Saint Brendan Anglican Church
Sermons
The Easter Sermon of John Chrysostom
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Pastor of Constantinople (~400 AD)Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!
Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.
Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!
Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hades when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
“You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.”
Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?
Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!
Fifth Sunday in Lent Sermon (March 9)
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
Our text for today is a lengthy section dealing with the raising of Lazarus from the dead. It is filled with many possibilities for sermon and for discussion, but I am struck by two aspects of our text –– waiting and weeping.
First, the waiting.
The story begins with the message sent by Lazarus’ sisters, “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.” They didn’t even have to say who it was. They were such close friends that they knew Jesus would know who they were talking about. But this closeness makes what happens next very hard to understand.
Jesus waits. He doesn’t seem to be moved at all by the information that his good friend is ill. He downplays the importance of the message. He says,
“This illness will not lead to death,
instead it is for God’s glory,
so that the Son of God will be glorified because of it.”
That’s not the kind of message that would make Lazarus feel any better. The idea that Lazarus’ sickness would merely provide a sermon illustration for Jesus must have blown Mary and Martha away. It was as if Jesus said, “Lazarus is sick. So what, it’s no big deal. It’s just something that God will use for his own glory.” And Jesus waits for two full days before beginning the two day journey to Bethany.
This is really puzzling behavior. How can Jesus be so calloused? How can he jump into philosophy and theology about the illness of his beloved friend? Why in the world does he wait? I must confess to you that I don’t have ready answers for those hard questions.
When we look closely at this text in John, we find no real explanation for why Jesus waited. Theologians have speculated and supposed, but in the end, we must simply conclude that John does NOT say why Jesus waited.
Whatever the reasons were for waiting, we can readily see that the sisters of Lazarus didn’t appreciate Jesus’ attitude. They were looking for Jesus to be the kind of friend who drops everything to come stand with them in their pain. They didn’t want a lecture, they wanted someone to suffer with them –– to help them.
But Jesus didn’t drop what he was doing. Jesus didn’t respond to the emergency note. He didn’t rush to the bedside of the sick man or to the aid of the concerned sisters. John says, “After having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”
Each sister in turn took Jesus to task for his tardiness. They wanted to be kind to Jesus whom they loved, but they just couldn’t help themselves. They both blurted out the identical words, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Surely, they had both rehearsed what they were going to say when Jesus did finally appear. Martha says exactly the same words in verse 20 that Mary says in verse 32.
While I can’t explain the waiting of Jesus, I can certainly identify with the waiting of Martha and Mary. Can’t you? How many times have we waited just like they did? “Why isn’t Jesus here when we need him?” “Why doesn’t God hurry up and do something?” “Where were you, Jesus?” “Where was God on September 11?”
We hear their pain, and we share it because in too many of our homes Lazarus has died. For some it is not the literal death of a loved one. It may be the death of a dream, the death of an ideal, or the death of hope. Where has Lazarus died in your heart or your home? Where has Jesus disappointed you? You’ve prayed, but no answers have come. You’ve pleaded, but God has delayed. You’ve waited, but he hasn’t arrived. You’ve held the funeral, but he didn’t attend. Or so it seemed. Where are you waiting for God to show up and be God for you?
We don’t know why Jesus waits, and we don’t know why God waits. No amount of theologizing and explaining can satisfy us while we wait. And wait we do.
My only conclusion is that something critically important happens to us while we are waiting. Life is lived while we wait. Faith is proved while we wait. Hope is tested while we wait.
Mary and Martha were not the last to wait for Jesus. And neither will we be the last.
And now comes the weeping.
When Mary broke down in tears before him, Jesus asked, “Where have you laid him?” And when he stood in front of the tomb, according to the King James version, “Jesus wept.” He must have wept out loud and long, and those who saw it were moved to say, “See how much he loved him.”
We knew immediately why Martha and Mary were weeping. Their brother had been dead for four days now. Theirs were tears of grief. Those tears we all understand. We, too, have stood by the graveside and poured out our heart in great tears. We have cried because we can’t help but cry. Our emotions seem to take over our bodies, and the tear ducts open and the waters flow.
But what about that shortest verse in the Bible –– “Jesus wept.” Why? Why did he cry?
There is no shortage of answers to this question. I believe your answer to this question says a lot about your Christology, your theology of Jesus as Christ.
Why did Jesus cry? Here are some of the reasons offered by various theologians:
1) Some argued that Jesus was crying for the crowd because of their lack of faith. He looked deep into their hearts and realized that they did not understand him or his mission. They didn’t understand the matters about life and death the way he did. They didn’t understand that he had the power to bring Lazarus back to life. He was weeping for the crowd because they didn’t believe in him.
2) Some say Jesus was weeping because he hated to bring Lazarus back from heaven. He knew that heaven was a wonderful place, and he was crying because he had to bring him back to earth to show his glory.
3) Others say Jesus was weeping tears of rage at the evil of death and sin. He grieved because of the sinfulness of humans and the death that followed that sin into the world.
4) Many say that Jesus was weeping for himself. He was crying in anticipation of his own death. He knew that the miracle he was about do perform would inflame the situation in Jerusalem and turn the Pharisees against him. And, in fact, John says that’s exactly what happened after this miracle. He was weeping because he was thinking about his own coming death on the cross.
All of these are suggestions, and we must remember that they are only suggestions because John does NOT make clear why Jesus wept. Certainly any of these could be the very reason that Jesus cried. But I want you to notice that all of these suggestions rely heavily on the divine nature of Jesus. They all assume that Jesus had special knowledge of the future, of heaven, or of the inner thoughts of the crowd.
Personally, I reject all of these proposed reasons. I reject them because no human being would ever cry for any of those reasons. If he cried for any of those reasons, then none of us mere mortals can really understand or identify with the tears of Jesus. I will never cry because I can see the future. I will never cry because I understand all about heaven. I will never cry because I can read other people’s thoughts. If that’s why Jesus was crying, then he is far, far from being like me. He is not a high priest with whom I can identify.
Do you picture Jesus as human like us or divine like God? I think it is impossible for our tiny minds to perfectly balance the creedal statement that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Our little brains automatically tilt to one side or the other. We make Jesus a little more divine or a little more human. I think the Gospel of John tilts toward the divine side much more than do Matthew, Mark and Luke. Personally, I prefer the views of Jesus that I find in the synoptic gospels. That’s because I prefer to think of Jesus’ humanity.
I want to believe that Jesus experienced this life as much like me as possible. Hebrews says,
“We do not have a High Priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way,
just as we are ––
yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
I lean heavily on Philippians 2 for my Christology. There Paul writes of
“Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness” (Philippians 2:5-7)
5) That’s why I believe he cried for a fifth reason. I believe he cried because he cared. He cried for the same reason that we cry at funerals. He grieved with Mary and Martha. Jesus loved them and Lazarus. He grieved that Lazarus had died. He identified with their pain and he understood their tears. That’s what friends do. They cry when you cry.
And I can take great comfort in this reason for Jesus’ tears. It tells me that God still identifies with people who are hurting. When we cry, God cries too.
There’s a story of a little girl who came home late from school one day. Her mother was furious and went on and on for about five minutes ranting and raving at the girl. Finally she stopped and asked, “Why were you late anyway?”
To which the girl replied, “I was helping another girl in trouble.”
“What did you do for her?” asked the mother.
“Oh, I just sat down beside her and helped her cry.”
I believe those simple words, “Jesus wept,” reveal as much about Jesus as all the other words ever said about him. He weeps for all who pray for God to come and nothing happens. He weeps for all who face the tragic experiences of this life and thrust their painful, “Why?” toward heaven. He weeps for those who have hard questions. He weeps for those who do not walk quietly to death’s dark door. He weeps for those who ask for a miracle and do not get it.
Here is not a picture of a god who is immutable, immovable, unemotional or uninvolved. Here is a God with a weeping heart. Here is the Lord of the universe with tears in his eyes.
For me, it is important to believe that Jesus understands what life is like for me. He knows my temptations. He knows what it was like to be fully human just like me, yet he did it without sin. He knows my suffering, my disappointments, my problems, my questions. And more importantly, he not only knows, he understands. He has literally walked in my shoes. And because Jesus knows and cares, then I know that God knows and cares.
Suffering has a way of isolating us. When we cry, we cannot help but think that we are the only ones to ever experience such pain, and we feel alone. We think no one else feels our pain or knows our grief.
But Jesus tears tell us that there is someone we can lean on for strength, for wisdom, for comfort. In our confusion, Jesus is there for us. While we wait, he waits with us. In our sorrow, he will hold us.
Across the street from the bombed out Federal Building in Oklahoma City, where 168 people died needlessly and senselessly, there stands a memorial. At the heart of that memorial is a nine foot statue of Jesus. But this statue is not one of a stony Jesus with arms out wide like you may have seen in the Ozarks or in Brazil. No, this is a nine foot statue of Jesus with his face in his hands, turned slightly away from where the acts of terror took place, and the plaque reads, “And Jesus Wept.”
For thousands and thousands of mourners and survivors that image of Jesus has brought resurrection and hope and new life. It is a pillar of comfort for all who pass by.
What does God do for us? He sits down beside us and helps us cry. And sometimes that’s all we really need.
First Sunday in Lent Sermon (Feb. 10)
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
They may surprise us, these forms that temptation takes when Jesus fasts out in the wilderness. The devil does not present a slice of chocolate cake, or offer piles of money, or any illicit activities. The devil is not working from a view of sin like that of our society. He doesn’t concern himself with simply the illicit, ill-gotten gain, or excessive, tasty calories.
What the devil does is to fly below the radar of conventional morality to present a series of temptations that can very effectively cripple all our relationships at their core: relationships with creation, God, and people. These temptations are not concerned with simply loaves made from stones, jumping off a tall structure, and a chance for world domination. They are concerned with what for us seems closer to home, such matters as skill, trust, and power.
Skill, trust, and power. Here all of us have the opportunity to wreck our lives or allow our lives to become what they are meant to be: vehicles of grace.
Consider the first temptation, bread from stones, the one that has to do with skill.
Jesus has been fasting a very long time, and his hunger is severe. The devil, never one to miss a chance to get us, appears and challenges him to prove his identity and satisfy his hunger at the same time. He points to the stones visible everywhere in that desert. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.”
Jesus counters this proposal with words from Scripture. “It is written,” he says, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
This confrontation is about more than whether Jesus gets lunch that day. Jesus is asserting that his identity as Son of God––our identity as children of God––does not depend on what we do, or what we have, but who we are, and who we listen to.
Jesus is God’s Son and listens to God. We too are God’s children, and we listen to God, we hearken when God speaks to us.
Yes, we have skill, we have technique, but these must be subordinated to the gracious purposes that God makes known to us. Just because we are capable of doing something does not mean that we should do it. Certain choices, though technically possible, contradict what God hopes for from us; they are not consistent with our identity as God’s children.
A couple of questions for any of us to consider.
• Do I look upon myself or others simply in terms of doing and having, or do I recognize myself and others for who we are: children of God?
• Do I view my skills and opportunities as simply mine to use how I see fit, or do I treat them as entrusted to me for use in accord with God’s intention?
Consider the second temptation, jumping off a tall structure, the one that has to do with trust.
The devil takes Jesus into Jerusalem, to the very top of the temple. He invites Jesus to prove who he is, and to do so in a spectacular way. “If you are the Son of God, then jump down, Jesus,” says the devil. “For remember what it says in the Bible: ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus counters this temptation, laced as it is with scripture quotes, with his own answer from the Bible: “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
The devil knows the words of scripture, but is ignorant of its spirit. Yes, guardian angels are commissioned by God to help us here on earth. But to trust God does not mean the assumption that God will protect me regardless, even if perform some life-threatening stunt as an affront to the law of gravity.
Trusting God does not mean that God will enable our stupid behavior. What it does mean is that we accept the life God offers us with its challenges, its risks, its disappointments. It means living our lives and trusting God to make sense of them.
For Jesus this means that he comes to accept the cup of suffering God offers him in the Garden of Gethsemane, a cup he would readily refuse except that he trusts the One who offers it.
As children of God, it is not sufficient for us simply to trust God. We must trust God in the right way. We cannot expect God to endorse the products of our egotism as though the Holy One were a cosmic enabler.
Not all risks are good ones. Some are ill-advised and destructive. Others are offered to lead us into the future God intends for us, a future marked by blessing.
A couple of questions for any of us to consider.
• Do I trust God only about my own wants and plans, or do I trust even when God invites me to risk in a way that seems strange?
• Is some hardship in my life a cup offered to me by God or a leap I have taken off a tall structure?
We come now to the third temptation Jesus experiences out in the wilderness, a chance for world domination, the one that has to do with power.
This time the devil takes Jesus to a very high mountain that offers a panoramic view of all the countries of the world. Not only are the territories visible, but so too is their splendor.
No longer does the devil raise questions about the identity of Jesus, nor does he have scripture to misquote. He simply proposes a deal. Is there a note here of impatience? “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Jesus senses that he has gained the upper hand. “Away with you, Satan,’ he says, “For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”
For whatever reason, Jesus does not contest Satan’s claim of control over the countries of the world. What he attacks instead is the propriety of treating Satan as ultimate. God alone is worthy of worship.
Just as he does not condemn all technique or all trust when addressing earlier temptations, so here Jesus does not condemn all power. What he insists on is that power, like technique or trust, must be subordinated to the purposes of God. Power sought and obtained for its own sake, power purchased at any price amounts to devil worship. Power must be used instead in obedience to God, in service to the benevolent purposes of God.
Each one of us exercises some power in life. Some of us may appropriately seek a further sphere to exercise power, perhaps through our work or some form of community involvement. By exercising any form of power, we end up serving someone. The choice of whom we serve is a moral and spiritual matter of the greatest consequence.
Two more questions, then, for any of us to consider.
• Where are the places in my life where I exercise power?
• Do I worship the Lord God alone through my use of power or do I worship something else?
Skill, trust, and power. These themes appear in the story of Jesus, not only during his wilderness temptation, but at other times as well.
• Jesus refuses to turn stones into bread at the devil’s suggestion. On several occasions, however, he multiplies bread when many are hungry and people give up their meal in order to help others.
• Jesus refuses to jump off the top of the temple, but he does accept that cup of suffering God offers him, and does so because he trusts God.
• Jesus turns down the devil’s bargain of gaining all the world in exchange for worship of someone less than God. What Jesus does is announce the kingdom of heaven come to earth, and then die and rise so we may enter that kingdom.
Jesus makes it possible for us to decide about skill, trust, and power in a way that acknowledges his triumph. We are free to find our identity through our participation in him as children of God, heirs of the kingdom by grace.
Yes, Jesus refused to turn stones into bread. But he turns bread into himself at every Eucharist. We are here to share that meal as we trust in God and enjoy a taste of his kingdom. May it be so. Amen.
Second Sunday in Lent Sermon (Feb. 17)
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
Born again! People respond to those words very differently. Some people love them, but others hate them. Herb Caen says,
”The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.”
Born again! There seems to be no middle ground — no one who just shrugs their shoulders and says, “Yeah! That sounds about right.” Everyone has an opinion about “born again.” It’s a hot-button topic.
Born again!
The problem is that when we hear those words, we tend to think of those annoying people who stop us on the street and ask, “Have you been born again?” — implying that there is something wrong with us if we have not been.
But those words, “born again” come from the Bible — from Jesus’ lips, no less!
Jesus said that we must be born again. He should know.
Maybe I should be more exact. Jesus did not say that we have to be born again. The New Testament was written originally in Greek. In Greek, Jesus said, “You must be born anothen. (AN oh then)
Anothen is one of those words that have two meanings. It can mean “again” or it can mean “from above.” I believe that Jesus chose this word for both of its meanings. He means that we must be born a second time — “again” — and this time “from above.” He means that we must have a Heavenly Father, just as we have earthly parents. Nearly all Christians believe that! Baptists believe it! Lutherans believe it! Catholics believe it! Nearly all Christians believe that we must be “born again” — “born from above.” Christians believe that we need the Heavenly Father to remake us — to reshape us — to take our broken parts and make us whole again. Christians might argue about the details — what it means to be born again — how that happens — but the differences aren’t really that great.
It comes down to letting God transform our lives — letting God help us become more God-like. When you stop and think about it, that makes a lot of sense.
When we are born physically, we take a great deal from our fathers and mothers. We get genes from both. We probably look a lot like one or the other. When we talk, we sound a lot like one or the other. Whether we are short or tall has a great deal to do with our parents. Whether we have brown eyes or blue eyes depends on our parents. Even if both of our parents have brown eyes, we might inherit a recessive gene from one of them for blue eyes — but that blue-eyed gene still comes from our brown-eyed parent.
And we learn a lot from our parents. They teach us to walk and talk. They nurture us and help us along the way. They feed us nutritious food so we can grow. They make us go to school so we will have a good foundation in life. They impart certain values to us.
Who we are has a great deal to do with who our parents were.
For many of us, that’s good. Our parents loved us and did a good job of getting us ready for life. For some of us, it wasn’t so good. Some parents don’t do such a good job. But when Jesus says, “You must be born again” or “born from above,” he is saying that we don’t have to be limited by our parents. He is saying that we can have another parent — this time a Heavenly Parent:
- A parent who will guide us
- A parent who will nurture us
- A parent who will love us
- A parent we can trust
- A parent who will help us to grow strong
- A parent who will prepare us to handle the ups and downs of life
- A parent who will help us to succeed in life
- And a parent who will welcome us into a heavenly home when we die.
Let me tell you a secret. It isn’t just children who need good parents — it’s all of us. All of us need good parents. Even if you are old when your parents die, you will still grieve their passing. You will still miss them. You will still feel their loss. All of us need good parents — even those of us well along in years.
Jesus is telling us that, just as we need earthly parents, we need God. We need a Heavenly Father/Mother.
That is an exciting idea. It says that we aren’t limited by the genes that we got from our earthly parents, because God can make something new of us. It tells us that we don’t have to settle for the person that we are, because God can make us better. The early church had a wonderful way of expressing its faith in the rebirth that people experience when they become Christians.
As I understand it, in the early church (3rd-10th centuries) people weren’t baptized in the church sanctuary. They were baptized in a separate baptismal building which was dimly lighted. Men and women were baptized separately, and they were baptized naked in a pool of water. Then they were dressed in white clothing, anointed with perfumed oil, and taken into a brightly candle-lighted sanctuary where they took Holy Communion. They would never have seen Holy Communion before — because they would always have been dismissed at the mid-point in the service.
These actions dramatized their “new birth” — their “taking off” the old life and “putting on” the new. I read a story that illustrates well what God wants to do with us — with our lives.
Lindsay Clegg was a businessman who owned a London warehouse that had stood empty for quite some time. He wanted to sell it, but the building looked terrible. Vandals had broken windows and scattered trash. But Clegg found a prospective buyer who showed an interest in spite of the building’s appearance. He tried to reassure the buyer that he would replace the broken windows and clean up the trash and make any other necessary repairs. But the buyer cut him short. He said, “When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different. I don’t want the building; I want the site.”
That’s what God says to us. “I’m going to build something completely different. I don’t care who you are now, because I’m going to make you into a new person.
Many people feel like they have nothing to offer God. They can’t imagine that God would want anything to do with them. They look at their lives and see only the broken windows and trash. They think that they must somehow lift themselves by their bootstraps so that they will be worthy of God, but that seems impossible. They think of themselves as poor specimens — unworthy — unlovely.
But the Good News is that God just loves finding a person like that– a humble person — someone who recognizes her neediness. A person who knows that he is lost is open to being found.
God says, “I don’t really care who you are now. You don’t have to be responsible for the repairs. I intend to make you into a new person. All I need is your heart.”
That’s Good News!
• It’s Good News to those who feel that they have done something terribly wrong — unforgivably wrong.
• It’s Good News to those who constantly struggle to do the right thing, but constantly fail.
• It’s Good News to those who can’t imagine that God would want anything to do with them.
• It’s Good News, because it offers the reassurance that God can make the best out of the worst.
• It’s Good News, because it reassures us that no one is hopeless.
But it’s also Good News for those of us who call ourselves Christians — for those of us who were baptized and go to church every week — for those of us who are accustomed to the ritual of Holy Communion.
It is Good News to those of us who have supposedly been reborn, but who still struggle to do the right thing.
It’s Good News to those of us who have supposedly been reborn, but who wonder if God is really doing anything in our lives.
Let me remind you that a newborn baby is pretty helpless. Newborn babies can’t program a computer or play quarterback. Newborn babies can’t even feed themselves or change their own diapers. Newborn babies are adorable, but they will spend a lifetime growing and changing.
A mother who happened also to be a physician once commented on her struggles with her teenage children. She said, “Their brains don’t quit growing until they are 25 years old. It’s no wonder that they have such a time making it through their teenage years.”
And so it is with those of us who have been born again — and all of us who have given our lives to Christ have been born again. When we were baptized, it didn’t seem like baptism did much for us. We weren’t taller. We weren’t stronger. We weren’t smarter. We weren’t prettier.
But something did happen. We invited God to make a new person of us, and God began that work. We became “infants in Christ.” That’s what the Apostle Paul called the Christians at Corinth — infants in Christ. The church at Corinth was a troubled church, and the Christians at Corinth were troubled people. Paul wrote a letter to guide them onto a better pathway. In his letter, he called them “people of the flesh — infants in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1).
”People of the flesh” — that was just another way of saying “sinners.”
Those Christians in Corinth were sinners. But they were also “infants in Christ” — people who had been born into a new life. They weren’t yet the people that God wanted them to be — and they weren’t yet the people whom they would become — but they had been reborn. They had asked God to make them into new people, and God had started that work. God would be working on them for the rest of their lives.
If you haven’t become a Christian yet, the word that Christ has for you is that God can do great things with your life if you will let him.
If you are a Christian, the word that Christ has for you is that God is at work in your life, chipping away the sharp edges, restoring you to the image of God (see Genesis 1:27).
You aren’t yet the person that God wants you to be.
You aren’t yet the person whom you will become.
But God has started the work, and he will complete it. So next time someone asks, “Have you been born again?” don’t get angry. Say, “Yes, I have, thanks!” And then just keep walking.
