If No Sound

Audio of More Sermons by Pastor Marjorie Palmer

2 Corinthians 5: 12-20

NOTHING BETWEEN©

          Rosalind Russell and Alec Guinness starred in a movie years ago called A Majority of One.  Russell played the part of an Orthodox Jewess, a widow who lived in a walkup apartment in Brooklyn.  Her world was very clear to her; her traditions gave her life meaning.  Her whole self-identification was wrapped up in her role as a Jewish woman, mother, and member of her Jewish community.  Her son, who worked in the diplomatic service had been newly assigned to Japan, so he asked his mother to join him and his wife to live with them in this new world.      

          On the ship across the ocean Russell met a wealthy, widowed, Japanese businessman (portrayed by Guinness).  He, like Russell, had a very clear picture of who he was in his world, his culture.  The two cultures met as these two people grew in friendship.  Both of these people knew exactly who they were.  You could say that they were very effective ambassadors of their cultures.

          St. Paul wrote that we, too, are ambassadors—Ambassadors of Christ.  By that he meant that we, as Christians, are completely new people since coming to faith. 

·        We have repented and been forgiven;

·        we are at peace and fellowship with God,

·        and we have a new job,

·        a new identity--as ambassadors for Christ. 

·        Our whole world wrapped around Jesus Christ

·        and living a life that will represent him to the world,

·        just like an ambassador does.

          I call this sermon Nothing Between, named after a gospel hymn that’s in our hymnal.  The hymn tells us that there is no room for anything to stand between our soul and our savior.  That is, we need to repent of those things that stand between us and God.

          Repentance is the theme of Lent and is basic to our faith in Christ.  When we repent we become reconciled to God and Ambassadors for Christ in this world.

          We shall begin by asking, ‘How can we know what is in our hearts’?  Then we’ll hear two examples of repentant hearts.  And finally we shall take time for a look inside our hearts to see if and where it is that we must repent.

          The first question we need to ask ourselves is, ‘How can we know what is in our hearts?  How can we know what we might really need to repent of? Besides a general confession about sins of omission, what is it that we have to repent?

          There is a way of knowing, a way of hearing, what our hearts tell us.  It has to do with the way we speak to ourselves.

          What do we say to ourselves?

          When we begin to think of how we speak to ourselves, we can begin to recognize what we really think or feel.  The way we talk to ourselves tells us who we are and what we do.

          When we begin to think of how we speak to ourselves, we can begin to recognize what we really think or feel.  The way we talk to ourselves tells us who we are and what we do.

          When we talk to ourselves, we identify who we are to ourselves. On of the things I say to myself is, ‘I love to sing; singing is something I do; and I don’t mind singing for anybody, anytime.’  Maybe you say something like that about cooking or working with numbers or out in the shop or teaching or working in the garden. 

          We also define ourselves when we say things about what we are not.  Maybe you say, ‘I am not a smoker or I don’t frequent bars, or I don’t watch scary movies; or I don’t watch a lot of what’s offered these days on T.V.’

          When we talk about to ourselves sometimes limits us, because we can also say things to ourselves that keep us from doing certain things.

 For instance, I say to myself, ‘I’m not a runner; I don’t run.’  Or ‘I can’t draw.’  Or ‘I don’t speak Deutsch very well.’

We each have many such things we say about ourselves.  We say things about our history:  “I had a really good childhood, and I feel much loved today.’  Or ‘My childhood was hard.  I was hurt back then, and I have to watch out for me that I don’t get hurt again.’

When Paul was persecuting believers he was full of himself.  He knew that the followers of Jesus of Nazareth were very wrong, in fact; it made him hopping mad when he thought of the blasphemy they were committing when they would call Jesus “Lord” or “Messiah”.  How could those people say such lies!  It was a direct affront to Almighty God!  Everything within Paul was dead set against such lies, and he was determined to rid the world of such wrong thinking!  (Can you see what his ‘self-talk’ was like then?)

Paul knew the reasons for his anger.  He probably reviewed them in his mind again and again.  He would remember the most sacred law, ‘Hear, O Israel, The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  One God would mean that it is impossible for the man who died to be God.

Then the believers were saying that the man Jesus, who died on the cross at Golgotha, was alive!  They were saying that he had risen from the dead and they had seen him many times.  Paul did not believe what they said, and it made him even angrier.

 Then something changed.  You know the story.  Paul was on his way to Damascus, intent on cleaning out the nest of believers that had sprung up there, when he met Jesus!  Jesus spoke to Paul, and Paul knew Jesus WAS alive!   Suddenly everything that Paul had been saying about Jesus was turned around.  Suddenly, Paul realized that he was wrong, and the believers were right, because he had met the living Jesus.

The thing that was standing between Paul and the LORD was his disbelief in Jesus’ being alive.  When he realized he was wrong, Paul changed.  He began thinking and talking in a completely different way.  We don’t know exactly how Paul spoke to himself, but we have plenty of letters from Paul to tell us how his thinking had changed:

            But whatever anyone dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that.  Are they Hebrews?  So am I. Are they Israelites?  So am I.  Are they descendants of Abraham?  So am I.  Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one:  with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.  Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashed minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning.  Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters;  in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.   2d Cor 11

            Paul knew he was a new person, changed by his new relationship with Jesus.  He had turned from persecuting the believers to being one of them.  He was reconciled to God through Christ, and he had become an ambassador for Christ to the world.

          Each of us has to make that same change.  Paul’s example is what we need, too.  

          Repenting is the big step.  How do we really know what to repent?  Perhaps we’re really not sure what things need repentance in our lives. You can be sure that for each of us it is a different matter.  But each of us needs to repent. 

          Repentance is a matter of getting where the trouble is and making a change at that point.

          The best way to explain that is to share a moment that crystallized it for me.  I’ve mentioned before that I took prescribed medicine for twenty-two years—anti-convulsants, that the doctors told me to take.  These drugs occasionally would seem to collect in my system and cause my whole world to become extremely cloudy. It was nearly impossible to be with people because I couldn’t follow the conversation.  These episodes would last for days and sometime weeks at a time for me.  It was very frustrating.  Somehow the drugs didn’t affect my doing stuff, like housework, but having a conversation was sometimes a terrible challenge.

           I had been reading a book from a friend at church, which said that we are supposed to praise God in every situation.  Generally speaking, I agreed with that proposition, but there was one area of my life that I know I could not praise God for.  That was my head problem.  I wanted that trouble to go away so badly; I wanted God to heal me of it, whatever it was.  At that point, though, I knew I could not praise God for it.  But the words in the book kept bugging me.  They kept ringing in my head. “Praise God in this situation, too.”  Finally, I decided that I should be obedient and, whether I felt like it or not, I should honestly praise God, anyway.  I got down on my knees and began to thank God, but just as my knees hit the floor, a thought came into my mind that had never occurred to me before.  The thought was ‘I am very full of self-pity.’  I really had never realized that before, but I had been thinking ‘O poor me!  No one else in the world has this problem!’  I realized that the self-pity was wrong; so I immediately asked God to forgive me for that.

          Something changed that day.  The head problem didn’t go away; everything was the same, except something inside me was different.  I knew something was happening.  That was a moment of repentance for me, and immediately after that I felt I had a new relationship with God.

          Each one of us has a different place to begin this process, because each of us has our own story, our own situation. No one else can ever tell you where to begin.  That’s something you must find out.

          Repentance is needed at the point where we find ourselves not able to thank or praise God in that situation.

          We need to think about our worlds and how we think and what place or event, if any, is something we cannot thank God for, what we cannot praise Him for.  Those are the things that are separating us from God.

          Think for yourself, in what part of your life might there be

·        a moment

·        a person

·        a deed

·        a situation

·        a job

·        a relative

·        a memory

Something that is part of you and your story, a part where work needs to happen in your life that is the place where you need to take a deep breath and look long and hard at the thing, whatever it is, that is standing between you and reconciliation with God.

Then!  After we’ve made that discovery, we know what it is that needs to be repented and have decided to make a change then we can begin to recognize the new identity, which God has given us.

We can use words like:

·        God loves me

·        God has forgiven me for

o       And you name it

·        God will be with me

o       Even through this trial

·        God wants health and goodness for me

·        God is calling me into fellowship

 I can thank and praise God for

          God has made me new

          God has given me a new identity

          I am an ambassador of Christ in this world

          I know what it is to repent and be reconciled to God.

          When we begin to talk to ourselves that way, we have heard our heart; we know what we think; we are being truthful with ourselves, and we are being truthful with God.  You could say that there is nothing that is standing between yourself and God, nothing between your heart and God.

          I mentioned a hymn in our hymnal that celebrates that fact.  It is called Nothing Between.  I’d like to read it to you, and then I’ll teach it to you

Then we can take that thought with us this week in song:

Nothing between my soul and my Savior

Naught of this world’s delusive dream’

I have renounced all sinful pleasure;

Jesus is mine, there’s nothing between.

Chorus:

Nothing between my soul and my Savior,

So that his blessed face may be seen’

Nothing preventing the least of his favor;

Keep the way clear! Let nothing between.

Nothing between, like worldly pleasure;

habits of life, though harmless they seem,

Must not my heart from him ever sever;

He is my all, there’s nothing between.

Nothing between, like pride or station;

Self or friend shall not intervene;

Though it may cost me much tribulation,

I am resolved, there’s nothing between.

Nothing between, e’en many hard trials,

Though the whole world against me convene;’

Watching with prayer and much self denial,

Copyright © 2009 Marjorie Palmer. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written permission of the author.

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