Use and The Lord’s Purpose | Rev. Pearse M. Frazier

Our first reading today is from Psalm 127.

Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.

Unless the Lord keeps the city, the keeper watches in vain.

For it is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, enjoying the bread of grief.

For so he gives to his beloved sheep sleep.

Behold, children are heritage of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is his reward.

As arrows in the hand of a mighty warrior, so are the sons of one's youth.

Happy is the mighty man who has his quiver filled with them.

They shall not be ashamed, for they shall speak with their enemies in the gate.

Now reading from the Gospel of Luke, portion of chapter six.

Then Jesus came down from the mountain with the disciples and stood on a level place with the crowd and his disciples and a great multitude of all the people.

Then he lifted up his eyes toward his disciples and said, Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Judge not and you shall not be judged.

Condemn not and you shall not be condemned.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.

For every tree is known by its own fruit.

For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.

For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Finally, reading from Divine Love and Wisdom, number 329 and 330.

From the final or ultimate end in creation, it can be seen what a form of use is.

The ultimate end in creation is the existence of an angelic heaven.

And because the angelic heaven is the final end, so too is mankind or the human race, since heaven is formed from it.

It follows from this that all other phenomena created are intermediate ends, and that these are forms of youth in the order, degree, and respect that they have relation to mankind and through mankind to the Lord.

Since the final end in creation is an angelic heaven from the human race, and so also the human race, therefore its immediate ends are all other phenomena that have been created.

And because they have relation to mankind, they have regards to the three constituents of a person, namely his body, his rational faculty, and his spiritual character, for the sake of his conjunction with the Lord.

Here end the readings Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.

Amen.

In our story today, which was taken from the Gospel of Luke, it begins with the Lord in a mountain.

He's high up, and he's been praying all night.

And he's been alone.

He comes down from the mountain and he's with his disciples.

And he comes even further down onto a level plane with the people.

Now, to give you an idea of what this might have looked like, we in the modern world have a very distorted view of public speaking.

We tend to think that a public speaker looks down on people.

Now, the reason why we can do that is because we have giant stone buildings or microphones with speakers.

But in the ancient world, they didn't have those things.

And so if somebody was just looking down a hill at a bunch of other people and yelling at them, they wouldn't actually hear much.

The acoustics are terrible.

If someone wanted to be heard, they would have to have what they would call an amphitheater.

Sort of like a little bowl, where behind them would be like rocks or a wall, in front of them something that could echo or bounce sound, like stone or water, and then the people would be going up.

We can't replicate that here, but that's what I'd like you to try to imagine if you were one of the Lord's disciples or the crowd.

That he has come down and is sitting on a level place.

And then, as the scripture tells us, he looks up at the disciples.

So he isn't preaching like this.

He's surrounded by a crowd, and he's preaching like this.

He is among the people.

In fact, it would be more realistic to say that he is preaching like this, which we feel very uncomfortable about.

But that is actually how the Lord preached.

He spoke to the people.

In fact, in this sermon, the Lord says, not blessed are those who mourn, or blessed are those who are poor, but he says, Blessed are you who mourn.

Blessed are you who are poor.

He's making eye contact with the people.

He's connecting with them.

He's trying to get them where they are.

Because he's trying to elevate them to something higher.

That's what the Lord's always trying to do with us.

He's always trying to come down to where we are and pull us up if we're willing.

And that's what he's doing today and every day.

The Lord has a goal in mind.

And we read about that goal.

The Lord's goal is a heaven from the human race.

His ultimate end, the thing that everything else is judged on and lined up in accordance with, all the other rules are for one reason only.

An angelic heaven.

Now we know in the new church that angels are people.

People who have died and who, because they love the neighbor and the Lord more than themselves, are in heaven.

So the purpose of your life is to become an angel, right?

Not exactly.

That's some of it.

That's part of it.

Because the goal is not to have a lot of angels, but to have an angelic heaven, a whole kingdom, a whole group of people that make a heavenly kingdom, which changes the perspective.

What is your purpose in life?

And that's what the Lord is talking to the disciples especially about.

He's with a large crowd of people, but the people he's looking up at and directing all of this sermon to are the disciples especially.

You can imagine twelve men who have, for various reasons, dedicated themselves to following Jesus Christ wherever he goes.

And around those twelve men and the Lord is a huge crowd of people.

Some of them were sick, some of them were possessed by evil spirits, some of them were just curious about what's going on.

Some of them might be evil people, scribes and Pharisees who are out to trick the Lord.

Or some might be there taking other people's names and thinking, oh, I better get him in trouble, he followed the Lord.

Think about all the crowd that's there.

And the Lord's talking just to the disciples.

And he says so many amazing things.

If we could hope, if I could hope for you to do one thing after this sermon, or after this talk, it would be to on your own read the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, in full.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

It's short, takes about seven minutes out loud, slowly, and it's beautiful.

And in it, the Lord is elevating, elevating, elevating to that higher purpose.

And near the end, he concludes with a bad tree does not bear good fruit.

And a good tree doesn't bear bad fruit.

People don't go picking grapes from brambles or figs from thorns.

The Lord's telling the disciples that if they want to do the Lord's good, because that's what they're hoping to do, they're going to have to have a good heart.

It's almost like a prereq.

If you want to be useful in society, it's a prerequisite where the first thing you need to be mindful of is to not do bad.

If a hard worker is hard at work, but they lie about what they're doing, it destroys everything else.

So good can only come from good.

But this creates a dilemma for the disciples.

And I want you to imagine what the dilemma might be.

Imagine that you are a really good disciple.

In that you're faithful, you're hardworking, you're following the Lord, you're trying your best.

But do you know what else you might be?

Really honest about who you are.

Which means you might know that you are not perfect.

So how are you going to do anything good if you're not perfect?

If the Lord says to you, good can't come out of a bad tree, and you think, yeah, but if I think about myself, am I a bad tree?

Am I sometimes dishonest?

Do I sometimes lose my temper?

Do I sometimes do things for selfish reasons?

The disciples were thinking, yes, sometimes I do.

And yet the Lord carried them with him.

Continued to lead and guide them.

And they had faith in him, trust in him, in his ultimate purpose.

Because they didn't actually have to do the good.

And this is our final idea.

The disciples weren't doing good, they were following the Lord.

And you don't have to do good.

You just have to follow the Lord.

Don't worry about how useful or productive you're being in any particular moment.

You don't have to accomplish amazing things.

It's not about some product that you post up on the wall or that you post to Instagram so people can see how productive you are.

There's no quarterly metrics review in this job.

It's about the process.

All you have to do is try.

If you follow the Lord, make mistakes, but then try again.

The Lord will do good through you.

And the angelic heaven that he creates isn't just that he's working on perfecting you, but that as you shun evil, and as the Lord through you does good, you share that with the Lord.

You become a vessel for the Lord's goodness, his love, his truth, his church, his heaven.

That's what the disciples heard.

They heard, We can be his vessels.

And they were courageous.

Amen.