Isaiah 43:19-20 “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen…”

God’s new thing forms an interesting contrast with the crossing of the Red Sea. At the Red Sea there was too much water, it seemed. The Lord had to make a dry place through the middle of the sea so that his people could cross it to safety. In the new thing God is doing, there is too much dry, trackless desert his people need to cross. That’s why God creates streams of water–so that they can survive their journey and cross the desert to safety.

One might guess Isaiah is referring to his people’s return from captivity in Babylon. Isaiah had predicted this captivity was coming. He even gave the name of the man who would let them go home when it was done: Cyrus, the future king of Persia. When the time finally came, and the people could come home to Jerusalem, they certainly had to cross a very dry, very lonely desert to get there.

That crossing of the Arabian desert may have begun the fulfillment of this prophecy. But we have no record from either the Bible or history of literal streams appearing in that desert on the Jews’ trip home. It’s also hard to think of the return from Babylon as being a more momentous event than the crossing of the Red Sea, whether for its historical or for its spiritual significance.

But there was another time ahead for God’s people when he was making ways in the wilderness and providing drinks in the desert. Remember Isaiah’s words describing John the Baptist? “A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.’” Remember Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well? “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The reason God led his people home from Babylon to Jerusalem was to bring them the Water of Life later in the person of Jesus. Then they could cross the spiritual desert in which they were living to safety with him.

Look at this new thing God has to show you. Do you see how it is blessing you in the present? These wonderful works of God were not done in a vacuum. They were not merely awesome displays of his power far removed from us. We still drink from these streams in the desert. God says that he has given them “to give drink to my people, my chosen.” That includes you and me. Does it occur to you that you have been personally privileged to experience an even greater miracle than the crossing of the Red Sea?

Less than two years after Israel had crossed the Red Sea, the impact of that miracle had worn off for most of them. After the people refused to enter the Promised Land on their first trip to its borders, God complained to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them?”

But you believe in him. You haven’t seen all kinds of astounding changes in the forces of nature. You simply heard the name of Jesus. You heard him inviting you, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

When he promises you that your sins are forgiven, you can’t see that it is so. But when you drink from that promise, your soul is refreshed and your strength is renewed.

Jesus has sent you no postcards of your heavenly home. He has never invited you to come and inspect the foundation or check out the furnishings before you move in. But though you have never seen it, its very mention fills you with longing to go there. Its promise is sometimes all that keeps you going when your life has become uncomfortably hot or dry.

Is that not a miracle? We are a uniquely jaded and skeptical people. By nature the human heart is closed to the spiritual truth about God. But on the force of some promises flowing from the loving life and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ nearly 2000 years ago, God has opened a way through the wilderness into your heart. He has poured the cooling drink of his love into your soul, and you live with the present blessing of believing it is so.

Isaiah 43:16-18 “This is what the Lord says– he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.’”

From our perspective in history, it may difficult for us to appreciate how shocking these words of Isaiah were. They allude to the crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of Pharaoh’s army there. In our day God’s people have more or less followed this command, though not intentionally. We might watch The Ten Commandments on TV at Easter. We might study this part of Bible History in a Sunday School class. But we don’t dwell on it anymore. Our church and our faith revolves around Jesus and the events of his life, death, and resurrection.

But when God inspired Isaiah to write this, the Exodus from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea were the most important things God had ever done for his people. This was how Old Testament people came to know the true God and what he is like. His justice, his love, his power, and his deliverance are all wrapped up in these events. How could he say, “forget the former things; do not dwell on the past”?

The Lord wasn’t saying this deliverance no longer held any importance. He was telling his people it would be overshadowed by the new thing he promised to do. That new thing culminated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. To an outsider, this may seem mistaken. How could Jesus’ simple life of love, telling people the good news about God, overshadow the power of God forging a path through the waters of the Red Sea? How could the criminal death of one man overshadow the destruction of an entire army on the floor of the Red Sea? How could one empty tomb overshadow the deliverance of an entire nation from the most powerful empire on earth at that time? The people of Israel simply had to trust God when he told them the future would hold greater things. We, too, must simply trust God when he tells us that the events of Jesus’ ministry are more significant than all the other wonders God has performed.

We aren’t always inclined to see it that way. God’s people have often found it difficult to keep their eyes focused on the main event, and the main event is Jesus. In an age that wants to dismiss God’s wonder-working power, some Christians react by making miracles the center of attention. In a society that denies God’s right to establish the standards of right and wrong, other Christians want Biblical morality to take the center ring. In a world where life is a struggle, relationships are prickly, and health is teetering on the edge, some want God’s principals for successful living or promises to provide to stand in the spotlight.

All these have their place. But sometimes we get so caught up in the peripherals we forget that the great issue of the day is not evidence for God’s supernatural power, or society’s lack of respect for life, or the success of my own life. The great issue of the day is still what I am going to do with my own sin. The always new thing that overshadows everything else God has said or done is freedom from sin and victory over death in the death and resurrection of his Son.

Luke 23:28-31 “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then ‘they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will they do when it is dry?”

It is too easy for our earthly circumstances mask our true spiritual condition. We equate success and prosperity with God’s approval of our lives. If I am healthy and gainfully employed, happily married and respected in my community, then everything must be okay between me and the Almighty. This is why so few are interested in a Jesus who forgives my sin and takes me to heaven. If I have already found heaven on earth, why do I need a heaven to come? If I have already been so blessed, why should I think I have been doing anything wrong? Even we begin to lose our sense of how desperately we need what Jesus wants to give. The grip of our faith begins to loosen. We begin to replace the security of a Savior’s grace and love with worldly comfort.

But if worldly success equals divine security, why did the beggar Lazarus go to heaven and the rich man go to hell in Jesus’ parable? Why did Jesus tell the rich and religious Pharisees that the prostitutes were getting into heaven ahead of them? Why did Jesus tell these women of Jerusalem that they needed to weep for themselves rather than the condemned man stumbling to his death in front of them?

A terrible death was waiting where Jesus was going, it is true. Crucifixion was a cruel, cruel way to die. The deeper hell he would suffer on the cross was hidden from the onlookers who watched him make his way through the streets.

But a new life awaited Jesus just three days away. A place of power at the right hand of God in heaven would follow less than a month and a half after that.

God’s judgment would not be so kind to those who cried at the sight of Jesus, but never put their faith in him. Jesus doesn’t go into graphic detail about the horrors of that judgment, but his description of its effects upon the heart and mind are just as effective.

For Jewish women of that time– who prized children and viewed childlessness as the greatest possible curse–to wish their children never existed suggests a terror beyond description. My own son’s cancer made it unmistakably clear for me how painful it is for parents to see their children suffer. To see your children suffer where there is no kind Savior, no hope, and no escape hurts to think about.

But if no tears of repentance followed their tears of sentimental sympathy, this was the only fate awaiting these women of Jerusalem and the unbelieving generation they would raise. “For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Do you get Jesus’ picture? Jesus was the green tree, a tree full of life. He shouldn’t be cut down. He was not fit for the fires of judgment. He was the innocent and holy Son of God, a man of perfect love and unquestionable goodness. If Jesus suffered this kind of treatment now, what could possibly be in store for those so spiritually dry and dead that they were perfect candidates for judgment?

Do you see what Jesus’ words are trying to do? They may sound severe, but they are not the words of a bitter man lashing out in pain and anger. They are not his desire for these people who cry, but do little to help. He is not a man so wrapped up in his own misery that he can’t appreciate the sympathy of others.

These are the words of a Savior who isn’t seeking our tears. He wants to spare us the misery he is about to suffer. The beatings and whippings exhausted him. The cross filled him with dread. But Jesus is always the Good Shepherd seeking straying sheep. It is not vengeful anger, but a breaking heart that moves him to make a final plea: “Repent! Trust in me! Escape the judgment I am going to bear for you on the cross!” If we must shed tears, let them be tears of sorrow for our sins, so that he can replace them with tears of relief in forgiveness and tears of joy in heaven.

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Most Christians would have no trouble getting the answer to this question right: “Which do you think you should serve, God or money?” We understand God’s claim on the title “Master.” We are his creation. Not one of us invented ourselves. We were his idea. He thought of us, planned us, and assembled us. He came up with a complex, powerful, gifted creature capable of managing planet earth and relating to him as children.

Even in our fallen and broken state we are wonders of his creative mind. No fair observer, Christian or not, should fail to see that we are not the happy accident of random natural forces working without direction. I’ve seen what a random mess looks like. I have made a few myself. They don’t become living beings able to spout poetry, compete in the Olympics, or work complicated algebraic formulas. We are God’s workmanship.

But Jesus warns us that there is a rival for our hearts. We should not underestimate its power. He calls it here, “Money.” More literally, he gives it the Greek name “Mammon.” Some commentators claim that this was originally the name of a Syrian god of riches. One of the church fathers believed that it was the name of a particular demon. This much is clear: there is an anti-Christian spiritual power lurking behind this part of the material world we make so much use of every day.

Mammon includes money, but it is more than the cash we carry. It is the lure of the material world that promises so much happiness. It includes the things that excite our senses: food, music, entertainment. It includes the things that bring us comfort: luxuries, sleep, and ease. It involves the activities that get our competitive juices flowing, provide a sense of accomplishment, and bring us praise and honor: our jobs, our sports, our pastimes. You can’t avoid having and using these things in your life. They aren’t evil in themselves. But they become Mammon when you make them master of your life.

Christian writer Mark Buchanan calls Mammon the “pig god.” Serving in its cult always involves a catch. It promises far more than it ever gives. “It has a well-practiced habit of depriving us of taking deep and lasting pleasure in his gifts: he brings with his gifts the sour aftertaste of ingratitude (it’s not enough), or fear (it won’t last), or insatiableness (I want more)….It trains us, not to value things too much, but to value them too little. It teaches us not to cherish and enjoy anything (Christianity Today, September 6, 1999).

Is it saying too much to say that Mammon has become the unofficial god of the United States, the unofficial religion behind the “American Dream”? Is our national cathedral really located on Wall Street in New York City? Could we fault a foreigner for wondering whether the phrase “In God We Trust” on our currency is really a reference to the cash and coins themselves? Don’t underestimate the power of this other option, who doesn’t want so much to serve us as to be our master.

But God has made a greater claim on the title. We are fallen creatures, rebels against his love. Still, that hasn’t stopped him from desiring us as his own. He dug deeply into his pockets to purchase us for himself. What he pulled out to pay wasn’t cash, gold, or other baubles. What he pulled out were great drops of blood belonging to his one and only Son, the life and breath of heaven’s Prince and earth’s Maker sacrificed in place of ours.

God scoured every moment of human history from the dawn of time until the last word on the last page of its story. He gathered every sinful act along the way without exception, and the relentless river of rebellion flowing from human hearts. He loaded the great burden on the shoulders of his Son, who carried it to the cross, and died under its crushing load. In doing so he banished it from our records forever. God claimed us as his children, and declared us his holy people. He has provided a place for us at his side, a share of his glory, a home in his heaven.

How can we believe this is true and not come to confess, “Jesus is my Lord”? Only one Master can rule our hearts. The one with the rightful claim is clear.

2 Corinthians 5:20 “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

Our own sinfulness is one of the traditional focuses of Lent, and we need to take time to ponder the reality and the danger of our sin. There is no such thing as a harmless sin. It is like acid: It corrupts and erodes every good gift of God with which it comes into contact. Sin makes us less spiritual, less civilized, less healthy, less loved, less secure, less respected, and less content. It makes us more beast-like, more dangerous, more difficult to get along with, more alone, and more desperate.

Even when we have confined sin to our thoughts and attitudes, it is constantly wearing away at our self-control. It fills us with all sorts of inner conflicts and tensions. And yet, though we have all experienced these miseries personally, we go on convincing ourselves that a little self-indulgence will make us happier in the end. It’s not that we are ignorant of what is right. We simply can’t bring ourselves to give up what we want in favor of God’s way.

We still haven’t touched upon its greatest danger. It is the subject of Paul’s concern here: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” People who need to be reconciled are people against each other. If Paul urges us to be reconciled to God, that means that sin makes us his enemies. It is not good to be God’s enemies. Who could possible hope for anything good if the almighty God were against us? What claim could God’s enemies ever lay on heaven?

And yet, God is the most wonderful “enemy” anyone could have. Look closely again at Paul’s message of reconciliation. What does he tell us to do? Simply “be reconciled to God.” Do you notice that this is a passive verb? Rather than laying down some activity by which we might make amends, his command simply describes something happening to us.

God does not expect his enemies to work out the details of this reconciliation business. He intends to remove the obstacles that created the bad relationship himself. And the pleading tones with which he moved Paul to make this appeal, imploring us to be reconciled (Can you imagine that, God through his servant almost begging us?!) reveal the great heart of love with which he desires to heal the breech.

The details of this reconciliation, the message that restores the relationship, is simply this: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” People often speak of giving something up for Lent. That is a useful custom if it leads them to devote a little more attention to the love Jesus showed at the cross.

But the really important thing given up for Lent is what God himself gave up for Lent: His one and only Son to be our Savior! That Son had no sin. The Greek says it a little more vividly. It tells us that Jesus never personally experienced what it was like to commit a sin of any kind or to have any sin inside himself. He was as far away from sin as anyone could possibly be.

Yet, perfect as he was, God made him to be sin for us, in our place, instead of us. God did more than consider his perfect Son a sinner. The Father made his Son out to be everything that sin is and involves in every human being who ever lived–the lost image of God, the rebellious heart and soul, the countless loveless thoughts, all the lost opportunities to do good, and every breaking of every commandment. Instead of us. In our place. Everything that we might have expected to receive for our sins, Jesus suffered instead.

So that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Inside of Christ, our sinful selves are blanketed by his perfection. He hides all our shortcomings behind his infinite and holy love. This promises does not stop at mere improvement. This does not describe the man who has merely conquered a few of his more obnoxious habits. This is absolute and sheer perfection! This is the righteousness that comes from God himself. In his grace, when God looks at us, he views us as though he were looking at himself in a mirror.

Doesn’t such grace stretch the bounds of our imaginations? How could God do such a thing? That is the message of this season. Follow Jesus through his suffering, death, and resurrection again this Lent and Easter, and you will hear God making his appeal to us again: Be reconciled!

Revelation 14:6 “Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on earth–to every nation, tribe, language, and people.”

The message the angel proclaims is not merely traditional. It is more than ancient. By nature, it is eternal. It is a message which remains ever the same. It never wears out.

That is not the kind of message many are itching to hear. The founder of one church confesses that it was his intention from the start to replace expositions of Bible passages with “talks” designed to apply Bible principles to life. He wanted more emphasis on “now.” This is symptomatic of what modern Christians consider relevant. Relevant is seen as things which are helpful for having a successful career, a wonderful marriage, or nice children. We don’t think much about getting right with an offended God.

This is not to say that relevant is bad. God’s eternal message is always relevant. But that message is unchanging, and rather than finding that disappointing, there is comfort in knowing that the message is the same for every people in every age. God doesn’t have a different way to be saved for each individual. He doesn’t have a dozen options from which to choose. There is only one. That simplicity, consistency, and sameness is what makes God’s message to us one we can trust. It makes God’s message a rock solid foundation on which we can build our lives now and forever. It won’t shift or change when we need to be sure: Sure of what God wants, sure of his love, sure that we are saved.

That eternal message is the gospel. By its very nature it is good news. It has never been God’s intention to gather us together to hear his word so that he could tie up heavy burdens, put them on our backs, and send us home with a list of things we aren’t doing right. The gospel doesn’t focus on things we have to change, more work we have to do.

It is the good news that God has set us free. He has set us free from the judgment our sins deserve. He has set us free from uncertainty about where we stand with God. “Is this enough? Now am I good enough? Now have I done enough?”

The gospel is the good news that God did not send Jesus as a new law-giver, a better role model, a demanding Judge. He sent him to take the burden of keeping the commandments on his own shoulders. He sent him to fulfill what we daily fail to do, in our place. He sent Jesus to carry the whole burden of sin–all of it–to the cross and dispose of it for time and eternity. He sent Jesus to rise again to life, set us free from death, and live in our hearts by faith. Jesus makes us the children of God.

God has set you free from everything you owed him in his Son Jesus Christ. He declares you free from your sinful past. It is as though it never even happened. He declares you free from the sins in your future. They will not condemn you. He declares you free from your sinful struggles. They will not become your master. This good news is forever, as certain today as it was the day the Lord first announced it. It is good news that will never end.

Psalm 126:1-3 “When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”

That the people of Israel returned to Zion from their 70-year captivity in Babylon is a fact of history. But it is so much more than just a cold, hard fact. Let me ask you a question. How many Hittites or Philistines have you ever met? I know the answer already. You have never met one. When their nations were invaded by enemies, they ceased to exist as a people. They completely lost their national identity. The same thing has happened over and over again as kings, dictators, and emperors have forced their relocation plans on the peoples they have defeated. Rarely do you hear of a nation that gets to go home. In all of history, I know of only one.

After 70 years, maybe even the Jews had resigned themselves to the fact that Babylon was now their home. After 70 years, all the old prophecies, the promises of a land to call their very own, may have seemed like little more than wishful thinking.

Then the Lord shook up the political scene in the Middle East. The balance of power shifted from Babylon to Persia. All of a sudden, a new king was telling the former citizens of Jerusalem they could go home. This meant more than the restoration of their earthly fortunes. Most of these people had done well for themselves in Babylon. But this was a great confirmation of their faith in the God of the Bible. This gave great assurance that someday God would send the promised Messiah.

Even the heathen nations had to acknowledge what had happened. “Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.” Worshipers of other gods had to admit that what had happened to Israel was more than luck. The Lord had done great things for them.

Can’t the same thing be said of us? In 1989 I served as vicar at Sola Fide Lutheran Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia. I had the privilege of visiting the home of Hans and Hildegard shortly after the Berlin Wall had come down. This couple grew up in Berlin. They fled to the United States at the end of World War II. They had trouble putting their joy into words, though I assure you few teenagers get away with playing their music as loud as Hans and Hilde were playing Beethoven’s 9th symphony the day the wall came down. “Their tongues were filled with songs of joy.”

I have seen the joy of parents whose sons returned from service in the Middle East. I have sat at the bedsides of people who narrowly escaped death, experienced nearly miraculous recoveries, and witnessed their new found appreciation for God’s gift of life. The Lord has done great things for them.

Our problem is that such joy and appreciation for personal examples of God’s goodness are difficult to sustain. The glow quickly fades. Sometimes we let difficulties and sorrows overshadow the good things he does for us every day. Thankless creatures that we are, we even turn to blaming God. “Why don’t you make me feel better? Why are you holding out on me? Why aren’t you doing as much for me as you do for everybody else?”

In this regard, consider God’s greater deliverance in sending us his Son. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are facts of history. But they are so much more. Greater than the Passover, greater than marching through the Red Sea, greater than Israel’s return from Babylon, God sent his only Son into the world as a real human baby. He died, and rose again to atone for the sins of us all. This was more than help for an obscure tribe of people living in the Middle East. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” The Lord has done great things for us all.

Maybe this love of God doesn’t impress us more because we don’t stop to remember that Jesus also did this all for me. Jesus is my Savior. That is my God lying in the manger. If all the rest of the world had remained holy and perfect, and you or I were the only ones who had fallen into sin, there would still have been a Good Friday or Easter. The wonder of God’s love is that Jesus would still have come to save just you, or just me.

The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

Mark 2:3-5 “Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”

Do you suppose these four men thought Jesus could help? They were willing to cut a hole in the roof of a home that did not belong to them. Would you have the audacity to take a chain saw and cut a hole in your neighbor’s roof just because he had a visitor you wanted to see?

Nor was getting through this roof as simple as taking a chain saw and cutting a hole. The flat roofs on the homes in Israel were used as upstairs patios for the family to spend time with each other. A layer of clay or mud mixed with straw lay on top of a layer of brushy wood laying on top of rafters. These men had to dig through a surface hard and thick enough to support a number of people, probably by hand, and create an opening long and wide enough to lower a person lying on a stretcher.

Do you suppose they had come to the right place for help? We all believe that Jesus is the person to go to for our needs. We can be thankful that getting to him is so much easier today. He is never more than a prayer away. There is no ceiling between us that we have to dig through. And we expect that he still has the power to heal us when we are sick, keep us safe when we are in danger, help us find work when we are unemployed, fix our fractured families, lift us out of our loneliness, or fulfill an endless list of perceived needs that preoccupy our thoughts by day and trouble our dreams by night.

But first things first. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” All that hard work to carry this man to Jesus, dig through the roof, and lower him into the room, and what did they get? Disappointment, or so we might think. We aren’t told how the four friends or the man on the mat reacted to Jesus’ words, but what they had come for was obvious, wasn’t it? Jesus was supposed to heal the man!

But Jesus sees the heart’s true need. It was common for people in Jesus’ day to assume that people who suffered in some terrible way were being punished by God. It’s not so different today. We hear preachers proclaiming that the reason you don’t have more money or aren’t cured of your cancer is your lack of faith. They imply he won’t help until you shape up and trust him more. Even Christians who should know better speculate about whether God is paying them back for past sins when tragedy strikes.

That is why, for Jesus, forgiveness comes first. Paralysis, blindness, unemployment, loneliness– none of these things ever damned anyone. But despair that God doesn’t love me is deadly to faith. Who can trust God when you don’t think he loves you? Jesus looked at the man lying in front of him. He saw the paralysis. But the Doctor of our souls also sees the heart, and whether this man was conscious of his greater spiritual need or not, Jesus was. Forgiveness came first. Before anything else, Jesus made this man sure God loved him.

Is our need any different? I know Jesus can help me with so many things I am concerned about in life. I know that he holds the answer to every question I can think to ask.

But I also know that what I need more than anything is not more advice on how to work Christian, or how to date Christian, or how to raise a family Christian, or how to vote Christian, or how to diet Christian. What I need more than anything is to know that God loves me. There is nothing that my heart longs more to hear than how much God loves me, how much he was willing to do to save me, how much he was willing to give to have me, how much he was willing to sacrifice to make me his own. There is nothing that so changes me as when Christ is held before me in all his grace, and mercy, and compassion, and forgiveness.

They have been telling me to stop sinning for as long as I can remember. It hasn’t stopped me yet (not that I didn’t need to hear that!). But nothing so changes my taste for sin, and fills me with the desire to live a life of love, as hearing about Jesus and his love for me. And his love always begins with forgiving my sins.

Mark 2:1-2“A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.”

Jesus’ words fill us with great expectations. These people had come to know that Jesus didn’t pontificate on pious platitudes like so many of their other teachers. Dining at his spiritual table wasn’t like eating bland comfort food– the spiritual equivalent of mashed potatoes and white bread and canned green beans. It was more like three-alarm chili or spicy Thai chicken. His message had a bite to it, a message that burned a little and made you sweat.

But Jesus’ words were real, they were true to life, and he always followed them up with something incredibly sweet and soothing to put out the fire. No one preached about sinful life, and no one preached about the height, and the depth, and the breadth of God’s love the way that he did.

That is why Jesus was preaching to a packed house in our text. Even his enemies came to hear the outrageous things (in their opinion) that came out of his mouth. Are we today losing our taste for the kinds of things that Jesus’ is serving in his word? Why is it that less than half of Christians go to worship each week? Why is Bible class such a hard sell, and even fewer Christians are willing to attend? Why are home devotions and family prayer conducted in less than 5% of Christian homes? Why aren’t we hounding Jesus like the people did in his day, never giving him a break, pressing close around his word all the time?

If it’s because the messengers have lost the guts to tell it like it is, and the passion to plum the depths of God’s grace, then shame on us. If God’s people have grown tired of being challenged, and are taking God’s grace for granted, and as uptight, dignified, middle class Americans don’t want to be seen as some sort of religious fanatics, then shame on you. If we have all begun to find the greatest story ever told boring and irrelevant, then God have mercy on us all.

What do you hope to find at church on Sunday morning when you do go? Maybe some of you go hoping to pick up a few helpful tidbits on how to manage your out-of-control life. Maybe you look to find a little inspiration, something to pick you up after a week of office politics, whiney kids, and home repair projects gone sour. Maybe you come for the people– for you, church fills the longing described in the theme song from the old TV series Cheers: “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came, you want to be where you can see our troubles are all the same; You want to be where everybody knows your name.”

We can find all of that, I hope. But that is not where Sunday worship begins. Week after week the hymns, the Scripture lessons, the creeds, the sermon, and the Lord’s supper want to draw our attention to one thing: the incredible grace of God that spared no price, that stopped at no sacrifice, to bring us forgiveness for our sins.

So often, when we come to Jesus, we set our expectations too low. We want a little relief from earthly hardship. He wants to deliver us from earth and carry us to heaven. It is the promise of his love and grace that take us on that trip. It may not always be the first thing for which we ask, but it is the last thing we will ever need.