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“Poured
in Our Hearts”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Romans 5:1-5
“… God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.”
Dear sisters and brothers, because of what God has already done for us
in the person of Jesus Christ, we, through experience and education have
learned to use certain Christian vocabulary (we have at least heard it a
lot): justification, peace, grace, hope, glory, faith, etc.
St. Paul in The Letter to
the Romans uses two ideas built on our being justified through and
by faith. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, we have access to
grace with God. And we are
now at peace with God in Christ. We
all have new lives hidden with God in Christ.
These are ways of talking about who Jesus Christ is, what became of him,
and what that has to do with us. Yes,
we hear these kinds of phrases every Sunday.
And we seek to have someone who knows about them, who has had
certain experiences with them, who can illustrate them so we can see
pictures and stories of them in our own minds.
And we need them to be explained to us.
I have placed in our worship bulletins one of my favorite illustrations
of our place in relationship to Jesus Christ.
Obviously, this is the crucifixion of Jesus.
It was painted by a man named Matthias Grunewald.
In this painting everything is so bold and abrupt.
On the left, the lady in the white is Mary, the mother of Jesus,
and the young man holding her is probably John, whom Jesus told to love
his mother. The young lady
on her knees, adoring Jesus, is more than likely, Mary Magdalene. And the man on the right holding THE BOOK is John the
Baptist. The sheep from
Christ’s flock is also carrying a cross.
All John the Baptist can do is point to Jesus.
As I preach, I try to teach is various ways, but ultimately when
it comes to Jesus giving his life for you, all I can do is point to
Jesus. As the Holy Spirit
works in your life, with your sisters and brothers, as you are pointed
to Christ’s death for you, you will adore Jesus in your hearts, you
will feel pain at times, and you will be loved by one whom Jesus has
sent to you.
We are pointed to Jesus. We
adore him. We suffer at times. And we are loved by sisters and brothers
in Christ during our times of suffering.
This is what the church is for us.
In what we just read, we were told we
also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does
not disappoint us.
We were just shown that we are loved at times when we are hurting.
As we suffer various tribulations we do experience learning how
to take on the pain during time, to tolerate and actually survive.
One of the favorite clichés is about how we are stronger once we
endure suffering than we were before it came about.
Once it’s over we might very well say, “I’m stronger now
than I was before.”
Before Paul wrote these words about our boasting during sufferings, he
also wrote about our boasting with regard to sharing in the glory of
God. This boasting that
Paul is writing about is taking pride in, even bragging about sharing in
the glory of God during the suffering, not actually after it, even
though, after it we do see that we have learned to endure, change
certain things in our character, and have hope.
But, we are boasting in our sufferings about being in the glory
of God.
What does this mean? One of
the most profound verses about Jesus is in The
Letter to the Hebrews, 5:8, “Although
he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”
The Son of God learned how to be one with God the Father in human
flesh, through the suffering he went through.
It was that faith that we are justified by, and it is that
reality that Jesus Christ knows how to share with us in our sufferings.
Jesus knows how to be faithful during suffering. Yes, he experienced
pain and struggling. He
cried out from the cross, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus had not lost faith. He
is speaking to God. He was
experiencing human pain, but he was faithful to the reality of God’s
presence by crying out to God the Father.
This is something that God leads us to boast about when we are enduring
suffering. We do cry out to
God. We may have doubts.
We might have questions. We
may have complaints. We
might be angry with God. Emotionally,
we may even “kick” God. But,
look at this. It is only us and God. Even
though we are suffering and struggling, we are only being with God.
Our minds are not caught up in worldly ways to seeing things and
doing things. We are not going months or even years without dealing with
God. God is not someone out
of our lives. We are
constantly turning to God. God
is not fighting with us; God is not quarreling with us, but God is
allowing even our suffering to show us that we are truly with God and
God is truly with us.
I remember a pastor friend of mine telling me that he would rather be at
home arguing with his wife, than in a relationship with her where they
are just roommates in the same house and do not have a relationship
where they connect with each other.
He would rather quarrel with his wife sometimes in their
relationship than have a kind of relationship where they simply coexist,
and never interact on a personal level.
God is showing us, even during our times of suffering that we may
boast about the truth that we are connected to God and God is connected
to us in the most personal relationship in our lives.
This hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into
our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
God’s love has been poured into our hearts.
That is what God is showing us, even during our sufferings.
And God is showing us this from God’s being deeper in us than
we are to ourselves.
When we envision something being poured, we usually see liquid, and with
living in a world of gravity, we see the liquid being poured from above,
out of a bottle, into a bowl. In
these words, we may try to see God standing above us pouring love from
outside of us into our hearts. But,
in this kind illustration, God is outside of us, pouring love into us.
The way to really illustrate this may not be easy for us to see, but it
is something we do believe in Christ.
The love of God does not come into us from outside of us; the
love of God comes into us from deeper with in us than even we are.
The love of God is not poured down on us; the love of God is
poured out within us.
Can we totally picture this? No.
Can we hear it and believe it? Yes.
Today in Trinity Sunday, and I am a mathematician, but I cannot
prove to you that 1=3 and that 3=1.
But, we do hear it and we do believe it.
You are in Christ. Christ
is in God the Father in the Holy Spirit and they are in you, pouring out
their love in your heart.
Let us pray…
Amen
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