Sermon thoughts and other musings

Since this was the day of the Blizzard of 2006, I'll post a little more of the sermon than usual, and include the Scripture text as well.

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

One of the qualities I most admire in people is decisiveness. I admire people who face a difficult situation, evaluate it quickly, and have the confidence to act on their judgment.

Jesus was a decisive person, no more so than in this story, where he is faced with an unexpected decision to make. It's unexpected because lepers are not supposed to approach people. In Leviticus 13, lepers are instructed to leave the people, keep their faces covered, and shout "unclean! unclean!" to warn others away.

But this is one bold leper. He dares Jesus to heal him. And Jesus responds - not by healing him at a distance, but by touching him! Touching a leper makes you "unclean". You do not want to be known as a person who has touched a leper. Jesus doesn't care about that; Jesus just cares about healing people.

Jesus breaks the rules in order to heal. Too often, Christians put obeying the rules first, and helping others second. As Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic, recently said: "The church is more concerned with preventing sin than unleashing the potential in people." And that may be the worst sin of all.

We can't be more concerned with staying clean than with healing others. Have you ever known a person who has a box of gift soaps - you know, the really fancy expensive soaps that are just too good to ever be used? It's silly to protect soap from dirt. If you do, it just isn't doing what soap is supposed to do.

We're called to respond to a hurting world with a bold: "I do choose." Does your life say to the world that you are one who has said, "I do choose"? Does the church manage its resources in such a way that it says to the world, "We do choose"?

Pastor McManus wrote in one of his books, "Even at our worst, we are still only one decision away from good." That decision is simple: it's to say, "I do choose." It's to say, "I choose to help", "I choose to give", "I choose to heal".

The world is hurting. What do you choose?

Exorcism. What do you think of when you see that word? For me, it recalls nauseating scenes from the movie, The Exorcist (nauseating because I don't do horror movies well). For many, if not most, exorcisms are pure fiction, and demonic possession is an ancient explanation for maladies that we would refer to as psychotic mental illness, or epileptic seizures, etc.

But thinking of demons and exorcisms in that way removes those concepts from our everyday lives. And this passage, though it tells the story of an exorcism, is very much about our everyday lives.

We have a concept of demons, though perhaps we mean it metaphorically. Have you followed the controversy around James Frey and his book, "A Million Little Pieces"? He reportedly said that "the demons" that fueled his addictions also caused him to embellish his tales in the book.

I don't know if demons are real as distinct beings, or if demons are just a metaphor for our struggles. But it doesn't matter what demons are - I know what demons do. A demon is anything that leads us toward doing that which we know is wrong.

Where God is, demons flee. So where in your life have you locked God out? It's often not a deliberate decision; it's as simple as believing that God's way of being doesn't apply to a facet of your life. Do you believe that you can't do your job according to God's way of being? If so, you've locked God out of your job. And the problem is that where God is locked out - that's where demons can stay.

It's human nature to want to lock God out of parts of our lives. We want to confine God to Sundays, to church, maybe to our families. And for me, I've found that the toughest place for me to let God in is to give God authority over my hopes, dreams, and ambitions. But where God is excluded, demons can stay. In retrospect, the deepest problems I've had came about because my dreams and goals were not of God. No wonder I found myself in a pit, calling to God for help. If only I had let God rule over my hopes and dreams, I would have stayed off that path.

So let God rule over everything in your life. Everything now and everything future. Because where God is, demons must flee.