Coming back from holiday is not always easy. You never know just how busy it is going to get.
Luckily, as a pastor, you can prepare yourself a little. I for instance did that by reading the Biblical Readings for today during the final days of my holiday. I remember how I did it hoping the readings would be good. After all, some are easier to write a sermon upon than others.
While I read the readings, I remember feeling relieved. Something I felt because I kind of like today’s reading.
The first reading is about at what price faith comes. And strikingly the reading states that faith does not come by offerings. Rather, faith comes by being good. And being good cannot be bad – at least I guess it should not.
The second reading is a sinner giving praise, because he has experienced that even though you are not always being good, God will still look upon you with mercy. What a message.
The last reading is a fantastic reading about how you should not boast. Nor should you be ignorant or selfish. No, if one wants to be recognized, one must serve. Because by serving, people are helped, and you kneel before instead of raising above – just as Jesus did while he walked this earth as a human being.
Fantastic readings. I truly like them. And I truly felt relived as I read them during the final days of my holiday. I figured though that I still needed to come up with an interesting approach to the readings.
Then suddenly live music started to play in front of the balcony I was sitting on. During the last two days of our holiday, my family and I stayed at a resort, and I had read in the program of the resort that there would be entertainment. This night the entertainment would be a Michael Jackson cover band.
At first, I thought that I would listen to the music from the balcony and then get back to finding my approach later. But while listening to the songs of Michael Jackson I realized how many of his songs is about how the world is made into a better place:
‘Earth Song’, ‘Heal the World’, ‘We Are the World’. Just to mention some. Maybe I could use these songs in my sermon.
Then the band started to play the song “Man in the mirror”. Do you know the song?
Well, in short it is a song about the exact same thing as today’s readings. Just listen to the chorus: “If they wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change.”
Change does not derive by itself. Mercy is a God given gift. But change starts with you. I had my approach.
Listening to the song, it mostly mentions poverty as the issue of the world that the singer wants to change. Just listen to these lines:
“I see the kids in the street, with not enough to eat, who am I, to be blind pretending not to see their needs?”
“I’ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love, it’s time that I realize, that there are some with no home, not a nickel to loan.”
It sure is about poverty. But more than that the song is about one’s responsibility when facing poverty.
Other issues are not mentioned, but we can ourselves easily add circumstances to the list where we do not live up to our responsibility: Climate change, inequality, injustice, racism.
Sadly, simply telling the truth – being honest – seem to be an impossible task for is in our world full of misinformation and the like.
The song encourages you to ‘make that change’, which also is the final line of the song. A change that seems right to ask for. But what I find hard with the song – something that I sometimes also struggle with while reading certain Biblical readings – is that the task of being responsible for making ‘that change’ is quite extensive. Maybe even too extensive to be a task appointed solely to us human beings.
I do not know if you think so as well. I suppose many do. Because is not the feeling of the task being too extensive one of the main reasons we do not ‘make that change’?
I think so. At least I know that feeling from myself. Driving down Hastings. Where to start! Just drive on. Wildfires. All over. What can I do when an area three times the size of Denmark burns away during one summer. And that is in Canada alone.
Listening to the song – or listening to todays or similar Biblical Readings – might not always be encouraging. Rather opposite actually. It can turn out to be discouraging due to the feeling of powerlessness.
Now, I do not want the song or the Gospel, nor my sermon, to fill you with powerlessness. By going to church you should be encouraged to serve, not discouraged. Hence, I want to be a little optimistic and share with you why I think our responsibility is important to talk about even though we might not be able to live up to our responsibility.
I have two encouraging reasons for this:
First, the Canadian sociologist Charles Taylor warns us against giving up. Because by giving up we just add to the pool of frustration. In one of his books, he wrote something like this:
“A society in which people end up being individuals who are ‘closed in their own hearts’ is a place where few people will want to participate actively in the management of society.
They will prefer to stay at home and enjoy the pleasures of privacy as long as the government in office at any given time manufactures and mass distributes the means to achieve those pleasures.”
And later in the book he adds something like this:
“As soon as active participation wanes, as soon as the many associations which were its medium fade away, the individual citizen stands alone before the immeasurable bureaucratic state and therefore rightly feels powerless.”
By talking about Charles Taylor, I want to express the fact that we actually cannot afford giving up. Because if we give up, not only will we not have solved any issues at all, but we will also add to a growing feeling of powerlessness since we eventually will feel more excluded from each other.
We must ‘make that change’. Not only because of the change, but also because we by acting interact. And by interacting we feel less powerless.
I hope it makes sense although it is a little complicated.
Anyway. Second, I want to remind you of the second reading for today. The reading about a sinner giving praise, because he has experienced that even though he had not always been good, God still looked upon him with mercy. The same will happen to us.
Not that God’s mercy should make us simply sit down and relax. This will be a severe misunderstanding of the Gospel. Also, as I stated earlier, this will just add to the unpleasant feeling of powerlessness.
No, we truly should look in the mirror and we truly should try to ‘make that change’. But when we do not accomplish every goal, we set. When we feel that the burden is more than we can bear. Or when change does not seem to work. We should not be discouraged.
Because not only are we looking in the mirror upon a wretched being. God is looking as well – looking with mercy – if only we dare to believe that it is so.
That was my first sermon after coming back from holiday. I hope you enjoyed. During my holiday I did not prepare any further in advance by reading more Biblical readings for upcoming Sundays.
Yet, I will not promise you that I will not talk more about what happened during my holiday on upcoming services. After all, when I take time off, I get inspired. In my personal life, but in my pastoral as well.
It is good to be back.
Amen.