SERMONS

Sermon:  “Beyond Belief: Imago Dei”

Upon given scripture passages, I may usually preach a sermon about calling. One day a little boy Samuel was called in the middle of night to serve God for God’s people. Gospel reading tells us another calling story that Jesus called Philip and Nathanael into discipleship and they followed him.  Divine recruitment represented in Jesus’ utterance, “follow me” would be a dominant theme in both stories.

But, I am going to focus on a different theme for this sermon. This preaching point emerges in Nathanael’s response to his friend Philip as he said, “I found Messiah named Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” His response was cynical: “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Another English bible Message reads the same verse like “Nazareth? You’ve got to be kidding!” The people in the bible had been waiting so long for a Messiah that it was hard to believe for some that the Savior had come out of a little town like Nazareth, much less the son of a common carpenter. “Its contemporary parallel might be: “I’ve really seen a future president of the U.S.” “Where?” “in Milaca, MN.”

How can we go beyond our own beliefs and assumptions about where God shows up?  Can we move beyond these to open our eyes to the holy in unexpected places and people? Let’s watch a video clip that I personally find it very interesting and resonant with my own experiences. It may evoke a simple fact showing how we are hardcored  with assumption and prejudice as we’ve seen in the attitude of Nathanael.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP_Ia0Zitdg

Of course, Daniel Yang isn’t Christ. But it tells us about how much we come to be pre-judgmental when we asset people or our encounter with people. Nathanael wasn’t exceptional. His assessment to Jesus wasn’t that different from our assessment to Daniel Yang in the clip. Therefore, going beyond our own belief is so important to meet God in our mundane life. In unexpected time and place and through unlikely people, God comes to us. God did to Samuel. Samuel was most unlikely chosen servant. He was a temple boy out of many. In the middle of night which is unexpected time, God called Samuel.

This is also why people who recognize little Jesus as Christ were not high priests or Pharisees or kings but gentile wise men from East, shepherds being awaken in the night, Semion and Anna living in a temple in a wait of Messiah. All who found Jesus Messiah were open-minded people for Christ.

God showed himself in unexpected time and place through unexpected people and events. Do you have such an experience? God thing can happen always and everywhere. If you are open to it. Then, how can we make ourselves to go beyond our beliefs? First, we ask God to open our hearts to see God in all things. If we don’t pray to God we will live and die in our own prejudice because we are human. God can make us new. God can open the blind. God can help us go beyond our own limitation. God can bring a new hope and a new day to us. God can open a new door for us. We are limited but God is unlimited. God can where we can’t. Amen.