10-9-2017

Good Morning All,

          Isaiah 53:3;” He was despised and rejected by people.  He was a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering.  He was despised like one from whom people turn their faces, and we didn’t consider him to be worth anything.”

    I was listening to some news program yesterday and I heard that phrase again; you remember the phrase from the height of the 2008 economic meltdown- vulnerable.  I never remember that word being used in any business or economics class I took in college but I hear all the time now; this bank or that bank is vulnerable.  I think it is a polite way to say the bank is about to go “toes up”.

     Vulnerable is a very inclusive word.  If the star player of a team has to miss a game; it is said to be vulnerable.  If a boxer has broken ribs during a boxing match; that side is vulnerable.  If an army doesn’t have enough troops in one part of a battlefield; it is vulnerable.  People are vulnerable.

    We usually say someone is vulnerable if there is a chance that their feelings might get hurt or they might experience some emotional pain.  It is as if being exposed makes you somehow weak.  That is usually how we view vulnerable; you are weak.  Actually, we as Christians, should view being vulnerable in a different light.  For us, being vulnerable means that we have the love of Christ in our heart.

    As we look at our verse, Jesus was definitely vulnerable; he was capable of being hurt.  He came to the world to offer redemption and forgiveness.  He just laid it out there for us and how did the world respond- with rejection, with anger, with violence, with complete hatred.  Yet Jesus, in his love, endured it for us out of love.  This is what true love is about; it is loving those who are viewed as unlovable.  It might be the man who sexually assaulted his children, or the mother who drowned her children, or the alcoholic who finally killed someone in a drunken car crash.  How do we love them?  Showing any form of compassion for them would make us vulnerable; vulnerable to the righteous indignation of those who see the law and the law only.

    In God’s grace, these are offered forgiveness.  In God’s grace, we are offered forgiveness.  “Well, I’m not like them!”  Yeah we are; we rejected Jesus because we didn’t consider him worthy.  We didn’t love as he first loved us.  It is tough.  How do you love “monsters”?  You hate the sin, just as God does, but you love and forgive the sinner, just as God does.  Does this make us vulnerable?  Of course it does, but we are God’s redeemed children we have received far more mercy than we have ever deserved and we have a chance to show some mercy to those around us.  Maybe not a murder but how about the kid that everyone makes fun of, how about the old couple who seem to have little to live on, how about the newly divorced mother or father, how about the guy who lives in the nursing home far from his family?  There are many ways to show God’s love, all make us vulnerable but all show love.

Dear Jesus, you are vulnerable, make us vulnerable as well.  Move us to love the unloved and to bring hope to the lost.  In your precious name we pray.  Amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret