Finding the Intersections: Sermon Matthew 27:11-54

Prepare our hearts, O God, to accept you Word. Silence in us any voices but your own, so that we may hear your Word and also do it; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This morning I would like to talk about finding the intersections. I was driving through Athens, AL a few months ago really just minding my own business, when a car pulled out in front of me moving perpendicular to me. My first reaction was to get mad. “Hey dude, what’s your problem, what are you doing?” Then I looked in front of me or more to the side of me at that point and saw the stop sign that I had missed a few seconds before. I was in the middle of an intersection and I had almost missed it. So the man I had initially gotten angry with was in the right. He had right of way because I had a stop sign and he did not. So I through up my hands apologetically, the man nodded his head in acceptance and we went on our merry little way and I was much more careful to observe the signs of the road and to find the intersections.

Have you ever missed an intersection? Perhaps not while driving down the road, but do we sometimes miss the intersections of life. There is a book I have been reading for one of my classes called Resurrecting Excellence and it talks, in part, about understanding the intersections of life. Specifically, they talk about the intersection of God and human life, where our lives and God’s life come together. Have we ever missed one of these intersections? Sometimes we forget about God, don’t we? When things are going smoothly and everything in life is going great, we forget about God’s role in all that. However, when something goes wrong, when tragedy hits who is it that we turn to? When we stop thinking about God we fail to see the intersections between God and human life until it is too late.

What and where are these intersections? We know that these intersections exist because we read about them in the Bible. The Bible is filled with stories of God’s intersections with humanity, but they are not limited to biblical times. They occur all around us even today. Some of these intersections are constant; they are always there around us, like the stop sign on the street corner. Sometimes we purposely create these intersections. Prayer is an example of this. We create that intersection with purpose and reason. Sometimes the intersections occur unintentionally and even tragically. I want to talk about some of these intersections today and explore how we can react to these intersections when they occur.

One such intersection is described in the book I mentioned earlier. It is the intersection between youth and age or one could also say between experience and inexperience. There are those of us here in this church this morning who have been Christians for many, many years and there might be those of us who have been Christians for only a short time or we have only taken our faith seriously for a short time. There are those with experience living as Christians and there are those who are new at this lifestyle. Too often these people never get the chance to interact, especially outside the church. Those who are new stick together and those who are mature in their faith stick together. This is unfortunate because there is much that these two groups can learn from one another. Those of us who have been Christians for many years are called to help those who are new to the faith. We do not simply bring them to the cross and leave them there. Instead, we should help our new brothers and sisters in their new walk with Christ. In the book Resurrecting Excellence the authors tell a story about a new program started at a particular church. This program matched young people, who were in the confirmation process, with older adults who had been active members for many years in a sort of mentor/mentee program. The older folks help the young people work through some beginning faith issues and the younger folks helped the older folks receive a renewed sense of vivaciousness in their faith. They helped one another, they learned from one another and they supported one another and we are called to do the same.

Another intersection that the often fail to see is the intersection of tradition and culture. This intersection is highlighted often by the question, “how do we make our doctrines, beliefs, and traditions relevant for today’s culture?” Some churches have embraced the culture of our time. The have contemporary church services with live music. There praise songs are backed with rock and roll music and sometimes hip hop music. They have cappuccino with Christ on Sunday mornings and their youth groups meet at the skate park. These churches have fully embrace popular culture and they believe by doing these they can fully reach the masses with the gospel.

Some disagree with this kind of ministry. They say that they compromise the gospel too much with popular culture and the true message gets diluted and even sugar-coated. Some say that they teachings of Christ and the life of a Christian replace any and all culture of our time. In other words we are above popular culture. We are better than the culture and the people caught in the midst of it and therefore we should separate ourselves from it. Those who do not see the light are just out of luck. The Church will not stoop to the level of the popular culture and we will not compromise. This sounds on the surface like the faithful way to deal with culture. The problem with this way of thinking is that it often alienates those people who are not part of the church and these are the exactly the people that we want to reach.

Instead we need to reach a compromise between the two. We should use the teachings of Christ to transform the popular culture. We need to understand where people are in their lives and take gospel principles and apply them to modern life while maintaining its potency. We have to understand this intersection not ignore it because, when used effectively, it can bring more people to Christ.

As I said before there are also those intersections that we do not expect. They happen unintentionally and sometimes tragically. There is the intersection between tragedy and hope and sometimes it is also the intersection between life and death. We cannot escape tragedy no matter how hard we try. We cannot escape those moments when that something hits us in the gut like a Louisville Slugger. You know the moments that I am talking about. We talked about them last week with Martha and Mary and those impossible situations. When tragedy hits, when stress and hardship build up to a breaking point we know that there is another side to this intersections…hope. What do we do when we find ourselves in midst of tragedy? We hope. We hope that things will get better. We talk with God because we hope in the truth that God is always with us. We hope in the truth that God is mourning with us when tragedy strikes. We hope in the truth that God always loves us no matter where we find ourselves. We hope in the truth that death does not have the final say and that life in Christ will conquer all.

God provides these intersections to further the Kingdom. They are they to teach us. They are there to move us and they are there to save us. This brings us to the greatest intersection of God and humanity that has ever occurred and that happened on the cross of Calvary. This is the ultimate moment between God and humanity, the greatest intersection of God’s life and human life. God not only intersected with humanity but became human. God came down and became human and did not live a privileged life but God understood suffering, understood forsakenness, understood loneliness and betrayal. He experienced it all on the cross of Calvary, the greatest intersection. Above all his suffering, the foundation of all these intersections of God and humanity, right there on the cross there was love. With every drop of blood that touched the stones of Golgotha there was love. When Jesus bore the sins of a broken world there was love. With every stroke of the hammer driving the nail there was lover. With every groan of pain and agony there was love. When Jesus cried his last there was love. But not just any love. Love so great that the sun refused to shine and darkness covered the earth. Love so great that the earth itself shook and quaked at the sight of such a love. Love so great that they veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom symbolizing the fact that they gulf of sin that separated God and humanity was now bridged by Christ. Love so great that the very foundations of Hell were broken. Love so great that a pagan Roman soldier, maybe even the one that drove the nails into Jesus’ flesh cried out in truth “Truly this man was God’s son!” Love so great that it still reverberates in the world today. Love so great that nothing can destroy it.

This intersection, on the old rugged cross, is the foundation of all other intersections between God and humanity. The foundation of all the intersections we encounter as the church is love, the love that was shone on the cross. It is our duty as the church to recognize these intersections and use them to make disciples for Christ. But whatever we encounter, wherever we go, whatever intersection we find ourselves there should be love. Love for all God’s people.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.