The Heart’s Cry!

Sermon for Sunday, February 3, 2008

1. Let us 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: Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany and next Wednesday, Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent which is the penitential season getting us ready for the glory of Holy Week which culminates in Resurrection Sunday!

Now let’s focus in on the Epistle lesson for today for it’s here that I found myself drawn to as I sought to discover what it was that God may want to reveal to us.

If I were to talk about your “mindset” I would be talking about where you have set you mind – where you mind is focused. For example, some people could be accused of having a worldly mindset. And what we’re saying here is that most of their thinking seems to be on worldly things and therefore not on things of the Spirit. Names that spring immediately to mind would be “Donald Trump,” “Britney Spears,” and so on – you could probably add a few more names to that list.

So our mindset is where our mind - our thinking is focused. This focus can change as our minds are drawn from one thing to another as a result of their attractiveness or perhaps even their threat of imminent danger to us. Fear has a tremendous mind-focusing power.

Clearly our emotions are certainly engaged in all of this and they focus our energies and our minds.

This world is so compelling that our minds seem always drawn away to “it” and in that sense away from any focus on God. We don’t have too many institutions dedicated solely to helping us establish and maintain our focus on God and the things of God.

So the Spiritual Disciplines come to play. These disciplines, not always that much fun, draw us – mind, body and spirit to God and the things of God.

Some of us in this sanctuary conduct daily spiritual disciplines. Just last Sunday one of you came up to me and shared your plan to fast during the 40 day season of Lent. This was your commitment to seeking to open yourself up more and more to the things of God and in so doing to draw away from the things of the world.

The Abbey of the Genesee for me is a wonderful gift because it’s very environment points me to God!

So this morning we’re going to be looking at how we can, in a sense, dispose ourselves more and more to the things of God as we prepare for the season whose whole intention is to do just this!

Now to focus our thoughts let’s turn to our Second reading for today for it’s here that we’re going to find the key to all of this:

Let’s read that passage again but this time I want to read verse 1 from the New International Version of the Bible and remaining verses from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase “The Message:”

Phil. 3:7 NIV

But whatever was to my gain – my profit - I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

“Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss.” This is a massive statement. Can you allow yourself to reflect upon the breadth of this statement?

Try to imagine a scale with Christ on one side and anything and everything else that ever meant anything to St. Paul and what Paul is here saying is that the weight of Christ outweighs everything else.

This is the extravagant language of committed love!

Everything that I once considered profitable – my reputation – the good opinion of other people, the respect of my peers, my reputation, the security of a large savings account and so on – all of this I now consider profitless! Indeed not only is it without profit for me any more but it’s actually a loss to me! And I do all of this for the sake of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! He trumps everything!

He’s what gives everything value and without Him nothing has any value at all!

Phil. 3:8 – 14 The Message

Now look with me at verse 8 Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life.

What is speaking here? It’s not Paul’s head it’s His heart. A heart hopelessly in love with the Lord!

There has been a purging in Paul’s life – a cleansing – a washing – a purifying – a letting go of anything other that what will draw him closer and closer to His beloved – to Jesus. Are there things in our lives that we need to purge? And in so doing he is cleansing himself of anything that will seduce him away for His beloved!

This is the act of a lover who wants never to be seduced by another lover! This is truly the language of romance!

Now let’s ask ourselves this question “is there anything in our lives that you and I still think of as important and which clearly draws us away from Jesus?”

If there is then we need to ask God to cleanse it from our lives right now!

Pray for this . . .

Reading on: Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ 9 and be embraced by him.

Did you hear that – I’ve purged myself so that I can embrace Christ and so that He can embrace me! That’s relationship – with nothing in the way! That’s the heart of a lover wanting to hold the beloved and to experience his or her touch – the embrace – of the beloved!

Reading on: I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

Phil. 3:10

  I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. 11 If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.

Wow! Now that’s a mouthful – look with me again at verse 10: I gave up all that inferior stuff so that I could know Christ personally. The inference here is that “that inferior stuff” drew me away from an intimacy with Jesus! Knowing Him personally brought me to experience His resurrection power – I was and felt like I had been raised from the very dead to life eternal here and now!

And somehow this freed me up to stop living a life of self-protection and released me to live a life in willing partnership with the resurrected Christ and it often involved my suffering but this always carries with it the certainly of my own personal resurrection. Jesus has given me life eternal here and now and nothing and nobody can rob me of that!

Reading on:

Phil. 3:12

  I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. 13 Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. 14 I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

This is such a powerful and enchanting expression of humility and love . . . don’t you think?

I can imagine one lover looking into the eyes of the other and saying words similar to these.

“I’m not perfect – O I am frightened of my weaknesses for they may affect our love. But I I’m going to run the race as well as these feeble legs will carry me. My goal is to love God and you and all else will follow!”

Think about it: Paul is giving himself body soul and spirit to Jesus Christ! You see what we’re hearing here is the expression not only of Paul’s mind-set but more significantly of his “heart-set!”

These are the words of love and of commitment that allow no quarter! They are absolute!

These are words that people who are lost in love for one another might say!

What I hear Paul saying put simply is this: You, my Lord Jesus are everything to me! I don’t want to share you with anything or anybody else! I love you and I want to be yours and yours alone for ever and ever Amen!

This is the language of the heart and as Blaise Pachal so sublimely put it – “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of!”

What God is challenging us to do this morning is to reflect upon the loves in our lives and to recommit ourselves to love our Lord over and above all other comers and it’s then and only then that our love for the others will be large enough for all!

We are the bride and He is our Bridegroom!

What we’re talking about here is the language of love!

Now let me tell you an imaginative story and see if you can see yourself in it:

Samuel Rutherford once wrote: “Since He hath looked upon me my heart is not my own.  He hath run away to heaven with it.”

I sometimes dream of a bright and exquisite land in which old people never die, babies and children never fell down and hurt themselves and all of the people in the land love one another.

But it’s hard to dream of that land because it makes me sad as I am reminded of how much the world in which I live is so different from this land!

When the thought of it comes to me that sadness returns and I become thoughtful as if looking for a memory that has flown away. And God claps His hands and whispers – “This is your home – I, your Beloved, have a place made to order just for you here but I want you to call this into your world of now.”

And this occurs just as I pray silently: “O Lord – Thy Kingdom Come – Thy will be done. . . . “ and God smiles from heaven and sends another angel to take something of His heaven – our eternal home - into my heart. And it sits there and cries to be born!

Incarnation – heaven born to earth – is not an easy thing! It is the work of the heart – a heart seeking to please her Beloved’s desire.

And God cries – call this our home down to earth and then we can be one – all of us – forever and ever and ever and ever. Amen!

And so you and I cry out with Paul,

Phil. 3:13

Brothers and sisters, I don’t consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Amen!