Remembering the Song That Changes Everything

I was really trying.  But I just could not get the tune right.   I could sense it right there, but I  couldn’t pull it out.   I was trying to sing to my son that great song, The Lion Sleeps Tonight.   Do you know that song?    But I couldn’t even get the a-wimowehs.    And if you can’t get the awimowehs, well, you can’t really do it justice. 

Have you ever had that frustration?   You’re trying to remember a tune, but you just can’t get it.  But beyond songs, it’s frustrating when you face memory lapses about anything.   Have you ever not be able to remember the name of someone, maybe someone who is standing right before you?  How uncomfortable was that?    Yet even so, those memory lapses, might embarrass us, but we can recover. 

But there is one thing you can forget.  It can feel almost like a song really.    And this thing, when you forget it, when you lose touch with it, it’s more than frustrating or embarrassing.  It’s devastating.   And yet this thing, this song is terribly easy to forget.  You and I can lose the tune so easily.   But when we do, we lose ourselves.

What is this tune that you so easily forget?  And how can you remember?  In these words, God shows the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Romans 8:1-13

In these words, and frankly, in all the words of this letter, Paul is trying to give us a tune of sorts, the tune by which we need to live our lives.   And each week, in this hour or so that we gather, we come so God can remind us of that tune again and again.  But here’s the problem, even with all of that, you can all too easily lose this tune, and when you do, you lose yourself.  But here, God not only reminds you of the tune, so to speak, he reminds you of the way to hold it close.   But before you understand how to hold it close, you need to remember what it actually is. 

And right in this first sentence, God gives the tune.   There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.   It’s hard to grasp in English, what Paul writes in Greek.  But this word, condemnation means liability, like you’d have in a legal proceeding.   Paul is saying.  In Jesus, we are not liable to God for anything, not now, not ever.   And that’s great news, because, let me tell, before Jesus, we were liable.  We were sooo liable. 

As a church we’re currently dealing with a law suit that goes back to work done by a contractor years ago.    Basically, a worker got injured, and we got included because the contractor worked for us.   But the lawyer who brought the suit has to show we did something wrong, something that caused the injury; something that makes us liable.   And as that isn’t the case, it’s simply a nuisance for us, something for our insurers to handle.

But with us as human-beings, that’s not true.   We’ve done things, said things, thought things that brought injury and pain, if to no-one else, it brought injury and pain to us.  Do you remember how last week, I asked.  What if we had some technology that allowed us to show on that screen every thought, good, bad or ugly you had from just the last week?   Would anyone here feel comfortable trying that technology out?    

Each of us has stuff inside us that just isn’t right, things that we don’t like to even see, much less show anyone else.    As Romans 7 puts it, sin, evil dwells within us.   And we’re liable for that, for what it does in us, to others, to our world.   Yet here’s the beautiful paradox, in Jesus, all that ugliness, and the liability that goes with it disappears.  It died on that cross, and it will never come back again ever.   That’s the heart of the song. 

When you get that, it gives you an amazing freedom.  First, it frees you from judging anyone else.   Why?  You know.  You have no room to judge.    If you look at anyone, a prostitute, a criminal, even a terrorist, you are seeing someone who is really no different than you.   You have the same seeds inside you, only yours didn’t get watered and grow.  More importantly it frees you from judging yourself  

This week I heard a story from the preacher, TimKeller that I haven’t been able to shake.  Many years ago, a couple in Virginia, not too far from the church he pastored, suffered a tremendous tragedy.  In a bizarre automobile accident, their three children all drowned to death.   Yet, in the face of this devastating loss, the couple found a way through.  Folks talked about how moving they found their strength and faith.  The couple rebuilt their life.  They had other kids. The husband became a respected leader in a local church.  

Yet a number of years later, the husband came to his pastor, deeply troubled.   He had developed a powerful sexual attraction to another member of the congregation, and it was tearing him apart.  Now the pastor dealt graciously with him, got him counseling, spiritual support, lots of resources to help him cope with his both his desires and his guilt.  Yet, in spite of all that, in the end, do you know what happened?   The man killed himself.    Here was a man who handled one of the most awful losses any human-being can face, yet he could not handle facing the ugliness he saw inside himself.     

But if you listen to that song, if you let God play it in your heart, it will give you that freedom, that freedom that allows you to see yourself as you really are and not lose hope. The life and peace that freedom gives will help you face anything, even the worst parts of yourself.   And in that freedom, you will grow in love and compassion towards yourself and others like never before. 

But here’s the problem.   It can be terribly easy to lose touch with the song, with the freedom it brings just as that church leader in Virginia did.   So how do you not lose touch?  In the last sentence we read, Paul summarizes the answer.    “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if, by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  

Now when Paul talks about the flesh and the body, he is not talking literally.   He is saying. If you try to gain validation for your life simply through your own efforts, your flesh so to speak, it will kill you.   But if you let the Spirit kill that self-focused drive for approval and validation, then you will live.   And each of us has a certain way in which we try to prove ourselves worthy, to use Biblical language, to justify ourselves.   Whatever that way is, it blocks the song of grace and acceptance that we desperately need to hear.  

The movie Chariots of Fire tells the story of two extraordinary sprinters, Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams.  But each of these runners ran for radically different reasons.  Abrahams ran out of a desperate need to justify himself, to prove himself worthy.   When it came to the 100 yard dash, he said.  “I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor; 4 feet wide, with 10 lonely seconds to justify my whole existence.”   Ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence….wow.    But that need to prove himself, did not give Abrahams any peace or joy.   As he put it …. I'm forever in pursuit and I don't even know what I am chasing.

Now what did Liddell run for?   As he put it to his sister, he said, I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.   Because of his belief in the gospel, he felt no need to prove anything by his running.  He ran simply for the joy of it, and for the joy of the God who had given him the gift.   It’s why when he ran, he would tilt his head up to the sky with his mouth open wide, like acrazy man.  Why?  Because he wasn’t just running.  He was worshipping. 

Do you see the difference?    One man runs to praise his own savior, and the other guy runs to become his own savior.   One man is running for the sheer joy of it.  If he wins, it’s icing on the cake.  Why?  He knows he is already justified, already worthy.  But the other man is running in grinding anxiety and fear.  Why?  He is running to find worth, to justify himself, but even when he wins, the worth doesn’t even come. (Tim Keller)   He remains forever in pursuit, yet not even knowing what he is chasing.

To set your mind on the flesh doesn’t simply mean thinking some bad thoughts.  It means letting your mind get seized by anything else but God as that which makes you worthy, that which justifies you.   How do you know what that is?   Ask yourself. What do I let rent space in my head?   Whatever that is, is what is blocking the gospel for you.

I have a resentful thought that seizes me more powerfully than any other. And it says everything about what I am tempted to look to for worth.  It goes like this.   I do and I do for you, and this is the thanks I get?  Have you ever had that thought?

But that thought betrays where I am looking for worth?   I am telling myself if I do enough good things for people, then they will appreciate me, and their appreciation will give me the worth I need.   But here’s the twist.   They never ever appreciate me like I desire.  In fact, they can’t. Their applause no matter how loud it gets can never give me what I need.  So when that applause doesn’t happen.  I get angry.  I get resentful.   I get judgmental.  But the problem is not with them.  It’s with me.  My anger and judgment blocks the gospel, the only thing that will give me the sense of worth I seek, the sense of worth that every human being seeks. And if I let it, that anger and judgment will kill me.

But how do you break that block?   You let the story of what God in Jesus has done for you capture you, your mind, your heart, your everything.    And the more you let the Spirit of God open yourself to the beauty of that story, the more you will find the freedom you need.  The more you will know how ultimately God values you, how infinitely God loves you.  And that love will become far more real than any of those things to which you have looked for worth in the past.  And that story, you don’t find only in scripture.  No, the Spirit has sent echoes of that tune throughout time, in countless stories and songs.   And the more you hear those echoes, the more you will see the beauty, the utter reality of what God has done for you.      

At the end of A Tale of TwoCities, Sydney Carton resembles Charles Darnay.  And Charles Darnay is in the Bastille, awaiting the Guillotine.  Sydney Carton breaks into that jail, knocks Charles Darnay out, and has his companions take Darnay out.   And Sydney Carton takes his place, wears his clothes, and waits to die in his place.   The next day, as Sydney goes to the guillotine, he meets a young woman, who is also sentenced to death.  She comes up thinking he is Charles Darnay, but then realizes he’s not.  Her eyes get really big, and she asks.  Are you dying for him?    And he says, “Yes, for he and his wife”   And she says, “Stranger, I am afraid to die, but if I can hold the hand of someone as brave and true as you, I think I can face it.”

Do you not see that you are Charles Darnay, that in Jesus, God became Sydney Carton for you. He has broken into the prison, and died for you.   And there is no longer any condemnation for you, not now, not ever.  As you see the beauty of that gift, as that song of love fills your heart, it puts to death all the sad, self-centered ways you seek worth.   Here is love vast as the ocean, loving kindness as the flood, when the prince of life, our ransom shed for us his precious blood.   Who his love will not remember, who can cease to sing his praise. He will never be forgotten throughout heaven’s eternal days.    

As you let that song wash over you, the song of God’s ultimate sacrifice of love for you.   It will free you.  It will give you life and peace and joy.   And then as one poem puts it, this will be your story. 

I wandered long, methought, alone 
to the deep shadow where the dead dwell; 
but ever a voice that I knew well, 
like bells, like viols, like harps, like birds, 
like music moving without words, 
called me, called me through the night, 
enchanted drew me back to light!

Let that song draw you to the light, to the light that no darkness can ever overcome.