What Are You Thankful For?
Hebrews 10:11-25
November 19, 2006
You have heard me talk before about the rise in spirituality in America. It’s true. We are becoming more and more spiritual while becoming less and less involved with the institutional church. Much of our spirituality is taking us down avenues far removed from traditional Christianity.
For a long time, we have had Shirley MacClaine and her past lives. Madonna, Demi Moore, and others have embraced the Kabbalah. We have Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and others who have turned to Scientology. In January of this year, Britney Spears had her son blessed in a Hindu temple in Malibu, California, which may have been a good thing if he spends a lot of time riding around in his mom’s car.
Eastern religions seem to be the thing nowadays. All around us we see a large segment of the pop culture that has quickly spun off into Hinduism – or at least Hinduism, sort of. One of the best examples we have is the television show “My Name Is Earl.” I will confess to you that I have seen the show exactly twice, and neither time did I watch the whole thing. So if you want to accuse me of talking about something I know nothing about, this would be a good time to do that.
Here’s my understanding of the show. The central character, Earl, bought a lottery ticket worth $100,000; but he lost it when he was hit by a car. In his hospital bed, he decided that it was karma that caused his bad luck. After a few good deeds, he got his ticket back, and that sealed the deal. He began to make a list of all the bad things he had done, so that he could fix them and cross them off the list.
Or as Alicia Keyes sings, “It’s called karma, baby. And it goes around. What goes around comes around. What goes up must come down.”
During the middle of the last century, there was a conference of religious scholars in England. They were discussing many of the great questions of the faith. One of the things that they began to discuss was the uniqueness of Christianity. What, they wanted to know, was unique about Christianity?
One scholar said that the incarnation was unique. That was soon put to rest when it was noted that there were other religions in history which believed that their particular god came to earth in the form of a human being.
Another scholar said that resurrection must be the unique aspect of Christianity but another participant at the conference reminded him that there have been other religions in history which have believed that their particular god-in-human-form was resurrected.
Te discussion continued until C.S. Lewis spoke up. He said that the unique aspect of Christianity was grace, or the idea that God’s love comes to us free if charge with no strings attached. It is only Christianity, Lewis noted, in which God’s love is unconditional. That blows Earl and his karma out of the water.
The Scripture text for today from Hebrews is about grace – unmerited acceptance from God. Grace is what turns karma on its ear.
Let’s go back to the Old Testament for a minute. Throughout the formative years of the Hebrew people, God developed quite a complicated system of sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. Ritual blood from sacrificed animals flowed freely around the altars of ancient Israel. Once a year, you will remember, they celebrated the Day of Atonement, when a sacrifice would be made by the high priest for the sins of all the people (Leviticus 16).
With the coming of Jesus, God continued to fulfill his promises to forgive sin, but he accomplished it in a much different manner. The author of the letter to the Hebrews says it this way. “Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it. Then he sat down right beside God and waited for his enemies to cave in” (10:11-12).
Let me pull a few lessons out of this Scripture text. The first lesson is found in the grace of forgiveness. The sacrifice of Jesus was a sacrifice of grace. Before the coming of Christ, the sacrifices for remission of sins needed to be repeated continually. With the once-and-for-all-sacrifice of Jesus, all of those other sacrifices became unnecessary. The sacrifice of Christ became the final and only necessary sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.
The sacrifice of Jesus is final. Even though we will all sin again, the price has already been paid; the sacrifice already has been made. We are fit for heaven and made perfect even before we arrive. All it takes is an honest effort to acknowledge our sins and seek forgiveness. There is no way to earn any more grace than we have already been given. Earl may believe that we can undo the bad in our lives and get some good karma, but we can’t do that. Jesus has already done it. That’s grace.
Dennis the Menace and his friend Joey were walking away from Mr. and Mrs. Wilson’s house one day, each with a handful of homemade cookies. The boys had just gotten into some sort of trouble with Mr. Wilson. Joey asked Dennis why Mrs. Wilson still gave them cookies when Mr. Wilson was mad at them. Dennis told Joey that Mrs. Wilson didn’t give them cookies because they were nice. She gave them cookies because she was nice. That’s grace. That’s a wonderful picture of Jesus.
One of the core beliefs of United Methodism is that we are all going on to perfection. Notice that “we are going on” to perfection. It is a process. We haven’t arrived yet. We are still on the journey. But we know that there is grace in the process. That’s the second lesson.
A few years ago when Toni and I were living in Elkhart, we had gone out to lunch one Saturday afternoon towards the end of December. It was a blistery cold day. The snow was blowing when we came out of the restaurant and I was looking forward to getting home and curling up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn for a college bowl game.
There was a woman walking across the parking lot with a plastic shopping bag in her hand. She walked up to us and asked us which way we were going because she needed a ride. I told her that we were headed the exact opposite way she was going. So she just walked off.
I pulled out of the parking lot, looked at Toni, and said, “We’ve got to go back.” So we turned around, pulled up beside her, and took her home. Her apartment turned out to be just a few blocks away, but the walk would have been horrible in the cutting wind.
After we dropped her off, I said to Toni that I wish it wasn’t so hard to be a Christian. In fact, I wondered if I was a Christian at all. I remember what Toni said to me. Some of you have heard me say this around here from time to time, but it was my wife who said it first. She said, “We are all Christians-in-training.”
The people to whom the letter to the Hebrews was written were struggling with their Christian faith. They were being tempted to go back to their old ways of thinking. They were being tempted to try to find a way to accommodate their old ways with their new Christian faith. The writer said, “Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going.”
It’s a process. If we are truly Christians, we grow; we are transformed; we are changed. God doesn’t abandon us as we struggle to live more faithful lives. Grace forgives us and then empowers us to try again.
The third lesson is that there is grace in community. Hebrews says, “Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the Big Day approaching.”
I am fully convinced that we don’t get to heaven on our own. We need each other desperately: to counsel, correct, guide, and encourage. We can’t go it alone. There are times when I am weak in my faith and I need you to prop me up and give me a pep talk. There are times when I am confused and I need you to point out what I am missing. There are times when I’m tired and I need you to help me carry the load. There are times when I am fed up and I need you to just sit and listen to me complain. There are times when I just don’t care anymore and I need you to give me a reason to continue on. There are times when I can’t see Jesus and I need you to be his face so that I know he is real. And my guess is that there are times when you need those things too, and will rely on me to be there.
There is grace in community. I am not sure that Alicia Keys will go down in history as one of the world’s best songwriters. But I am sure that John Lennon will. He reminds us that – “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
Life is not about karma. It is not about earning good things from God. It is not about doing good things now so that good things will happen to you in the future. Life is about grace.
Daniel Caruso was preparing for a Golden Gloves boxing match in Madison Square Garden. As he warmed up, he was trying to really get in the mood for the fight to come, so he started to hit himself in the face. The problem was that he broke his own nose and the fight had to be called off. Grace says that God chooses those who shoot themselves in the foot or jab themselves in the face.
Not too long ago, one of our national polling companies conducted a nationwide poll. They asked the question, “What word or phrase would you most like to hear.” The results may be surprising.
The most often phrase people want to hear is “I love you.” Secondly, people want to hear, “You are forgiven.” And the third phrase people desire to hear the most is, “Supper is ready.”
What a picture of grace. Each of those needed phrases is a window into the heart of God. Through grace, those who need to hear “I love you” are reminded of God’s intentional love. God doesn’t just love because he happens to feel like it. He doesn’t just love because he has an opportunity to do so. God loves because that is what God is. God’s love is intentional. Remember John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”
Those who need to hear, “You are forgiven” are brought face to face with that forgiveness in God’s unlimited and unmerited grace. It is forgiveness with no conditions and no strings attached. It is free for the asking.
And finally, those who want to hear “Supper is ready” are eager to hear God unsurpassed invitation. It matters not to God who you are, what you wear, how much you earn, what sort of car you drive, what denominational label is hanging around your neck, what political persuasion you are. It doesn’t matter to God whether you are black or white, gay or straight, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, or male or female. It doesn’t matter to God if you are bald, or overweight, or short, or tall. It doesn’t matter to God if you come from North America, Europe, the Middle East, or the South Pacific.
Whoever you are, you are invited to come to the table and experience the love of God and the grace of the Lord Jesus. It doesn’t matter who you are – saint or sinner – you are invited to come to God to be forgiven, dusted off, cleaned up, and saved for all eternity.
This congregation will sit down following this worship service to a Thanksgiving dinner. Next Thursday, most of us will join with family, friends, and loved ones around a Thanksgiving feast.
We indeed have much to be thankful for. For most of us, material blessings are heaped up. We live in a great nation. We belong to a loving church. We have the freedom to speak and worship and make our opinions known.
Of course I want you to remember all those things and be thankful. But most of all, I want you to be thankful for the grace of God which is seen most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ. It is grace: free and unmerited. It is lavish and poured out with love.
Earl likes to say, “Karma is a funny thing.” Grace isn’t funny, but it is the reason we are able to stand before God justified and saved. I hope we are thankful for that.
