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Sep 02, 2018

Back to Basics #3

Passage: Luke 15:1-7

Speaker: Michael E. Karunas

Series: Back to Basics

Category: Back to Basics Sermon Series

Today is week 3 of a sermon series called “Back to the Basics.”  These 6 weeks are an attempt to describe the basic structure of the bible and the story of salvation that it tells.  Each week we’re looking at the many ways the bible reveals that God is with us from the beginning to the end.  The first two weeks we looked at the Old Testament.  We learned that God is with us by coming alongside us on all our journeys; and that God is with us when we come together in worship.  We also said that the whole bible tells a story of the people of God (Us) trying to find their way back home – to the paradise for which we are created; and that God helps us find that way back home by seeking ways to connect with us.  For example, in the Old Testament God sent the people the Law (a total of 600 laws all stemming from the 10 Commandments).  Following these laws meant that they were close to God.  Not following them meant that God was far away.  God also gave them the Temple, as a way of connecting with them through worship.  And God gave them the prophets, to warn them when they were not following the Law properly and to bring them back when they were straying from God. 

Over the centuries, this was not working.  Psalm 14:2-3 says, “God looked down from heaven on humankind and saw that all had gone astray; not one was faithful.”  So this meant that God had to find a new way to connect with us and to help bring us home.  That new way came in the person of Jesus.  We read about his life in the first 4 books of the NT (MT, MK, LK, JN), called “The Gospels.”  The name “Jesus” means “God helps.”  And the name “Christ,” means “the anointed one.”  It is not Jesus’ “last name,” rather it means he is the one God appointed to save us. 

Jesus had a miraculous birth.  His mother conceived him by means of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is an expression of God’s presence and power, so this means Jesus was both (1) fully human – true human being in flesh and blood; but also (2) fully divine, truly God, called the Son of God.  Part of the mystery of Jesus is that is both human divine at the same time.  He grew up, until age 30, around his mother Mary and earthly father Joseph, and in the same land where the people settled with Moses centuries earlier.  He lived in the norther part of the land, in Galilee, which was then (and now) a beautiful part of the country.  It is dominated by farming and fishing (on the Sea of Galilee) and the people who lived there were predominately peasants and lesser educated than those in the larger towns and cities.  Jesus grew up Jewish.  He attended worship every Sabbath in the synagogue and celebrated all the Jewish festivals.   

At age 30 Jesus was baptized by immersion (fully underwater) by his cousin John (called John the Baptist) in the Jordan river and began his ministry.  His ministry, which lasted 3 years, was an attempt to show us a new way of relating to God, no longer through the traditional understandings of Law and Temple.  He began by asking people to follow him.  They were known as “disciples,” a name which means “student” – one who learns.  Symbolically, he started with 12 disciples, because 12 is a number which represents inclusiveness.  Twelve disciples meant that his ministry was for everyone.  But in reality, he had many more followers than just 12.  Jesus traveled all over Galilee, teaching God’s Word and healing the sick.  And he was wildly popular.  Every time he taught the Word of God, huge crowds gathered to hear.  He wasn’t asking them to be perfect.  He wanted them simply to follow; to have faith and trust in him and his teaching.

What was the Word that he was teaching?  First, that the Spirit of God’s Law was more important than the Letter of the Law.  People had gotten to the point of nearly idolizing the action the Law prescribed without remembering the purpose that the action was trying to convey.  They knew “what” to do but had forgotten the “why” behind it.  One of the Laws – which we looked at two weeks ago – so that there was to be no work on the Sabbath.  Jesus got in trouble with some of the religious leaders, because he healed the sick on the Sabbath.  They considered that work and thought it shouldn’t be allowed.  But Jesus said that God values life more than death and anything that can be done to enhance life should be done, regardless of the day.  He said “Sabbath was made for humankind (for their use) not the other way around.” 

Second, he preached a message of inclusion.  Up until this point, bloodlines mattered.  To be in the chosen family of God, you needed the right DNA.  But Jesus said faith and trust in God are more important than heredity and that anyone who followed Jesus’ teaching was considered a member of his family.  “Anyone who does the will of God is my mother and brother and sister” (MK 3).  He even included the untouchables into this family.  Jews had laws and customs that divided people into groups.  The healthy were not to mingle with the sick, known sinners were marginalized, and Jews were not to mix too closely with foreigners.  They had a name for anyone who wasn’t Jewish – Gentile – and Jews were to separate selves from the Gentiles.  But… Jesus included them all in his family.  The sick.  The sinners.  The tax collectors (who were considered chief sinners because the obvious ways they extorted money).  And the Gentiles. 

Of course, this got him in trouble.  His message and actions upset the status quo and threatened the balance of power.  At least five different kinds of religious leaders all had problems with Jesus and conspired among themselves looking for ways to stop him.  But Jesus’ ministry continued to be popular among the people and one of things Jesus made famous were parables.  Jesus was a storyteller.  And parables were stories.  They were highly symbolic; about every day circumstances to which the people could relate; and they all taught something important about God’s Word and will.  Here is an example of one of Jesus’ parables, our scripture reading from Luke 15.  Read Luke 15:1-7

Each week in our sermon series were emphasizing a “word for the day” around which our sermon is built.  Week one’s word was “alongside” (God comes alongside us).  Last week we had “together” (God is with us in our togetherness).  Today’s word is “toward.”  It reminds us that God comes toward us in Jesus Christ; that God is not a God who hides away from us and waits for us to find God.  God comes toward us.  And in his ministry, we saw how Jesus came toward the disciples, asking them to follow him; toward the sick, the sinner, the Gentile, and inviting them into God’s inner circle.  And in that same spirit, Jesus comes toward us.  We sin and fall away from God – as PS 14 reminds us.  But Jesus comes toward us, looking for us like a shepherd looks for his lost sheep.  Even if 99% of the flock is safe, Jesus will risk his own safety to come toward the 1% that isn’t. 

Which leads to the question: Why did Jesus die?  And die he have to die?  To us, there is nothing in his message that sounds worthy of a death sentence.  This is clearly a question worth much greater discussion with no shortage of evidence from the bible to support a variety of positions.  I will say, here, that what matters is that he did die.  And… that at some point during his 3-year ministry in Galilee, Jesus turned toward the South; toward the city of Jerusalem; toward the cross that would await him there.  But in his turning toward all of this, he was also turning toward our eternal life – though no one knew it fully at the time.  And therein lies our greatest hope as his followers – that just as there is death in the midst of life, so is there (through faith) life in the midst of death. 

We’ll turn our attention toward that next week, but as we close today, I invite you – in the spirit of our message today – to reflect on your life and on times when you’ve been included; found.  Where was it?  What happened?  When in your life have you experienced the kind of inclusion that Jesus came to share?