Gracious God:  We do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from your mouth.  Make us hungry for this heavenly food that it may nourish us today in the ways of eternal life through Jesus Christ, the Bread of Heaven, Amen

 

            I actually want to tell that story again about Adam and Eve but I’m going to do it very much as a paraphrase, that is, a bit humorous, so please take it in the humor that it is presented this morning.  It is very much a paraphrase from what we’ve read earlier in Genesis.  How many of you have children?  I have five so I have plenty of children.  How many of you were children, all of us here, so we certainly will understand this paraphrase in which, here again, a humorous paraphrase and it is meant that way.

 

            For all of us who have children and to all of those who were children we certainly can relate.  Whenever your children are out of control you can take comfort from the thought that even God’s omnipotence did not even extend to his own children.  After creating heaven and earth God created Adam and Eve.  And the first thing he said was, “Don’t”,” don’t what?” Adam replied.  “Don’t eat the forbidden fruit,” God said.  “Forbidden fruit, hey Eve, we have forbidden fruit!”  “No way,” “Yes we have forbidden fruit.”  Do not eat the forbidden fruit”, God said.  “Why?” said Adam.  “Because I’m your father and I said so”, God replied, wondering why he hadn’t stopped creation after making the elephant.  A few minutes later, God saw his children having an apple-break and He was mad!  ”Didn’t I tell you not to eat of the fruit,” God said to our first parent.  ‘Uh huh!’ Said Adam.  “Then why did you eat of it?” God said.  “I don’t know”, said Eve.  “She started it”, said Adam.  “Did not”, “did too”, did not” and looking at the snake, Eve said, “He made me do it!”  And having had it with the two of them, God’s punishment to Adam and Eve was that they should have children of their own, thus the pattern was started and has never changed!  So I suspected those who have had children understand that completely.

 

            But the reason we read that story this morning is because that what we find in that story is that Adam and Eve sinned against God.  And we realize in that story that Adam and Eve were not perfect, and, nor are we!  For you and me, we’re not perfect.  You and I have certainly sinned against God.  We have fallen short of the glory of God in our own lives, haven’t we?

 

            Harold Cushner, a Jewish rabbi and a renowned author, has written many thoughtful and inspirational books and probably one that you may have heard about or even that you have read was his book called “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”.  However one of his more recent books was called “How Good Do We Have to Be?”  And then in that particular book Harold Cushner writes that ‘no one is perfect’.  And for some reason, and it’s not all bad, we have internal standards within ourselves that we set for ourselves.  And we have expectations that we set for ourselves – many times we set those standards and expectations for others, but we realize that we don’t always meet up to those standards, those internal standards, or those expectations that we have for ourselves or those that we have for others.  Because of that, many times we feel guilty; we may feel disappointed in ourselves, disappointed in others for not being more perfect and sometimes we may even find ourselves angry at others and angry at ourselves for not meeting up to those standards.  But Harold Cushner goes on to write that God does not ask us to be perfect but God asks of us to be Whole.  Now what does he mean by that ‘being whole’?  He says that to be whole before God, means to stand before God with all of our faults and with all of our virtues and hear the message of our acceptability.  Now I want to read that again because I think that is so important for us to hear this morning.  That “to be whole means to stand before God with all of our faults and with all of our virtues and hear the message of our acceptability--to hear the message that we are worthy!”  I like what he says that life is not a trap that’s set by God so that if we mess up one time we’re doomed; it’s not like a spelling bee that if you miss one word, you’re out.  But life is more like baseball--which even the best teams will lose one-third of their games and even the worst teams will have brilliance on the field.

 

            Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States and I think that we all would agree that he certainly was a man full of wisdom.  He once wrote, “Show me a man with no vices and I’ll show you a man with no virtues”.  We all make mistakes.  We all sin; we all fall short of the Glory of God.  I’ve said many times that if you could get in my head and hear my thoughts you would probably say, ‘he’s a minister?’  Because I’m not perfect.  You’re not perfect and I want you to hear the good news, God does not expect us to be perfect; he expects us to be ‘whole’.

 

            One of my favorite stories in the New Testament comes from the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verses 1 through 11.  It is certainly a story that I’m sure that most of you already know.  But I love this story in the Bible because I think in this story we hear the message that we are accepted; that we are worthy before the eyes of God.  It’s the story that you know of the woman caught in adultery.  She was caught with her hand in the cookie jar and she was brought before Jesus. The Pharisees and the Scribes brought her before Jesus and the Scribes and Pharisees turned to Jesus and said, “The law of Moses says that we should stone this woman,” and they are standing there with stones in their hands and ready to stone this woman.  They said to Jesus, “What do you say?” And Jesus turned to them and said, “The person who has never committed a sin among you, please go ahead and throw the first stone”.  The scribes and the Pharisees had nothing to say at that point. I love what the scriptures say next, “They went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest”.

 

            My question to you this morning is “I wonder why the eldest dropped the stone first and walked away?”  Do you have a clue?  I suspect you do, don’t you?  As we grow older we all get a little dirt on us, don’t we?  We all know that we’re not innocent; that we’ve made mistakes.  We have some of those skeletons in the closet that we want to keep that door shut.  We don’t want anybody to see what’s behind that door, do we?  Because we live life, and in living life, sometimes we make mistakes; sometimes we sin against God. We realize that we’re not perfect.

 

            I find it interesting that they dropped their stones and they walked away.  But what is such a good part of this story comes next is what Jesus says to the woman.  Here’s this woman in disgrace, shamed in embarrassment.  You can only imagine what she’s feeling at that moment in front of this crowd and in front of Jesus.  And Jesus turns to this woman and says, “Woman, where are your accusers?  Has no man condemned you?”  And she said, “No man, Lord”. Understand now that Jesus probably was the only person at that moment who could condemn this woman, but does he?  No.  Jesus turns to this woman who was caught in adultery and said to her, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and sin no more.” Jesus was saying to this woman, “Yes, you have made a mistake, yes you have not done right; you can do better.  Go, do better and sin no more because in my eyes you are worthy.  In my eyes, I know you are not perfect, but you don’t have to be.  And you know why, even though we’re not perfect, we are whole, do you understand why we are?  This is where I may differ a little bit with Harold Cushman.  I believe his statement that to be whole means to stand before God with all of our faults and with all of our virtues and hear the message of our acceptability but, do you know why we’re accepted before the eyes of God?  Do you understand why we are ‘whole’ in the eyes of God:  because of what we celebrate this morning; because of what we remember this morning – the Broken Body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  That is why we are accepted – that is why we are worthy; because of His broken body on behalf of us; because of his shed blood on behalf of us.  Isn’t that what we believe as Christians? Isn’t that why we’re here this morning celebrating and worshipping because of what Christ has done for us?  That is why we are accepted in the eyes of God.

 

            I was in seminary at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and I pastored a small American Baptist Church outside of Madison, Indiana while I was there.  It was a lovely old church.  It was so far back in the woods that we didn’t even have running water.  We had out-houses in the graveyard; just beautiful people though; ‘Salt of the earth’ type of people.  One of the gentlemen there was named Floyd and Floyd was a farmer and he taught Sunday School and one day after Sunday School Floyd and I were talking and Floyd said, “Well, Taylor, you know there’s one thing that God can’t do, don’t you?  I said, “Well, Floyd, I don’t know.  I thought that God could do anything that God chose to do;” and Floyd said, “Nope, one thing that God can’t do”!  And I said, “Well, Floyd, God’s omniscient, God’s omnipotent”, I was just throwing out these wonderful theological words.  I was a seminary student, I knew everything.  And Floyd said, “Nope, there’s one thing that God can’t do.”  And I said, “Well Floyd, what is it that God can’t do?”  And Floyd said, “God cannot see your sins through the blood of Jesus Christ.”

 

            We are accepted!  We are made whole.  We are worthy through the broken body and through the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, let us hear the message of our acceptability.  May we know that we are worthy and that we are whole!

 

AMEN