Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship ·January 16, 2005

Prayer of the Day

O God, thank you for meeting us in this place, with these people, in this hour of worship.  We lift up to you, not only our praise, but also our deepest concerns.  Restore to us, we pray, the humanity that you intended for us at creation.  May we serve you all our days.  Amen.

Scripture
John 1:29-31

The next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, behold the Lamb of God, who comes to take away the sin of the world!  This is the one I mean when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’  I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to my people Israel.”

Message
Sentenced to Live
Rick Frost

Good news; bad news.  In Wednesday’s edition of the “Tribune,” the editorial cartoon read, “Double stabbing, murder in parking garage, two officers shot. Columbia has finally become a big city.”  Most of you saw it. 

Oh, come on, Hank.  You just don’t get it.  Such things are not confined to big cities.  Are they?  They aren’t.  Most of us in the room are card-carrying members of the human race.  We are generally positive, up-beat kinds of people.  We are people who believe we have a stake in today and tomorrow.  It matters to us that humanity does well, and that we do things right. 

We like maintaining the small-town veneer.  The fact is, probably one of the reasons most of us in this room live here is…  (How’s is it stated in the P.R. around town?)   “All the advantages of a metropolitan area but none of the disadvantages of a big city.” 

So, we rightly see pictures of Molly Bowden and Curtis Brown, and we are rightly shocked and saddened.  We see pictures of Rick Evans, who grew up in this community, and we are rightly enraged and saddened.  Many of us in this room know the Evans family, and have for years, and we feel something of their pain and sadness.  How could that happen here?  The answer, of course, is one we do not want to hear.  We don’t like to hear it, but the answer is: Human beings do this all the time.  And they do it everywhere.  Even here.

Turn on your television.  Pick up a history book.  The story is there for everyone who wants to see.  Our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens of the human race, so troubled, so filled with anger, hate, rage, willing to do unspeakable things to persons they haven’t even met.  Take your pick: 9/11, Iraq, Rwanda.  My goodness.  The priest in Rwanda who somehow survived that genocide was asked, “Has this evil shaken your faith in God?”  He replied immediately, “Absolutely not, but what has happened in this country has destroyed my faith in humanity forever.”  Wow.

Novelist William Golding, who wrote a book many of us read, for some of us required reading, Lord of the Flies, was asked years ago, “What have you learned after observing humanity after all these years?”  He said, “I have learned that humanity makes evil the way bees make honey.”  Likewise, Nobel Prize Winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian said, “The only difference between Attila the Hun and an ordinary person is that Attila had an army.”

Ordinary folks, regular folks, people like you, like me, like our friends, like our neighbors, like our family members.  We struggle every single day with the dark side.  Various levels of meanness and viciousness.  Our failures with families, and friends, and marriages, and parenthood, and relationships.  We know how hard it is even to get along with each other as a Christian congregation, a Christian community. 

I know there are all kinds of wonderful things, and that’s good.  I thank God for them.  That’s where most people want to focus, but I’m asking you to let yourself think today, and actually think of the other side.  When you do think of the other side, if you are like me, it is enough to cause one shame.

It was Paul, wasn’t it, St. Paul who said, “Of all people, I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but the very thing that I hate.”  This is a hard, hard truth, but he said it so well.  The psychological word for that is “the shadow.”  The shadow side, the dark side.  The biblical word for it is “sin.”

Now while risking to find myself put in the camp of our fellow evangelicals and Fundamentalists, brothers and sisters that they are, why don’t we just say it out loud?  Why don’t we just say it to each other?  Our world is in a deep grip of sin.  The evil done by and to humanity is pervasive.  It’s serious.  Some detonate bombs.  Others take shots at police officers on routine traffic violations.  Most of us in this room are much less dramatic, but quite frankly, just as hurtful.  When we lie, when we cheat, when we are deceitful, when we cut, when we get involved in self-absorbing things, power struggles, when we intentionally and unintentionally inflict pain on others, it seems to be the inevitable state of our human nature.  We are, in fact, estranged from, separated from God.  That’s the definition of “sin.”  Isn’t it?  Right out of the Bible, that’s what sin is: to be separated from God.  That’s what the dark side, the shadow side is all about.

As Paul said, “All have sinned, not just a few.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  It’s enough to make one ashamed to be a member on Sundays of the human race.

The question today is: If you were God (I know that’s a big order) how would you respond to… how would you deal with the tragedy of our world that is caught up in, that is entangled in, that is even enslaved to sin, to darkness, to the shadow side? 

Now, one answer is found in a symbol that is found in most of our courthouses.  Isn’t it?  We have all seen the statue.  You have the image in your mind right now.  A blindfolded woman holding in one hand the scales of justice and in her other hand a huge sword.  That is the definition in our culture of justice, impartial, fair, detached judgment.  That is on the one hand, and with strong, fierce retribution on the other.  That’s what we call justice.  That’s what evil, and sin, and the darkness that victimizes innocent people well deserves.  No one would argue with that.  Rebuke, judgment, condemnation, and punishment of the crime in a fitting manner.  God knows, in an imperfect world, you and I would exist in anarchy without it.  We know that.

The problem is justice, even in it’s purest form, while going a long, long way to create and maintain social stability, does not, because it cannot transform, change, take away the darkness.  It doesn’t have the power to take away the sin – your sin, my sin, our community’s sin, our country’s sin, the sin of the world.

No.  The power to do that is found in another symbol.  You’ve seen it, all of you, somewhere, I think.  Maybe in a church.  Maybe in an art museum.  Maybe in a magazine.  I hope someday we will get a sculptured image of it here at Broadway.  You know what that image is, of course.  The Lamb.  No claws.  No sharp teeth.  Far from the fastest moving animal in the lot.  When attacked, it really doesn’t have much it can do other than to receive the blows.  The Lamb.  You’ve seen that.  Haven’t you?  The gash in its side, bleeding, and yet with light streaming from its head.  The Lamb.  The Lamb!

Folks, according to the Bible, according to John, the gospel writer, according to our text today, John the Baptist sees Jesus coming towards him and says, “Look, behold the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world.”  Oh, my gosh!  Take it away.  Not receiving what I deserve, but receiving what only God can give me.  And you know and I know what that is called.  It’s called “grace.”  Amazing Grace.  How in the world does God do that?  How does Jesus do that?  I want you to know that John, the gospel writer, essentially doesn’t say, which is probably a good thing when we are dealing with very, very deep mysteries related to God’s activity in the world.  These are things that are beyond our understanding, our ability to grasp.  How does Jesus take away?  I don’t know. 

Now Paul has some ideas about that, and he talks a lot about it in his writings, but that’s for another day.  Our text for today is out of the gospel of John.  John doesn’t know.  And I don’t know.  I just know that he does.  Do you know someone?  Have you ever been the recipient of that kind of grace?

Two stories:

Martin Luther King Sr., whose son and whose dream we will commemorate tomorrow all over this nation often wrote and preached about he called the “weapon of love.”  Did you ever hear that?  The weapon of love.  As his church members and children were being beaten and thrown into jail, King’s message to those who wronged his people was this:  “We will counter your force with soul force.  We will match your ability to hate with our ability to love.”  Martin had found the secret of the Lamb, you see.  The Lamb. 

Two college students in another city were out on a date.  They got to drinking a little bit.  In fact, they started drinking too much.  They shouldn’t have been driving, but the young man did drive his date home that night.  On the way home, he had a terrible accident, and she died.  The police did the right thing.  They charged the young man with manslaughter, and the D.A. prepared for a trial.  The law was very clear.  Driving under the influence of alcohol is illegal, and anyone of age to drive should know better.  Coddling and tolerating such destructive behavior by society is only asking for more trouble and more tragedy.  If found guilty, it was very clear he was going to go to prison.  It was the right and just thing to do. 

But just before the trial, the parents of the young woman who died issued this public statement:  “One precious, wonderful life has already been lost.  We do not want to lose another.  This young man has wronged us terribly, but we want him to be sentenced to live, to go on and to make something of his life, to live life, the life that our daughter is not going to be able to live.  We, therefore, plead, we beg, we urge the powers that be that he be allowed to live in the light of this tragedy and to go on and make something of himself for good.”

Evidently, in this particular case, the state decided that based on the parents’ plea, they would not prosecute this case further.  Innocent, helpless, terribly wronged, wounded people.  Yes.  But somehow forgiving.  Taking away the burden.  Allowing somebody else to live.  How in the world did they do that?  Can you imagine just putting yourself in their place?  How did they do that?  I don’t know.  But they did.  It sort of reminds me of today’s text.  “Look, behold the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world, so that somebody else can live the way God intended.”

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Cleansing Lord, we come to you with heavy hearts that contain sin and sorrow.  Our world holds so much joy coupled with such deep sadness.  Call us to you in moments of despair and regret.  Here we find forgiveness, hope, and the courage to move forward in the spirit of your love.  Amen.