SERMON                                                                                                                            “Behind the Masks”

First sermon in a series,

titled, “The Ragamuffin Gospel”

 

1.       ”Something is radically wrong.”  What’s wrong:  SPIRITUAL  DISHONESTY.

 

2.       Why do we wear masks, especially around other Christians?

 

·         We don’t truly believe THE  GOSPEL  OF  GRACE.

 

·         We are  ASHAMED.

 

·         We believe:  As a Christian, I should be better.  I will lose credibility.

 

7 To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.                     2 Corinthians 12:7-10

        3.       Our posture before the Lord:

·         Humility

·         Transparency

·         Confession

          Con = "With"

          fess = "Speak"

 

Excerpts from The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
 Multnomah Publishers

 

 

1)   Put bluntly:  the American Church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice.  We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works—but our lives refute our faith.  By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived.  Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love.

 

2)   Sooner or later we are confronted with the painful truth of our inadequacy and insufficiency.  Our security is shattered and our bootstraps are cut.  Once the fervor has passed, weakness and infidelity appear.  We discover our inability to add even a single inch to our spiritual stature.

 

3)   Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.

 

4)   Here is a revelation bright as the evening star:  Jesus comes for sinners, for those as outcast as tax collectors and for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams.  He comes for corporate executives, street people, superstars, farmers, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, AIDS victims, and even used car salesmen.  Jesus not only talks with these people but dines with them—fully aware that His table fellowship with sinners will raise the eyebrows of religious bureaucrats who hold up the robes and insignia of their authority to justify their condemnation of the truth and their rejection of the gospel of grace.

 

5)   In effect, Jesus says the Kingdom of His Father is not a subdivision for the self-righteous nor for those who feel they possess the state secret of their salvation.  The Kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there.  No, it is for a larger, homelier, less-self-conscious cast of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.

      These are the sinner-guests invited by Jesus to closeness with Him around the banquet table.  It remains a startling story to those who never understand that the men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their imperfect existence.  Perhaps it was after meditating on this passage (Matthew 9:9-13) that Morton Kelsey wrote:  “The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.”

 

6)   When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes.  I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty.  I am trusting and suspicious.  I am honest and I still play games.  Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

      To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark.  In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.  As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”

 

7)   The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out:  we are all, equally, privileged but unentitled beggars at the door of God’s mercy!