You will remember that a few weeks ago, I asked each of you to make a list of twelve names, a list of people who apparently know little about Jesus Christ nor follow him. I asked you to begin to pray for these people and to attempt once a week or at least once a month to engage them in a discussion of God and Christ. Today, I’m going to give you some ideas which might assist you in leading your people to an understanding of what it means to be saved by Jesus Christ. And if you have not turned your life over to following Jesus, these ideas might help you understand Jesus better. Let’s begin by turning on our imagination. Imagine this:
The Man, the Child, and the Cat
There was a man, a very neat and clean man. Apparently he had been an officer in the service and the old habits remained. This man was a bachelor and he kept his apartment spotless. There was never a speck of dust in the house on his fine furniture, there were no dirty dishes in his sink, the clothes were all neatly put away or lie in a clothes basket awaiting laundry, which he did twice a week. Even his carpet was vacuumed weekly and the nape on the fibers lay in a single direction when he was finished and there was never an unusual odor in the place. As I said, this guy was neat and clean.A friend suggested that he get a pet, like a cat.
“No!” he responded in no uncertain terms. “I will not have a cat because cats, by their nature are dirty creatures. They shed fur on the carpet; they scratch the furniture. They cough up fur balls and their litter boxes can become a stinky mess. No, I will not have a cat – or even a kitten.”
Time went on, the man met a woman, they were married, and they had a child a year later who the man loved dearly, perfectly, and wonderfully. One day, a few years later, the child was outside walking and came upon a stray kitten wandering the street. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. “ Soon, the kitten was safe in the child’s arms and taken home to see the man.
“I found this kitty. Can I keep him?” the child asked the man. “I’ll clean up any messes.” And, of course, you know what happened. The man allowed the child to keep the kitten in the house. And true to form, the kitten shed fur on the carpet, scratched the furniture, coughed up fur balls, and even made the litter box into a stinky mess. And yet, the man allowed the kitten to stay. Why?
It wasn’t because the kitten was an especially good kitten. It made messes as all cats do.
It wasn’t because the kitten was good at catching mice. Like Garfield, it never considered chasing a mouse.
It wasn’t because of anything the kitten did or didn’t do. As you probably realize, the man allowed the kitten into his house simply because he loved his child – and the child loved the kitten…because the kitten had come to the child when the child said, “here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” The only thing the kitten had done to deserve this home in the man’s house was to trust the child.
And this is the way it is with God. We are the kittens and cats for God. Jesus is God’s child. We can’t be good enough for God to allow us into Heaven, because we all have bad habits by our nature. But God’s Son, Jesus Christ, has said that He will clean up our messes. And God loves His Son so much, and Jesus loves us so much, that God allows us in – if we trust Jesus enough to follow Him when Jesus calls us to Him. All we have to do is to go to Jesus and follow Him.
It isn’t that we are particularly good people. We all make messes.
It isn’t that we are particularly useful people. We all have a hard time doing God’s will.
Our salvation with God rests solely on the fact that Jesus has decided He loves us and has decided to call us to Him where we can be kept safely.
Will you go to Jesus and follow Him home?
So many people in our world have decided that Christianity is all about being good enough for Heaven. Unfortunately, that has been a lie that has come down from many years ago. It is not the Gospel, the Good News that the early church discovered.
The Old Testament speaks of a people who had been in slavery in Egypt over four hundred years. In those days, the Israelite people were not educated, they were not allowed to live freely, they simply did as they were told. Eventually, God took one of their number, Moses, dealt with him and sent him back to negotiate for the release of all the Israelites. Eventually, after a series of ten plagues, the Israelites were set free and escaped ahead of the Egyptian army across the Red Sea in a miraculous journey which was famously handled by God.
After the escape, God gave Moses a series of commandments and laws for the Israelites to follow which would take the place of following the orders of the Egyptians. It was a way for them to live together as a society and get along without violence, for the example of their slave masters had not been good. The Egyptians had simply taken what they wanted. Now, the freed Israelites must agree to follow certain laws so their society could function peaceably.
Over the centuries, the Israelites learned to follow the laws. In fact, for many Israelites, now known as Jews by the time of Jesus, following the laws became more important than paying attention to the God who had brought them out of Egypt. They would do evil to another and justify it by pointing out that they had followed the rules to the letter. For example, the law said not to work on the Sabbath. Harvesting was work. So some would punish people who were hungry and walked through a wheat field on the Sabbath, picked the tops of a handful of wheat, and ate the seeds because that was said to be harvesting, and that was work, and the law said not to work on the Sabbath. Jesus’ disciples got in trouble for this very situation. The people had made the rules more important than treating other people well. Jesus taught differently.
Two Sons
Our reading today speaks of one day when Jesus told a group of rule-following religious people a brief story of a man with two sons. He asked his first son to go and work today in the vineyard. The son said, “I will not,” but he later changed his mind and went to work.The father went to the second son and ask the same thing. The second son said, “Of course I will, sir.” But he did not go.
Then Jesus asked a question. “Which of the two sons did what his father wanted?”
The listeners answered, “the first, of course. The one who said “I will not” but later went to work.
And then Jesus said to the religious people. “Truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. John the Baptist came to show you how to be righteous, but you did not believe him. But the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed."
You see, the first son represents the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the people who ignore God early in their lives and then turn to God, doing what He asks. The second son represents people who grow up giving lip service to God, perhaps attending church regularly, but not doing what God asks, which is to help others, to take care of others, to lead others to an understanding of God.
The point of the story was that over time, the religious people had developed the idea that following the rules made them good enough for Heaven. Yet Jesus pointed out that choosing to follow Jesus was the way to Heaven. The rule-following would always remain secondary to worshiping God and doing good for all the other people around us.
Even today, we often get the idea that following the rules is the way to end up in Heaven – and if we haven’t followed the rules, we can’t get to Heaven. But that’s not true. That’s not what the New Testament tells us.
It is true that not following the rules, the commandments, the law of the Old Testament will usually lead to trouble. For example, if we break the commandment and steal, we are likely to end up in prison. If we kill others, we are likely to either end up in prison for murder – or be shot by someone taking revenge. Looking at some of the other Old Testament commands, such as not to eat pork, we find that eating too much pork will raise our cholesterol.
But Jesus also taught us that God can forgive any rule-breaking, any sin, any crime against his commandments. For following the rules is simply a guide to a way to live without trouble. The key to being on God’s good side is not following the rules, but – as both John the Baptist and Jesus taught – is to repent, to rethink our relationship with God and apologize to God for what we have done and choose to follow the teachings of Jesus and His example of living – worshiping God and treating other people very well.
If we focus upon these two things, worshiping God and treating other people very well, listening to the guidance of the Holy Spirit every hour, God will lead us to do the right things and will be pleased. And if we mess up, God will forgive us.
Now, just like that cat I talked about earlier, we can’t be perfect. It isn’t in our nature. But we can begin to work to follow the way of Jesus.
What Jesus was talking about to the religious people was that it seemed that those people who had been living rough lives, those people who were outside of normal society, those people who the good religious people didn’t associate with were more likely to believe Jesus and turn their lives around than the religious people who were following the rules but were unkind to others, more likely to believe than those people who never broke the commandments but looked down on others, more likely to believe than those people who blamed the poor for being poor, the addicts for being addicted, the starving for stealing food.
And Jesus asked everyone to rethink what God wanted and learn to do two things: Love God and love other people. All other people. Give God the glory God deserves and treat people right.
Why is it important to God that we treat people right?
Portraits of God
Imagine that you come across a portrait of God – a real-life painting of God. How much could you sell it for? How valuable would it be? The most valuable painting ever sold at auction was worthy over $400 million. It was a painting of Jesus Christ called Salvador Mundi, the Savior of the World, as imagined by Leonardo Da Vinci. It was an imagined portrait of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It was in poor condition, with scratches and mold on it. Now imagine how much a real, honest to goodness painting of God would be worth! Billions of dollars?Yet in Genesis, we are told that we have been created in the image of God. We are walking, talking sculptures of God, each made from a different angle. Let me try to be clearer – if you and I and everyone else in this room took a photo of someone in the room, they’d all be slightly different, shot from different angles, right? That’s what the Bible says about us. We are all images of God – and of course, we are all shot from different angles, showing different features of God just as the works of different photographers and painters will all be slightly different even when they shoot or paint the same thing.
Look around. Near you are dozens of portraits of God, each done from a different angle with a different style. And each person is that image of God, potentially worth billions of dollars.
And now I want you to recognize this. If each person is an image of God, then you and I are images of God, immensely valuable even if we have the scratches and mold of the world on us that have come because of our poor choices in life. WE ARE VALUABLE TO GOD! You and I are in God’s photo album!
Let’s put the rules of the Old Testament in proper perspective. Those rules were provided to a group of people who had previously had no rules except to do what their Egyptian masters said to do. This set of rules was given, much like the rules for handling valuable portraits in a museum – Don’t touch the portraits, don’t harm the portraits, don’t use flash photography, don’t stack the portraits on top of each other without a soft cloth between them. We don’t want to damage the portraits or put scratches on them! These are the rules of the Old Testament – to avoid damaging yourself and others, to properly worship God. But the rules couldn’t handle every situation and people forgot the purpose of the rules and simply followed the rules, even though no list of rules could cover every situation. And because of that, we put scratches and damage on each other and ourselves.
And so God said, through Jesus Christ, that if we will apologize for putting those scratches on ourselves, if we will choose to follow Jesus’ teaching and example, if we will start trying to repair ourselves by listening to Jesus and the Holy Spirit – we will be kept with Him forever.
We won’t be tossed out with the trash. We won’t be left to fend for ourselves alone. We won’t be left to fade away because of the sunlight or the weather or the rot and mold that has started to grow in our souls. We will be restored to the full glory that every portrait of God deserves.
And all we have to do is choose to follow Jesus, God’s Son.
The lie that has come down through the ages is that it is following the rules that gets us into God’s kingdom. No, following the rules is how we polish up our portrait and restore it and protect it and other portraits. Getting into Heaven is by following Jesus.
So how quickly will you make that decision to follow Jesus? You might find yourself moving to the head of the line for Heaven, because there are even some people in the churches who have not made that choice yet. They have been following the rules, but have not decided to do what Jesus asks – to treat all people, all those images of God with kindness and love, to do what God asks, to follow Jesus’ example of sacrifice and love for others.
Choosing to follow Jesus requires change. You’ll need to grow and change. You’ll need to change your habits, perhaps even your friends. But it is for your good. Let me tell you one last story:
Two Trees
I saw two trees. One was dead, gray and lifeless. A vulture perched on a limb.The other tree was filled with life - songbirds, fruit, even caterpillars enjoyed its dark green leaves that moved constantly in the bright sunlight and slightest breeze. Every day it was different and growing, and a joy to be around. Underneath it was a cool place on hot days.
Every day, the dead tree was the same, never moving, always still except when a strong wind blew, it would drop a branch or a few twigs as it slowly decayed. There was very little shade. It was sad.
I realized that people are this way, too.
As COVID-19 changes our world, as everything seems to change in our world, we can choose to stop growing, to try not to change or grow, to stand still in the winds of change, to await our death alone, sadly.
Or we can be joyful, putting out new shoots as we move in the winds of change, unfurling new leaves and skills, letting others be attracted by our growth, our skills, our movement, our fruit of life like the songbirds and the caterpillars are. We can choose to be different every day and a joy to be around, lifting up others to the sunny, blue sky. People will join us in the shade given by our beautiful leaves. We will never be alone again.
I choose to grow in this time of change. I choose to follow the living, breathing Jesus, doing what He asks each day, following His example of loving God and all the people around me, not stay the same day-after-day following some dead code until I die, piece-by-piece. I choose to be transformed and changed by His example and His teachings, I choose to grow! How about you?
Father, I pray for these people in this church and all those watching and listening at home. Fill them with your Holy Spirit, teach them Your ways, help them bring the Good News of Jesus’s love into their hearts so that they may do great things by trusting and following Your Son Jesus and Your Holy Spirit. Give them the courage to step away from their old life, to forgive others daily, and joyfully do Your will. I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Remember: God loves us because of the Son, not because of anything we do. We are valuable because we are each images of God. Change and growth is good for us, God asks us to grow and change.
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