Unworthy?

This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Sunday, May 29.

Unworthy?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 29, 2016

Scripture: 1 Kings 8:22-24, 41-43; Luke 7:1-10

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

He thought he was unworthy. The Roman centurion I mean. The one who sent some Jewish elders to ask Jesus to heal the centurion’s servant. He says it himself. He says he sent others to Jesus with his request for help because he didn’t think he was worthy enough to do it himself. He says he not worthy to have Jesus enter his house. He thought he was unworthy.

They thought the others were unworthy. The Hebrews thought the Gentiles were unworthy. We didn’t have a passage this morning where we hear them say it. In fact, in the passage we heard Solomon says pretty much the opposite. But that passage reminded me of passages where they say it. They say it pretty clearly in the book of Ezra, for example. The stories of that book are set after the people returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. In it Ezra is a priest. He gets really distraught because he discovers that Hebrew men have married non-Hebrew women. He orders those men to divorce their non-Hebrew wives and to send them and their children away. The text of Ezra says that marriage to non-Hebrews has polluted the Hebrew race. It has polluted the very ground of Israel. The book of Ezra says non-Hebrew women are unworthy of being married to Hebrew men. They are unworthy even of being present in Israel. The text says the people agreed with Ezra about that. They, the Hebrews, thought they, the foreigners, were unworthy.

Now, if people thinking themselves unworthy of God, and if people thinking that people not like them are unworthy of God, these passages wouldn’t be worth preaching on the way I’m preaching on them this morning. But see, unworthiness is a real thing in our world today too. It can come in different forms. Sometimes we think we are unworthy, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of love, unworthy of help, even or maybe especially unworthy of God’s grace. Christianity has done a really good job at the very bad work of making people feel unworthy. We’re all nothing but horrible sinners, we’re told. We’re all captives of original sin, we’re told. Our faith isn’t strong enough, we’re told. We don’t pray hard enough, we’re told. Christianity has also done a really good job at the very bad work of making Christians think that all non-Christians are unworthy. We have the only truth, we’re told. Our way is the only way, we’re told. Other people are all damned if they don’t convert to Christianity, we’re told. There’s unworthiness all around us today. We’re not worthy. They’re not worthy. No one, it seems, is worthy.

Why do so many people think everyone’s unworthy? I’m not sure I know the answer to that question, but I have some ideas. See, it is very much in the church’s interest, or at least in what the church mostly takes to be its interest, to make everyone unworthy. The church making everyone unworthy gives the church immense power. You’re not worthy of God’s grace, the church says, but believe what we tell you to believe, do what we tell you to do, and don’t do what we tell you not to do, and your unworthiness will be cured. The church says we have the solution to your unworthiness. Turn you lives, and your money, over to us, and we’ll see to it that your unworthiness doesn’t land you in the hell you so richly deserve for an eternity of torment. It may actually be more in the church’s interest to empower people and make them realize what God really thinks about them than it is to make everyone unworthy. But for most of its history most of the Christian church has worked really hard at making everyone unworthy.

Well, here’s the truth of the matter. God doesn’t think you’re unworthy at all. God doesn’t think anyone is unworthy at all. It’s not that we’re all perfect. Far from it. The truth is: God doesn’t care if we’re not perfect. God knows we aren’t God. God loves us just as we are. God loves everyone just as they are. That’s the truth about how God sees us, not that we’re all a bunch of unworthy bums.

We see at least hints at that truth in this morning’s scripture readings. In our passage from 1 Kings King Solomon is praying at the dedication of the temple that he has just finished building. In part of that prayer he mentions foreigners. He says that foreigners will come to the temple because they will have heard of the mighty deeds of the God of Israel. Solomon asks his God to hear their prayers and grant them. Notice: He doesn’t ask God to make them convert to Judaism. He asks God to hear and grant their prayers just as they are. To Solomon these foreigners are not unworthy the way they would be to Ezra centuries later. They’re not Hebrews, but they’re not unworthy. They are precisely they not us, but that doesn’t make them unworthy.

Then there’s Luke’s story of the Roman centurion. He’s a military commander in the Roman army. He represents a foreign, occupying force in Galilee. He’s a Gentile not a Jew. He is presumably a pagan not a follower of Jesus Christ or even of the God of Israel. Maybe he’s not as bad a guy as many Roman soldiers were. After all, the Jewish elders he sends to Jesus say he loves them and built a synagogue for them. Still, he’s one of “them” He’s a Roman. He works for the hated foreign empire that has occupied the people’s land and oppressed them with its taxes. He thinks he’s unworthy. The story doesn’t tell us why he thinks he’s unworthy. Maybe he feels guilty about what the Romans are doing to the people. Whatever the cause of the centurion’s sense of unworthiness, this story tells us that Jesus didn’t think he was unworthy. Jesus set out to heal the centurion’s servant. Would he have done that if the Jewish elders who came to him hadn’t said nice things about the centurion? I don’t know, but I sure like to think that he would have. Be that as it may, Jesus didn’t think the centurion was unworthy.

There’s a great lesson for us in the way Solomon didn’t think foreigners were unworthy and Jesus didn’t think the centurion was unworthy. See, God doesn’t think anyone is unworthy. No one is beyond the reach of God’s grace. There’s no one God doesn’t love. Now, an awful lot of people never benefit from God’s love because they aren’t aware of it. They deny it. They even deny the reality of God. Well, that’s their problem. It’s not God’s problem. Everyone is worthy in God’s eyes. Yes, for an awful lot of us repentance is necessary before we can really accept and live into God’s love, but God’s love is always there. For everyone. There are no unworthy people.

Which raises a pretty important question for us. No one’s unworthy as far as God is concerned, but what about us? Is anyone unworthy of love as far as we’re concerned? Well, I can’t speak for you, so I’ll speak for myself. I don’t know that there’s anyone I think is ultimately unworthy of love, but there sure are a lot of people I find it very difficult to love. I mean, people do really terrible things to other people, to other creatures, and to God’s world all the time. It’s a whole lot easier for me to hate those people than to love them. At the very least I get mad at them and sure don’t much feel like extending love to them. I’d be surprised if there weren’t people you feel the same way about.

So let me suggest something to both you and to myself. When we start thinking someone is unworthy of our love, or if we think someone is unworthy of God’s love, let’s remember the centurion in Luke’s story who thought he wasn’t worthy. And let us remember that Jesus didn’t think he was unworthy. Let’s remember Solomon welcoming Gentiles, who a lot of Jews of his time and later thought were unworthy, to the brand new temple he had built to God. Sure. There are people we don’t like. There are people we don’t approve of. That never means that God thinks they’re unworthy. So maybe we shouldn’t either. Amen.