Lime Cordial Re-Write - 05/22/2016

What Flavor is your God? – 05/22/2016

 Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Have you ever seen the movie Mary Poppins? 

The part where Mary Poppins and the two children were caught in a rain storm and were required to take medicine, because as Mary Poppins pointed out, “People who get their feet wet must learn to take their medicine.”  As she poured out a spoonful to each child, and herself, the liquid in each spoon was a different color.  And further, when each one took their spoonful of medicine they proclaimed its flavor.  Little miss Jane tasted hers and proclaimed “Yummm, lime cordial”, then Master Michael tasted his, he proclaimed, “Strawberry!”, and finally Mary Poppins announced that hers tasted like “Rum Punch”.

From the same bottle each person saw and tasted what pleased him or herself.

·         Too often today, we humans have in our heads a God who pleases US in whatever situation that we find ourselves in.

I’m in a counseling situation with a man who is seeking help for his marriage.  His wife is unfaithful and an alcoholic, but she will not make it easy and just leave, nor make any attempt to address her alcoholism and unfaithfulness.  The man will not leave his spouse because he is vested in their marriage with a couple young children AND (if truth be told) probably an unhealthy co-dependency.

I dislike marital counselling because frankly, I am not good at it.  As I prayed for this man, and how I might advise him, I realized that his marriage situation is simply the result of him never having met Jesus – Not really.  He knows the churchy stuff, and all that, but despite knowing these things, he has lived his life never once seeking what Jesus desired for his life.  So he got into a marriage and started a family and now he is unhappy with the result of his own decisions.  And so he seeks God to pour out a flavor of medicine that will fix his problems and please his palate. 

The 12 disciples followed Jesus for 3 years doing ministry.  They learned at the feet of the master and they experienced miracles that would blow my mind:

·                     they experienced the water turned to wine,

·                     the healing of the leper,

·                     the blind man who made to see,

·                     the crippled man picking up his mat,

·                     the demons cast out of the man and into the pigs,

·                     and the feeding of the thousands from a few loaves and fishes, 

But at the cross they were still disappointed in Him. 

The disciples wanted (and expected) a Messiah from God who was going to free the Jewish nation from Roman rule, and when he was crucified on the Roman cross, they were greatly disappointed because the reality flew in the faces of their expectations of Him.  In other words, the flavor of their medicines tasted nasty.

But something happened.  On the third day Jesus raised back to life from the dead.  At first they did not (would not) believe it.  All the miracles he did and all the things he taught were great but the concept of the dead man raised -- that’s just too much to believe.

Then Jesus appeared to them.  He appeared to them

·         and called them to touch him,

·         to feel his flesh,

·         to put their fingers into the scars of his hands and side where the nails and the spear had pierced Him. 

And once they discovered that Jesus was indeed alive, they discovered that their spoonful of medicine tasted nothing like they could have imagined: for they had just experienced a dead man who was made alive again.

 

I grew up going to church.  Life was churchy. 

·                     I was baptized at the Congregational United Church of Christ back in 1970. 

·                     I remember going to Sunday school and church at the Congregational Church in Richmond,

·                     then I went to the Baptist Church after that. 

·                     I was “Born Again” when I was 7 years old, (and a few more times after that – You know, just to be on the safe side). 

·                     I was baptized with the youth group at the Baptist church when I was about 12 years old

·                     I went to church camp every summer (and sometimes on winter retreats) from the time I was 8 or 9 years old until I was about 12. 

·                     And when I turned 12, I moved out of my mother’s home determined I would never go to church again.

And for the most part I didn’t.

Then I was living in New Jersey, when I was 24 years old, and it dawned on me that I was killing myself with fast living.  I figured that I was going to meet my creator sooner -- rather than later.  And I had better get myself ready to meet this creator.

I really was not convinced of the Christian God because that one never really worked for me.  So I prayed simply that if a Creator actually existed, that I needed to know who he was and I asked him to reveal himself to me.  It was the first time in my life that I really wanted to know what was true, because I was not so sure that the flavor of God I had up to this point was all that satisfying to me.  I desired to know the true, the real flavor of God.

And in about two months times I met the resurrected Jesus -- the dead man who was again alive.

Like Saul, on the road to Damascus,

·                     I was confronted by a man whom I had ignored for all of my life. 

·                     I was confronted by a man that was not at all like I had imagined:

·                     I was confronted by the very Son of God who had been executed on a Roman Cross.

And the shocker was, that He was very much alive.

His aliveness changed everything in me. 

·                     His aliveness proved that I was certainly a sinner

·                     His aliveness proved that he is right

·                     His aliveness proved that I was  wrong

·                     And his aliveness proved to me that there is so much more to this life than what I had been lead to believe -- Much more.

So the question is, what flavor is your God?

Is your God the one who gives you medicine that tastes yummy every time you have need?

Or is your God the one who lives, who might not change the fact that the Romans rule in Jerusalem or make our bad marriages better, but the one who is alive and who died for you?

Your answer to this question is the difference between the God who is and the one that you’ve made up in your own imagination.

This morning, let us seek the God who is and receive from him the medicine as it is from the Great Physician who died, and is now alive again.

John 14:19-20 & 24-29

¹⁹ On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

²⁴ Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin  was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

²⁶ Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” ²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Like the disciple Thomas, If you have never had a “My Lord and My God” experience that has made you fall to your knees in response to meeting the Jesus who is alive then I encourage you to seek Him and  the truth of the reality of our God.