Got You Covered
If there are images in this attachment, they will not be displayed. Download the original attachment
CREATION M6 SERMON NOTES (DRAFT) NOVEMBER 22, 2009
TITLE: Got You Covered
TEXT: Genesis 3:6-12, 21; Luke 15:11-24
BIG IDEA: We can overcome our shame as we recognize what God has done to clothe us, as we remind ourselves of how we have been clothed by God, and as we are experience a sense of being clothed by God through other people’s affirmation.
Do you have any recurring dreams?
While I was a student and for many years after--I had a recurring dream that I was enrolled in a math or French class and had forgotten to attend class and study for the course all semester long… and about ¾ of the way through the semester I realize I have a big exam and I’m unprepared for it and it’s too late to drop the course--and I’m panicking that my GPA is going to sink through the floor.
Now, that I’ve been out of school for a while--I don’t have that dream very often.
But, I have had another recurring dream.
It’s not long before I am supposed to speak maybe at church or maybe some event, but I have no idea what I will be speaking. I have some sketchy notes, but have no idea what the symbols are supposed to trigger in my memory…
So, I begin to shoot from the lip… the auditorium empties.
Or I’m supposed to be speaking somewhere and I’m in a car on the way all I have is wrinkly old, dirty old shirt to wear (show as a prop)… and no pressed shirt to wear.
I don’t know exactly what the dream means, but I suspect that it has something to do with the fear of not being properly “dressed” for something significant.
Many of us have a fear of not being properly “dressed” for something… and that fear originates from Adam and Eve, the first human beings, separating from God in the Garden of Eden.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been in Genesis, and we’ve seen how Satan approaches Eve and Adam in the form of a serpent. He tempts them by suggesting that if they eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they won’t die; in fact, they will really live for the first time.
As their eyes are opened, they will become like God, knowing good and evil. They will be wise. They will be autonomous, free, fulfilled, more fully human than ever before.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, whenever Satan tempts us, he always offers us a glittering promise that we will benefit in some great way. But when Adam and Eve separate from God and bite the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, are they in fact better off? Are they wiser? Are they freer? Are they more fulfilled? Are they more fully human? No.
As we have seen in these past weeks, when they separate from God by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they immediately sense that something has been taken from them…something has been stripped from them. So they reach for a fig leaf—something to give them a sense of covering, security, and protection.
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve talked about how one of the radioactive effects of turning away from God, of sin in the world, is that we feel this sense of deficiency. So we reach for some kind of fig leaf to cover our shame. For some of us, the fig leaf that we turn to is educational achievement. For others, it is accomplishment at work.
Mike Tyson is a boxer that many people love to hate (photo). I recently saw the documentary film on Mike Tyson. In that documentary Tyson describes how he was born into a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood.
He says, “My mother was sexually promiscuous and I didn’t know who my father was.”
Mike says, “I was a fat boy and picked on and bullied… other kids would rob me, and steal my quarters and nickels…. One time a bully stole my glasses and stuck them in the trunk of a milk car. I couldn’t believe a human being would do that to another human being and I just ran because I was so afraid.” He said, “I have had a big inferiority complex my whole life, but I learned to box when I was 12 years old.” He says, “I was so scared before my first amateur fight that I went downstairs to the subway, and thought, ‘Man, I should get on the train and never come back.’ I just wanted to leave because I was so scared. I didn’t want to fight anybody.”
Part of the reason that Tyson was so driven to succeed as a boxer was so that no-one would ever bully him again. In his words, “No-one would ever f____ with me physically again.”
Mike Tyson was also driven to succeed so that he and others would know that he was not a loser…that he was somebody.
Though most of our stories are not quite as dramatic as Mike Tyson’s how many of us have pursued education or work or something else in our lives to prove to ourselves, or perhaps to someone significant, we are not a loser… that we are somebody? I have been there. I know what’s it’s like to try define myself by what I do, I know what it’s like to try to sew together a fig leaf garment to cover me through what I do.
The problem, of course, with this approach as I said a few weeks ago is that if we turn to education or our work (which are good in and of themselves) as our master, our god, if we turn to one of these things for our primary source of security, identity, and meaning… and if we fail this god, the education god or the work god will punish us harshly by making us feel even more shame.
Even if we, by an objective standard, serve our education or work god well, we will likely feel even then that what we have done is not quite enough and our hearts will remain dissatisfied.
Earlier this year I read a column by Pico Iyer in the New York Times. He was writing about how he now wanted to simplify his life, after having felt like he had had enough of the rat-race in the corporate world. He wrote: “I remember how in the corporate world I always knew there was some higher position I could attain which meant that like Zeno’s arrow I was guaranteed to never arrive, always to remain dissatisfied.”
(Education and work in and of themselves are gifts from God, but if we turn to them as a fig leaf, as something to cover us and give us a sense of security, identify, and meaning, they will fail us).
Others turn to a relationship as a fig leaf, to give them a sense of being covered.
The continuing popularity of reality TV shows, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, demonstrate how strong the belief is that if we find a beautiful, successful, and caring partner, I’ll be a somebody, then I’ll be happy forever.
Like work and education, a special relationship with someone may be a great gift from God, but if, as I said a few weeks ago, if romance or a relationship becomes our master and we fail it… the person you want to be with doesn’t feel the same way you do, or if we break up with your partner, the romance god will punish us harshly.
Even if you serve this master well, having a great relationship alone will not fully give you the feeling that we are fully covered either.
(As I have shared with Sakiko, I have lived long enough now and have been sufficiently fortunate to have experienced many of the things that I was hoping to experience in life; whether it was a position that I wanted to play on the high school football team, or being admitted to a certain school, working the company I really wanted to work for, marrying the woman that I had been in love with for years, having a loving family, a great church to serve, and a great dog! And yet, I know, as grateful as I am for these things, they are not enough to cover the sense of deficit that I can feel. I know that no earthly achievement can do it. Only God can do that.)
So, as this message unfolds, it is directed to me as much as it is directed to anyone else here.
So how is our shame, our sense of deficit, covered?
In Genesis 3 we have seen how Adam and Eve separate from God, and as a result feel an emotion they have never felt before—shame… shame before God, a shame before themselves, self shame, and shame before each other.
Then in Genesis 3:21 we read:
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife Eve and clothed them.
We read in Genesis 3:21 that God tailored garments of skin for Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had sewn fig leaves together and made clothes for themselves. We have a fig tree in our back yard, and I can assure you, though I have never tried to do this, that sewing fig leaves together will not create comfortable nor durable clothes. So God, in his mercy and love for Adam and Eve, though they had chosen to separate from him, creates garments from animal skins for them. God covers them to help warm them from their physical chill and their metaphysical (or spiritual) chill.
We human beings have separated from God and sinned and experienced shame, but God in his love for us covers us with new garments (use a prop).
Commentator Walter Bruggemann, says, “God does for the couple what they could not do for themselves. They cannot deal with their shame, but God can, will, and does.”
For God to have created these garments of animal skins would have required what? The sacrifice of an animal.
This sacrifice of an animal to cover Adam and Eve’s shame foreshadows what God himself would do years later when God became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ was 33 years old, he allowed himself to be stripped naked, beaten, punched, spat upon, humiliated and shamed. God in the person of Christ allowed himself to be sacrificed for us on a Roman cross. And as people walked by they simply assumed that Jesus Christ was being punished by God for his sins. But as Isaiah tells us in chapter 53: “He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace upon him and through his wounds we are healed.”
God in Christ lived the perfect life that we were supposed to live. On the cross he bore in his body the punishment for the sin that we deserved. When we offer ourselves to God, God takes the perfect record of Christ, and transfers it to us… and sees us as perfect, as though we have never sinned. He removes our dirty clothes and places on us new, pressed gleaming shirt (use prop). God says… I’ve got you covered. That’s grace.
In the book of Zechariah 3 we read of how Joshua, the high priest, is being accused by Satan. He is standing before an angel, dressed in dirty clothes (literally in clothes marred with feces). The angel spoke to his attendants, "Get him out of those filthy clothes," and then said to Joshua, "Look, I've stripped you of your sin and dressed you up in clean clothes."
God says, “This symbolizes what I will do in a single day through my servant, the branch (a reference toJesus Christ). On a single day I will remove the sin of my people. I will clothe them with new clothes and they will be free from sin and shame.” God says, “I’ve got you covered.”
In the gospel of Luke 15, Jesus tells the story of a father who has a rebellious son. His son in effect says, “I’d be better off if you were dead—and then I’d have access to my inheritance money now.” The father gives him the cash equivalent to the portion of the estate that he would have coming to him if he had died.
The son takes his father’s money, goes to “Las Vegas.” He spends it on extravagant meals and on casinos, massage parlors, and prostitutes. But when he has blown his father’s money, it’s a recession and he is unable to find work, so he is a failure. The only job he’s able to get is feeding pigs (which in for a person of his culture would be the lowest of the low). He is homeless. He is hungry. And he is covered with a blanket of shame.
He thinks to himself, “I need to go home. I am not worthy anymore to be called my father’s son. I will go to my father and say, ‘I am not worthy to be called your son. Hire me as one of your servants’.” The son begins to make his way home. He is homeless, hungry and smelling like a pig. Then the father, who would walk to the edge of his property every day to look for him, sees a long way off…just a speck on the horizon and he ran after him. In the Greek, the technical word is the term for racing in a stadium—he sprinted, like he couldn’t get to his son fast enough. He, of course, would have had to lift the ends of his robes and show parts of his legs as he sprint, which would have been considered extremely shameful for any grown man in the Middle Eastern culture of the day.
The father reaches his son embraces him, and before his son can begin his speech about not being worthy to be called his father’s son, his father shouts to one of the servants, “Quick. As fast as you can, get him a new set of clothes, the best set of clothes. He puts them on him and says, “Son, I’ve got you covered. Let’s party!!”
This is what God does for us, if we come home to him. He embraces us and says, “Quick! Get him or get her a new set of clothes, the best set of clothes. He who has been lost has been found and she is alive again!”
Do you see yourself wearing these gleaming white garments that God has purchased for you at the price of his son? When you recognize just how much you are loved by God, and what you’ve been clothed in, you can toss away your old shirt and become a person free from shame.
“God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We cannot deal with our shame, but God says I’ve got you covered.” Grace.
As Lee reminded us last Sunday, if we have come to God and been received by him and have been clothed with new garments, then we no longer need to live under the mastery of Satan or sin or shame in our lives, but we can live under the loving mastery of God.
(POWERPOINT: SHOW IMAGE OF STONE HEDGE).
When you are tempted to feel ashamed, or to get back into activity that will induce shame or to define yourself by what you do or by what you’ve achieved, by a relationship you have or want to have, you can remind yourself: “I am clothed in a garment that God has purchased for me at the price of his Son.” God has me covered.
As Lee said last Sunday, “You can keep reminding yourself, ‘I belong to God. I belong to God. I belong to God. I belong to Christ. I am baptized. I am baptized. I am baptized’.”
In my baptism, my old self, my old clothes fell off and I have been raised up… given a new clothes… new life!
(If you have never been baptized, and if you want to be clothed by Christ, you want to know that you belong to him, is there anything that would prevent you from taking this step and being baptized?)
So we can live free of shame when we remind our self what God has done for us. God does for us what we cannot do ourselves. God says, “I’ve got you covered.”
We can hear the voice of God saying, “I’ve got you covered directly through the Scriptures or through the Spirit speaking to our heart, and we can hear the voice of God through ourselves as we as remind ourselves of our baptism, and we can hear that voice through each other.
Some of our shame comes by what people have said to us.
At the youth retreat led by our youth pastor Catlin last weekend, he had our youth write out on labels what they had been named in their lives. Here are some of the words: failure, just a waste of space, not pretty enough, home wrecker, F_____ up. Perhaps we feel certain labels more acutely as young people, but a person can feel a label for life.
Catin had the youth put the labels on the cross as a way to recognize that God had removed these labels on the cross through Christ…
Words can make us feel like we’re dressed in something horrible.
But words can also clothe us, words can also bring life.
Part of the reason that being connected in a real community and in authentic relationships is so important is because it provides a context for God to clothe us through each other. Sometimes God gives us a sense of covered by his love through a friend.
Are you in the kind of relationships where you be clothed in God’s love and cover others in God’s love?
Are you in some relationship where you can share your story and receive and offer support and affirmation?
In a New York Times Magazine article, Hal Niedzviecki writes about his Facebook account. Soon after start he joined Facebook, Niedzviecki had accumulated about 700 "friends." He writes, "(I was) absurdly proud of how many ‘friends’--and even strangers--I'd managed to sign up." But the irony was he had more online friends than ever before, he had fewer friends to actually hang out with than ever before. So he decided to have a Facebook party to turn his online friends into actual in person friends.
Hal invited all 700 of his "friends" to a local bar for a party. Fifteen said they would be there, and sixty said they might be there. He guessed somewhere around 20 would show up.
He writes "On the evening… I took a shower… splashed on some cologne… I put on new pants and a favorite shirt. I headed over to the neighborhood watering hole and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, one person showed up." A woman he didn’t even know. She was a friend of a friend. They ended up making small talk and then she left. He sat the bar alone and waited and waited and waited till midnight. Hal concludes his article with these words: "Seven hundred friends, and I was drinking alone that night."
Do you a friend or two who can reflect God’s love to you in a way that makes you feel clothed?
I have a friend named Elizabeth who is a member of a small group that I am part of. She was a star javelin thrower in university and she can hit me between the eyes with the hard truth about that I need to hear.
But, she has the way of seeing good things in me that I don’t see, or I have forgotten existed. She names them, and in my friendship with her I feel stronger. I feel clothed by the grace of God.
I have experienced that with my wife, my mom, a few close friends.
When we are loved and affirmed by a friend, a family member, something in us lifts and straightens. We feel clothed by God.
We can do that for others, as well.
Sometimes people will hesitate to affirm others because they are afraid the person will get a “big head.” But most people are not over-confident.
Even people who seem to have an air of swagger are often insecure.
We do well to take the risk and offer affirmation, and as we do it will shape the lives of people as they feel clothed by the love of God.
Henri Nouwen was a Catholic priest who taught at Harvard and Yale and served during the last years of his life as a pastor with a mentally handicapped community in Toronto.
He writes in his book, Life of the Beloved, that one afternoon a resident of the community, Janet, approached him and asked for a blessing. Nouwen, placed his thumb on Janet's forehead and traced the sign of the cross. Janet jumped back and said, "No… that doesn’t work, I want a real blessing."
Nouwen, surprised, asked “Janet can I give you a real blessing at the community's evening prayer service.” Janet agreed.
That evening, after the prayer service, with about 30 people seated in a circle, Nouwen said “I want to give Janet a special blessing.” Janet immediately rose, came to Nouwen and wrapped her arms around him and put her head in his chest. Nouwen said, "Janet, I want you to know you are God’s Beloved Daughter. You are precious in God’s eyes. Your beautiful smile, your kindness to people in this house show us what a beautiful human being you are." Janet paused for a moment, looked up at Nouwen and smiled. She felt clothed in God’s love and returned to her place in the circle.
BTW, to his surprise, several other members of the community immediately asked for a blessing and Henri held each of them as he spoke a personal blessing to them.
Then he was amazed when one of the staff asked if he could have a blessing, too. They felt clothed in God’s love, too.
Do you hear God saying, “Where are you?” As God called Adam and Eve he calls us. And as we come to him, we will find that we are not condemned, but clothed in gleaming new garments. We’ll find God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves… that he’s got us covered. We live out this reality by reminding ourselves and each other that he’s got us covered.
Prayer: Do you sense God clothing you?
Do you sense his blessing over you?
CREATION M6 SERMON NOTES (DRAFT) NOVEMBER 22, 2009
TITLE: Got You Covered
TEXT: Genesis 3:6-12, 21; Luke 15:11-24
BIG IDEA: We can overcome our shame as we recognize what God has done to clothe us, as we remind ourselves of how we have been clothed by God, and as we are experience a sense of being clothed by God through other people’s affirmation.
Do you have any recurring dreams?
While I was a student and for many years after--I had a recurring dream that I was enrolled in a math or French class and had forgotten to attend class and study for the course all semester long… and about ¾ of the way through the semester I realize I have a big exam and I’m unprepared for it and it’s too late to drop the course--and I’m panicking that my GPA is going to sink through the floor.
Now, that I’ve been out of school for a while--I don’t have that dream very often.
But, I have had another recurring dream.
It’s not long before I am supposed to speak maybe at church or maybe some event, but I have no idea what I will be speaking. I have some sketchy notes, but have no idea what the symbols are supposed to trigger in my memory…
So, I begin to shoot from the lip… the auditorium empties.
Or I’m supposed to be speaking somewhere and I’m in a car on the way all I have is wrinkly old, dirty old shirt to wear (show as a prop)… and no pressed shirt to wear.
I don’t know exactly what the dream means, but I suspect that it has something to do with the fear of not being properly “dressed” for something significant.
Many of us have a fear of not being properly “dressed” for something… and that fear originates from Adam and Eve, the first human beings, separating from God in the Garden of Eden.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been in Genesis, and we’ve seen how Satan approaches Eve and Adam in the form of a serpent. He tempts them by suggesting that if they eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they won’t die; in fact, they will really live for the first time.
As their eyes are opened, they will become like God, knowing good and evil. They will be wise. They will be autonomous, free, fulfilled, more fully human than ever before.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, whenever Satan tempts us, he always offers us a glittering promise that we will benefit in some great way. But when Adam and Eve separate from God and bite the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, are they in fact better off? Are they wiser? Are they freer? Are they more fulfilled? Are they more fully human? No.
As we have seen in these past weeks, when they separate from God by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they immediately sense that something has been taken from them…something has been stripped from them. So they reach for a fig leaf—something to give them a sense of covering, security, and protection.
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve talked about how one of the radioactive effects of turning away from God, of sin in the world, is that we feel this sense of deficiency. So we reach for some kind of fig leaf to cover our shame. For some of us, the fig leaf that we turn to is educational achievement. For others, it is accomplishment at work.
Mike Tyson is a boxer that many people love to hate (photo). I recently saw the documentary film on Mike Tyson. In that documentary Tyson describes how he was born into a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood.
He says, “My mother was sexually promiscuous and I didn’t know who my father was.”
Mike says, “I was a fat boy and picked on and bullied… other kids would rob me, and steal my quarters and nickels…. One time a bully stole my glasses and stuck them in the trunk of a milk car. I couldn’t believe a human being would do that to another human being and I just ran because I was so afraid.” He said, “I have had a big inferiority complex my whole life, but I learned to box when I was 12 years old.” He says, “I was so scared before my first amateur fight that I went downstairs to the subway, and thought, ‘Man, I should get on the train and never come back.’ I just wanted to leave because I was so scared. I didn’t want to fight anybody.”
Part of the reason that Tyson was so driven to succeed as a boxer was so that no-one would ever bully him again. In his words, “No-one would ever f____ with me physically again.”
Mike Tyson was also driven to succeed so that he and others would know that he was not a loser…that he was somebody.
Though most of our stories are not quite as dramatic as Mike Tyson’s how many of us have pursued education or work or something else in our lives to prove to ourselves, or perhaps to someone significant, we are not a loser… that we are somebody? I have been there. I know what’s it’s like to try define myself by what I do, I know what it’s like to try to sew together a fig leaf garment to cover me through what I do.
The problem, of course, with this approach as I said a few weeks ago is that if we turn to education or our work (which are good in and of themselves) as our master, our god, if we turn to one of these things for our primary source of security, identity, and meaning… and if we fail this god, the education god or the work god will punish us harshly by making us feel even more shame.
Even if we, by an objective standard, serve our education or work god well, we will likely feel even then that what we have done is not quite enough and our hearts will remain dissatisfied.
Earlier this year I read a column by Pico Iyer in the New York Times. He was writing about how he now wanted to simplify his life, after having felt like he had had enough of the rat-race in the corporate world. He wrote: “I remember how in the corporate world I always knew there was some higher position I could attain which meant that like Zeno’s arrow I was guaranteed to never arrive, always to remain dissatisfied.”
(Education and work in and of themselves are gifts from God, but if we turn to them as a fig leaf, as something to cover us and give us a sense of security, identify, and meaning, they will fail us).
Others turn to a relationship as a fig leaf, to give them a sense of being covered.
The continuing popularity of reality TV shows, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, demonstrate how strong the belief is that if we find a beautiful, successful, and caring partner, I’ll be a somebody, then I’ll be happy forever.
Like work and education, a special relationship with someone may be a great gift from God, but if, as I said a few weeks ago, if romance or a relationship becomes our master and we fail it… the person you want to be with doesn’t feel the same way you do, or if we break up with your partner, the romance god will punish us harshly.
Even if you serve this master well, having a great relationship alone will not fully give you the feeling that we are fully covered either.
(As I have shared with Sakiko, I have lived long enough now and have been sufficiently fortunate to have experienced many of the things that I was hoping to experience in life; whether it was a position that I wanted to play on the high school football team, or being admitted to a certain school, working the company I really wanted to work for, marrying the woman that I had been in love with for years, having a loving family, a great church to serve, and a great dog! And yet, I know, as grateful as I am for these things, they are not enough to cover the sense of deficit that I can feel. I know that no earthly achievement can do it. Only God can do that.)
So, as this message unfolds, it is directed to me as much as it is directed to anyone else here.
So how is our shame, our sense of deficit, covered?
In Genesis 3 we have seen how Adam and Eve separate from God, and as a result feel an emotion they have never felt before—shame… shame before God, a shame before themselves, self shame, and shame before each other.
Then in Genesis 3:21 we read:
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife Eve and clothed them.
We read in Genesis 3:21 that God tailored garments of skin for Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had sewn fig leaves together and made clothes for themselves. We have a fig tree in our back yard, and I can assure you, though I have never tried to do this, that sewing fig leaves together will not create comfortable nor durable clothes. So God, in his mercy and love for Adam and Eve, though they had chosen to separate from him, creates garments from animal skins for them. God covers them to help warm them from their physical chill and their metaphysical (or spiritual) chill.
We human beings have separated from God and sinned and experienced shame, but God in his love for us covers us with new garments (use a prop).
Commentator Walter Bruggemann, says, “God does for the couple what they could not do for themselves. They cannot deal with their shame, but God can, will, and does.”
For God to have created these garments of animal skins would have required what? The sacrifice of an animal.
This sacrifice of an animal to cover Adam and Eve’s shame foreshadows what God himself would do years later when God became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ was 33 years old, he allowed himself to be stripped naked, beaten, punched, spat upon, humiliated and shamed. God in the person of Christ allowed himself to be sacrificed for us on a Roman cross. And as people walked by they simply assumed that Jesus Christ was being punished by God for his sins. But as Isaiah tells us in chapter 53: “He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace upon him and through his wounds we are healed.”
God in Christ lived the perfect life that we were supposed to live. On the cross he bore in his body the punishment for the sin that we deserved. When we offer ourselves to God, God takes the perfect record of Christ, and transfers it to us… and sees us as perfect, as though we have never sinned. He removes our dirty clothes and places on us new, pressed gleaming shirt (use prop). God says… I’ve got you covered. That’s grace.
In the book of Zechariah 3 we read of how Joshua, the high priest, is being accused by Satan. He is standing before an angel, dressed in dirty clothes (literally in clothes marred with feces). The angel spoke to his attendants, "Get him out of those filthy clothes," and then said to Joshua, "Look, I've stripped you of your sin and dressed you up in clean clothes."
God says, “This symbolizes what I will do in a single day through my servant, the branch (a reference toJesus Christ). On a single day I will remove the sin of my people. I will clothe them with new clothes and they will be free from sin and shame.” God says, “I’ve got you covered.”
In the gospel of Luke 15, Jesus tells the story of a father who has a rebellious son. His son in effect says, “I’d be better off if you were dead—and then I’d have access to my inheritance money now.” The father gives him the cash equivalent to the portion of the estate that he would have coming to him if he had died.
The son takes his father’s money, goes to “Las Vegas.” He spends it on extravagant meals and on casinos, massage parlors, and prostitutes. But when he has blown his father’s money, it’s a recession and he is unable to find work, so he is a failure. The only job he’s able to get is feeding pigs (which in for a person of his culture would be the lowest of the low). He is homeless. He is hungry. And he is covered with a blanket of shame.
He thinks to himself, “I need to go home. I am not worthy anymore to be called my father’s son. I will go to my father and say, ‘I am not worthy to be called your son. Hire me as one of your servants’.” The son begins to make his way home. He is homeless, hungry and smelling like a pig. Then the father, who would walk to the edge of his property every day to look for him, sees a long way off…just a speck on the horizon and he ran after him. In the Greek, the technical word is the term for racing in a stadium—he sprinted, like he couldn’t get to his son fast enough. He, of course, would have had to lift the ends of his robes and show parts of his legs as he sprint, which would have been considered extremely shameful for any grown man in the Middle Eastern culture of the day.
The father reaches his son embraces him, and before his son can begin his speech about not being worthy to be called his father’s son, his father shouts to one of the servants, “Quick. As fast as you can, get him a new set of clothes, the best set of clothes. He puts them on him and says, “Son, I’ve got you covered. Let’s party!!”
This is what God does for us, if we come home to him. He embraces us and says, “Quick! Get him or get her a new set of clothes, the best set of clothes. He who has been lost has been found and she is alive again!”
Do you see yourself wearing these gleaming white garments that God has purchased for you at the price of his son? When you recognize just how much you are loved by God, and what you’ve been clothed in, you can toss away your old shirt and become a person free from shame.
“God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We cannot deal with our shame, but God says I’ve got you covered.” Grace.
As Lee reminded us last Sunday, if we have come to God and been received by him and have been clothed with new garments, then we no longer need to live under the mastery of Satan or sin or shame in our lives, but we can live under the loving mastery of God.
(POWERPOINT: SHOW IMAGE OF STONE HEDGE).
When you are tempted to feel ashamed, or to get back into activity that will induce shame or to define yourself by what you do or by what you’ve achieved, by a relationship you have or want to have, you can remind yourself: “I am clothed in a garment that God has purchased for me at the price of his Son.” God has me covered.
As Lee said last Sunday, “You can keep reminding yourself, ‘I belong to God. I belong to God. I belong to God. I belong to Christ. I am baptized. I am baptized. I am baptized’.”
In my baptism, my old self, my old clothes fell off and I have been raised up… given a new clothes… new life!
(If you have never been baptized, and if you want to be clothed by Christ, you want to know that you belong to him, is there anything that would prevent you from taking this step and being baptized?)
So we can live free of shame when we remind our self what God has done for us. God does for us what we cannot do ourselves. God says, “I’ve got you covered.”
We can hear the voice of God saying, “I’ve got you covered directly through the Scriptures or through the Spirit speaking to our heart, and we can hear the voice of God through ourselves as we as remind ourselves of our baptism, and we can hear that voice through each other.
Some of our shame comes by what people have said to us.
At the youth retreat led by our youth pastor Catlin last weekend, he had our youth write out on labels what they had been named in their lives. Here are some of the words: failure, just a waste of space, not pretty enough, home wrecker, F_____ up. Perhaps we feel certain labels more acutely as young people, but a person can feel a label for life.
Catin had the youth put the labels on the cross as a way to recognize that God had removed these labels on the cross through Christ…
Words can make us feel like we’re dressed in something horrible.
But words can also clothe us, words can also bring life.
Part of the reason that being connected in a real community and in authentic relationships is so important is because it provides a context for God to clothe us through each other. Sometimes God gives us a sense of covered by his love through a friend.
Are you in the kind of relationships where you be clothed in God’s love and cover others in God’s love?
Are you in some relationship where you can share your story and receive and offer support and affirmation?
In a New York Times Magazine article, Hal Niedzviecki writes about his Facebook account. Soon after start he joined Facebook, Niedzviecki had accumulated about 700 "friends." He writes, "(I was) absurdly proud of how many ‘friends’--and even strangers--I'd managed to sign up." But the irony was he had more online friends than ever before, he had fewer friends to actually hang out with than ever before. So he decided to have a Facebook party to turn his online friends into actual in person friends.
Hal invited all 700 of his "friends" to a local bar for a party. Fifteen said they would be there, and sixty said they might be there. He guessed somewhere around 20 would show up.
He writes "On the evening… I took a shower… splashed on some cologne… I put on new pants and a favorite shirt. I headed over to the neighborhood watering hole and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, one person showed up." A woman he didn’t even know. She was a friend of a friend. They ended up making small talk and then she left. He sat the bar alone and waited and waited and waited till midnight. Hal concludes his article with these words: "Seven hundred friends, and I was drinking alone that night."
Do you a friend or two who can reflect God’s love to you in a way that makes you feel clothed?
I have a friend named Elizabeth who is a member of a small group that I am part of. She was a star javelin thrower in university and she can hit me between the eyes with the hard truth about that I need to hear.
But, she has the way of seeing good things in me that I don’t see, or I have forgotten existed. She names them, and in my friendship with her I feel stronger. I feel clothed by the grace of God.
I have experienced that with my wife, my mom, a few close friends.
When we are loved and affirmed by a friend, a family member, something in us lifts and straightens. We feel clothed by God.
We can do that for others, as well.
Sometimes people will hesitate to affirm others because they are afraid the person will get a “big head.” But most people are not over-confident.
Even people who seem to have an air of swagger are often insecure.
We do well to take the risk and offer affirmation, and as we do it will shape the lives of people as they feel clothed by the love of God.
Henri Nouwen was a Catholic priest who taught at Harvard and Yale and served during the last years of his life as a pastor with a mentally handicapped community in Toronto.
He writes in his book, Life of the Beloved, that one afternoon a resident of the community, Janet, approached him and asked for a blessing. Nouwen, placed his thumb on Janet's forehead and traced the sign of the cross. Janet jumped back and said, "No… that doesn’t work, I want a real blessing."
Nouwen, surprised, asked “Janet can I give you a real blessing at the community's evening prayer service.” Janet agreed.
That evening, after the prayer service, with about 30 people seated in a circle, Nouwen said “I want to give Janet a special blessing.” Janet immediately rose, came to Nouwen and wrapped her arms around him and put her head in his chest. Nouwen said, "Janet, I want you to know you are God’s Beloved Daughter. You are precious in God’s eyes. Your beautiful smile, your kindness to people in this house show us what a beautiful human being you are." Janet paused for a moment, looked up at Nouwen and smiled. She felt clothed in God’s love and returned to her place in the circle.
BTW, to his surprise, several other members of the community immediately asked for a blessing and Henri held each of them as he spoke a personal blessing to them.
Then he was amazed when one of the staff asked if he could have a blessing, too. They felt clothed in God’s love, too.
Do you hear God saying, “Where are you?” As God called Adam and Eve he calls us. And as we come to him, we will find that we are not condemned, but clothed in gleaming new garments. We’ll find God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves… that he’s got us covered. We live out this reality by reminding ourselves and each other that he’s got us covered.
Prayer: Do you sense God clothing you?
Do you sense his blessing over you?
posted by Shigematsu at 6:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home