Sermon Part 2

As I look at this country, it is easy to get depressed. We are less and less able to trust one another, and since September 11, we have to be more and more concerned about passing a security check when we come into airports, or even ballgames for that matter. Look at our political situation. We seem to be stuck in perpetual gridlock, with more and more politicians and political activists who care less and less about the common man, and more about lining their pockets. While certain drug rates are going down, uses of drugs like heroin, crystal meth, and ecstasy are on the rise. With every trailer in the rural Midwest a possible drug den. After situations like Katrina, racial tensions seem on the rise. Street children are estimated to be one million strong. One-eighth to one-fourth of all women in this country will be the victim of a heinous sex crime. Fifty percent of all marriages in this country end in divorce. In many ways it might seem kind of hopeless. Yet as people of the good news of Jesus Christ we have a message for this nation of ours—GOD LOVES US, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET.
I wish I could tell you that the stories in the churches are a lot different, but they are not. How many churches have we heard of that have been scarred by clergy that violated their trust through stealing from them, or sleeping with vulnerable members of the congregation? How many times have we walked into churches and saw only about 20-30 senior citizens, and wondered where the hope for our future is and what the future of that churches witness would be if one bad flu bug hit the congregation? And what the church of the next generation is going to look like? Is there even going to be any young people in churches like ours in 20 years? How many churches have settled for a social club and a pretty meeting space instead of insisting that the gospel is about following Jesus no matter the cost and the discomfort? How many times have we been in churches that have been lulled into a sleep of complacency and half-hearted Christianity? Or that spend most of their energy arguing about who is right and who is wrong instead of spending their energy asking who is hurting and alone, and how can we introduce the grace and goodness of God to them through our life together? How often do we see churches building human kingdoms instead of participating in the Kingdom of God. The picture can sometimes seem bleak. And I am a firm believer that for revival to come in this city, in this nation, in this world, it needs to start with a radical sense of repentance from within the church. It seems we are far away from that happening. But we still have a message for our churches. That message is that—GOD LOVES US, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET.
Garth Brooks describes the hopelessness that we see and feel in his song, The Change, when he says that trying to go against the hopeless flow of selfishness and evil is like “trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss”. Yes, as this song goes on to remind us, as ministers, it is this flood of hopelessness that we are called to strive against. We, like Ezekiel, are called to share the good news of God’s faithful lovingkindness in the midst of the suffering cries of the people around us.
There are many ministers that could serve as examples to us of this. Think of an example that is known to all of us, the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. At 26, he led a whole city in a non-violent bus boycott. He went on to inspire a nation. How did he do that? Through a message of hope, that is how! Hope that love is stronger than hate. Hope that can suffer through imprisonment, beatings, and suffering. Hope that justice would come in the morning. Hope that the dream of racial and ethnic barriers would crumble under the power of a dream. Hope that—GOD LOVES US, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET.
Yet, this message does not just apply to the big picture issues. It applies to the ordinariness of our everyday lives. Many of us are dealing with struggles in our own lives. We are teenagers that wonder if the day will ever come when our parents will actually listen to us and understand us. We are parents that wonder if our children will ever appreciate us. We are single people wondering if we will ever get married. We are married people wondering if we are going to be able to survive another year in a marriage where it doesn’t seem that our spouse loves us. We wonder if we will ever do more than live paycheck to paycheck. We wonder if we will ever get out of debt. We are in midlife wondering if our life is really amounting to much. We are growing old, and wondering if anybody will value us or listen to us any more. We are lonely people. We are people who fill our lives with half-hearted obligations instead of setting Christ-centered priorities. We are people who struggle with depression and anxiety. We are people who struggle with anger and rage. If statistics are right, at least half of us men in the church have some sort of struggle with internet pornography. Even more with lust in general. We judge our friends and our neighbors for not living up to our impossible standards. We steal by taking long lunches at work, and taking shortcuts on our taxes. We eat too much and we exercise too little. In other words, most of us can look at our lives and see sin and struggle. WE ALSO NEED TO KNOW IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES THAT GOD IS LONGING TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES. IN OTHER WORDS, GOD LOVES US AND GOD IS NOT FINISHED WITH US YET EITHER.