05 December 2021
Sermon ~ Advent 2
Malachai’s Unacceptable Offerings
You might have an offering to give to the Lord, but what if you are in no condition to give it?
Malachai dice que el Señor se alegrará al recibir ofrendas igual como en otros tiempos.
Malachai says that the Lord will gladly accept offerings like in times past. So, why does God regard some offerings and not others? God regarded Abel’s offering of a lamb, but not Cain’s which was cereal. Micah also said that God detested some offerings, and detested solemn assemblies, but wanted justice in the land. The true offering God wants is justice. But what if God isn’t even interested in our offerings of justice? The problem is when we think of our offerings as a valorization of our suffering. We falsely try to take the place of Christ by thinking that we can earn God’s salvation. Instead, a true offering is acceptable only when we are purified from our evil desire of works-righteousness. When we accept God’s grace in faith then our offerings are acceptable to God.
La mentira es que la salvación es obtenida por buenas obras. Pero no. La salvación de Dios es dada por la gracia de Jesucristo. We are saved by grace and not by work.
Before we have faith in God’s grace we are like an unpurified metal that is full of imperfections. These imperfections are the parts of us that want to earn salvation, they are our sins of which we are guilty. Imperfections within us are also like bruises. The injuries and traumas we have experienced also are impurities within us. When we receive the Holy Spirit, it is like a king entering the temple. Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit purifies us and heals us giving us peace and new life! I remember a time in my life when I repented and was purified.
Engineering Purification
I remember when I was a freshman in college. I started out as an engineering major. In the spring semester I took an introduction to engineering class with all of the other engineering students of all types in the whole university. It was a massive classroom full of nerds, geeks, and some dorks. I was just a nerd. There were four group projects that determined the bulk of our grade. We were free to choose our groups. The first project was to build a bridge out of paper. I feel into a group of enthusiastic students of which I knew only one or two. I remember spending hours and hours in the Student Union trying to build a bridge out of paper. It was so frustrating. But the thing that was most frustrating of all was the people. Everybody in our group thought they were smart, or the smartest, and so nobody worked together at all. Our bridge was not good at all. It was a relief to find out that many of the bridges were not good. Really there was just a couple of groups that had good bridges. One was called the “log” and it was a husky sized tube of rolled paper. The last group to present was three people who joined the class late. They called their bridge the twig. It was like the log but much much smaller. They said that they were trying to minimize “P,” and P was a numerical value based on price vs. strength. They aced the project and made the entire auditorium of nerds feel stupid. Their group was made up of non-engineering majors, some women, and like a marketing major. I remember looking at the auditorium and seeing all the engineers with the jaws hanging open as the professor praised them and berated everyone else for not paying attending to what was being asked of us. We were all trying to build the beefiest strongest bridge, when that wasn’t what we were asked to do.
The next group assignment was to build a water filtration system. We were limited by a tight budget and we had to reduce the turbidity or the cloudiness of the water using materials that cost no more than like five bucks. I fell into another group this time by random, again. This group frustrated me because everyone seemed to what to do the same thing, to spend way more money on a fancy filtration system and then lie about how much we spent. I was so uncomfortable by what was happening that I went to the professor. He told me to just give it the old “college try.”
The third project again I fell into a group at random and this group was made up mostly of fraternity guys. I remember the project looked really cool at the end, we had a flashy presentation, we all looked good, but the thing we made was basically useless.
As we neared the end of the semester the final project was approaching. This project would account for most of our grade. We had to build an egg drop. This egg drop would be a bungee jump from the third story window of the engineering building to the ground. We would be graded on if we could not crack the egg, and how close we got to the ground, and how “thrilling” the adventure was. By this time I had made a new friend in my math class, Brian. Now Brian had been in one of those groups that kept making really good projects. I decided that in order to get a good grade in the class, I had to stop just randomly joining groups of people I didn’t know. Even though a part of me felt kind of guilty, I approached Brian and his group of really smart people, and said, can I join your group? They all said, sure! No problem! I knew I had made a good choice when our first meeting wasn’t at the Student Union or a Frat House, but at the engineering workshop. Even though I was with freshman, they had access to large power tools and knew how to use them very well! We aced the assignment!
This is a story of repentance. I was the one who repented. For three quarters of this college class I just randomly bumped around from group to group, and even each group operated randomly picking ideas from people who were forceful rather than intelligent. I think there was a part of me that said that the Christian thing to do would be humbly accept whichever group “God” gave me, and then once in a group to just go along with what others said. I got tired, though, of being roped into projects and processes I disagreed with. I got tired of results I wasn’t proud of. So I repented. I changed. I decided that I would seek out the smartest group, people who were better than me. When I did that, it turned out that the people who I thought were better than me, needed my help too. In the egg bungee jump project I came up with a systematic way of determining the stretchiness of the rubber bands using data and putting it into excel. In a nutshell you could say I repented from being passive, to being more assertive. And it was worth it! I became so assertive, in fact, that I changed my major from engineering to philosophy. When I told my parents that summer, it didn’t go over so well. But that’s a story for another time.
Discipleship and Repentance of John
John the Baptizer was assertive too. He didn’t waste his time trying to tell people that wouldn’t listen to repent. He didn’t go to Emperor Tiberius in Rome. He didn’t confront Governor Pilate, or Tetrarchs: Herod, Phillip, or Lisanieas. He didn’t go try to team up with head priests Caiaphus and Annas. No. He went out the river Jordan. My friend, Pastor Nate, has traveled to the Holy Land a couple of times. He said that there is basically now human development around the Jordan. John went out to where there really wasn’t anybody at all! In fact, the only people we know who were out there were the Essenes. They were people who rejected the urbanization of Rome, the temple, and lived out in the desert waiting for the Messiah. John was a smart guy! God told him to preach repentance to the people, and he went to where there weren’t a whole of people to preach to, and the only ones that were there were already primed to repent! Who knows? Maybe he even invited his cousin Jesus to help get ready for the Messiah!
Fellowship in Philippi
When I think back on that final group I worked with I have such a sense of joy. We all enjoyed hanging out with each other. I worked harder in that group, than I did in any of the previous groups, but it didn’t feel like work. It felt like play! This is the same way that Paul felt when he wrote to the Philippians. He praises them for their awesome outcomes! They were growing and bearing fruit because of their ministry. He assured them that when Jesus would come back he would be proud of them for all that they had accomplished, and encouraged them to keep at it! He couldn’t wait to be with them again either!
I believe this is exactly the same kind of fellowship God has designed for each of us. God guides us into wonderful fellowship, and into communities that share a profound joy in living and working together. God is doing that here at Grace Lutheran Church, and God is doing it in many more places in your life! God will lift us out of just randomly bouncing around feeling lonely and restore us into fellowship and community of joy. Starting now and going on forever. Amen.
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