Fixing Whats Broken

September 15, 2013

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Luke 15: 1-10

This morning I want to invite you on another journey of imagination, which is, I suppose, a grown-up way of saying, Lets pretend. Imagine that you are walking through the place where you work while one of your coworkers if cleaning out a closet that had been boarded up and painted over generations before, perhaps long before the company you work for had ever existed. As they clean out this newly discovered closet, all sorts of amazing and wonderful glimpses of the past emerge. Letters and correspondence from some distant past, photographs of your city with horses instead of automobiles and a streetscape of buildings that is nearly unfamiliar except for a few of the buildings you know yourself to be very old. As your coworker pulls out more items from the closet she finds an old steamer trunk with clothing and personal items that a museum or an historian would find interesting and then, from among a pile of other things, she finds a machine. Not something that is easily recognizable, but one that, to you and everyone around you, has no discernible purpose. It has various openings for putting something in, or taking something out, tubes, and square sliding panels, and gears, lots and lots of gears. It seems possible to turn some of the gears, at least for a turn or two, but no matter how you turn to machine from side-to-side or upside down, none of it seems to make any particular sense. As you and your colleagues look at this machine you are unsure whether it is a complete and whole device or if it is a part that was taken from something larger. And then the question arises from one of your friends, How do we fix it? How does someone go about fixing a machine that you do not understand and whose purpose you do not understand? How could a prehistoric caveman, who has only recently discovered fire or whose most advanced technological achievement is the bow and arrow, even begin to repair an automobile? More and more often here at Trinity, in the United Methodist Church, as well as in churches of all kinds, we hear people say that the church isnt running the way that it should, or that the church is broken. The problem that I have seen is that quite often, the people who believe the machine is broken dont seem to be really sure how it works or what it is that it supposed to do. This morning our message is an exploration of what God says the machine called the church is supposed to do, what is broken, and how we ought to go about fixing it. We begin in Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28, where God declares to his people, very clearly, that his church is broken
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At that time this people and Jerusalem will be told, A scorching wind from the barren heights in the desert blows toward my people, but not to winnow or cleanse; 12 a wind too strong for that comes from me. Now I pronounce my judgments against them.
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My people are fools; they do not know me. They are senseless children;

they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil; they know not how to do good.
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I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone. 24 I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking; all the hills were swaying. 25 I looked, and there were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away. 26 I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.
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This is what the Lord says:

The whole land will be ruined, though I will not destroy it completely. 28 Therefore the earth will mourn and the heavens above grow dark, because I have spoken and will not relent, I have decided and will not turn back. In this condemnation of Israel, God declares that he is going to cleanse the nation of evil by wiping away all trace of his people and driving them out of the land that he had given to them. Why? Because the nation was broken, and then God begins to list what he considers to be wrong with the nation of Israel. The people had forgotten God and they practiced evil instead of good. Thats it. The people had forgotten God, and they practiced evil instead of good. For that, God says that he will ruin the entire land, though not completely, and empty it of its people. This is a potent warning to anyone who worships God. God had chosen Israel and he had poured out his blessing upon them. In an era when we often hear talk of American Exeptionalism, we can easily see in scripture the idea of Israelite Exceptionalism. God had blessed his people and the nation of Israel over and above their neighbors because they were his children, but once they forgot him and began to act in ways that were not his ways, then God was fully prepared to revoke those blessings and remove whatever had made them exceptional. In fact, in several cases, God chooses to bless Israels enemies instead so that those enemies can overrun, pillage, destroy and otherwise punish Israel for their unfaithfulness. In several cases, this punishment included extended periods of slavery in a foreign nation. Ouch. But amid these dire warnings we also find stories of amazingly good news. In 1 Timothy 1:12-17, the Apostle Paul reflects on how bad he once was and how damaging he had been to the cause of Jesus Christ.

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I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. 13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
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Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinnersof whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. 17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen. Paul declares that while he once thought himself to be among the best of the best, he has come to realize that he was actually among the worst of the worst. He so much wanted to please God that he hunted Christians, arrested them, put them in chains, dragged then to Jerusalem for trial and, in at least one case, killed them. Figuratively speaking, Paul spat in the face of Jesus and called Jesus by unforgivable names, but God did not come down on Paul with a sort of bone crushing justice. God did not allow Paul to be captured and tortured and sold into slavery but, instead showered him with mercy and forgiveness. Instead of destroying Paul for opposing him, even through violence against his followers, Jesus meets Paul, corrects him, forgives him, and redirects his passion in another direction that serves the Kingdom of God. The most potent warning of all comes from the lips of Jesus. In Luke 15: 1-10, Jesus is harshly criticized by the Pharisees and other church leaders because, once again, he was breaking the rules. Jesus was talking and associating with riff-raff that good people, especially good religious people, simply do not associate with. Even worse, Jesus wasnt just accidently bumping into these unsavory characters in the marketplace; he was sharing food with them. This is a big deal. A good Jew might occasionally be forced to have business dealings with Romans or Samaritans, or other sinners, but no good Jew would never even think about setting foot in a home that was owned by one of those sorts of people. The home of a foreigner or a sinner like these would be full of unclean things. Just to step foot in such a house would make you unclean and require rituals of purification in order to be accepted back into polite society, possibly before you could even go home. Setting foot in such a home was unthinkable, but sharing food with them, was unimaginable. Showing such people love or hospitality was absolutely unacceptable. But there was Jesus, sitting in the homes of such people, inviting himself to Zacchaeus house, and, apparently this sort of thing happened more than once Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.
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Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesnt he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep. 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesnt she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin. 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Jesus doesnt apologize or make any excuses at all. Instead, Jesus turns the tables on the church leaders and shows even more love to the outcasts. Jesus explains that in Gods economy, these outcasts, these losers, these unclean foreigners, these sinners, are Gods lost children, every bit as valuable as the ones that havent been lost, but all the more wanted simply because they are lost. God condemned his people in the days of Jeremiah because they had forgotten him and Paul was condemned because he had violently opposed the will of God, but the message of scripture has always been clear that God stands ready to forgive all those who have turned away and who have a change of heart. Jesus often said that his entire mission was to seek and to save the lost children of Israel and that is the very thing that the leaders of the church had forgotten. Jesus was sent to earth to fix what was broken, and what was broken was the church. The priests, the Pharisees, and other church leaders had come to believe that the church existed to serve the church and that it was their duty to separate themselves from those people, prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners. The message, and the life, of Jesus turned that entire way of thinking on its head. Jesus spent time, in private, teaching his disciples, but his clear intent and purpose in doing so was to equip them to go out into the world and do the same thing that Jesus did. Jesus intended for his disciples and all of his followers to follow his example and to go out into the world and make friends with those people, to hang out with outcasts and people who are different from the people inside the church, to demonstrate genuine to love to them so that they will feel the power of forgiveness and reconciliation. Many people today are saying that the church in North America is broken and have set out to fix it before they really understood how it all worked, but perhaps whats wrong it is that our churches have become too much like the church leaders that Jesus knew and not enough like Jesus. If we want to fix whats broken in churches across North America and around the world, maybe the thing for us to do is to be more like Jesus and love to the sinners and outcasts in our community so that they will be willing to listen, and to hear, Jesus message of reconciliation and forgiveness.

You have been reading a message presented at Trinity United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Trinity of Perry heights in Massillon, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Trinity United Methodist Church, 3757 Lincoln Way E., Massillon, Ohio 44646. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at subscribe@trinityperryheights.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at http://www.scribd.com/Pastor John Partridge. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.