Sermon for the 5th Sunday in Lent

Sunday 13th March 2005

Preached by Rev Paul Hewitt

When I used to run up and down ladders to change those posters that we have at the Church gate, I remember once meeting up with a man in his ‘middle years’, who had just been to a Baptist Church meeting! (It’s amazing whom you run into just doing ordinary things. It’s like meeting half the parish on a shopping expedition!)

Anyway, he had been brought along to this meeting by his live-in ‘partner’, who was a keen member of this Baptist Church, not a million miles from here! And he was so disturbed by the kind of preaching that he heard there, that he wanted to know, truly, were all Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic and Presbyterian people going to go to hell!? That, basically, was the teaching that evening, that there was no hope for anyone outside of that Baptist Church that night. He was so concerned because his partner seemed to be so wrapped up in it all!
“She” began to intrigue me! It was on the tip of my tongue, but I stopped myself from saying that, “If ‘she’ were so committed to her Church, as she said she is, she wouldn’t be living with you!”. I know, it would’ve sounded all wrong, and he would’ve taken personally, so I didn’t say anything!

But this is the reality; somewhere along the line of her ‘Christian commitment’, this person had missed the point entirely. She had missed the point!

There was once an organisation in Montana which offered a bounty of $ 5,000 for every wolf captured alive. Two hunters named Sam and Jed decided to head for the hills and make some money capturing wolves. Day and night they scoured the mountains and forests searching for their valuable prey. Exhausted after three days of hunting without success, they both fell asleep. During the night, Sam suddenly woke up to find that he and Jed were surrounded by a pack of 50 wolves, with flaming red eyes and bared teeth, snarling at the two hunters and preparing to pounce.
Sam nudged Jed and said, “Hey, Jed, wake up! We’re going to be rich!”

Somehow, Sam seemed to miss the point. He only saw one thing, while the reality of the situation was quite different!

It’s easy to get bogged down in minutiae, which at the end of the day often make us miss the reality of the situation. We can’t see the wood for the trees. The fear is that we get so enveloped and surrounded by what appear to be huge imponderables that we miss the point entirely.

It would be very tempting to comment on all that has happened at Dromantine in recent weeks when 35 Primates of the Anglican Communion met to discuss the repercussions of the Windsor Report and how best to hold together the worldwide Anglican Communion, given the difficulties which have arisen from the Anglican Provinces in North America particularly with regard to homosexual relationships. But I am waiting for Brian’s sermon on the matter, and then I’ll feel better informed. This is one comment.

What we are about to celebrate at Easter is all because we are broken people. It’s not popular to say that so much these days. But if we are not broken people then why did Good Friday and Easter have to happen? It is precisely because we are broken people that Jesus had to come to fix us and make us well again. That’s the real point!

There was a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco:
“Hello. Mom and Dad, I’m coming home. But I have a favour to ask. I have a friend I’d like to bring home with me.”
“Sure”, they replied. “We’d love to meet him”. “There’s something you should know”, the son continued, “he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us”
“I’m sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live”.
“No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us”.
“Son”, the Father said, “you don’t know what you’re asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can’t let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He’ll find a way to live on his own..”

At this point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing from him for days. Some time later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believe it was suicide.

The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognised him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn’t know…
their son had only one arm and one leg.

Jesus didn’t come because we are perfect people. Jesus came because we are broken people. And he came to fix us up.

No matter who we are, no matter what we have done, and I believe no matter what our sexual orientation is. Isn’t that the real point? That it is an unconditional love! Isn’t that the point of Easter, isn’t that the point of this thing we call Church. If we miss that, then we miss the point entirely.