"The Good News and the Bad News"
Sermon by the Rev. Matt Kennedy

August 13th, 2006
The Church of the Good Shepherd

John 6:37-40

Let's begin this morning with our bibles open to the gospel lesson for today, specifically the first section, John 6:37-40.

I've told this story before, but since it fits here and we have some new people with us, I'll tell it again. 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. During my stint the goal was to help us young seminarians get in touch with our deeper selves. 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. In fact, 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. 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 taught us 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, Christocentrism, and he ranked it alongside racism and sexism. I didn't make a very good grade in CPE.

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 all faiths lead to the same God. This is a popular belief and sometimes I wish it were true, but the gospel lesson today demonstrates that it is not.

If all roads lead to God and all religions are the same, Jesus makes absolutely no sense today. Look down at verse 40 “For it is my Father's will that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.“ There's both an explicit promise and an implicit call implied in this sentence. The promise is that everyone who believes in the Son, will live forever and be raised with Jesus on the last day. The implicit call is for those who do not believe; to believe; to turn from whatever faith they profess and believe in Jesus. This implicit call is made explicit both later in this chapter where Jesus says in verse 53: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will have no life in you.” and again in John 14:6, where Jesus, “No one can come to the father except through me.”

Now, there were plenty of religions out there in Jesus' day, and Jesus knew of them, from Judaism to Buddhism. In fact all of the major faiths we have today existed then, except for Islam, all of them promising, as they do today, to lead to moral purity and acceptance into heaven. And yet, Jesus wants all people, everywhere to leave their old lives and their old faiths and put their trust in him, to believe, be baptized and made disciples, forgiven and made clean. Why? because no other way in this world offers what Jesus promises here: eternal life.

Keeping that in mind listen to these poll results from Richard Barna in 2002. 87% of all Americans agree that God created the Universe. That's pretty good. But 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 shines out and you become a god or godlike. 4% believe that there are many gods, each with different spheres of power and authority. 9% believe that God is a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach. As you become more and more spiritual you become one with the great Cosmic energy force in the sky. It goes on.

Compare that with 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 trust in Jesus as their Savior and Lord. What does that mean?

Well, it means, if we take Jesus at his word, that 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 and they will spend eternity in hell.

These numbers break God's heart. Jesus in Matthew 18:14 referred to the lost people of the world as sheep. He 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 and once there as he tells us in verse 37 of today‘s gospel lesson, he will never let us get lost again, “whoever comes to me I will never drive away” and in verse 39 he says, “I shall lose none of all that he has given me..” Jesus wants all the lost sheep in his fold and when they come, they‘ll never get lost again.

Jesus' last words on earth in Matthew 28 are not about how to run the church, or where to put the altar, or the budget, or how many LEMs we should have, or even about feeding the poor and getting along with others, they are about seeking and finding the lost. "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 so much that he wants more of them. Jesus longs for the lost and 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 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 and 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 to look to and believe in the Son. We are saved 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 what the water of baptism represents, a cleansing from sin and the beginning of a new life in the arms of Christ.

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

Where do they? One way 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?" When you read today's gospel you can't help but notice Jesus' longing for lost people to believe in him and come back home. Is that our desire? Is it yours?

Today we baptize four brothers, each of whom have said, I believe in Jesus Christ and I want him to be in my heart. The commitment they make this morning will seal their destiny forever. The promise Jesus makes to you is that if you truly surrender your heart to him today as your Lord and Savior then you have eternal life. God will come and make his home in your heart and he will never leave you or forsake you. You will never be lost again. Knowing the longing of Christ's heart revealed in the gospel today we can also know that what is happing 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

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