Halo Shining

Halo Shining
Sermon: Psalm 51, Hebrews 5:5-10
5th Lent, March 25, 2012

Let’s take a quick journey through thousands of years of God’s work among us, through the Old and New Testaments and up to the present time. It will be a fast trip and we will have glimpses of biblical characters and passages. Hopefully, it will all make sense in the end. Think of the intro to the current tv show, the very popular, Big Bang Theory, At the beginning of the show there is a fast moving collage that takes the viewer from the origins of the universe, through the evolution of life, into the study of physics and up to the present time. So our biblical journey will be similar. What would a tv show be without a commercial, though? Our commercial this morning is for the Scripture 101 class that meets at 9.30 most every Sunday morning. We are taking a quick journey there through scripture and invite you to get on board, if you haven’t already.

Okay, ready for this journey, here we go. Picture Adam and Eve in the Garden, shamed because they sinned. Suddenly we see old Abraham. He approaches the priest Melchizedek, who offers to the God Most High a sacrifice of bread and wine in Abraham’s name. Next there is David, God’s favorite king, breaking three of the ten commandments, like all at once, and then composing that great psalm of his repentance, Psalm 51, the one we prayed after the reading from Jeremiah this morning, “Have Mercy on me, oh God.”

Then there is Jesus at the Last Supper offering up the sacrifice of bread and wine, a foreshadowing of his sacrifice the next day upon the cross. We hear echoed today’s words from Hebrews, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

A quick transport in the salvation time machine and we see the present day Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, writing one of her many books. What is Sister Joan saying?

“One mistake we often make is to accept perfection as our standard, as our goal. When we imagine that we will never fail, failure hits hardest. Perfection is an oppressive standard and no Christian this side of heaven will ever reach it. The problem, of course, is that we fail. We know ourselves to be weak. We stumble along, being less than we can be, never living up to our own standards, let alone anyone else’s. We eat too much between meals, we work too little to get ahead, we drink more than we should at the office party. We are all addicted to something. Those failures and addictions convince us we are worthless and incapable of being worthwhile. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy of the worst order because it traps us inside our own sense of inadequacy, of futility, of failure.”

Do her words feel familiar? What’s to be done about this condition? If we can’t be perfect, do we just give up and “go the way of all flesh,” to quote St. Paul. Well, let’s go back through the time machine and get the bigger picture. God didn’t give up on us. In that mythical story of the fall in the Garden, God didn’t give up on Adam and Eve and on the human race. When David broke those three commandments (he lusted after his neighbor’ wife, he committed adultery with her and he had her husband killed so she could be his wife.) God didn’t give up on David and David didn’t give up on David. His repentance is expressed in that remarkable psalm that can be our expression of repentance, if we need it.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses. Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.”

The thing about it is Christ has won forgiveness for us. He offered the ultimate sacrifice upon the cross; that sacrifice is re-presented and we are invited to enter into it each time we celebrate the Eucharist. He is a priest forever according to the Order of Melchizedek. Remember that Melchizedek offered the sacrifice of bread and wine, way back in the days of Abraham, just as we will today, only it has much more power and meaning now because of Christ’s death and resurrection. And there will be a time in today’s service, very soon in fact, to express our repentance and hear the words of forgiveness. Then there is also the opportunity to go for personal confession.

So, what about Joan Chittister’s words concerning perfectionism. I find them encouraging. We can’t be perfect as we tend to define it. So, let’s give it up. We don’t give up trying to live the Christian life, we just stop trying to be perfect. We will screw up and be less than we think we should be. I dare say, very few of us will screw up like David; and he was forgiven because he repented and made amends. And so will we, if we repent and make amends. We have to forgive ourselves. Most of the things we beat ourselves over the head about aren’t sins at all but failures to live up to our own self-image, you know, trying to shine up the halo.