Sermon for February 6

Let the words my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen

There’s an old story of a man (or woman) going to heaven and St. Peter giving the new guest a tour. They were going down a long hallway when St. Peter opened the door. The guest looked in and saw a bunch of people walking around drinking iced tea. “This is the Lutheran Room.” St. Peter said. He closed the door and they walked further down the hall and he opened another door. The guest looked in and again he saw a group of people walking around drinking coffee. “This is the Methodist Room.” They walked further down the hall and came to another door. St. Peter told his new guest that he couldn’t look in. “Not even just a peep?” he begged. St. Peter finally said, “Ok, but I’m going to open the door and very quickly close it.” He opened it just a bit and closed it right back. The guest really wasn’t able to see anything. “Well, who’s in that room?” St. Peter said, “O, that’s the Baptists, they think they’re the only ones here.”

We like to put labels on people or groups of people. We call people Mennonites, or Jews, or Episcopalians, or blue collar, or white collar, or liberals, or conservatives, or tall, or short, or children, or men, or women, however you might to compartmentalize people. We have a name for everybody. And we who label people wind up being the only one who doesn’t have a label. We stand by ourselves, alone.
But that’s not what it’s supposed to be. We are not supposed to be alone. Even God said so. We are to have companionship. That’s why God created “the man” a helper. A helper to be by his side. Now, before I dig myself in to a deep hole, how do we define helper? Who do we call on for help? Usually, it’s a higher power. Maybe even God. So, that helper is someone we look up to and respect.

If we were to look at the reading from Hebrews, we read the following: “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet.” The author of Hebrews is telling us that mankind is made just below the angels and above everything else in creation. He is telling us how Jesus, the very Son of God, came down to us as a human and was, for a while, a little lower than the angels. He became one of us—human. And even then, the angels ministered to him while he was in the wilderness being tempted for those 40 days.

But. But in Hebrew culture and in most other cultures, there were two groups of humans that were regarded as non-persons. Women and children. They were mostly considered as property. This was why the disciples were trying to keep the people who were bringing children to Jesus that he might touch them. The children were non-persons—nobodies—they didn’t count in the scheme of things. They weren’t to bother men, much less a teacher like Jesus. They just didn’t count. In fact, they were fully dependent on other people, their fathers) for everything. They were helpless non-persons who were fully dependent on their fathers.

But Jesus, seeing this, got rather ticked off. “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The kingdom of God belongs to nobodies! It was not necessarily that the kingdom, or the word of God be accepted with the innocence of a child, or with a mind that had not been corrupted, but more the fact that the children (and that’s us, the children of God) as being helpless in our search for salvation.

We do nothing to merit salvation, we have no claim of it; and therefore, we are as helpless as the children were that Jesus blessed. God intended us to live in that garden forever, but because we were made a little lower than the angels, we had freedom of choice and we chose disobedience; to wanting to be like God, to doing things by ourselves for ourselves; without help from God or, for that matter, anyone else as long as we come out on top. But the reality is that we can’t do it; we can’t go through life without assistance from our neighbor, much less God. And we certainly can’t gain salvation on our own just by being or doing good.

The question then becomes ”how do we get back to Eden (home)? How do we get back in community with God, our Father?” We have to realize that we are just like the children—helpless and fully dependent on our Father. We beg forgiveness of our sins and live in community with our neighbor. We live without labels for we are all humans created in the likeness of God.

Heaven will not be full of Lutherans or Methodists or Baptists. Heaven will be full of people who believe in the Word, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. It will be filled with people who realize that their only hope is in Jesus, who gave his life for us, was resurrected and ascended back into heaven where he came from. It will be filled with Christians and perhaps whomever God wills. God takes us nobodies and makes us somebodies! We are God’s children and God’s children are special and or loved by God.

And we strive to live in community as God wanted us to. Today is World Communion Sunday—a day in which the Church, the whole Church, is united in one common event—the sharing of Christ’s body and blood that is given to us in the presence of bread and wine. Today, when we partake of Holy Communion, let us come together with all other Christians in a sense of unity. We are all one body in Christ, the body of Christ, receiving God’s call and obeying his call in His great plan for us.

God loves you and so do I!