“Humbled & Needy – A Christian Is Right at Home” – Day of Humiliation & Prayer

Texts: Joel 2:12-19; Psalm 6; 1 John 1:5—2:2; Matthew 6:16-21

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – Amen

Saint John the Evangelist writes, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” This is our text.

            A pandemic like the one we are in is many things at once.  It is scary, it is frustrating, it is bigger and badder than some people take it to be, and it is not as significant as others make it out to be.  It is a time to band together even as it is a time we have to stay apart.  It is a time for hope and joy on account of our faith in Christ, but in addition to that it is also a time for humiliation- humbling ourselves before God, and praying to Him for mercy and relief.

On a personal level this week has been very humbling. In case you haven’t learned this about me yet I am a very deliberate person and very deliberate pastor. I analyze and think through situations- beating the dead horse in my own head- before making a decision. And once the decision is made I am so certain it’s the right one that I am very hard to move off it, because I really have thought through and weighed a lot- if not all- the pros and cons and options.  Maybe some take this to be me as a purely stubborn person, and that is definitely part of it- but a lot of it comes from how far in advance I analyze and plan and manage my time… and weeks like this it’s all a wash.

            Everything I planned and worked ahead on for Lent and Holy Week – yanked away.  The ability to work ahead and plan? Nope, one day at a time.  It’s frustrating, stressful…but it’s also humiliating.  It drives me to repentance.  This is a great time for me as a pastor to learn what I need to know most- how to repent and rely on God for forgiveness, for daily bread. He will provide more than I can with all my time management and situational analysis. And it will be more successful coming from Him than from me.  

            One of my favorite Christian thinkers of the last century said it very well.  G.K. Chesterton said- “I don’t need a church to tell me I’m wrong where I already know I’m wrong; I need a Church to tell me I’m wrong where I think I’m right.”  That is humbling and humiliating.  But that is most needed, because it leads us to repentance.  We will come out of this challenging time and you will look back and say, “Pastor, you and the deacons made a bad decision here ____” and I can tell you right now, most likely you’ll be right. I’m ready to be humbled for making wrong decisions. I question myself constantly.

            And that shows me how much I need God’s mercy, and His grace in Jesus Christ. We poor sinners are needy, helpless beggars.  Humbled and Needy – A Christian is right at home.  Driven to repentance by our failures, by our unpreparedness, by our bad decisions, by our sins – we see how great our need for a savior is.  You are spending more time at home and with your family than ever and that is more opportunities to sin against one another- and you have. 

            You’ll be questioning your own decisions, dreading and worrying about the future, and feeling helpless and needy from start to finish.  That’s good.  That is what a Christian is- humbled, helpless, and needy-- standing before a God who IS both all powerful and all loving, who delights to pour out His grace for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself up for us.

            Times like this we are constantly confronted by our Sin.  God’s Word convicts us.  I’ll give you another personal example-  as I read and studied our Old Testament lesson from Joel 2- appointed for this day of Humiliation- I was convicted by God’s approach to disaster and how different it is from ours. “Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people.” Did God not know that large numbers of people gathering is not sanitary…much worse in the days of the Prophet Joel than even now?  Did God not know that or did He know that the fellowship of believers is powerful medicine, that prayer and fasting, repentance and faith, can move God who acts more quickly than the CDC?

            None were left out, “Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber.  Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach.”  I am humbled by these words.  I question our decisions. If you were to tell me, “Pastor, we’re wrong” I would agree with you.  And I know if we held services- even if no one got sick- and you said, “Pastor that was wrong” I would agree with you then, too.  This is the real world. We don’t have good option versus bad option. Sometimes we have bad choice versus bad choice.

            Thank God we are not saved by our ethical decision making abilities!  Whether we’ve made all the right choices or all the wrong choices I stand here today to ask you all to pray with me that prayer from Joel 2- “Spare your people, O Lord, make not your heritage a reproach,” don’t let your people suffer want and hunger, don’t let small churches around the nation close for good, don’t let your schools go under.  Guard our FAITH, the gift we need the most.  Teach us to suffer with repentance, recognizing that based on our Sin alone we deserve far worse than this.  Teach us to suffer with faith and hope, spending more time in Your Word than we spend on the CDC website, spending more time in prayer than we spend complaining, worrying, and debating it to death with family and friends across social media. 

            Thanks be to God we can be wrong.  Thanks be to God we have an Advocate with the Father, the Righteous one, Jesus Christ.  Thanks be to God that His blood covers my sins and failures as a pastor, that it covers your sins and failures, that it covers the sins of the whole world- even the corrupt Communist Government of China- Jesus even died for dictators! May the whole world, purchased by the precious blood of Christ “return to the Lord our God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster.”

            So dear Christians, we are humbled and needy, but that’s right where we belong.  In the light of God’s Law we are humbled by our sins and failures, brought to repentance, crying “Rebuke me not in Your anger! (Ps. 6:1)” and we are in need of His grace.  And then we behold the rich grace and mercy of our loving savior and we are still humbled, but uplifted in that humility, seeing that God almighty stoops down in His own humiliation to meet our needs in the flesh, not keeping divine social distance, but breathing our poisoned air that we might know His grace and breathe the air of heaven.

            Now Saint Peter gives us good, practical advice for daily living at this time. It’s in 1 Peter 5.  They were suffering by persecution, not a plague.  That is something we must bear in mind, but Peter’s purpose in this practical application of Humiliation and Faith is to warn the people about the Temptations of the Devil during times of despair and suffering.  That much is still true of us.  As surely as God will use this time to test us, the devil will seek to drive you to despair, to adopt worrying instead of prayer, to seek selfishness instead of supporting one another, to learn to love the isolation in place of Christian fellowship. Resist him.

            Saint Peter writes, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”  - What comforting words for we who have many anxieties right now.

            Then Peter’s warning: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.” So be on guard against fits of anger or jealousy, despair and unbelief.  Don’t take this time to become slothful or lazy in your faith, or getting used to not attending Church. Know this for certain: the devil loves using things like this pandemic to scatter the flock of God that they might never return.

            But Peter encourages us again, that this shall not last, whether persecution or plague, famine or disaster- “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” So as your pastor, who has failed more than I can imagine in the last week, I call on you to put into practice two things, this day, and for as long as you can- Repent and Pray.  Pray for mercy. Pray for your fellow Christians. Pray for the nation and its leaders.  Pray that God restore His Church. Pray that God confirm our faith in Christ.  Pray that the Holy Spirit would strengthen our resolve to love one another with good works.  And pray that our Triune God establish us in His Kingdom of Grace. “To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”