{"id":655,"date":"2017-09-19T11:46:31","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T15:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=655"},"modified":"2017-09-19T12:29:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T16:29:35","slug":"14th-sunday-after-pentecosta-come-see-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2017\/09\/19\/14th-sunday-after-pentecosta-come-see-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"14th Sunday After Pentecost\/A – Come See Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Come See Jesus<\/h1>\n

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/h2>\n

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor – Copyright 2017<\/h2>\n

14th Sunday After Pentecost\/A \u2022 September 10, 2017<\/h2>\n

Matthew 18:15-20<\/a><\/h2>\n

Hear the sermon preached by clicking below<\/h3>\nhttps:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/comeseejesus.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

One of the big issues in my life is that I lose stuff. Do you find this? Keys, cellphone, little things: I misplace them. Last week on my boat I lost my phone. The boat is a small area. I knew the phone was there somewhere. Half an hour later, I resorted to begging a dock worker to call me so I could find it. I lose things all the time. Now if you lose things too, you can feel the problem of the people to whom Matthew is speaking in today\u2019s scripture reading. He\u2019s writing to a group of Jewish Christians about fifty years or so after Jesus left his earthly ministry and here\u2019s their problem: they\u2019ve lost Jesus. <\/p>\n

Where Is Jesus?<\/h3>\n

How do you find Jesus? Where is he? How can we get him back? How can they find the assurance that he is present? How can they talk to him, walk with him, hear him. Where do you go to find Jesus? What are the directions that will allow us to come see Jesus?<\/p>\n

The classic way to deal with this is simple: you make a statue of Jesus and hang him on the wall. All great Roman Catholic cathedrals have these; European art museums are full of pictures of Jesus, hanging there, easy to find. Of course, the problem is you have to go there to find him; that\u2019s not much help if you want him with you, walking with you, where you are. <\/p>\n

Another solution is just to make up a picture of Jesus. That\u2019s what prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen do. They give people a picture of someone with all the problems solved and tell them well that\u2019s Jesus, be like him. They live like rich people which in our culture looks like living successfully. Their problem, of course, is that it isn\u2019t Jesus they are portraying, it\u2019s just living like a rich guy. <\/p>\n

But how do you find the real Jesus? This scripture lesson is all about finding Jesus, it\u2019s a sign that says, \u201cCome see Jesus.\u201d Listening to it is like reading a map, like someone saying, \u201cCome see Jesus, he\u2019s over here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Matt 18:20).<\/p>\n

\n

I know you\u2019ve heard this saying of Jesus before; it\u2019s frequently quoted, especially by Congregationalists. I wonder if we\u2019ve really taken it seriously enough. Every time you and a friend get together and treat each other like Jesus treats people, every time you have compassion on a stranger the way Jesus has compassion on strangers, every time you treat someone like a child of God, the way Jesus treats everyone as a child of God\u2014there he is. Every time we gather here in his name to worship, here he is. Every time one of our Boards or committees gets together and thinks about how to help people in his name, there he is. \u201c\u2026where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there\u2026,\u201d he says. Every time I visit with one of you in the hospital and we pray, there he is. All it takes is two or three of us, gathering in his name, for him to appear. <\/p>\n

So where do you go to find Jesus? The answer is specific: you go to others. And one sure place is to the gathered congregation of his followers. One of the jobs of pastors is to listen to excuses for not going to church. I learned early not to tell people on airplanes I\u2019m a pastor, for example, because they would tell me why they didn\u2019t go to church last Sunday. High on the list of excuses is, \u201cI find God in nature.\u201d Sometimes nature means the golf course, sometimes another place. And, of course, we\u2019ve all felt the stirring of inspiration seeing God\u2019s creation. Sometimes that may work; often that is inspiring. But it\u2019s a chancy thing. If you want to be sure Jesus will come along, if you want to be sure about finding Jesus, you need a congregation, you need two or three or more other followers.<\/p>\n

The second thing it\u2019s important to notice here is the number required. Jewish scribes had settled on ten men as the minimum number to get God to be present. The book of Genesis records a wonderful conversation between Abraham and the Lord. The Lord is angry at Sodom and decides to wipe them out. Abraham asks whether the Lord will wipe out the righteous with the sinners. Abraham asks if 50 righteous people would be enough; God agrees 50 would be plenty. Abraham goes for 40; God says ok, 40 is enough. Finally, Abraham gets the Lord down to ten: ten righteous men will be enough to stop the destruction. From this, Rabbis deduced the requirement that ten righteous men are needed. <\/p>\n

Now Jesus reduces this. Notice that he doesn\u2019t specify gender: it\u2019s not just men, it\u2019s any followers of Jesus, and it only takes two or three. This is the foundation for our church order. Where some believe that it requires a whole structure of bishops and officers to constitute a church, Congregationalists believe it only takes a congregation, meeting in covenant for worship. How big a congregation?\u2014two or three.<\/p>\n

So if you want to see Jesus, come to the congregation; where faithful followers gather, he promises presence. The verse before this makes it clear: \u201cwhatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.\u201d The reason is that what we are doing is what Jesus is doing: we are literally the body of Christ in the world because he is present here with us, in us. Christ is present here and this is our destination: to go where he is, to be with him, to walk with him.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not enough to have a destination, you also need directions on how to get there. Navigation can be tricky. When I\u2019m sailing, I write down the buoys I\u2019ll pass, the courses to take. I still make mistakes. Last week, I was coming back from a little cove and I suddenly realized I\u2019d misread one of the buoys that marked a big shoal and I was about to run aground; I had to change direction fast to be safe. <\/p>\n

What are the directions to Jesus?<\/h3>\n

The directions are in the part just before his statement about presence. One of the issues the early church faced is what to do about people who hurt each other in the church. So here it is, laid out in detail: first you tell them they hurt you\u2014-you say ouch!-\u2014and if they repent, you forgive them. If that doesn\u2019t work, you get some other folks to mediate between you, and when they repent, you forgive them. And if that doesn\u2019t work, you get the whole congregation involved and if they repent, you forgive them. Finally, if even that doesn\u2019t work, you treat them like outsiders; in other words, following Jesus, you give them special love and care.<\/p>\n

Now if you listened closely to these directions, you heard the same word over and over: \u201cyou forgive them.\u201d The directions to Jesus are to forgive; the directions from Jesus are to forgive. The first step on the way to Jesus is forgiving others and accepting forgiveness ourselves. <\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela was a young lawyer leading a revolution in South Africa when he was arrested in 1962. Beaten, imprisoned, he might easily have become hardened and bitter. Instead, he let the love of God bloom in his heart. He learned to forgive. In 1990, after 27 years, he was finally freed. Desmond Tutu, a bishop in South Africa said this.<\/p>\n

Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC’s military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mandela became the first President of a new South Africa. Many had predicted a racial civil war. Thanks to his efforts and example of forgiveness, his nation sought instead reconciliation and became a model for this.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no accident that this section on forgiveness is connected to encountering Jesus: forgiveness is the path to gathering in his name, to his presence. <\/p>\n

For the next few Sundays, we\u2019re going to think about this theme, see what Jesus says, imagine what it means to live out forgiveness in our daily lives. Perhaps in your life, there is someone you need to forgive; perhaps you need to seek someone\u2019s forgiveness. Perhaps you need to feel God\u2019s forgiveness. <\/p>\n

The farther we walk on the path to forgiveness, in our prayer life, in our daily life, the closer we come to Jesus. \u201cCome see Jesus\u201d, is the gospel invitation: come see him here, come see him in the light of the forgiving love he shares and that we share in his name. <\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Come See Jesus A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor – Copyright 2017 14th Sunday After Pentecost\/A \u2022 September 10, 2017 Matthew 18:15-20 Hear the sermon preached by clicking below One of the big issues in my life is that I lose stuff. Do you find this? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,109,108,3,2,69],"tags":[24,67,26],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-pentecost","category-matthew","category-scripture","category-sermon","category-worship","category-year-a","tag-forgiveness","tag-jesus","tag-parable"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":668,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions\/668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}