Sermon manuscript:
The first article of the Creed says, “I believe in God the
Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” One of the most important parts of
my job is to teach this. What does it mean that God is the maker of heaven and
earth?
A couple years ago I started to change the way that I teach
this. For the first 10 years or so of being a pastor I really focused on what
happened long ago. For all of us, I think, when we hear the word “creation” we
think of stuff that happened a long time ago. Bible believing Christians then
think about how creation is different from evolution. God created the world. Existence
is not the product of chance or the survival of the fittest. I used to focus
mainly combatting this alternate understanding of evolution, which is so
powerful and persuasive in today’s world.
But, a couple years ago, I started to shift my energy and
focus towards a different aspect of God being the maker of heaven and earth. My
teacher for this was our humble little catechism. You might recall what it says
when it explains this first article of the Creed: “I believe that God has made
me.” There you have something that is not in the past It is right now. How
often do you think of that? God has made you. Probably not that often. We are
very thoroughly trained to think of ourselves as being the result of an egg and
a sperm and a whole bunch of natural processes. We just kind of show up. How
different it is to think of God the Father almighty wanting you to exist, and,
therefore, deliberately bringing that about.
Our catechism goes on: “He has given me my body and soul,
eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes
care of them.” God made you; God gave you your body. That’s a great gift. So
often we think of our bodies with a tremendous harshness. Our bodies don’t
measure up to other bodies that we see. Our bodies are ugly compared to others.
Many of us then come to hate our bodies. That’s a shame. “Oh, what peace we
often forfeit; Oh, what needless pain we bear.” Your body is a gift from God.
It’s wonderful. Even if your body were to become severely disabled with many
parts ceasing to function, it would still be wonderful. It’s God’s gift to you
and your body is even a gift to us.
God gives you the gift of your soul, your reason, your
senses, your personality. What a gift this is too! You can see and understand.
You can laugh and cry. You can be a blessing and make the others around you
happy by virtue of the way that you are. Unfortunately, here, too, it is common
for people to trash this part of themselves. They wish they were smarter. They
wish they were funnier. They wish that they were more outgoing.
It is as though we are taught that there is one right way to
be. There is one right body that everyone is supposed to have. There is one
right personality. We are all supposed to be smart, charming, funny, talkative,
cool, popular, and so on. When we’re not all these things, (and, frankly,
nobody can be all these things), we suck.
The spirit that causes us to run ourselves down like this is
not a good spirit. It is an evil spirit. Evil spirits do not want us to be
joyful. They most especially do not want us to be thankful. How long has it
been since you praised your Creator for making you, for giving you your body,
for giving you your soul? These are tremendous expressions of love from God to
you. We should thank and praise him—it’s good and right so to do.
But the evil spirits do not want us to be thankful. What
they want is for us to be covetous. Coveting is when you are dissatisfied with
what God has given to you, and so you want what you see in others. Your body
sucks because others have better ones. Your mind sucks because others are
smarter. Your personality sucks because you are not popular.
Supposedly this coveting, this dissatisfaction, can bring
about something positive if you do it right. I’m not so sure. Maybe the best
case scenario is that you work up such a hatred of yourself, of how bad you
are, that you embark on a ruthless self-improvement campaign. You diet. You study.
You read books about how to be charming.
But even this best case scenario isn’t very good. There’s no
end to coveting. You might think you’d be happy if only you were such and such
a weight. You might think you’d be satisfied if you got such and such an award
or recognition. Nope. You’ll keep coveting. You’ll keep hating yourself for not
being as good as you-name-it.
But this is not so much self-hatred as it is a hating of
your Creator. You might think you’re hating yourself, but really you’re hating the
one who made you the way that you are. You’ve become blind to his goodness.
You’re deaf to his messages of love. The gifts he gives you with your wonderful
body and with your wonderful soul are messages of his love.
There are more messages of love. Our catechism goes on: “He
also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and
children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with
all that I need to support this body and life.”
I mentioned already how we are prone to think of ourselves
as the uniting of sperm and egg and a whole bunch of natural processes so that
we just kind of show up by accident. We do the same kind of thing with this
list of things that have to do with sustaining this body and life. We don’t
think of our clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home coming from God
as messages of his love to us. We think we have these things because of our
money.
We have money because we work hard and we’re smart. If we
worked harder and were smarter we’d have even more money. Maybe if we just
worried more, if we could just get to the bottom of things for why we don’t
have more money, then we’d have a lot more money. With more money we’d have
even better clothing and shoes, tastier food and drink, a more comfortable
house and home. What we need is more money. We don’t need God; we need more
money.
The same evil spirits that are behind our abusive talk with
our bodies and our souls are at work here. That evil spirit said, “You don’t
need God. You need a smoking hot body.” “You don’t need God. You need to be
smarter or more charming.” So also here: “You don’t need God; you need more
money.”
What is the action plan behind all these things? We’ve
already mentioned it. You need to be hard on yourself. You need to worry more.
You need to worry more about your lousy body so that you finally work up the
self-hatred to make yourself a better one. You need to worry more about your
lousy personality. You need to worry more about your lousy shameful house, and
your ugly junky car, and your miserable dead-end job that isn’t getting you
nearly the amount of money that you should be getting. “Then you’ll be happy,”
these depressing, evil spirits say. “The more you worry, the harder you’ll try,
the happier you’ll be!”
What incredibly different advice we are given by our Lord
and Master, Jesus, this morning! Over and over and over he says “Don’t worry.”
The opposite. Don’t worry about clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and
home. That’s the opposite of what we are otherwise supposed to do. We’re taught
to never be satisfied, always to be worried, always to be chasing more.
There’s another thing that’s the opposite too, and this also,
I think, is highly significant. Jesus says that you are valuable. “Consider
the ravens,” he says. “God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than
birds!” And again, “Consider the flowers. You’re more valuable than they
are.” It is because you are valuable to God that you should not worry. What
do you do with the things that you treasure, with what you think is valuable? You
protect them and care for them. “You are valuable,” Jesus says, so won’t
God, who values you, also take care of you, “O you of little faith?!”
“But,” you might be saying to yourself, “I’m not valuable.”
How powerful this thought is! The evil spirit certainly want you to believe
that with your whole heart. They want you to believe that you suck; end of
story. But it’s not just the evil spirits. The thought that you are not
valuable is powerful because there are some very powerful arguments that seem
to prove just that.
We’ve done some terrible things. We’ve perhaps stretched our
bodies with poor eating so that it will never come back into shape. We’ve
perhaps pickled our bodies with drink, but our drinking has had an even worse
effect on our souls. These sins and others like them are obvious to anyone and
everyone as being bad. The damage is obvious.
But there’s more: there’s also God’s commandments that we’ve
broken. The problem that is created by not keeping God’s commandments is less
obvious to folks, but our breaking of his commandments is an even more powerful
reason for us to say to ourselves that we are not valuable.
But how you value yourself is one thing. How God values you
is another. You might not see value in yourself, but you’re not the only one
who gets a say. There’s somebody who’s better at appraising than you. That
someone is God. He valued us even when we were dead and lost in our trespasses
and sins. His value, his love of us, prompted him from eternity to send his Son
to suffer and die to redeem our poor bodies and souls. There is no one for whom
Christ didn’t die, so there is no one who isn’t redeemed. All are valued by
God. Since all are valued by God, you are valued too.
Because God values you, you should not worry. God will give
you your clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, and all that is
needed to support this body and life. We could even go one step further,
perhaps, following Jesus’s advice if we dare. He says we should sell our
possessions and give them to those who have need. But that might be a little
too advanced for us right now. We’ll get there eventually, but we have some
re-wiring to do.
We need to think differently in our daily life. We are prone
to keep God far, far away. We don’t need God; we need a smoking hot body. We
don’t need God; we need more money. What we need, in fact, is God, then all
these other things will come as well.
So, very practically speaking, what should you think about? The first thing I want you to bring to mind
this week is that you are valuable to God. Set aside any self-hatred. What you
think of yourself is really beside the point. Who cares what you think? What
matters is what God thinks. And God says you’re valuable to him. You’re so
valuable to him that he sent his Son to redeem you. You are valuable to him so
he will take care of you. Jesus very emphatically teaches this in our Gospel
reading today.
The other thing I want you to think about is that God is
sending you messages of love all the time, every day. Let the sun shine and nourishing
rains speak to you that God loves you. Think of this with all the pleasures of
life. He gives you this little pleasure or that. Let the pleasure of food be
God’s gift to you. Let the pleasure of drink, even, or perhaps, especially,
alcoholic drink, be God’s gift to you. Remember that the goal of the evil spirits is
to banish God from your thinking. Open your eyes to the wonders of everyday
life and be thankful to your Creator.
Thankfulness is the antidote to coveting. Coveting is when
you look at what God has given to you and you are so dissatisfied with it. You
look at what he has given to others and you wish that that had been given to
you. The antidote to this extremely powerful spiritual poison is thankfulness.
Thankfulness comes from correctly understanding God’s message to you first and
foremost and unmistakably in the Gospel. Then also in all the other gifts that
he gives you.
Finally, to sum up again so that you don’t forget: 1) You are
valuable to God. You, with your body and soul, are valuable, regardless of how
you might appraise yourself. 2) God gives you messages of his love everyday
with all the good things he gives you. Hear that message and be glad.
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