God is greater than our hearts. April 25, 2021. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

1 John 3:16-24

And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and [God] knows everything.

If your heart has never condemned you, then you can go grab another cup of coffee or return to your crossword puzzle or take a little nap, because unfortunately I have nothing to offer you today. But if your heart has ever condemned you, if you’ve felt the sting of failure, if you’ve experienced the pain of hurting people you love, if you know what it feels like to fall short of being who you want to be, then stay with me as we unpack this message from the First Letter of John.

And like so much of the New Testament, this passage seeks to push us beyond our small and finite selves. We face many perils when we operate within the limited confines of our egos. We can live in denial, basically out of touch with reality; we can constantly be fearful and angry as we perceive the world around us to be inherently threatening. And for many people, there is the danger of being trapped in a vicious cycle of despair: we feel guilty and ashamed when we fail, which just sets us up to feel even worse the next time we fail. Our own hearts condemn us, and as anyone who has experienced this knows, it can feel very difficult to reassure our hearts and somehow get to a better place. And when we feel alone and isolated, it can be well-nigh impossible.

But we are never truly alone. The Holy Spirit within us connects us in the deepest possible way with God. And God is greater than our hearts. Let me repeat that: God is greater than our hearts. Just saying those words is liberating. The invitation here is to wake up and see ourselves as part of a larger reality, an abiding love that enfolds all our sins and miseries in compassion and mercy, taking the frayed and tangled threads of our lives and weaving them into something beautiful. My power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9), the Lord says to Paul. Failure is not an unfortunate aberration: it is somehow a necessary part of the program. But we can’t see that while we are  imprisoned in our own hearts: only the all-embracing heart of Christ can make that clear and set us free.

This is not academic for me: I say this from hard experience. I am acutely aware of all the ways I fall short. I can write out an extensive list of my sins, my character flaws, and the ways I have hurt or disappointed people. And given my personality type, it would be very easy to fall into a pit of despair — and I have. What saves me is the love of Christ lifting me out of myself and helping me see that I am still connected, I am still part of what God is doing in this world. And that’s what I want: to be part of what God is doing, I want to love, I want to enjoy abundant life, I want to help others enjoy abundant life. And God knows this. As the reading says, God knows everything. And God can deal with my failures and shortcomings just fine. What matters is that I am with God and I choose love.

This is what it means to believe in Jesus: to trust that God loves the way Jesus loves and to live accordingly. We won’t be perfect and we don’t have to be. We just need to love as best we can. And when we fail, we remember the bigger picture, remember that God is happy to work through us as we are, then get up, smile, and keep on loving. The First Letter of Peter tells us love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8), and it’s true. God won’t let our hearts condemn us, because God knows that we want to love and we’re trying to love. And God will take even our weakest efforts and use them for good.

So the next time you fail, rather than deny it or beat yourself up about it, I encourage you to see it as an opportunity to experience God’s mercy and to grow in love. For that to happen, the primary thing we need is humility: the humility to acknowledge our weakness, the humility to receive forgiveness, the humility to grow. This is what Jesus means when he talks about poverty of spirit. The poor in spirit are blessed because they have surrendered the egotistical need to be perfect and are open enough and vulnerable enough to give themselves to God as they are. Maybe that’s why the wonderful mystic Julian of Norwich insists that sin is not only inevitable, but necessary. Maybe only failure can soften our hearts enough for us to realize that God is greater than our hearts, and to know, as Julian says, that in God all shall be well and all shall well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

COOS Sunday Worship April 25, 2021

 

COOS Sunday Worship

April 25, 2021

Order of Worship

(may be printed)

Midweek message from Fr. David 4/21/21

Midweek message from Fr. David

April 21, 2021

COOS Sunday Worship 4/18/21

 

COOS Sunday Worship

April 18, 2021

Order of Worship

(can be printed out)

A new kind of life. April 18, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

 

Luke 24:36b-48

It was a Friday evening in April of 1993. My husband, Michael, and I had gone out to an early dinner and had plans to spend the rest of the evening at home in our teeny, tiny Seattle apartment. I don’t recall our dinner conversation, but I imagine that we had touched upon the future. Months earlier, I had been accepted into a Master of Divinity program in Connecticut which meant that our world would be radically changing that fall with a move across the country and all the exciting, unknown possibilities that would come along with that. But at the time life was much more mundane.

Upon arriving home after dinner, I was first to the door. I opened it, crossed the threshold and entered into the dark when all of sudden the lights came on and I saw a crowd of people jammed into our small place shouting at me. They were yelling, “Surprise!” I was completely dumbfounded. What was going on here? Surprise, for what? Well, it turned out that Michael had planned a party to celebrate my upcoming new life in divinity school. It was so kind and I treasure that memory. However, I found this experience of surprise to be so shocking that it took a good long while for this the unexpected reality of the evening to sink in.

“Startled and terrified,” is the way that Luke describes the disciples reaction when one moment they are talking amongst themselves and then the next Jesus is standing among them. If I was so thrown by an unexpected party, I can’t fathom how completely shocking it must have been for Jesus - dead Jesus, in their minds - to just show up as he did. “Startled and terrified” is probably an understatement!

Understandably, the disciples try to make sense of the situation. And the most rational explanation they can come up with is that they are seeing a ghost. But Jesus is having none of that. It’s of the utmost importance that they get that he’s with them not as a ghost, which if you believe in ghosts, is the spiritual presence of someone who is still dead, but that he’s there with them as someone who is alive. A new kind of alive. Here, he says, “Look at my hands and my feet...Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." It must have taken some time for this unexpected reality to sink in and Luke gives us a hint to the disciples’ inner lives as he explains that, “in their joy they [the disciples] were disbelieving and still wondering.” Which prompts Jesus to offer more proof of his bodily presence by eating some broiled fish.

Jesus is alive in body, but it’s a new kind of body and a new kind of life. One that we call resurrected. It’s a life and a body that is not bound by old ways, old understandings, and old experiences. What Jesus is literally embodying is a new future, a new creation, a new way of life - not just for himself alone, but for us all. Because Jesus lives after death that means that all the deaths, all the endings that we might experience in this life they are not The End. Ultimately, all that has been taken, broken, mistreated, wronged, lost or forgotten, will be restored. Death has lost its sting. Because Jesus lives we, and all of creation, can live resurrected lives too.

But letting this new reality of resurrection sink takes time - a lifetime really. It is the repentance of which Jesus speaks in the gospel of Luke. For repentance is all about the changing of one’s mind. And as we, with the disciples, open our minds to Jesus’ resurrection it is forgiveness that naturally flows - the restoring of relationships with God, with others, with the world. This is the new life we have in Christ full of exciting, unknown possibilities. And we are called to embody it in our own lives. To incarnate the good news in our very own flesh and bones. In the language of Jesus, we are to be “witnesses of these things.”

But how? How are we to witness and incarnate such lofty truths of resurrection life? Priest and author Henri Nouwen suggests that at the end of each day we ask ourselves these questions, “Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions,” Fr. Nouwen reflects and then continues, “I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.”

Incarnate, material, flesh and bones love really is the ultimate experience of and witness to the unexpected yet glorious reality of resurrection life. Instead of shouting, “Surprise!” what we get to proclaim with our words, our deeds, our very lives is something so much better, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen. The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia!” 

 

 

Midweek message from Fr. David 4/14/21

 

Midweek message from Fr. David

April 14, 2021

COOS Sunday Worship 4/11/21

 

COOS Sunday Worship

April 11, 2021

Order of Worship

(may be printed)