Sermon:  "Confidence in Christ"

The Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)
March 20, 2008

Maundy Thursday

Confidence in Christ

2 Corinthians 2:14; 3:4-5, 12, 18

Prayer: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Each Maundy Thursday, we hear the “New Commandment” of Jesus given again – the “mandatum” that gives this day its name – and each time, I suspect we are tempted to think, “This year it will work.  This time we’ll remember to always ‘love one another’ no matter what.”  But sometimes I think we’re lucky if we can remember to be loving all the way home after church!

Do you know, as I was rushing out the door to come here for this service, the phone rang, and it was somebody from my seminary, calling me by the wrong name and asking for money!  I said, as nicely as I knew how, “You do know that you’re a seminary, right?  And you train your students for ministry?  So now it’s 6 p.m. on Maundy Thursday and you’re calling a pastor at home to ask for money??  I’m sorry, but they shouldn’t have asked you to do that – they shouldn’t have put you in that position.  I’ll be happy to give if you send me something in the mail, but I don’t have time to talk with you right now.”  I did TRY to be nice, but I know I couldn’t hide the tone in my voice.  She probably will tell everyone about the awful, mean, un-Christ-like pastor she got on the phone tonight!

And yet, we still hope to be able to make ourselves be more loving.  We are so positive, and so optimistic in churches like ours.  Anything seems possible, even as Paul promises in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians, that we might actually see the glory of the Lord.  We might even have hope that we “are being transformed into the [image of Christ] from one degree of glory to another.”  But deep in our hearts, we know it’s not that easy, don’t we?  We are human, and we are seriously flawed.  [Cell phone rings.]  Yes!  Let the one whose cell phone has NOT gone off in the middle of something important cast the first stone!  Mine started vibrating during a prayer I was leading at a church meeting the other night – and it was Toni, our choir director, calling me.  “We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” 

But tonight is about more than simple sins.  It is about outright betrayal.  Do you remember the first time you were betrayed?  I know I do.  I was young and optimistic and full of hope – running for my first elected office.  I was campaigning to be Vice President of the student body … at Brooks Elementary School, back in Greensboro, NC.  I was only 10, but the memory sticks with me.  I thought I could count on my Girl Scout Troop to support me – we had gone through some really tough seasons of cookie sales, and some brutal campouts together.  And after all this… well …they told me the traitor in the troop had been Mary Frances – a girl I thought was my friend.  But turns out she had been spreading the rumor all around the school – and encouraging her minions in the troop to spread the rumor – that I was NOT actually a nice person at all, but was bossy and stuck-up.  Needless to say, I lost the election, and I also lost forever my nerve when it came to running for public office.

And, of course, because I’m human – and because I live among other flawed human beings like myself – there have been many other betrayals in my life:  other friends that gossiped behind my back, friends that I gossiped about in return; fickle and no-good cheating boyfriends, and lies I told to guys when I’d much rather be “washing my hair” than go out with them; a boss who made a point of telling me she had tried to get me a promotion, when later I found out she had done just the opposite so she could land the job herself.  Another time, I failed to come to the defense of a co-worker about to get fired, because I was too afraid of losing my own job.

It’s just …reality.  Life leads from one betrayal to another – sometimes we are the betrayed; other times, we are the betrayer.  And yet, many of us still believe in the goodness of human nature.  We continue to expect people to NOT let us down.  We continue to expect OURSELVES to not let ourselves down.  As “modern” and “moderate” Christians, we resist “original sin” theology, which we consider too old-fashioned, or too fundamentalist.  But I worry that in our relentless pursuit of human righteousness, we might be missing the opportunity to just relax into the Spirit of Christ and accept the amazing gift of God’s transforming grace.  That is the gift we remember most of all this night, and in this Holy Week.  That is the gift that gives us true confidence – confidence not in ourselves, but in Christ.  I love this line in Paul’s letter – I should have shared it with the search committee when they interviewed me to be your pastor:  “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us,” Paul writes.  “Our competence is from God.” Our competence is from God.  Now that is Good News!

Tonight, as we remember the series of bitter betrayals and desertions that led Jesus to the cross where he gave his life for us, let us also remember that it is that self-giving love of Jesus that ultimately saves us.  We cannot save ourselves, no matter how hard we try.  Like the disciples on that last night, we will betray Jesus sometimes.  We hear him calling us to be one with him, to be one with each other, to be more loving.  And yet, our flawed human nature sometimes gets the best of us.  We will deny him.  We will fall asleep on the job of discipleship.  We will forget to be peacemakers, and we will lapse into living by the sword.  We will run away in fear.  We will make him weep gallons of tears for us before our lives are over.  But the Good News?  He still loves us.  While we are yet sinners, he loves us; this we know.  Stories of his life and death and resurrection tell us so.  “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.”  Amen.