Scripture/Sermon of the Day

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 49 Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

I. Last June a woman named Jessica Vincent bought a glass vase decorated with red and green swirls at a Goodwill store in Virginia for $3.99. Looking it over at home, she noticed a small “M” on the bottom, and wondered if it might be valuable. She joined a Facebook group for glass enthusiasts, and members told her it might be a design by Italian architect Carlo Scarpa. She contacted the Wright Auction House, which confirmed the authenticity and sold the artwork to a European collector last week for $107,100. “What made the vase so valuable was its perfection,” said the auction house president Richard Wright. Even a small chip would have cut its value to under $10,000.

II. We value perfection. I’m ashamed to say that we bought our Boxer at one of those puppy-mills and he was expensive because he was a pure, 100% Boxer. If we had bought a dog of mixed breed, we could have just gone to the pound and paid almost nothing. People give mixed dogs away. But a purebred, perfect dog — no defects, just like the Carlo Scarpa glass — is expensive.

III. I watch the Antiques Roadshow a lot. And you know what the motto of collectors is? “Condition, condition, condition.” The more perfect something is — the more value it has. So I’m grateful God’s not a collector. Because, however chipped or broken or sinful we are — God loves us. In fact — the more cracks we have the better — look at all the different places there are for the God’s love to pass through us into this once-perfect world that we have made REALLY flawed.

This is important for us to understand: God loves us with all our chips and gouges and broken places and sends us on a mission. We can be sure about this when we read the Bible and and look at history and see all the dented and torn and morally disfigured people that God called.

IV. Like Isaiah — regarded as one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament. When he was in the Temple and had a vision of God — remember the first thing he said? He said, “My God — I’m filthy! My lips are unclean — I can’t believe all the trash that comes out of my mouth! And the people I live with are as bad, broken, rotten and ruined as me. How can God let someone so unholy live? I’m going to die!”

V. But instead of throwing him in the trash heap of hell because he was broken and chipped and damaged, God said: “Isaiah — I need a prophet. I have so many things I want to tell my children, all the humans I made — especially how much I love them. I wonder, Isaiah, who will do my work?” Isaiah said, “Here I am — send me!” And God said, “You’re hired, filthy mouth and all!”

VI. Tomorrow is the day our nation celebrates the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was damaged and chipped and broken too. J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI hated him and had files and tapes telephone transcripts that he used to prove to people how bad and morally corrupt King was. There are books that expose King’s imperfections in lurid detail.

But when God needed a prophet for post WWII America, when God needed a powerful voice that would proclaim from the mountaintop: “We are all God’s children, red and yellow and black and white, native and immigrant and refugee — not perfect, but all one family and called by God to love one another.”

V. Jesus assembled some of the most unlikely, unsophisticated and bumbling group as his disciples. Children annoyed them; they didn’t like crowds; they couldn’t work even the simplest of miracles, and they argued with each other about who Jesus loved more. Yet Jesus told them, “You will see heaven opened; angels will help you — and I will love everyone through you.”

Just as God called Isaiah of the unclean lips, and Martin Luther King of the scandalous FBI dossiers, and all the bumbling disciples, God calls us to channel the divine love and forgiveness and grace. I hear God’s words now, saying: