What Is At The Center?

Genesis 3: 1 - 5

John 13: 31 – 35

Nov. 10, 2024

John Ortberg, in his book Faith & Doubt, tells the story of a woman named Sheryl that went to a salon to have her nails manicured. As the beautician began to work, they began to have a good conversation about many subjects. When they eventually touched on God, the beautician said, “I don’t believe God exists.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Sheryl, who has MS. “Well, you just have to go out on the street to realize God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine loving a God who could allow all these things.”

Sheryl thought for a moment. She didn’t respond because she didn’t want to start an argument.The beautician finished her job, and Sheryl left the shop.

Just after she left the beauty shop, she saw a woman in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair. She looked filthy and unkempt. Sheryl turned, entered the beauty shop again, and said to the beautician, “You know what? Beauticians do not exist.”

“How can you say that?” asked the surprised beautician. “I am here. I just worked on you. I exist.”

“No,” Sheryl exclaimed, “beauticians do not exist, because if they did, there would be no people with dirty, long hair and appearing very unkempt like that woman outside!”

“Ah, but beauticians do exist,” she answered. “The problem is, people do not come to me.” Exactly. One can no more claim that there are no beauticians in the world because of the presence of unkempt individuals than one can claim that there is no such thing as God because of the presence of brokenness in the world.

We live in a world that is filled with great beauty. We live in a world that displays magnificent diversity, with created richness and variety. Our planet is populated by people of various colors, shapes, sizes, and capabilities for acts of startling kindness, grace, and generosity.

But we also live in a world with natural disasters, sickness, and brokenness. Romans 8 describes a creation that groans under the weight of such evil. “Where is God?,” we cry when that brokenness enters our daily lives” “Does he even exist,” we ask, when sin and evil mars the beauty of our daily lives and Creation.

I understand the pain. I understand the heartache. I understand the angry cries of disbelief when evil turns your life upside down. I have uttered those words myself in dark moments. In my darkest times, I have screamed out the same words of disbelief.

Over time, and in response to a God who has been so incredibly patient and grace-filled with me, I have found the Genesis account of the entrance of sin - the event of our choosing brokenness - to be a fascinating origin story that explains so much. Whether you believe early Genesis to be a literal account, or simply a metaphorical attempt to understand our beginnings, the essential teaching point – the essential wisdom – is the same. Humanity, in its ego and pride – chose self-centeredness over God-centeredness. “Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Humanity attempts a spiritual coup. Humanity asserts its own sovereignty and the brokenness, the sinfulness, as one of my confirmands once said, that is “Our overwhelming slavery to self-centeredness” has reigned supreme. This arrogance, this choice, explains so much of the pain, so much of the heartache, so much of the brokenness that we experience. We made that choice – for ourselves, for our own unguided, undirected supremacy and I can only ask, “How is this working for us?”

I would suggest that the history of humanity would demonstrate that it hasn’t.

And yet, our God continues to love us. Our God continues to desire to be in an intimate, life giving and life directing relationship with us. Our God continues to wait patiently at the doors of our lives, honoring our choices – good and bad, honoring, not overcoming the freedom in which we live. God remains connected with us, even when we are overwhelming self-absorbed and connected only to our wants, to our desires, to our power.

Last week we spoke about the faithfulness of a God who remains connected to us even when we try to not acknowledge or accept that connection. Last week we talked about the beauty, about the joy, about the comfort and support that we gain in being connected with others who are on the same path of reconnection. There is much in life that has tried to overwhelm and bury me and yet those attempts were defeated – not by myself, not by my strength and determination – but instead by those who chose to surround me and carry me when I could not do so for myself.

The realization that God is the answer to the brokenness that afflicts us, the understanding that God is not the perpetrator of sin and evil but is instead the redemptive remedy to that pain and heartache initiates for many – it certainly did for me – both a new connection with God and a never-ending process of faith transformation in my heart.

I want to be careful here. I am far, far from perfect. I make choices sometimes that reflect my own self-centeredness and desire to go my own way. And yet I worship a God of mercy and grace. As I grow in my own spiritual maturity I recognize an expanding transformation in my heart.

No longer do I believe that my eyes can be open and that I can know – as God knows – the difference between right and wrong. No longer do I believe that I am free of my own slavery to self-centeredness. No longer do I believe that I am best served, and the world is best served – if I try to assert complete sovereignty in my life.

No, instead I believe that the God who spun our world into being – utilizing whatever methodology makes the most sense to you – is the one who knows best how we should live in his Creation. I believe that the testimony of history demonstrates the failures of pride, ego, and self-centeredness and that instead – an intimate, guiding connection with God results in a life transformed by that love.

Love, not feathering my own nest, becomes my guiding principle. Love for God. Love for one another. Can you imagine what this world would be like if that was really true?

The skeptic, the cynic, the self-oriented non-believer will say that my belief about the power of divine love is unrealistic. I would say that it is exactly the unusual, d3emonstrable presence of such a love that makes faith and the church so overwhelmingly attractive and lifechanging.

Connected to God; connected to one another initiates a process of transformation that moves us to see ourselves, our world, and our responsibility to each other through God’s lens of love. That transformation moves us, not to secular wealth, power, and influence but to service, sacrifice, generosity, and grace.

This transformation leads us to a patience with ourselves as we seek to grow into the very likeness of Jesus. That kind of transformation is rarely straight and progressive. No. Instead, it is up and down and all around. There will be seasons when it seems as though there are more defeats than there are victories. But friends, that is why we need one another.

This transformation that I speak of is both individual and family-wide. Our personal transformation is enhanced by the faith community – those men and women, children and youth – who serve as exemplars, role models for us.

Dear Ones, we live in a broken world, but neither that brokenness or its effects will define us. We live connected to God and to one another. We live as a family slowly transforming into the likeness of Christ.

If you are looking for a church; or if you know someone who is looking for a faith and a church that has been transformed by its connection to God and its desire to more fully love him and one another then we would humbly offer to you LNPC.

We are not perfect, we rely on kindness, grace, and forgiveness. We are not perfect, but we are connected to the one – the only one – who is. That has transformed how we view ourselves and how we view the world. We are loved by God. We will love God and one another. Amen.