RECONCILED AS FRIENDS

 Today is the third Sunday of the Easter season.  The central theme of the Easter season is about  believing in the presence of a living God and risen Lord in the midst of a world that has done everything it can to drive God out of the world; a world where God seems to be absent so much of the time; a world that is profoundly broken; a world where humanity often makes horrendous choices that destroy peace and harmony; a world of sin that results in fear, violence, injustice, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, crime, exploitation of others and the environment; estranged families; choices that like a dark cloud, obscure the light of God. 

 Three weeks ago we emerged from the Lenten season.  The central theme of Lent is about where to look for God.  Lent’s message is that we don’t find God sitting in heaven behind a control panel pushing buttons manipulating events on earth.  We don’t find God in a divine pulpit, removed from the world, shouting religious platitudes (mostly judgmental) to the residents of earth.  We don’t find God on a heavenly judge’s bench keeping score of your sins and mine.  The theme of Lent is that we find God in the most shocking and unlikely place we could ever find God; the last place we would ever look – on a cross dying!  We find God, without reservation, making himself totally vulnerable to the same broken, sinful, dying world that you and I live in every day; a God who opens himself up to all the wrong and sinful choices we make and takes the resultant suffering into himself.  We find God in solidarity with human suffering and pain.

 On Thursday, I tuned in to the history channel to see a documentary about Auschwitz. There was a little piece towards the end of the documentary about a Polish Jewish man who survived Auschwitz, and after the war he visited his little village in Poland where he had lived, and he went to the house that he had owned and lived in that had been taken from him.   He finally arrived, and he knocked on the door.  A little man answered the door.  He identified himself to the man.  The man now living there was suddenly very uncomfortable, and after a few minutes of conversation he blurted out, “I know why you are here. You left money hidden in this house and you have come back for it.  You left a treasure hidden here.  If you tell me where it is I will split it with you 50-50.  Tell me! Tell me!  Tell me, where it is and we will split it equally.”

 Disgusted and disappointed, the Jewish man simply left.  Of course, there was no treasure.  He had only come back to see his former home; to see what had happened to it; to see who was living there. 

 Many years later the man returned to his little village  one final time.  The village looked about the same, and he felt emotional stirrings in his soul and old memories surface as he walked down the street towards what was once his house. When he finally arrived at the house and stood before it, he was shocked by what he saw.  The place was in shambles, boarded up and uninhabited.  The rest of the houses and buildings were in relatively in good repair, but not his former house.  He wondered what had happened to make it this way. 

 A woman walked by, and he stopped her. He identified himself, and asked if she knew anything about what had happened to the house.  She told him that she had heard of his previous visit, and after it the man who lived there came to believe there was a treasure hidden away in the house.  The man spent years literally tearing the house apart, little by little, in a frenetic attempt to find the treasure.  He finally died, but the house had been so badly damaged by his obsession to find the alleged treasure, it became uninhabitable – and the village just boarded it up. 

 This is a powerful parable-like story.  We are all on a quest to find a treasure.  Our treasures may be very different, but they are fueled by a soul-deep thirst to find some kind of meaning or sense of fulfillment.  We all worship and exercise faith in numerous gods who promise to quench that thirst.  In the process we invest ourselves in those gods and commit ourselves to those gods: the god’s of culture, materialism, power, security, self-indulgence, wealth.  Our gods make big promises for fulfillment, security, self-realization and happiness.  We can become so obsessive-compulsive about our quest that we can end up rationalizing and justifying actions that leave considerable pain and damage to others, the world and ourselves in their wake. 

 The god’s we worship all have an altar upon which they demand we place something sacred.  Spouses betray life-long promises on the altar of unfaithfulness and passion.  Corporate executives cook the books on the altar of personal gain.   Multinational corporations sacrifice most anything and everything sacred on the altar of profit at all costs.  Most of us look the other way from the great suffering masses on this planet placing them on altars of indifference.  Care for the environment gets roasted on the altar of self-indulgence.  Religious extremists, Christian, Muslim or otherwise, even sacrifice love on the altar of God-sanctioned hatred and contempt.   

 As I reflected on the three scriptures for today printed in our bulletin, I see three things that help me wrap my arms around what it means to believe in the one true God in this kind of world.

 First, it means heeding a call to repentance, “Repent and turn to God…” (Acts 3:19) Repentance literally means to turn away from one thing and turn towards something else.  The world is in need of repentance in that sense, and, if I am honest, I am in need of repentance – everyday.  The popular god’s are not doing the job; not solving the problems; not quenching the inner thirst that parches every soul on this planet. Repentance for the Christian is a daily turn toward the one true God and a turning away from the alluring gods of the culture and the world that are shallow and a sham.

 Second, it is a turn towards genuine love: “See what love the Father has given us…” (I John 3:1) The love referred to here is not the kind of love that I am able to muster on my own, and I can muster a certain amount of love on my own.  I can love my family, my friends, people like me, a few not like me.  I can sometimes even rejoice at the success of others without envy. I can sometimes show compassion toward the unfortunate.  But my love is fickle and easily loses resolve.  The one thing I cannot do on my own is love my adversary and my enemy: love the one who dislikes me; or hates me, or rejects me, or condescends against me; or judges me; who would crucify me literally or figuratively.  I cannot do that.  I cannot love like that.  But when I repent, that is, turn away from my phony, shallow popular gods and turn towards the one true God, I am turning towards that kind of love.  And when I turn I become the object of that love, because you see, in my hot pursuit of my shallow gods I have been God’s enemy all too frequently in this world, and I will be again because I will succumb again to the phony god’s and place something sacred on their altars of sacrifice, and in so doing lose some of my humanity all over again.  It is a turn towards a love that forgives me, and embraces me; brings me into relationship with God and restores my humanity and identity as a child of God.   

 Third, this love towards which I turn is a person, crucified and risen, and he has a name - Jesus Christ.  Not long after the resurrection he pursued the very ones, who to a person, had abandon him at his hour of greatest need and had become, for all practical purposes, his passive enemies.  And he asked them, “Have you anything to eat?”   And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence – no longer enemies, but reconciled as friends. 

 As we gather around this table today and receive these symbols of his body and blood this morning, we are turning toward the one true God; turning toward the most authentic love the world has ever known; turning toward a person, the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ with whom we are now reconciled as friends; who challenges and invites us to take his kind of love and grace into a very thirsty world.    Amen.