Rev. Dr. Bary R. Fleet - Pastor
March 4, 2007 – 2nd Sunday in Lent
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

Who Lives in You?

I grew up being taught that my body is God’s temple, and I should treat it as such.  That being said, I raise the question as to who lives in our house? 

If we can imagine ourselves as a house – and, since we are imagining, we can imagine ourselves to be any kind of house:  one that never has to be painted, one that is full of closets, one with a stone fireplace, maybe it is a cabin surrounded by forest … or a cottage on a lake, or even a house at the beach - whatever we’d like to be as a house – who lives inside?

Imagine a stranger knocking at the door, who would answer?  Who lives in us?  Would the stranger find us to be full of clutter, or would they find that everything was for appearance sake?

Who lives in us?  That’s the question for the second Sunday in Lent.  Jesus was very clear that it was God who lived in him, and that is why he wasn’t the least bit afraid of Herod.  Even though Herod wanted to kill him, that wasn’t going to stop Jesus from doing exactly what God wanted him to do – cast out demons, perform cures, and proceed into Jerusalem.

So, back to us.  Would the stranger find a citizen of heaven answering the door, or a citizen of the prevailing culture?  When we think about the people that we dealt with this week – whether they were the people we live with, or the folks we do business with, or the strangers who share the highway – who did they meet?  Did they find someone who cares about them as much as we care about ourselves?  Or did they find someone who was pretty self-absorbed … or downright rude?

There is a story of a burly, old lineman from a professional football team who thought that he knew all the tricks so he could stay out late and party on road trips despite the team's curfew. Over the years he'd gotten it all down to a science. He'd pile certain things up under the blankets of the bed to make it appear that he was asleep when the coach checked curfew. And it worked fairly well until one evening when he was in a hurry and couldn't find the right items to put under the covers, so he just decided to slip a floor lamp under the blankets instead. Imagine what happened when a suspicious coach peeked in at 1 a.m. and snapped on the poor guy's light.

Sometimes we claim to be citizens of heaven and yet live as strangers to God because we think no one will notice the difference. After all, we are not as bad as others around us, are we? And we do bring an offering to church, even though it may be less than we spend weekly on entertainment. And we do plan on reading our Bibles and saying our prayers, sometime, don't we? How often we live as strangers to God and try to claim we are citizens of heaven and hope no one notices the difference.

But the Season of Lent reminds us that God knows. That we may be able to fool ourselves (and even those around us) but we can never fool God, for God reads the human heart. God knows who lives in our house. 

The reality is that we cannot have dual citizenship.  We cannot live simultaneously as citizens of this world and as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  Jesus was very clear:  “No one can serve two masters!”

As we are invited to the Lord’s Table today, I would encourage each of us to use this as a time of self-reflection.  Use this as a time of being honest with ourselves.  Let us use this as an opportunity to think about the way we deal with those around us, the way we live in the world. 

Let us use the rest of this Lenten season to make whatever changes we need to make in order to live lives that are more reflective of God’s love in the world … in Jesus’ name!

NOTE:  Much of today’s sermon is credited to www.esermons.com, retrieved March 3rd, 2007.

Next Sermon -- 3/25/2005 -- THE SCENT OF A WOMAN