Author Archives: Maxie Dunnam

It is absurd to apologize for mystery.

Keep that sentence in your mind now because I will be coming back to it in the sermon today, and may be coming back to again and again in this series of sermons which we begin this morning. It is absurd to apologize for mystery.

Some of you movies buffs will remember an Italian film entitled Le Dolce Vita. As that movie opens, a helicopter is flying rather slowly and not very high above the earth. Slung from the helicopter is a kind of rope halter in which there is a statue dressed in robes with arms outstretched. Now and then it becomes rather amusing as the camera focuses simply on that statue, and it looks as though the statue is flying through the air alone. It passes a field where some men are working in tractors. They look up and see this sight and become very excited. They begin shouting to one another and pointing and then one of the fellas recognize who it is a statute of and says, hey, that’s Jesus. The others become even more excited. They throw their hats into the air; they wave and they scream, but the helicopter moves on. It comes into the edge of the city of Rome and is flying rather low over an apartment building, on the top of which is a swimming pool surrounded by beautiful girls dressed in bikinis. The helicopter does a double take as the men flying it see what’s going on there. It comes back and it hovers over the swimming pool and in an effort to attract the girls’ attention, the men began to shout down at the them, asking them for their telephone numbers, telling them that they’re going to finish their mission – taking the statue to the Vatican – and would be quite happy to come back when they finished that mission.

It’s a rather amusing thing to see and Frederick Buechner describes the kind of reaction the audience had in a college town where he saw that movie. At first it was an immediate reaction of laughter; laughter at the incongruity of it all. On the one hand, the sacred statue dangling from the sky; on the other hand, the profane Italians and the bosomy young bathing beauties. One of them cold, remote, so out of place, hanging there from the sky; the other made of flesh so radiant with life. When the thing comes on and the people begin to laugh, no one doubts as to what they’re laughing at and no one doubts as to whose expense it is. But when the helicopter gets on into the center of Rome, the dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral looms up from the earth, and then for the first time, the camera people focus in just on the statue, and very soon this figure of Jesus fills the screen. And then the move on in, zoom on in, until only the bearded face of Jesus fills the entire screen and there’s no more laughter. All is quiet and still; there is complete silence, because it seems as though they are seeing their own face for the first time. A face that they may not have seen before, but a face that they somehow know belonged to them, or that somehow they know they belong to. It’s absurd to apologize for mystery.

And there’s mystery here; mystery in the way that Jesus comes to us; mystery in the way that when we, in his presence, in our heart of hearts, have to be still and quiet and look and listen and ask, what have you to do with me Jesus of Nazareth? Or, what must I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?

This is a season of reflection and assessment. The season when we focus our eyes in a disciplined gaze upon Jesus. The season when we position ourselves in relation to Jesus in order to receive his judgment and his grace. To facilitate this long look at Jesus, I’m going to preaching a series of sermons on the great claims of Jesus. Those passages in the scripture where Jesus says, I am, I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the light. In these sayings of Jesus, these great claims, he writes his autobiography. It is as though in words he is painting a self-portrait, and this is what we want to look at.

And we begin today, with that one word from our scripture lesson – I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst. Let’s put that verse of scripture in the immediate, as well as in the larger context of the scripture. Jesus has performed a number of miracles, miracles of healing. Just the day before, he has performed that miracle of multiplying the loaves and the fishes and feeding the multitude of 5,000 people. At the close of the day, the disciples take a vote and move across the Sea of Galilee, but Jesus goes off alone to be by himself and quiet and to renew his soul in relation to God. On the next day, the crowd, wanting to see Jesus again, decide to go over where they saw the disciples go, thinking that the disciplines may know where Jesus is. When they get there, Jesus is with them. They didn’t know it, but he had walked across the water and joined the disciples in that miracle that amazed the disciples themselves. And when they see Jesus there, they ask, when did you come here, Rabbi? Jesus didn’t answer their question, but rather he pressed the deeper issue of hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And he said to them, you’re really not concerned about who I am as the powerful Son of God, you ate your fill yesterday of the loaves and fishes, and that’s what you’re interested in. Then he laid his claim upon them, do not spend yourself, he said, for bread that perishes, but seek that bread which is God’s offer of eternal life. And then he made the connection between what he had done in feeding the multitude and what had happened in the wilderness when day in and day out Moses and the wandering Jews had received Manna from heaven.

Listen to those verses there, 32 and 33, “then Jesus said unto them, verily verily I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my father giveth you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world. Then said they unto him, Lord ever more give us this bread. And then Jesus made his claim. I am the bread of life, he who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me will never thirst.” It’s absurd to apologize for mystery.

So we’ll not bother to apologize or to explain or to rationalize, but simply nail these truths down as the core of our learning today.

One – life depends on bread. We can’t live without being physically nourished – life depends on bread.

Two – this physical bread is God-given. The anonymous poet stated it clearly, back of the loaf is the snowy flour and back of the flour the mill and back of the mill are the wheat and the shower and the sun and the father’s will. Physical bread is God’s gift.

Three – for all of God’s children to have this bread, we humans must corporately labor and share. For all God’s children to have this bread, we humans must corporately labor and share. Augustine put it a pithy sentence – without God we cannot, without us God will not. Get that. Without God, we cannot, without us God will not. God will not make a loaf without us, and we cannot make a loaf without God. So in a loaf of bread we have symbolized the fact that we are dependent upon bread, we’re dependent upon God, we’re dependent upon each other. So we need to remember that the way this world is constituted, there are those who will not eat unless we provide them the bread to eat; that is, unless we provide the necessary resources by which they can get bread. So, again, for all God’s children to have this bread, we must humans must corporately labor and share.

Now a fourth learning. While in its most elementary form, life depends upon bread, bread only nourishes life, it doesn’t make life all that God intended it to be. Now I wish I had time to talk about this at length. Parents, it is not enough for you simply to provide food and clothing for your children; it’s not simply enough for you to provide them a good education; it’s not enough for you to simply provide them the physical necessities of life. Husbands, wives, it’s not enough simply for you to share together in the parenting process; it’s not enough for you simply to provide sexual satisfaction for your mate; life demands more than that. Life demands relationship; caring and sharing, tenderness and affection, giving as well as receiving love. There must be shared values and commitments. I don’t believe people fall in love. People grow in love. And people don’t fall out of love, they cease to love because they cease growing in love. There is a quote with one great truth – “if thou hast two loaves of bread, sell one and buy lilies.” Now that’s the truth. Life needs more than bread; it needs lilies. It needs love and light and beauty and blessedness.

Now the fifth learning, the biggest truth. Jesus said it, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. That is Jesus’ answer to the devil when after 40 days in the wilderness, he had been fasting, and was terribly hungry, and the devil said to him, why don’t you turn these stones into bread in order that you might eat. And Jesus’ response was, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” For us Christians, we know that we not only live by the words of God as we find them in the scripture, we live by the word of God who is Christ himself.

Here it is in a story out of Great Britain. An old scrubwoman was taken ill. Her friends managed to get enough money to get her into the hospital. During her convalescing, she went up and down the corridors of the hospital meeting the other patients and visiting with them. She became very close friends with a 12-year-old boy across the hall from her. Johnny was his name, redheaded, freckle-faced, a kind of stereotypical 12-year-old. They became fast friends. The little boy was very sick. One early morning, a commotion awaken the old scrubwoman and very soon the mother of Johnny came rushing into her room saying, the doctors are here and they say Johnny has only 10 or 15 minutes to live – he loves you so much, won’t you come and say something to him. Well that was a tough task for a simple woman, but with the courage of a great Christian, she walked across the hall, sat down by the bedside of Johnny, took his frail hand between her calloused palms, looked him in the eye and said, “listen Johnny, God made you, God loves you. God sent his son to save you, God wants you to come home and live with him.” Johnny lifted himself feebly up on his elbow, a smile, a faint smile came on his face and he said, “say it again.” And the old woman repeated it. “Johnny, God made you, God loves you. God sent his son to save you.” And a big smile came on Johnny’s face and he said, “tell God thank you.” The old woman knew it, the 12-year-old learned it, man shall not live by bread alone, but by the words of God – more than that – by the word of God, Christ himself.

And that brings us to our focus today. The bread that will be brought to the altar in a moment, is symbolic of it. It is absurd to apologize for mystery.

This is the ultimate truth of the Christian gospel. The bread must be broken in order for us to be nourished by it. And that’s what this sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is all about. The body of Christ continually broken, that the salvation and the continued life of Jesus Christ might come to you and me. That’s a mystery. It’s absurd to apologize for mystery, we simply receive it.

Go back to our scripture lesson – the crowd was thinking, if not saying, “wait a minute. It was Moses who gave our ancestors bread in the wilderness. Do you mean to tell us that you can do the same thing?” Jesus said, it wasn’t Moses. It wasn’t Moses who gave you bread in the wilderness, it was God. And God has sent down his bread from heaven to you. I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst. And the crowd said, Lord, give us this bread always.

The texts for this sermon come from Romans 1:8-13 and Romans 15: 23-29.

Apart from the Gospels, the Epistle to the Romans is the “pearl of great price” in Scripture. It was Martin Luther’s study of this book that fired the Reformation. Luther contended that, “the Epistle to the Romans is the masterpiece of the New Testament and the very purist gospel…it can never be too much or too well read or studied, and the more it is handled the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.”

One of the greatest fathers of the church, Chrysostom, had it read to him twice a week. The poet Coleridge said it was, “the most profound writing that exists.” I hope you know your Methodist history well enough to know that when, in his deep soul searching, John Wesley went to a prayer meeting on Aldersgate Street in London, the leader was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans; and Wesley testified that while the leader read, “I felt my heart strangely warmed; I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

There is no possible way to express the monumental role this Epistle has played in the history of the Christian movement. In all of Christian history, Romans has been pivotal.

In a few verses from the first chapter of the Epistle, Paul expressed his desire to go to Rome. Only recently did I note that Paul expressed his same longing as he was closing his letter. In between those expressions of deep desire in Chapter 1 and Chapter 15, Paul spells out in the most deliberate and studied way his understanding of the gospel, and the core of the gospel message, justification by grace through faith. And after using all his genius to write this brilliant argument for the Christian faith, Paul expresses again his passion to share that faith with the Romans, in verse 29 of Chapter 15: “know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.”

I can’t imagine that my longing and passion for sharing the Gospel comes anywhere near that of Paul, but my passion is great, and my age and years of ministry have not diminished that passion. In fact, the passion is greater because I don’t know how much longer I have, and I don’t know how many occasions I will have to share it. Paul’s confession is mine: Woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel.

I want to do it now by simply outlining what the full measure of the blessing of Christ is.

First of all, Christ comes to free us. Let that sink in. Let it permeate every fiber of our awareness. Christ comes to free us.

Among Christians in one section of Africa, the New Testament word for redemption means “God took our heads out.” It’s a rather strange phrase, but when you trace it back to the 19th century when slave trading was practiced, the meaning becomes powerful. White men invaded African villages and carried men, women and children off into slavery. Each slave had an iron collar buckled around his neck. To that iron collar was attached a chain which was attached to the iron collar around the neck of another, and on and on, until a long chain of people where marched off to the sea shore where a ship waited to take them to England and America to be sold into slavery.

From time to time, as the chain of slaves would make their way to the coast, a relative, loved one, or friend would recognize someone who had been taken captive and would pay a ransom to the captor for the collar to be removed and the person to be freed. Thus the word for redemption: God took our heads out.

However we state it, whatever image we use out of our own culture, redemption means that God’s action in Jesus Christ sets us free from the bondage of sin, guilt and death. Christ comes to free us.

So, where are you? Do you feel pain in your heart, a heaviness of spirit because there is a broken relationship? Parents, do you have children you are separated from? Is your marriage in trouble? You and your spouse have drifted apart…or the relationship is severed because of infidelity? Christ comes to free us.

Do you feel helpless because you or a family member is bound in the tenacious grip of alcohol, drugs, gambling or some other destructive habit? Christ comes to free us.

Is you energy drained because you have been living too close to moral compromise? Christ comes to free us.

Are you preoccupied with sexual lust? Christ comes to free us.

Are you addicted to pornography? Christ comes to free us.

Could the blessing be greater? Christ comes to free us.

The blessing may not be be greater, but it is fuller. Not only does Christ come to free us, he comes to fit us; Christ come to fit us, to transform us for Kingdom living.

Go to another section of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Have you ever noticed the dramatic difference between Chapter 7 and the first verse of Chapter 8? In the last part of Chapter 7, he describes the anguishing war that is going on inside him. He feels that he is being brought under the captivity of sin. He moans,”For the good that I would, I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” Then he groans, “O wretched man that I am…who will deliver me from this body doomed to death?”

That‘s the way Chapter 7 closes. Then the very first verse of chapter 8 is this glorious word: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

Do you see the tremendous difference between Paul’s condition, which he expresses so dramatically in chapter 7 — “O wretched man that I am” — and the beginning of chapter 8 – “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus”?

What a huge divide! How do we leap over it?

We don’t.

People may tell you that you simply need to give your sins Jesus; and they say it so glibly: just give your sins to Jesus. That’s impossible. We can’t give our sins to Jesus; if we could, we’d all be saints.

We can’t give our sins to Jesus. We give ourselves to Jesus and He takes our sin. He transforms us and fits us for Kingdom living.

There’s a story about a man who was tired and weak all the time, drained of energy. Finally he decided to visit his doctor. “Doctor,” he said, “I feel drained and exhausted. I don’t seem to have any energy. I have a chronic headache. I feel worn out all the time. What’s the best thing I could do?” The doctor knew something about the man’s wild and fast-paced lifestyle. “What’s the best thing you can do? You can go home after work, eat a nutritious meal, get a good night’s rest, and stop running around and carousing all night — that’s the best thing you can do.” The man pondered for a moment, then asked, “What’s the next best thing I can do?”

Too often we decide for the next best thing because we are not willing to be who God called us to be. We are not willing for God to transform and fit us for Kingdom living.

Listen! Holiness is not an option for God’s people. God says, “Be holy as I am holy.” We can’t leave that word back in the Old Testament, as though it had no relevance to us. Over and over again in the New Testament, we’re called to be “new creatures in Christ Jesus.” Holiness is not an option for us as Christians.

We are where we are as a nation today because we have become a people and a place where “everything goes” –
Where as many Christians as non-Christians are divorced yearly,
Where our city is full of children without fathers,
Where some government leader is caught lying and cheating almost every week,
Where the Supreme Court has made a decision that completely disregards God design and Christ’s understanding of marriage –
We are where we are because we have ignored God’s call, “be holy as I am holy.”

There ought to be about us Christians something that distinguishes us, that sets us apart in our ethical understanding, in our moral life, in the way we walk, in the way we talk, in how we live together in our family, in how we raise our children, in how we treat our wives, in how we treat our husbands, in the way we think about issues like abortion, same sex marriage, sexual brokenness, gambling, extravagant consumption, in how we treat the environment, in how we treat prisoners and the attention we pay to the poor, in how we order both our private and our public life.

In Ezekiel God says to Israel, “The nations shall know that I am the Lord, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes.” Listen friends, the world is not paying attention to the church today, and will not pay attention to the Church in the future until those of us who call ourselves Christian vindicate God’s holiness before their eyes.

Again, holiness is not an option for God’s people. God calls us to be holy as he is holy. Now listen — only Christ can make us holy. He fits us for Kingdom living.

And that leads to this final word. Christ comes to free us; he comes to fit us for Kingdom living, and he comes to fill us, to fill us with his Holy Spirit. And that’s our need, friends, the power of the Holy Spirit.

How we need the Holy Spirit. I believe the reason most of us are impotent in our discipleship, the reason being a Christian is a debilitating struggle for too many of us is that we do not claim Jesus’ promise, “you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you.”

We don’t spend enough time on our knees. We trust Jesus with some things some of the time when we need to trust him with all things all the time.

We have all been troubled by what happened in Charleston, South Carolina a few weeks ago. Nine persons in church, in a Bible Study, were shot down by a man possessed with the demon of hatred. What moved me most, and challenged me to the depth of my soul, was the response of some family members of those who had been killed. They attended the session when the judge was setting the bond for the young killer. The judge allowed some persons to speak to the man who had killed their family member. I couldn’t believe it. Person after person not only expressed their grief, but they told the young man they forgave him.

Could you have done that? I can’t imagine I could. Where did that kind of power come from? Those folks would be quick to tell you. It comes from Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. I want the kind of power those folks had.

So I have come to you in the full measure of the blessing of Christ. Christ who comes to free us, to fit us for kingdom living, and to fill us with his presence and power. That’s the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel. I don’t want to miss any of that, and I don’t want you to miss it.

We are all in need of healing for the brokenness sin has wrought in our lives. So, why the hesitancy to talk about it, especially to name those causes for our brokenness as the sin that it is?

For one reason, the person talking about sin is talking too often about sin in the life of another, not his or her own sin.

We must be honest about our failures and sins.  None of us lives up to the standards our faith demands. But this doesn’t mean we cease wrestling with and proclaiming the Word. Humility doesn’t mean there are no standards.  Because we have failed in calling for sexual purity and keeping clear God’s design for marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman as a part of his order of creation, doesn’t mean we give up or give in to the cultural tide of a “whatever pleases you” understanding of sex, and a civil definition of marriage.

Add to that the fact that the talk about sin usually has a self-righteous ring to it, as though the speaker is free of sin and of the judgment he is pronouncing on another. The big issue is that we forget (if we have ever owned) that we are all sinners. We are sinners not because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.  Paul made this especially clear in his First Letter to the Corinthians.

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-12 NIV)

The Christians in the Corinthian church must have been a wild bunch. After naming all the sins that would keep people out of the kingdom, Paul said, “and that is what some of you were.” Paul was quick to sound this word in all his letters: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24 NIV)

When we talk about sin, we should always do it from a we perspective rather than a you perspective. Also, we should do it from the perspective of grace and the possibility of redemption and transformation, not from the perspective of judgment and condemnation. To all those folks, among whom were sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who have sex with men, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers, he said, “but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” Just as freely and boldly as Paul named our “sins,” he affirmed that we have “redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Those of us who oppose same-sex marriage take our cue from Jesus.  When he dealt with sexual immorality, and the multiple expressions of it, he pointed people back to God’s design.  When he dealt with the question of divorce (Matthew 19:1-12), he could have easily pointed to texts that condemn wrongful divorce, i.e. Malachi 2:16, “I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel, and I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment…So guard yourself in our spirit, and do not break faith.”

Instead of that simple statement of God hating divorce, Jesus pointed back to Genesis chapters l and 2, God’s order of creation, and his design for marriage: one man and one woman becoming one-flesh in a lifetime covenant. As Adam Barr and Ron Citlau remind us, “for Jesus, anything outside this arrangement would be one item on a long list that could be summarized by the phrase sexual immorality.” (Compassion Without Compromise, Bethany House, 2014, pp. 59-60)

If there was nothing else in Scripture about the practice of homosexuality, God’s order of creation, and Jesus’ expression of the meaning of marriage would be enough for those who accept the authority of Scripture to oppose same-sex marriage. While we may not want to use the term sin – and when we use it, it must be from a we not a you perspective – as it relates to this issue of same-sex marriage, we need to make the core of our discussion God’s design plan: one man and one woman in one-flesh lifetime union.

The practice of homosexuality is not the only expression of sexual brokenness. Adultery, cohabitation, pornography, and serial divorce all witness to the failure of the Church to teach God’s word about the sacredness of sex and our responsibility to use our gift as male and female responsibly, to be accountable as those created “in the image of God.”

The Church has become shy in seeking to minister in this area for all sorts of reasons: the LGBT effective social media campaign that paints our biblical convictions as hatred and discrimination, the presence of gay persons in our families, the triumphant positioning of culture that the “war has been won” and that sexual practice must be solely personally determined. All this, as well as weariness, have made the Church reticent to even engage. We don’t like to be called bigots. We don’t want to be considered hateful.

But we believe God has a design for sexuality. That design is clear in God’s order of creation. And Jesus affirmed that design when, in talking about marriage, he referred back to creation, and made the same claim. God’s design for our sexuality is one-flesh union, one man and one woman in a lifetime covenant.

On the surface, the cultural war related to homosexuality has been won. That Indiana’s recent religious freedom legislative issue was so quickly turned into a gay discrimination issue is a rather clear signal that all the guns will be loaded against our present position of United Methodism when we arrive in Portland in May 2016 for our General Conference.

Never mind what Scripture says. Forget what the church’s witness has been for 2,000 years. Disregard Jesus’ own clear definition of marriage as a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman.  For persons to practice sexuality however they choose, and to marry whom they please even though of the same sex – these are being claimed as civil rights that must not be denied.  The “justice” train has long since left the station and is going at breakneck speed.

What we need now, and always, no matter what happens at General Conference, is compassion without compromise. That’s the mission of the church: transformation, loving Jesus and loving like Jesus. Love without holiness is not his kind of love. And holiness without love is not his kind of holiness.

We must pray and prepare in every possible way for General Conference: to keep our biblical witness clear as the Discipline of our Church presently states it, and find a way forward for our divided church. That given, I plead for a renewed or new commitment to a ministry of compassion without compromise. 

The scriptural context for today’s article can be found in Genesis 45:1-28, which you are invited to read here.

Loren Eiseley is one of my favorite writers.  He is a distinguished anthropologist and essayist.  What makes his writing so gripping to me is that he has the eye of an artist and the soul of a poet.  He sees beyond the surface and has that rare double gift which enables him to enter deeply into an experience and then share that experience with us in a way that enables us to vicariously experience what he himself has experienced.

In one of his poignant vignettes from boyhood, he shared a moment of time that bears timeless truth.  He was 16, and one day he leaned out the second story window of his high school and saw an old junk dealer riding in a cart filled with castoff clothing, discarded furniture, and an assortment of broken-down metal objects. A broken-down horse was pulling the cart.  As the decrepit figures passed below him, Eiseley had a sudden sense of what time means in its passing. He wrote, “‘It’s all going,’ I thought with a desperation of the young confronting history.  No one can hold it… we’re riding into the dark.  When my eye fell upon that junk dealer passing by, I thought instantly, ‘save him, immortalize this unseizeable moment, for the junk man is the symbol of all that is going or gone.'”

Forever after that, Eiseley said he could never regard time without having a deep sense of wonder and he sought to receive every moment as a kind of gift that was only his.  It’s an image to consider as we begin this year.  And to help us appropriate it, let’s look at our scripture lesson.

Tucked away in this story of Joseph’s sojourn into Egypt is a verse that is packed with far more meaning than appears on the surface. It is a word that carries a whole wagonload of goods for reflection and teaches us an eternal truth that we do well to consider as we move into the New Year.

Rehearse the story.  Sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph found favor with the Pharaoh and became one of the trusted officials in Pharaoh’s court.  A strange irony of fate (the providence of God, of coarse) brought Joseph and his brothers who had betrayed him together again.  A famine had ravaged the land of Canaan, the people were without food and they came to Egypt seeking to buy food from the Pharaoh.  It was soon revealed that the person with whom they had to deal was the brother they had sold into slavery, so the tables were turned.  Here they were asking food from the person they had cast away.  And when it came to Pharaoh’s attention that Joseph’s brothers had come, it pleased him.  He instructed Joseph to bring the whole family away from Canaan, promising to give them the goods of all the land of Egypt. It is at this point that the power-packed verse is found.  Do this, said Pharaoh: “take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives, and get your father and come.  Never mind about your belongings, because the best of all of Egypt will be yours.”  I like the way the King James’ version translates that. “Regard not your stuff, for the best of all the land of Egypt will be yours.”

Regard not your stuff.  There’s all sorts of meaning in that.  One translation renders it, “leave your stuff behind.”  Now some of us who have moved a good bit, like Methodist preachers, know what that means.  I remember when we moved from Mississippi to California, years ago.  Moving across the continent made it even more difficult to decide what stuff we were going to take and what stuff we were going to leave behind.  Moving is expensive.  My wife, Jerry, collects rocks, and she had bushels of them.  She knew better than to get into a discussion with me about taking those rocks from Mississippi to California.  Do you know how heavy rocks are?  So Jerry did a very cunning thing.  She packed her choice rocks into kitchen canisters and cake tins and brought them along without my knowing it.  The movers were mystified, I’m sure, as they handled those cake tins and canisters, and I learned of it long after I had paid the bill.

“Regard not your stuff,” said Pharaoh, “leave your stuff behind…for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours.”

By the time most of us get to be adults, we have accumulated a great deal of stuff.  We’ve learned so many wrong things, stored up so much misinformation, learned to respond in so many destructive ways, adopted all the biting, snarling, snippy styles of relating, become secretive and cynical.  We carry a lot of stuff around, and it burdens us down.  We get all glued up in our limited world of habit.  So this word of Pharaoh to Joseph’s brothers is a good word for us, particularly as we begin this new year: leave your stuff behind. What is some of the stuff we need to leave behind as we begin the new year?  What can we drop off our weary, bending backs to make our trek into the New Year a bit easier and far more meaningful?

Leave behind self-pity. Self-pity is a burden most of us are unwilling to drop off.  Someone hurts our feelings and we carry our hurt with us forever.  We’re treated unfairly and we never forget it.  Something happens in our family and it seems to us that we’re being put down: someone else is receiving special treatment, so we get a kind of stepchild complex.  We suffer physically and we get the idea that the whole universe is out to persecute us – such an easy snare to fall into! As long as we carry this burden of self-pity, we can blame our failures on someone or something else.

To go through life with the burden of self-pity is to go through life crippled.  It is to stumble along at an uneasy and faltering pace, so we need to leave the bundle of self-pity behind us.  We need to stride into the future, not with self-pity, but with self-affirmation.  And when we rehearse the gospel, we know that we can do that because the whole of Scripture, especially the Gospels, is an affirming, not a destructive word.

Jesus said that not even a sparrow fell to the ground without the Father taking note, and then he added, “you are of more value than sparrows.” And how extravagant is this? “The very hairs on your head are numbered.” Each of us is a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God, and there is a place in God’s heart that only I can fill…that only you can fill.

“For thee were we made, oh God,” said Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”  No wonder he said that; the psalmist himself had captured it long before – You have made us a little lower than the angels, a little less than God, and crowned us with glory and honor.  We don’t need to go into the New Year with self-pity because God is on our side.  God has created us. God has affirmed us.  And God is going to be with us.

Leave behind illegitimate responsibility.

The second bundle of stuff we need to leave behind is what I call illegitimate responsibility.  I’m talking about the responsibilities which we rigidly claim for ourselves, but which don’t legitimately belong to us.

Our journey will be more meaningful if we can determine that there are certain responsibilities that are ours; these we will accept and give our resources to.  There are other responsibilities which we simply have to leave with others and with God.  Parents, there is a limitation to the responsibility we can take for our children.  We must do all we can to nurture our children to live productive, helpful, meaningful, Christian lives.  But beyond a certain time and place of nurturing, certainly when they have gone out from us, we must commit them wholly to God, and leave with them and with God the responsibility for guiding themselves.

This is conditioned by a special word to young parents, and I introduce it with a story.  A Chicago suburbanite put on a last spurt of speed to catch his train but missed it.  A bystander remarked, “if you’d run a little faster you would have made it.”   “No,” the suburbanite replied, “it wasn’t a case of running faster, but of starting sooner.”  Young parents, you can’t begin too soon to relate a child to God – to demonstrate clearly to your children your own Christian commitment and values.  We can’t depend wholly upon the church or Sunday school to teach our children scripture and to instill within our children a love of God’s Word.  That won’t do it;  it never has and it never will. Of course the church has a responsibility, but parents are primarily responsible. When we have been faithful in our parenting, we can leave the stuff of inordinate feelings of responsibility for our children behind.

Am I making it clear?  There are responsibilities that we can and must assume – but many of us are weighed down by responsibilities that don’t belong to us, and we must leave them behind.

Leave behind cancelled sin. There’s a lot of stuff we ought to leave behind, along with self-pity and illegitimate responsibility. We can’t name them all, but let me mention one other bundle that needs to be cast off as we stride into this New Year.

I call it the bundle of cancelled sin.  The phrase comes from Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Oh For A Thousand Tongues To Sing.”  He claims that this is the work of Christ.

He breaks the power of canceled sin,

He sets the prisoner free;

his blood can make the foulest clean;

His blood availed for me.

Scores of people who beat a steady stream to my study door for counseling are burdened down by cancelled sin.  Somewhere in the past, they have done those things, been involved in those situations, and had relationships about which they feel morbid guilt.  They carry this around as an inside burden which no one knows about.  But like a malignancy, it grows and spreads until it poisons the person and brings a sickness unto death.

The heart of the gospel is that God through Christ forgives our sins, and our sins are, in fact, cancelled by God’s grace.  But obviously, this fact and experience are not enough.  Cancelled sin still has power – destructive power in our lives.

How then is the power of cancelled sin actually broken?  How do we cast this burden aside?  There is one key: confession and inner healing.  I believe that under most circumstances, not only confession to God but confession to another is essential for healing and release from the power of cancelled sin.  This is the reason James admonishes us to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another.  Once we have confessed to a minister or to an intimate friend or a sharing group, we don’t have to carry the burden alone.  The poisonous guilt that has been bottled up inside is now released.  The cleansing and freedom that comes is wing-giving.  Forgiveness and acceptance are confirmed in our lives and the fear of others knowing who and what we are is taken away.

A medical analogy is apropos here. When an infectious boil appears somewhere on the body, antibiotics are given.  If these do not destroy the infection, usually the infection is localized and has to be lanced.  The surgeon uses the scalpel and opens the boil in order that all the poison might be drained.  Confession is something like the surgeon’s scalpel.  When we honestly open our lives in confession, all the poisonous guilt that we have bottled up within has a chance to flow out.  Confession becomes the cleansing process by which the self is freed from the power of cancelled sin.

Now there are two requisites for redemptive confession – one, you must trust the person, the person or the group, to whom you confess; and two, your confession must not be destructive to another person.  We dare not disregard the health and wholeness of another in order to seek our own release.

The big point is that the burden of cancelled sin is too great for us to carry into the New Year.  You can leave that stuff behind, because God forgives.  He loves you and accepts you.  And if you’ve not experienced the release from cancelled sin, if the burden of it is still with you, you may need to find a person whom you love and trust with which you can share.  Open your life to them, and allow the poison to flow out in your honest confession, and remember the promise of John’s gospel, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

I want to invite you now to use your imagination.   Picture yourself with a big trash bag. Move through every room of your life; select the stuff you need to leave behind. I’m talking about self-pity and illegitimate responsibility.  Put it into the trash bag.

What cancelled sin still has power over you, what hidden hatred, what frustrating fear, what devastating doubt, what powerful prejudice? Put it in the trash bag.  Do it.  Act it out in your imagination.  Put it into the trash bag.

Is there an unresolved relationship with a husband or wife, a parent or a child, a neighbor?  Is there a jealousy you’ve never brought out into the open?  Put it into the bag.  It could be any number of things.  You know what weighs you down, and what stuff you don’t need to take into the New Year.  Put it into the bag.  Be specific in identifying and visualizing all the stuff in your mind to put into that bag.

Now stay with me in your imagination.  Get in your mind the picture with which we began  – the junk man with his cart filled with cast off clothing, discarded furniture, all sorts of abandoned useless things.  Do you see it in your mind?  He’s passing by.  In your imagination now, throw your trash bag onto the junk wagon and let it be taken away.  Have you done it?  In your imagination, just cast it onto the junk wagon to be taken away.  Be silent now and enjoy the relief and release of getting rid of that burden.

Keep the image of the trash man in your mind for a moment, taking all your trash away.  Now substitute for the image of the junk man, Christ himself.

Do you see him?  Jesus. Listen.  Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Leave your stuff behind – all your junk.  Leave it.

You are forgiven.  Your failure and weakness are accepted.  Your past is buried in the sea of God’s loving forgetfulness.

Go into the New Year with Christ, and go joyfully.