God’s Work of Art

God’s Work of Art!

Sermon for Sunday March 22, 2009

1. Good Morning. Let’s pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

2. Opening Comments: Palm Sunday is just two weeks away! Yes, we’re most than half-way through the penitential season of Lent and I know that many of us have been feeling God’s scouring – His cleansing of our souls and it hurts but oh how it liberates us!

You many have picked up on this theme in our Old Testament Reading: in the 36^th chapter of Second Chronicles we read about God’s harsh but necessary sculpturing of His chosen race – the Israelites. He sent the Chaldeans to conquer Israel and then to take the population into captivity in Babylon. They after 70 years of purging He caused Cyrus the Persian King who had conquered the Chaldeans to return the Israelites to their homeland and to pay them to restore their destroyed city and it’s walls!

Think about that, God used a pagan King to accomplish His plans for his wayward but beloved people. We can actually discern the providential hand of God working throughout 70 years of history to restore the heart of His people to Himself!

3. Focus on Scripture: And now look quickly at Psalm 137. In this reading I heard the cry of deep desire – a desire never to forget God and to return home and be at peace with their God!

This deep desire is what calls all people home. Truly, as St. Augustine once wrote, “We are restless until we rest in God.” The God in whose image we are “ALL” made – even Persian Kings of the 6^th Century before Christ!

In our Gospel reading we are reminded that we are kept safe as we keep our eyes on the Cross – which constantly reminds us both of our terrible sins and the infinite love of our Lord who overcame our sins by His self-sacrificing love.

Again, in this reading God came to us in Christ and saved us! But we must appropriate that gift by focusing not only the eyes of our body on our crucified Lord but more importantly the eyes of our heart!

Our hearts drawn by His infinite love draw us home to be with Him. Our hearts yearn to be at home with Him – our beloved Father, our loving Brother and our encouraging Comforter!

4. Deeper focus on the Ephesians passage: But now let’s focus for a few minutes on the reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians chapter 2 but I want to begin at verse 1 to give us all the full context of St. Paul’s comments from verse 4 onwards which are our specific focus.

There’s something magnificent in all of these verses but particularly in the final verse – verse 10. Here we go!

Eph. 2:2 You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. 3 We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. 4 Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5 he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! 6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. 7 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. 8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! 9 We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! 10 No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. - 10 For we are God’s workmanship (poi÷hma, that which is made specifically by God’s creative activity), created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Wow! Now that’s one of the most powerful sections in all of Scripture. You could spend a life time meditating just upon these 10 verses and not plum their full depth.

By the way did you hear verse 6: 6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Have you figured out what this little verse tells us? Yes, heaven begins now – here and now on earth – not just when we die and go to heaven.

Heaven on earth begins the day you begin to love, trust and obey our Lord Jesus Christ!

But it’s the last verse that I’m convinced our Lord wants us to really delve into. Please listen to it again:

10 For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Did you hear that – we are God’s workmanship! Now this is where a little knowledge of the original language is really helpful. The Greek word for “workmanship” is Poiayma – and it literally means – THAT WHICH IS MADE SPECIFICALLY BE GOD’S CREATIVE ACTIVITY!

We are literally God’s Work of Art! God’s Poem in progress” as Biblical commentator Fr. Brendan Byrne so beautifully put it.

You’re a poem being written by God! That’s what God had in mind when He dreamt of you and of me and of you and you and you and you and all of us!

We’re not cookie cutter human templates! We’re not afterthoughts. We’re not soap operas or melodramas but rather magnificent works of art being created by God Almighty Himself!

Now first let’s remember who used this word – St. Paul. Listen again to the words that preceded the magnificent verse 10:

4 . . . immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5 God embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! 6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Savior. 7 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. 8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! 9 We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! 10 No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving.

Truly then we ARE God’s works of art! This is God’s plan from beginning to end for you and for me! Brilliant, magnificent, awe inspiring works of art! Not one like the other – each and every one of us unique creations of the Creator of all things!

Mark Flanigan in an article entitled “What is Poetry?” wrote this:

“Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you.”

Ah! “. . . and the canvas is you!” Truly you and I are the canvas and if we will trust God He will write us a magnificent script!”

Flanigan goes on:

“Poetry is imagination at work – It’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma! . . . It doesn't like your definitions and will shirk them at every turn.”

This is why God gave us our imaginations – to explore His poetry in us and in those about us. We defy definition – God is a poet not an engineer or at least a poet engineer – ha!

The key is to believe that God is “THE” AUTHOR – the greatest of all possible authors and to allow Him to write our story and not to usurp His role in our lives or the lives of those about us. This is to play God and goes against the fundamental fact that God is God and you and I are not!

We are HIS workmanship – His poems – His creative gifts to this His world to so captivate the watching and listening audience so as to draw it away from it’s own self-absorptions into the greater and much more magnificent and majestic drama of God’s own creation!

You and I are God’s own workmanship – His poems to a lost and lonely world! A world which has lost the sound of the voice of its Author and is trying to write its own story.

So sad – so futile – such a waste of wonder!

Listen once again to Steve’s poetry:

We are living works of art

A masterpiece as bright as a star

Made in the image of our God

We are living works of art

We are alive

We are free

To be who the Master

Has formed us to be

Expressions of God

On display in His gallery!

We adore You -our Creator

We praise you -our Savior

So with one voice

As living works of art

We praise You O Lord!

This is the song of praise that should be on our lips as we enter the great feast of Holy Week after the excruciating fast of Lent!

In the remaining days of Lent let God erase your own graffiti and humbly sit still long enough for Him to work His creative genius into your lives.

Yes, this is a time for stillness before Him.

In the waning days of Lent God would encourage us to stop – be still – rest – wait upon Him. Listen to Him – listen for His leading.

5. Application: Let me share with you how our Lord has been writing His poetry into my life during these Lenten days. Most mornings I wake early and invariably find myself meeting Him in my favorite place – Moss Flower Glenn. I bow before Him and wait for Him to direct me. Inevitably I get some leading – an insight into my life or the life of one of you who have been in my thoughts or on my heart. I reflect upon the insight and perhaps ask our Lord for further revelations which He may or may not give me. We must never force ourselves and our needs upon Him. Remember – “He is God and we are NOT!”

but now turn with me to verse 10 again but this time lets focus on the final phrase:

10 For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Did you hear that – you are a work of art to do good works which God has prepared for us in advance to do!

You see as God’s work of art, we were also all artists, called to do Good Works which God has already prepared for us to do!!!

Every moment in our lives is an act of creation, every encounter with another living being generates something new.

But, the skeptic asks, is it art? When does the act of creation not only make something new but also make something beautiful? It does when we are being who we are – works of art in the Hands of our Great Celestial Artist!

Jesus taught us what it means to be God’s work of art, and showed us how to make our lives a divinely inspired work of art.

Let God your Creator – who is molding you into a great work of Art also teach you how to create.

We are not dead works of art but living works of art and as such we live and move and have our being in the Presence of our Great Artistic God!

So this morning I want to encourage each of us to draw close to Him – right now.

Please bow your heads and I want to encourage you to imagine a perfect scene. One in which you feel completely at home.

Look at it – look at its colors, its shapes, its contours. Even it’s sounds and smells. Vividly picture it in your mind’s eye.

Now believe that your Lord will come into this place and will meet you.

Picture yourself kneeling before Him – completely submitted to Him.

Feel your heart – its quiet and at peace and waiting upon His leading.

Now let Him bless you and let Him write upon your hearts His new and majestic story for the remainder of your lives. Be prepared for change – Your lives will take on a new vibrancy and color and excitement!

. . . .

Let’s pray . . .