Monday, March 14, 2005
I entitled Sunday’s sermon, “When God Gets Out Of Line”. We discussed how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, an appropriate ending to Lent. God often acts outside the lines of our expectations, defying our limited faith and myopic vision. As difficult as it is to admit, in that regard, we are just like the Pharisees who constantly challenged Jesus about who, what, where, when and how he could perform miracles. The end result is we either to not recognize, or do not accept, the miracles God performs in our daily lives.
When we sit in our circles, whether in Bible study or committee meetings (necessary and worthy events in church life), we must look beyond the circle to the world Jesus loved and offered his life. I am amazed at how passionate churches become about which side of the chancel the piano is on, the color of new paint in the fellowship hall, and about who does and does not have access to certain rooms in the church. That is a church sitting in a closed circle, focused on itself, its needs and possessions. Many of those same churches fail to see the weeping young mother, the struggling older man at our door.
Sometimes Jesus acts “out of line” to disrupt of “comfortable circles of complacency”.
Lord, if I am in Ezekiel’s valley of dried bones, focused on the dust of the unimportant, the relics of religion rather than the Spirit Who gives new life, please act out of line, breathing new life into my parched and weary soul so that I may see your mission beyond the comfort of my complacency. Give me a new set of expectations of what you can, rather than what you cannot, do; if only I can muster a mustard seed of faith. Help me erase the lines I have drawn to segregate those things that are “mine”. Forgive my childishness. O Lord, all I am and all I have is yours. Use me and my meager possessions as instruments of your amazing love and grace to all mankind. Amen.
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