Differences

Pastor Meyer's Sermon

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Pastor Meyer's Sermon

A friend of mine named Janet was telling me a story about how her son, John, and she wanted to go see a movie at the Jordan Creek Mall. And as they were walking through the mall, they noticed a booth out in the middle of the mall and it had purses and so she thought, “Oh, I'd like to go and look at the purses.” But the person who was there selling the purses, well, it was a man and he had tattoos all over his arms and he looked rather creepy. “I'm not sure if I want to buy something from him.” But she had her son with her and so she thought, “Well, I'm going to go ahead and go look at the purses.” So she went ahead and was looking at the purses and, one thing led to another, and she started talking to the man. Not only that but she found out the man was a Christian. Even more, the man had been a Christian for quite some time and what was most surprising was those tattoos that were on his arms were tattoos of different animals as they were walking towards the ark. And so she said, at that moment, she felt so convicted. She couldn't believe she had been so judgmental because this person, this man was different.

Differences. In our reading from Romans, Paul takes up the topic of differences, those differences that occur among God's people. God has made each of us unique and different and the believers in Rome recognize these differences just as we recognize these differences among us today. But despite these apparent differences, we who believe share the same faith and we also believe in the same Jesus Christ.

In fact, Jesus died and took up His life again so He could be Lord of all of us despite our differences. But even so, sometimes our differences among us get in the way of relationships, don't they? They get in the way of relationships with God and in the way of relationships with each other.

I have a niece who is 8 years old and when she was about 3 or 4, we were out playing in the back yard together and we had been playing for quite a while when all of a sudden, she stops and she looked up at me and she said, “What is that thing in your ear?” And I said real quickly, “It's a hearing aid,” and I went back and started playing hoping that she'd forget about it. But you know how 3 or 4-year-olds are. She didn't want to forget about it. In fact, she didn't even want to play with me anymore. She kept saying, “What is that thing in your ear?” You see, to Alexis, I was something different. I had something different. I have a hearing aid and she could only focus on that difference, and she couldn't allow that difference to just be a part of me, a part of her Uncle Kendall.

Now we do the same thing, don't we? We find it hard sometimes to accept a fellow believer because that person may be, in some way shape or form, different. And so we end up making what we do or how we look or even how we live determine whether we accept the person or whether even Jesus accepts a person. So just like my niece, we end up centering our attention on the differences in people instead of allowing those differences to define that person, that fellow believer who shares the same faith and the same Jesus Christ.

Now when I was younger, I had a former pastor of mine who decided to observe Lent by growing out his beard. You see, he was very particular about how he looked. He always wore nicely pressed clothes and he always made sure his shoes were shined and he was particular about his face in making sure his face was clean shaven. And so he thought, “This would be a good idea for me to observe Lent by giving that part up and allowing my beard to grow out.” Then as his beard started to grow out, some members of the congregation started to complain among themselves. They started to say things like, “That's not the appropriate way to respond to Lent.” Or they would say, “He's just being lazy.” Or they would say, “Well, that's certainly not something I would do.” Now that's just an example, but what about the teenager who has the pierced eyebrow or maybe that man who I just talked about with the tattoos on his arms or maybe there is a particular person that so much loves the variety in worship and we might not like the music so much or the way things have been rearranged. Notice how easy it is for us to focus on the differences in people and not allowing those differences to be a part of the fellow believer who shares the same faith.

My Friends, there's someone who's different, too. You see, Jesus is different. Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One, people had different expectations of who this Messiah should be. The Messiah should be born a kingly birth, so we see Jesus, as we just celebrated a few weeks ago, was born in Bethlehem in a tiny manger, born to ordinary people just like you and me. A Messiah should live the life of a king in a magnificent city, but Jesus came from a small, insignificant town called Nazareth . He lived the life of a carpenter. He was humble, not prideful. Now that's different.

A Messiah should wear extravagant clothes and wear a crown on His head. But Jesus wore ordinary clothes, and He had a crown of thorns on His head that tore at the flesh of His head. And a Messiah should sit on a beautiful earthly throne but Jesus sat on an ugly, rugged cross. And he endured the pounding of the nails through His hands and through His feet. Now that is different.

A true Messiah will restore the kingdom of Israel and will place that nation above all nations. But instead, Jesus was placed in a cold, dark tomb laid to rest. But Jesus wouldn't stay there for long, just three days, because, you see, Jesus is different. This king that nobody thought could save Himself, this Jesus, the Holy one, would not see decay. Easter morning, Jesus threw off the bandages that wrapped Him. He threw away the stone that entrapped Him. This king could not be contained by anything, not even death. Now that is different, someone coming back to life again. And when Jesus walked out of that tomb in the early hours of that Easter morning, God kept His promises to us. God had sent His true Messiah. And Jesus appeared before the disciples. He beckons them to touch His hands and to feel His thigh, to feel the breath as He breathed out on them. “It is me,” He said. But the disciples wouldn't accept it. They had a different understanding of Messiah. This Messiah they believed was the true Messiah ended up dying on a cross and being placed in a tomb and now He was there before them? And so they asked, “Are you now going to restore the kingdom of Israel ?” They just didn't get it. But still, Jesus accepts them despite their misunderstanding. He opens up their minds to them to get them to understand that God really has sent the true Messiah. God kept His promise and Jesus opened up their minds so they could see Jesus had to die and rise again so He could be Lord of all of us despite our differences.

Now after my niece wouldn't play with me anymore, we were still out on the back porch and I sat down and she was standing a little over here and I started snapping my fingers. And she was standing over here going, “What are you doing?” And so I got up and I went over to her and I said, “Can you hear this?” And she said, “Yeah.” And so I took it over to her right ear and I said, “Can you hear that?” And she said, “Yeah.” I put it to her left ear. “Can you hear that?” “Yeah.” And I said, “I can't hear it in this right ear but in this ear, I can hear it because of the hearing aid.” I could see it in her eyes. I could see it was like a lightbulb went off and she got it. And she changed the way she acted around me. She understood this hearing aid, which she thought was a difference, was something she could accept, that it was a part of me and we went off and we continued to play.

Because we all share that same faith and that same Christ, we are together in the body of Christ despite our differences. In fact, we work together as His church and each of us brings together the unique and different gifts to the life we have together.

For example, in the June issue of Lutheran Witness , it was the 2002 edition, there is a wonderful story in there about a man named Crusty Cal . Now Crusty Cal was an older man. He was single. He was very opinionated. He was known for wearing red suspenders, and he made sure everyone knew he did not believe in God. But Cal was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He had a family, but the family was small and they lived quite a ways away from him. And so His Christian coworkers decided that despite Crusty Cal 's differences, they would come together and they would be his family. And so they would take him to his chemotherapy treatments. When he needed to, they would go ahead and bring food over to him. And when it was apparent that Crusty Cal would not survive, their prayers turned from that of recovery to that of peaceful rest in Jesus. And so a pastor was called in to talk with him and one of the group was a 1 st Grade teacher and she had her students write notes to Cal. Cal's brother, who was also a Christian, actually came down and spent the final days with Cal . It was interesting that, on one of those last final nights he was to spend on this earth with his brother, Cal prayed to God for forgiveness and that the Holy Spirit would enter into his heart and when Cal died, he died as a believer in Jesus. Can you see how different people with different gifts can make a difference in someone's life? These coworkers, these Christians, they worked together. They did not focus on the difference in Crusty Cal or even on their own differences, but they worked together to provide comfort and care. And the Holy Spirit worked through this group and brought Crusty Cal to be a believer in Christ.

I have here a Father's Day card and it's a little small, so I'll put it up on the screen for you. You can see this is a Father's Day card from my niece. And you can see “Happy Father's Day.” I'm her uncle, but she really wanted me to have a Father's Day card. Her mother helped her write this. But if you open it up on the inside, you see there is the sun and you also see me. You see a round head and you see the round glasses, a little bit of hair on top. And it says, “Love, Alexis.” But her mother was saying she was having a hard time drawing this and she was getting very upset because she didn't know how to draw a hearing aid and she kept saying, “Mommy, this is not Uncle Kendall unless he has a hearing aid on him.” And so if we get the closeup, you can see the dot that's on my left ear. To her, something that was a difference became something that was not just a part of me but also defined who her Uncle Kendall was.

My Friends, Jesus makes a difference in our lives and, through Him, we can accept the teenager with the pierced eyebrow and we can accept that man who has the tattoos on his arms and we can accept people who so appreciate different variety in worship because we are all of the same faith and we all believe in the same Jesus Christ. Thank you, Jesus, for not only being different but making a difference for us because it is through you that God accepts us. Amen.

Copyright 2006 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church