I'm A Good Person What More Do You Want?!?!

The following constitutes my closing remarks from my sermon last Sunday.  It really should be taken in the context of how an apologist, skeptic, and Christian would interact with this question.  These closing remarks assume a deep conviction that all of us are a complexity of good, bad and ugly and beautiful.  We are broken pieces of the image of God. 

"Brent the Rhodes Scholar and I were sharing back and forth on this subject and he said to me, if one of his colleague informed him, “I’m a good person, what more do you want?” His reply would be deceptively simple. “If you are a good person, you do not need Jesus.” 

He says, “People should not try to convince good people that they need Jesus, because good people simply do not need Jesus.  Jesus is for bad people. 

Jesus came to convince bad people to turn away from their bad ways.  So if you are truly a good person, Jesus is of course, a moot issue for you (except as a cultural novelty).   When Brent said this I could see Jesus sitting in a room with sinners and publicans, a religious taboo in his day.  And some of the Pharisees knocking him, “Why does he hang around with felons and riffraff?”  I hear Jesus say, “It is not the healthy but the sick who need a doctor.”  When Brent said, Jesus is for bad people, I had a vision of a misty night, 99 sheep locked safely away in their pen and the Shepherd walking the hills looking for one lost sheep, as I look closer I see the Shepherd is Jesus, he turns and says, “I have come to seek and save the lost.” Another scene comes into view, a crisp morning, the sounds of ritual echo off Temple walls, the goody-two-shoes and holier-than-thous enter with their religious swag, marching straight for Jesus they demand to know his mission, you know if he is going to take away their students or infringe on their territory, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.  Yes.  I am calling sinners.”  I close my eyes and smile.  Jesus is for me.

You may be saying, “Jesus is a crutch for those that are really messed up.  And that’s where you’d erroneously underestimate Jesus.  “See, he is so much more than a crutch,’ as one pastor once said, “he’s a whole hospital.” 

So if you are a good person, and don’t have any addictions or bad habits, and you have learned how to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps-so-to-speak, you’re a self-made woman, you have managed life without the help of anyone, I don’t think you will find Jesus attractive.  If you don’t have any hurts or fears or worries then Jesus would only serve as a cultural novelty, a piece of décor adorning your living room. 

But if, just if you are aching with a broken heart Jesus heals. 

And if, just if, you have an addiction, Jesus helps.

And if, just if, you are lonely, fearing the night and restless with abandonment, Jesus comforts. 

And if, just if, you have stared into the cold of eternity, existential angst suffocating your sanity, Jesus is the I am.

And if, just if, demons and closets, skeletons and yesterdays, beg for resolution, and your tired of playing God, Jesus is God.  A God who forgives, A God who loves. 

If, just if, you are filled with hatred and bitterness, you were wronged and wounded, discriminated against and suffer low-self esteem, Jesus is pro you.

Or if, just if you are bereft of a father, widowed of a spouse, standing on the banks staring in loss at the distant horizon,  Jesus befriends, he’s been there, he’s swam those waters, he knows what crossing over is all about. 

And this last if (is hard to reconcile from human terms of love on direct proportionality and reciprocal scales).  But if, just if, you really don’t want Jesus now, but somewhere in your waning moments of life, you come to see that you aren't good enough to face death, and want someone to hold your hand as you walk the chasm from time to eternity, he will be there.  That is how unhuman his love is, and how faithful it remains.   

Comments

[Misty]

Thank you!