit card, and having the right cellular phone.

              Winners expect to win. There was a time in our history where winning came quite naturally to the church.  Many of us have lived through a period when the growth of the church was robust, and affiliation with a church was the norm for successful, upwardly mobile families.

                Times have changed.  The church has lost its standing in our communities, its voice is becoming increasing faint in the public square. The gospel churches were given to communicate no longer commands the authority it enjoyed in an earlier day. Conversely, while the church has lost standing among the educated and prosperous folk in the West, it is growing by leaps and bounds among the poor and disenfranchised of the Southern Hemisphere and of Africa and Asia.

                  That is not to say people in the West, Western Europe and North America, are out and out rejecting the gospel, but it happens that most growth occurring across the American church is occurring where ministries promote those aspects of the gospel that are most attractive to winners.  The message stressed tends be that God wants his children to succeed and be prosperous, and that our personal happiness ranks among God’s foremost priorities.  Christianity is presented as a route to self-actualization, challenging the individual to renounce those behaviors that are preventing him or her from realizing his or her God given potential.

              It seems to me that minister preaching and teaching in this current context inevitably must entertain the most basic question of all. Does the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which offers freedom from bondage, salvation for the sinner, really have anything to say to winners who have never felt themselves bound or in need of deliverance? Closer to home, does the Gospel of Jesus Christ have anything to say to us? 

              First, how do we define gospel?  You know the classic definition.  Gospel is the Good News.  But it is Good News of a particular variety, isn’t it?  While the gospel in no way condemns the aspirations we maintain for success, prosperity, and personal happiness, the basic thrust of Jesus’ Gospel is addressed not to the winner, but to the loser, the person I am defining as the sinner in need of salvation. 

              Luke has the Pharisees and scribes, the winners of Jesus’ day, berating Jesus for giving his attention to losers. Luke informs us, by my reading of his gospel anyway, that the Pharisees and scribes missed the Gospel.  More joy in heaven over one loser who scores a win, than all the winners who have known nothing throughout their lives other than wins.

              Losers track their dirty feet into God’s house, but the winners Jesus addressed with his gospel do all they can to maintain the appearance of cleanliness. If that happens to involve a good bit of self-deception and dishonesty so be it.        

              Again the question, does the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which offers freedom from bondage, salvation for the sinner, really have anything to say to winners who have never felt themselves bound or in need of deliverance? Can the gospel really be convincing to us if we fail to identify, at least at some level, with that lone sheep Jesus set out to find?

              The connection between the lone sheep, the sinner, the loser, and folks who affiliate with churches like this one, is difficult to make for the simple reason that sin is by and large a topic that has fallen out of the church’s repertoire. (It is certainly not a staple in my repertoire.) You don’t show up here to be scolded for your failings.  Moreover, the portion of our service where the faith community offers personal silent confession, followed by public corporate confession, is frequently perceived as an arrow shot at a non-existent target.  

              The issue of sin may be out of favor today, but historically it was never allowed to drift from the Protestant consciousness. Professor John Thompson writes that the “insistence on the thoroughgoing sinfulness of human beings” is a prominent part of our Protestant heritage.  He continues, “It is common to hear parishioners complain about being called sinners----if they even hear this ‘s-word’ mentioned. Yet our [Protestant forbears] regarded a strong acknowledgment of sin as necessary both for salvation and for the well-being of the Christian life. [He concludes.] To know oneself as a sinner is truly to know oneself as the lost sheep whom the Shepherd sought to rescue.”

              You and I have a shepherd, but how many of us are really convinced deep down that we need one?  If we deem ourselves not to be in need of one, to what part of Jesus’ message are we, the self-confident and self-assured winner types, responding?     

              The gospel inspires confidence and self-assurance in our relationship with God, not by congratulating us for lives well lived, but by assuring us that though we have not lived well, even lived very poorly, a Savior is ready to put our lives right. Repeat, first comes the personal acknowledgment that we have not lived well.  Only after that does the gospel find its target.

              The gospel found its target in the life of a man who by his own acknowledgment not only denied his need for a Savior, after all he was a winner, but aggressively persecuted those who followed the Savior. He believed that his persecution of Jesus’ followers brought honor to God.  But then came an awakening.  He was forced to acknowledge that he was a sinner, and oddly enough that admission opened him up to a self-awareness and freedom surpassing anything he had every known.

              The Apostle Paul, not content to enjoy that self-awareness and freedom as purely a personal benefit, turned his life, his personal story, becoming an object lesson for others who had no previous acquaintance with the freedom and peace he enjoyed.  To the church at Philippi he writes, “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” All wins accumulated in his life prior to Christ Paul regarded as loss.  He regarded himself as a loser made whole.

              The gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t, however, about converting wins to losses, or engendering guilt or self-loathing, rather it invites us to achieve a new level of personal honesty, honesty that allows us the freedom to admit to ourselves what Jesus and those with whom we have contact already know: we don’t measure up to our own basic standards of conduct, let alone those of our Lord.  It allows us the freedom to use the s-word in self-reference.  The gospel helps us to recognize that insofar as the human race is concerned there are no winners in the pure sense, only people who to varying degrees lost.    

                Churches like this one can provide a great deal to the people it would serve.  It can impart valuable life lessons.  It can provide a social outlet.  It can provide opportunities to better the lives of people lacking food and shelter.  It can be gathering place where children learn about the faith and the traditions of the church, and adults engage in Bible study or conversation around the great issues of the day.

                But what about the proclamation of the gospel?  Does the gospel of Jesus Christ have anything to say to winners?  Very little, I think, so long as winner is satisfied with the state of his or her life as it is.

                 Churches like this one can provide a great deal to the people it would serve. But the very best work it will do is to expose those who worship in its sanctuaries, and participate in the life of the communities it has formed [it can expose them] to the reality that Jesus came to earth to not to congratulate winners, but rescue losers, and insofar as sin as insinuated itself into our lives we are all losers.   

               The gospel is for losers, those who recognize that sins is a persistent fixture in our lives.  Fact is, only a few of us are ready to own up to being losers. Instead thinking that the dirt and grime of the world has not attached to our lives, or that God has given us a pass, we give Jesus little room to work in our lives. Jesus came to save, but the ninety nine stood around patting themselves on the back, content to live off the wins righteousness earned them, failing to recognize that the lost soul who acknowledged his sin and repented, was the biggest winner of all.

              PRAYER

              You come to us, O Christ, as a brother to save rather than accuse, as brother to hear our confession rather than condemn, as a Savior to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption rather than to establish a kingdom in this world.  You bear with the weaknesses we attempt to conceal, inviting us to confess our sins as the first step to a new life. Where lack of imagination limits our access to this new life you hold out for us, expand our vistas that each day we may progress further into holy mystery.

              To the world’s way of calculating profit and loss, the shepherd, O God, had no business leaving the ninety-nine to search for one. Yet through an act those of mature judgment might deem irresponsible, even reckless, the Savior taught the world how he values a single soul. To all souls encumbered in the bonds of sin you offer release, O Christ, and we are grateful, but often from afar. May the gospel, Good News, you brought with you to earth resound with renewed force among all who have heard its summons, that your church, O Christ, may be the temple of hope and righteousness you created it to be. 

              Lord, help us find Sabbath rest amid the push and pull of responsibility and obligation.  Disciplined in activity that will earn us a living, we lack discipline that might secure for us a more enriching life.  Work and worry, fret and care, our minds seldom disengage long enough to rest, the new gadgetry of the internet age keeping us on line all our waking hours.  Free us from the mindset that we must always be available, that great burden that has descended upon us as citizens in this global village.

              Abide in all those places where suffering and despair rake the human hearts. Extend mercy to those deprived of voice or vote in matters bearing on their futures and the futures of their children. Persecution and neglect continue to keep populations in chains, O God, even as the oppressor amasses his ill gotten gains. Destroy the plans of those who plot evil, O Lord, even as you raise up a new generation of leaders who will take seriously the moral challenges and opportunities of leadership.

              Lord awaken us to new possibilities existing for us in ministry.  Even as we acknowledge that the church is much more than a building, often our hopes and aspirations are played out within our buildings.  The obligations that come with maintenance of programs and buildings often absorb us so thoroughly that our time is consumed simply addressing those concerns. In mission to the brother or sister in need we honor the vocation you have given us, O Christ. May what we know to be true in our minds pertaining to mission not remain there as an aspiration to be fulfilled on some future date, but what the mind knows inspire deeds undertaken today.

              Living God, be with those recently impacted by earthquake in Indonesia, hurricane in Texas and the western part of our state.  Support, O God, all who grieve the loss of loved ones, of personal property, and businesses as a result of these natural disasters. Be with aid workers, nurses, and doctors, and all others involved in relief efforts.

              We lift up family and friends with special needs: Be with Christian Noble Chancellor, born prematurely.  Be with Anna Christine as she tries to sort out her life.  Be with Shane, Pam, Rudy, Wayne and Ken in their battles with cancer.  Abide with Richard Dickey and grant him strength