Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

Morning Promise Service – 10/7/01

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Text: Luke 17:1-6

 

The Sermon: No Mere Mortals

 

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v     This is one of the most misused passages.   —I really don’t think this is about our having enough faith to create miracles.

 

Ø      I think it’s really about trusting God…that he will do whatever, and be wherever he has promised,

Ø      that if it needed doing for the sake of his relationship with us, God would move mountains, and trees.  In fact, I think he already has.

Ø      He has already moved the greatest, gnarled trees of our sinfulness.  No sins can stand in the way of God and you.

Ø      You and I need to own the faith that God has made in us, to trust and believe that promise.  The tree of sin, roots and all, has been ripped out and thrown into the Deep.

Ø      He has removed the greatest mountain, the same way: the Mountain of Death has been leveled, through Jesus Christ.

Ø      God was born among us, a mortal man, but raised immortal…the power of God that was there from the beginning of creation: the Word of God, made real and in the flesh.  Every time God said, “Let there be!”  There was life.

Ø      And once again, one time for all time, when the mortal body of his Son had died, God said, “No, not this!  Let there be: LIFE!  RISE AGAIN!”

Ø      The Mountain of Death rolled away, and he rose bodily. 

 

Ø      St. Paul would write later to the churches in Corinth that—when God commands life—then “this mortal body must put on immortality…we will be the same, but are bodies will change.  Perishable bodies will put on imperishability.”  It will be like being dressed in new clothes—all because Jesus Christ, one time for all time, paved the way.

 

v     But it’s not just about eternal life …“some day.”

Ø      The other incredible thing about this “mustard seed” faith that God has put in each of us is the way that it already connects us to the Kingdom!

Ø      In the play we just saw, after the woman bought her shoes that the little girl was praying for, the little girl asked, “Are you God?” 

Ø      If the play went on from there (I’m glad it didn’t), how do you think the woman would have answered?

Ø      I believe that the woman, like any of us, would’ve said, “No!  I’m not God!  Nothing like him.  Of course, I try to be.  I was just moved by your prayers, little girl, and just did what seemed decent.  Anyone else would do the same thing.”

Except that, as the play showed us: that isn’t true.  Many passed the little girl up.  Now, between the girl and the woman, something special had happened, and the woman probably didn’t realize that this little girl’s question was more than just a cute childish interpretation of what had happened.

Ø      God happened.  The woman may not have been God, but God was there in and through her, answering the girl’s prayer like a miracle.

Ø      I can imagine this woman in heaven: Jesus is welcoming her.  He is saying, “…and I want you to know how grateful I am!  After everyone else ignored me, you washed my feet, so carefully.  Then you covered them with new socks and shoes.”

Ø      “When did I do anything like that, Lord?  Must have been someone else.  My grandparents weren’t even around to do such a thing!”

Ø      “Oh yes you did!  When you did it for that little girl, you did it for me.”

Ø      God himself.  Incarnate.

Ø      So… the little girl looked at the gentlewoman who answered her prayers, and saw God himself. 

Ø      This is a greater miracle than any healing, and more important than the shoes themselves, more important than the comfort of her feet, or even her life.  In this finite woman, a gnarled tree was removed, and there was the infinite God. 

Ø      At the very same time, the woman in the play was also meeting Jesus…in the little girl.  The little girl asked, “Are you God?”

Ø      The woman could have answered, “No.  …Are you?”

 

v     There is one more level to this.  It’s about us and all the people we encounter.

Ø      No one you meet is ever a mere mortal.  It’s not just that God creates us all.

Ø      We are all created with eternity running through our veins!

Ø      C.S. Lewis once preached about this.  Reading this sermon was very powerful for me.  It showed me how the faith of a mustard seed can see miracles greater than mountains moving in each person.

 

v     It’s a long section, but listen carefully, C.S. Lewis wrote:

Ø      “It is a serious thing to live in a society…to remember that the dullest person you can talk to may one day be a creature which…you would be strongly tempted to worship…or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, …that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics, [and all anger].

Ø      “There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are [all] mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Ø      “This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.  [But we play as people who have taken the life, the eternal lives, of each seriously, without] flippancy, no superiority…

Ø      Next to the blessed Sacrament [of Holy Communion], your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.  If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way [as the Bread and Wine, the Body and Blood], for in [your neighbor is] also Christ—the glorifier and the Glorified, Glory Himself.”1

 

Ø      God has promised to be present like this.

Ø      With our faiths the size of mustard seeds, we see it, and it happens through us.  Amen

 

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