Download Don`t lose Heart (Chris Luyt) – Sermon Notes 15 February 2015

Sunday Eucharist, St. Michael’s, 15 February 2015
2 Kings 2:1-12; Ps. 50:1-6; 2 Cor. 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-13
Don’t lose Heart
Chris Luyt
Frail Care
Many of you are familiar with the journey into frailty that most adult
children must make with their parents. For me that journey began, in a
far more obvious sense, last March. It is a strange road, marked by
uncertainty, by worry and sadness. It is a road of mental and possibly
even physical exhaustion; a road of role-reversal and identity adjustment.
But it is also a road of learning and growth; of patience; revelation; of
unique moments. It is a road for forging last memories and even for
recovering lost memories.
The Clay Pot from Nazareth
Both Jesus and Paul grasped that the kingdom of God was all about
relationships and that hidden deep within the human being, lies a
potential that God was willing to stake His life on.
Today is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany. In this season, which
follows on from Advent and Christmastide, we have considered the Great
Treasure that lay beneath the skin of a young Jewish carpenter from
insignificant Nazareth. The Angels recognized it, Gentile kings from
thousands of miles away in the East recognized it, the Patriarchs,
Prophets and John the Baptist saw it; and so did Mary and Joseph, Simeon
and Anna, the ‘tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes’. A few fishermen
thought they caught a glimpse of it but soon began to feel quite
disappointed.
The Mount of Revelation
For Elijah and Elisha, this was a literal road – the road to Gilgal.
In our New Testament reading, Paul compares our ‘earthly selves’ (body
and mind) to clay pots. He is drawing off a real early Middle Eastern
‘custom of necessity’ comparable to a modern-day piggy bank. People
would horde coins in ‘ordinary’, domestic clay pots and bury them if and
when they felt vulnerable to attack. Archaeologists have discovered
scores of these ‘treasures in jars of clay’; each possessing a unique story
that no one will ever know.
Jesus used the same concept when He told a parable of a man who
surveyed a field he intended to buy and, in the process, discovered a
‘buried treasure’. He sold all that he had to buy the field because deep
within its unassuming ordinariness, lay a treasure worth more than all he
had previously possessed.
One day, our Gospel reading tells us, Jesus decided the time was right for
Peter, James and John to discover the treasure hidden under their noses.
He led them up a high mountain, just as God had led Moses up Mount
Sinai, and revealed something of His divinity to them. Mark tells us how
Jesus’ clothes shone with a dazzling brightness and immediately they
were joined by Moses and Elijah 1430 and 870 years (respectively) after
both were mysteriously taken into heaven.
Peter, James and John had definitely ‘stumbled upon’ a clay pot of
exquisite inner worth. Jesus told them not to disclose what they had
discovered to anyone because ‘His time had not yet come’. At the end of
this monumental (though contained) display of His divinity, Jesus
confirms to His disciples that He is the long awaited for Messiah
anticipated in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament.
Jesus enlightens the disciples to the fact that John the Baptist was the
predicted forerunner – the “Elijah” that would pave the way for the
coming Messiah (Mal. 4:4-5). Moses had played his role, Elijah had played
his role, John the Baptist had played his role (the statement that ‘they
have done to him everything they wished’ is a reference to the events
recorded in Mark 6:14-29); now it was time for the Messiah, the ultimate
Treasure, to be revealed, and to play His trump-role in the restoration of
humankind – the role, the path, of suffering and rejection.
A Pot for a Pot
Jesus’ death, the breaking of His body and the spilling of His blood at the
hands of a hostile humanity, constitute an initial kind of ‘pot’. Once Jesus
had ascended and returned by means of His Holy Spirit, He would take up
residence again in not just one, but many clay pots. This is what our New
Testament reading is all about. In conclusion, I would like to draw a few
points of application from this reading.
Paul affirms that Jesus Himself, insofar as He bears the fullness of the
image of God, is our greatest treasure. This is not only because He bears
God’s image, but because we too bear God’s image within us – even
though it has been corrupted by sin. As a result, it is only Jesus that can
save us from the inner corruption caused by sin – by fear and selfishness
that come from our refusal to accept that God loves us, that He is
trustworthy and able to genuinely restore us to His original ideal for us.
The “gospel” (translated ‘good news’) is that no matter how ordinary,
scarred or broken we are, the Potter that formed us, is willing to restore
us to ‘factory perfection’ by displacing our fear and selfishness with
nothing less than His fullness. Jesus had to suffer and be rejected to
show us all that no matter how broken we become, God is able to raise us
to new life.
Renewed Day by Day
The Gospel, our Christian faith, is not a denial of reality; but an
extraordinary hope in the midst of reality. Paul puts it like this: “Though
outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly, we are being renewed day
by day” (2 Cor. 4:16).
Thank God that this is a day by day process, characteristic of God’s loving
hand, gently and poetically, intimately, uniquely, moulding us on His
potter’s wheel called ‘life’. Moulding our hearts, setting us free from the
‘secret’, ‘shameful ways’; the ‘deceptive’ ways of the world – the
generation of the faithless, blinded by ‘the god of this age’.
The Apostle John put it like this: “We know that we are children of God,
and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. And we
know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so
that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His
Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children,
therefore, guard yourselves from idols (deception/illusions of the world).
Don’t Lose Heart
Paul uses this phrase twice in our NT reading and this is what today -The
Transfiguration- is all about. As we enter into Lent next week, we will be
confronted again by our humanness, but because of Jesus, we do not lose
heart. Because of Christ, rather than being rejected by God, we will be
shaped and moulded by God, so that all that is weak about us can be
transformed into the power we need to bring life and love and healing
into the hearts and lives of those for whom we are called to leave a
legacy.
Extended Summary of 2 Cor. 4:3-18:
a. The Gospel is Veiled [4:3-4]
“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.”
[4:3]
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Those driven by fear cannot understand love
Those driven by fear are dying physically AND internally
Those driven by fear are controlled by the deception in the world
The fearful world is controlled and manipulated by Satan (the ‘god of
this age’)
b. Jesus is essential for Salvation [4:5-6]
“For we do not preach ourselves…” [4:5]
 Jesus is the perfect image of God in human form
 Only Jesus is pure enough to lead us towards the ideal
 Only Jesus (God) is perfect enough to love us towards perfection
c.
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d.
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We are not yet Perfect [4:7-12]
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay.’ [4:7]
To remind us that we are nothing without God (aging teaches you this)
To remind us that we are everything with God
To remind us that our brokenness is our gift (our ministry to others)
We have Hope [4:13-18]
That we will leave a legacy when we go (in other people’s hearts)
“Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being
renewed day by day. Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for
us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all”
Paul does not deny reality
Every single day counts
That we will be raised to life again
That we will be fully immersed in God’s presence
That we will be with those who matter most to us and to whom we
matter most
That our absolute utopia will last for eternity without end as God’s
original intention for us is genuinely realized