CMLC 2024-04-21 Sermon

God, we know that You are the one that we can always turn to.

God, as much as we strive to be the people

that You desire us to be,

we can never be the foundation we are never meant to be.

So God, help us to continue to point others

to build themselves not on us,

but with us on You,

so that they can truly find what is true

and the rock that gives us our true hope.

In Christ Jesus, amen.

Howdy.

Well, I realize that I probably already gave away

what we're gonna be starting today's sermon about,

but I'm going to still try to paint

a little bit of the picture for you.

You see, the thing is, is that today,

I need us to spend some time

with something deep and philosophical, okay?

There is a tome, there is a work

that is a part of classic American literature,

something that really digs deep into who we are as people,

struggles that we have, you know, ups and downs

and the flaws of humanity,

but still being a part of the overall community,

the overall picture, the landscape

of what it is to be in this world.

And I'm talking about the classic book,

Monster at the End of This Book.

The monster at the end of this book

is the underrated American classic

that I think we don't truly appreciate

the way that we should.

You see, for those who may not quite get this,

is that this comes out of the 1970s,

a land where the world was full of sepia tones

and bell bottoms and disco balls

and everything else in between.

I tried my best to stay as far away from it as possible

and waited for the 80s, so it was a lot safer.

With that is that in the 70s,

we came up with something amazing called Sesame Street,

in which basically an opportunity to utilize monsters

in order to help kids learn and grow

and see all sorts of different lessons to learn in life.

Now the thing with this is that

one of those big characters was Grover.

And Grover was the star of this particular book.

Now, you may or may not know this book.

I definitely suggest that you get one if you can.

But you see in this, Grover hears at the beginning

that there is a monster at the end of this book

and he is frightened.

He wants nothing to do with this monster at all.

And so what he keeps doing is,

as you're turning the pages, he's panicking.

He's like, what are you doing?

Oh my, and he tries to stop you all along the way

and he builds a brick wall at one point that,

oh man, that was really difficult to get past, Grover.

Or he tries to glue the pages together

and they get ripped apart.

Or even at one point, he even has this vault door on there.

But as you keep going, he even just stops

and he's begging you, please,

don't turn the pages of this book.

And I remember as a little kid thinking,

I'm destroying this poor little creature's life.

What have I done?

And then I'm like, do I?

It's like a big ethical question for the four year olds.

You know, what are you gonna do?

I don't know.

But of course, what do you do?

You turn the page.

And just like in good Bob Seeger fashion,

and you end up getting to the end.

And turns out, who is the monster at the end of this book?

It's Grover.

Grover is the monster at the end of this book.

And he even tries to gaslight you a little bit.

And so like, oh boy, I can't believe you were

so scared, everybody.

And then he's like, yeah, I'm so embarrassed.

And the thing is, is that the discovery

that Grover is the monster at the end of the book,

it's this really big kind of metaphysical

kind of like discovery.

Cause he had been talking to you the whole time.

He was breaking the fourth wall,

way before Deadpool and anybody else, okay?

And with that is you end up discovering though,

a lot about yourself.

See, the thing is, is that the monster

at the end of the book, it's a couple different things.

One is that you're realizing that Grover

didn't see himself as the monster.

And in many ways, oftentimes that's we ourselves.

But also in a sense, the fact that we

keep turning the pages, even as he's begging us not to,

it's sort of like, man, what kind of a terrible person

is this little child?

I have no idea.

But at the same time, it's also a chance

to kind of pause and maybe self reflect.

And I'll be honest, this last week was exhausting.

This last week was absolutely exhausting.

And I'm sure that a lot of you, for your own reasons,

absolutely exhausted.

Some people may have just been really, really tired

because of the multiple allergens that were in the air.

Mine was last weekend, other people are this weekend.

Or some of you may have been struggling

because of all of the dust, everything in the air

from the sugar cane burning out in Central America

that wafted its way up here.

But I'd say also there were a lot of other things too inside.

It felt like every single day this last week,

it's like trying to handle things,

trying to tackle things the best you can,

but still feeling like no matter what you tried to do,

you still felt like, oh man, I have butchered this as well.

Because even in the midst of trying to be the protagonist

of the story, you still end up feeling each day like

you may also be the monster.

And the thing is, is that as much as there are dumb mistakes

that we make all the time, we're still learning,

but it's also this sense of feeling, am I still accepted

even though I know that my attempt at this

was absolutely terrible.

But you see, children of God, we don't purify ourselves

by ever getting it all right.

We are purified because of being in Christ.

And that's the thing, is that we're not meant

to try to prove something, but rather is letting God

do his work in us.

You see, Grover the whole time throughout this whole story,

he is trying desperately to stop you

from going through the book.

But then at the end of the book,

you have this really big revelation,

and so does he, his best efforts the whole time

turned out to be completely misguided.

And in so many ways that's so revealing about ourselves,

is that our best efforts, the things that we are trying

so desperately to do, that we think are going

to make everything better.

And yet then from the outside looking in,

realizing that we may actually be making everything worse.

And that's a hard piece with this, is that we though

are still welcome in the story.

You see, Grover as much as we know that he ends up

being the monster at the end of the book,

but he's still in the book.

He is still welcome in this book.

And instead of trying to avoid all the issues,

it turns out his very being, the monster in the book,

is the very means by which we end up learning

what the book is trying to teach us.

See, the thing is is that as much as we think that somehow

we're the ones who know the answers,

and we're the ones who are going to fix everything

because we're the children of God, gosh darn it,

and we need to save the world from those children

of the darkness, those children of the devil

that are out there.

And then we pause and realize that what we're trying to fix

may very well be the issue all along.

Had a friend of mine, the way he was talking to me,

I'm gonna use the term loosely for today,

but essentially decided that he was going to send me

a message and correct me, and tell me all these reasons

why I was so terrible, and I'm sitting there

thinking to myself, great, thanks so much

for being judgmental.

And I wrote my full response that I was going to send

through messenger, and I was going to make sure

I was very clear to him, all these reasons why

he was wrong and I was not.

And then pause long enough to look at it and say,

is any of this actually going to either help him

or help me, and delete it all of it?

And then pause and realize that it's not really up to me

to fix him.

It's not up to me to identify that he's the monster

in the story, and he needs to go and get himself some help,

but rather is to slow down and say, you know what,

for whatever reason he's in this story.

But everything that I say and do right now,

would I become the monster in it, if I did so.

But also at the same time, did I go back and spend

all the time second guessing everything about myself,

but instead pause and said, you know what,

I'm sure I made some mistakes, but I'm not going to spend

all the time trying to justify all of them,

before I can actually feel forgiven and welcomed.

But you see, we're oftentimes looking at these things,

we're unwilling to admit to the issues that we have.

We'd rather focus on the way that we feel,

rather than admit to our actions,

possibly making things worse.

We would rather just focus on things that allow us

to avoid that, and rather is to try to say,

what sort of things can I use to avoid it?

And then end up having somebody outside of my office

saying, this is something that I'm willing to admit

that maybe I need to step back from things.

And knowing that if I had tried to be the one

to make a point, that person may never

have been willing to see it.

And that's the thing is that oftentimes we allow ourselves

to avoid certain things that we don't want to see.

But the reality is that everyone who makes a practice

of sinning also practices lawlessness,

because sin is lawlessness.

And when I read that verse, as I was preparing

for the sermon, and I remember sitting there,

looking up at God saying, seriously?

I salute you, Captain Obvious.

I mean, yeah, I mean, sinning is lawlessness.

What am I supposed to do with that?

How am I supposed to preach that part?

And then pausing and realizing that that's also

what we oftentimes do to avoid things.

You see, we look for the loopholes to say,

well, you see, because this isn't specified in a certain law,

because this isn't a rule, then therefore you can't blame it.

You can't say that I'm sinning in this regard.

You can't blame guilt on me, because this is totally okay.

But in reality, is that lawlessness is not just about

what is specified as much as even asking, who are we?

What is it that's happening inside of us?

You see, with this is that we not only will look for loopholes,

but oftentimes we're even saying, well, don't even make a law out of this

because I have no interest in changing.

How many times we're saying, I see this thing that I don't want to change on.

So now none of the rest of you don't dare call it lawlessness,

because then I would be convicted of it too.

And I'm not okay with that.

I'm just right, instead of asking if maybe we need to change.

And that's the thing with what we end up seeing here,

is that lawlessness is not just the things that we see specified.

It's asking what's happening inside of us.

And yet, what's happening inside of us may turn out to be the very means

by which God is doing what He's meant to do.

And so, you go back and look at that book,

and it's a book filled with glue and bricks and a vault,

and Grover making his desperate attempt to stop you from going through it.

The whole book itself is a mess.

It's just this character desperately trying to avoid things.

And then it reminds me of a photo that I got sent to me.

It was either my mom or my sister or my dad. It's one of those three culprits,

because it's usually one of their fault, whatever it may be.

But the photo, it shows a really little Jason in the middle of it.

And I think I might have been four years old or something like that.

Big old head, not so big body, okay?

Because they always said that I started with the right-sized head,

and my childhood was just trying to grow into it.

But big old head of Jason sitting there in the middle of this messy floor,

working on his Legos with everything else all surrounding him.

And at the time, I could only imagine my parents coming by and saying,

you need to clean this. Why is this never clean?

What is going on here?

We're going to step on that Lego and get a bone spur,

and it's going to be whatever it may be.

Do you know what they're saying when they send a picture?

They're saying, here's Jason trying to process the world.

Because that is what was happening, is that in the middle of that mess,

I was trying to make sense of, in my mind, I have Ninja Turtles over here.

I have Legos over here.

I have Brickworks. I have superhero characters.

I have Racetrack. I have all these things.

And how do they all fit together?

And truth be told is that that was the beginning of a process that's still today.

I'm still trying to figure out.

And that's the thing about it, is that while we make the mess, we're still God's kids.

Making the mess doesn't mean that we're Satan's kids.

And the truth is, is that whenever people look at us and they can see the mess,

it doesn't mean that God isn't working that whole time.

It just means that somehow God has to use that messiness to get us where we need to go.

The thing is, is that sometimes we need to just slow down a little bit.

Because God is working on fixing our flaws, but also helping others to see what they can't.

We may be trying to figure out, how do I make sure that you get why you are this child of lawlessness that I see

and realizing that from the outside we may see the monster.

But the one who wrote that book sees his child.

See, God's child keeps being brought back.

Not that God's child never goes out and makes mistakes.

We know from 1 John, whoever says that they are without sin is a liar.

But we also know in 1 John that the child of righteousness is the child of God.

And that's the piece with this, is that as we look through the story of what we're living through right now,

and we see the times whenever we are butchering things,

it doesn't mean that we need to either avoid it or pretend that, oh, well, you just didn't understand what I was doing.

Or even other times to try to look at everybody else and say, this is why you're the monster and not me.

But instead is to start seeing ourselves from God's eyes.

Is that that righteousness is not us having it figured out?

That righteousness is what God is doing in us all throughout.

As we close, I want to point out something that I'm closing each of these sermons with,

is what we're doing here at the church, because we're focusing on discipleship, care, and outreach.

And the reason for that is because it is so easy, oftentimes, that as we're focusing maybe on one or another to the exclusion of the others,

we end up with a very skewed outlook.

And sometimes we're so focused on, did I get enough Bible reading without pausing to say,

what was it supposed to be changing in my life with the world around me?

Or I may be sitting next to a person who is desperate for the love of God and all I've done is say,

okay, I'm glad I got that studying.

Or we may have spent so much time being so busy getting things done without slowing down to say,

what is God actually speaking to me today?

Or even the times whenever we say, what I'm doing is to care for other people.

And yet then at the same time, when we do so without coming back to God,

when we do so without saying, how is what I'm doing outside of my own head but actually for the world around me,

then is the way that we care for one another truly caring for one another?

Or is it just something that we feel like doing at that point?

Because oftentimes the way that we want to love others,

we sometimes have to slow down enough to say, yes, but is this actually what they need in order to be loved?

Am I so focused on doing something because that's what I want to do that I don't slow down enough to say,

maybe God needs to show me what they need more than what I want?

So wherever you may be, there's no issue with going to the end of the book.

Feel free, open up the page. Take a look. See who's there.

Because it's you and it's me. It's all of us.

Loved by God and continue to be brought into a messy story through which God is doing His work.

Thanks be to God that He uses the mess instead of waiting until we're somehow gone.

Amen.