"The Desire of Jesus' Heart"

Sermon: Trinity Sunday year A

The Rev. Matt Kennedy

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Let's begin this morning with our bibles open to the gospel lesson for today. (Matt 28:16-20) I'm going to set aside our sermon series this Sunday and come back to it next week with the final sermon in the series. This Sunday I wanted to talk about Baptism and the great commission.

During the summer of the first year in seminary all seminarians on the ordination track are required to participate in something called Clinical Pastoral Education or CPE. CPE was originally intended to give young pastors in training some hands on experience doing hospital visits. By the time I got to seminary it had changed a lot. During my stint the goal was to help us young seminarians get in touch with our deeper selves, our inner child. We spent most of our day in a group counseling session where we were encouraged talk about our feelings and any new discoveries we'd made about ourselves that day and how it made us feel to be around and visit sick people. We spent most of our time talking about our feelings about visiting sick people, instead of actually, visiting sick people. In any case, the worst part of the whole experience came when my CPE instructor laid down the following rule. Under no circumstances were we to "proselytize". How many people here know what that word means? It means to share your faith or to evangelize.

We were told not to say anything to patients about Jesus or salvation or heaven or hell. If we were counseling a dying patient who'd never heard the gospel, we were to let him die unless by some chance, he were to bring the subject up himself. My instructor was of the opinion that there is no hell, only heaven, and our only role as care-givers was to make people feel happy on their way there. Any attempt to introduce someone to Jesus Christ or share the gospel was considered a sign of intolerance. He called the idea that Christianity was in some way more true than other faiths, Christo-centrism, and he ranked it alongside racism and sexism.

I didn't make a very good grade in CPE. In fact I ended up spending extra time with the instructor as he tried very hard to get me to open up and share that pain I must have suffered as a child that led me to hold such intolerant views. It was great.

I think my instructor's attitude is widely shared in our society and not only in our society but even in the Church. Bishop Swing, the Episcopal Bishop of California, preaches openly that faith in Jesus Christ is just one way to salvation among all the other religions and philosophies. In the end, he says, everyone goes to heaven because all faiths lead to the same God. This is a nice thought, and a popular one, and sometimes I wish it were true, but if nothing else, the gospel lesson today should demonstrate that it is not.

If all roads lead to God and all religions are the same, Jesus makes absolutely no sense today. Why make disciples of all nations if all nations are already disciples? Why baptize, set apart believers, if everyone is headed in the same direction anyway? Why become human and die on the cross to make people clean who aren't dirty? There were plenty of religions out there in Jesus' day, and Jesus knew of them, from Judaism to Buddhism, all of them promising, as they do today, to lead to moral purity and acceptance into heaven. In fact all of the major faiths we have today existed then, except for Islam. And yet, Jesus wanted all people, everywhere to leave their old lives and their old faiths and come to faith in him, to be baptized and made disciples, forgiven and made clean.

The Christian world was small when Jesus told his disciples to make disciples. It consisted of 11 men, some women, and a small group of hangers on. It is much larger today, but probably not as large as we sometimes tend to think.

Richard Barna is a Christian pollster and periodically he conducts insightful polls of the American people and their faith or lack thereof. I read the following poll numbers from a poll Barna took in 2002. 87% of all Americans agree that God created the Universe. 87%! When I first read that I thought, we're doing pretty good here in this country. But then I read on. Of that 87% more than 4% believe everyone is God. 7% believe that God, is the total fulfillment of human potential. In other words, as you fulfill yourself your inner divinity comes out and/or begins to shine through and you are in some sense a god or godlike. 4% believe that there are many gods, each with different power and authority. God created but he must need smaller gods to take care of the details and administrative stuff. 9% believe that God is a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach. This is sort of an eastern idea. As you become more and more spiritual you become one with the great Cosmic Yes in the sky. It goes on.

Then I read some statistics about what people think happens after they die. 54% believe that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their life, they will earn a place in Heaven regardless of their religion. That means that one out of every 2 people you know believe that they can earn their way into heaven through good works. Of that remaining 46%, 2% percent believe that they don't have a chance and their headed for Hell. 11% have no idea whatsoever. 7% believe God will let everybody in regardless of how they live or what they believe. Only 60% of that remainder, which means about 30% or less of the whole, believe they will go to Heaven because they have confessed their sins, and accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord. What does that mean?

Well, it is a frightening picture. 70%, 7 out of 10 of our neighbors, are lost. Unless they hear about Jesus Christ, repent and trust in him for the forgiveness of their sins, when they die, they'll stand before God and face his perfect justice without an advocate or mediator or substitute.

These numbers are heartbreaking, especially when I think of loved ones who I know don't know Jesus Christ. But even more so, it breaks God's heart. Referring to the lost people of the world as sheep Jesus said, "My father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost." That phrase "little ones" in Greek as in English is a term of deep tenderness and compassion. God sees everyone he created, you, me, everyone, as his little ones and he wants nothing more than to gather us all into his arms.

Jesus' last words on earth to his dearest friends are not about how to run the church, or where to put the altar, or the budget, or whether we can wear shorts and sandals in church or how many LEMs we should have, the things that churches worry about, or even about feeding the poor and getting along with others, they are about seeking and finding the lost. Take a look at his words. "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Bring home my sheep. Bring back my lost children. Teach them to live in my house. God loves his followers, he loves us so much but he wants more of us. And Jesus is desperate: eternity is at stake.

It's not enough that someone is religious. It's not enough that someone works at a soup kitchen. It's not enough that someone visit's the sick or thinks nice thoughts about other people. All these things are great and we should do them but the standard by which all human beings will be judged has been given to us by Jesus himself in the book of Matthew 5:48, "Be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect." Or, as James says, "Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." (James 2:10)

Now we all know, especially if we've tried to live out this command, that no one can meet that standard, no religion, from Islam to Hinduism can give the key to meeting that standard.

There is only one way to be considered clean and right before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ alone because Jesus Christ alone met the standard and died for the rest of us who don't. And when anyone trusts in him that person is forgiven of their sins and covered with clean white robes and made part of the living vine Christ himself who will never die.

That is the whole purpose and reason God the Son became man in Jesus Christ, to gather his lost sheep, to call you and me and our friends and neighbors and enemies and everyone else back into his loving embrace. He died to make that possible. Now, if that is God's chief desire. If he cares so much about the lost of the world that he was willing to become human and die on their behalf and make it the mission of the church to seek them out, where should our priorities be as Christians and as a church lie?

Where do they? One of the ways you and I can test our maturity in faith is to line up our hearts with the heart of Christ and ask, "Do I want the same things that Jesus wants?" "Do I get excited about the same things Jesus gets excited about?" "Do I have the same longings in my heart that Jesus has in his?" Well when you read the gospel, especially today's gospel you can't help but notice Jesus' overwhelming longing to bring lost people back home. Is that our desire? Is it yours?

Today we baptize three people and we also celebrate 7 kids giving themselves to Jesus in a very new and special way. Angels are throwing a party this morning over the things going on here. And knowing the longing of Christ's heart revealed in the gospel today we can also know that what is happing this day is pleasing to him. Wouldn't it be wonderful to please him in just this way every Sunday? In Acts 2, Luke tells us that in the days of the first Christian church the Lord added to the church "daily those being saved."

Doesn't he have the will and the power to do that even here, even through us? Of course he does. But first, his will must be our will and the longings of his heart must become ours as well. May we, all of us, have the heart of Christ for the lost.

Amen