Sermon Archive
Letter to Jesus
Sermon preached by John McLuckie on 12 May 2002
Instead of a sermon today, I thought I might share with you a little correspondence I've had recently. Now don't worry, it's nothing to do with murals or repatriating cultural artefacts. Here's my letter first:
Dear Jesus,
I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but I think I need to point out to you a few gaps in some of the material you've left for us. I fully understand the limits to what one can do in forty days, but I really feel that the Ascension has come at a bit of a bad time. Another forty days might have done it, but we're a bit late for that hence this letter.
I'd rather like a bit of clarification on one or two issues and I must express my distress over some rather significant omissions from your teaching. First. About the church. I can't say that what you've given us really amounts to a constitution and the tax people will do their nut over some of your fiscal policies. The lack of any constitution must, of course, lead me to assume that the structure we have here is just as you intended. The problem is that others seem to have the same idea and we're having one or two tense moments about that. (maybe another letter on this at a later date). Still on the church, we assume that you were doing a bit of that Rabbinic over-statement thing when you talked about us all being servants, so we'll gloss over that and carry on as you must have intended.
My second, related concern is about worship. Same problem here. 'Do this in remembrance of me' is proving a little too imprecise for our liturgy guys, so once again I'll assume that we're doing it right and the others have just got the wrong end of the stick. We'd be most grateful for a fuller text, which you can send in any standard format to our liturgy Tsar, whose email address you'll find on our website, www.onesixsixtwo.org. While we're on liturgy, let me say a word or two about hymns. When the texts you've left for us say that you all went out from the upper room singing hymns, I must presume that you didn't then have access to the latest version of our hymnbook so I take that as a green light to revert at once to the more authentic article.
A few more omissions. A lot of people seem to be spending rather a lot of time having very heated arguments about sex. You've left us a bit in the dark here. I can find next to nothing about this anywhere in the book we've compiled of your sayings. I imagine that some over-cautious censor has filed it away somewhere so we'd appreciate a fresh copy of the relevant prohibitions, condemnations and cautionary tales.
Also, we're scratching our heads just a little over the political thing. I know you had plenty to say on all that, but we can find nothing of any great use to our media consultant. He says the material is just unusable - far too hung up about truth and clarity.
Now for some problems of interpretation. We have just a few things here that have either been taken down wrong or just haven't been finished - probably some scribe on a fly coffee break. First of all, I'm still in a bit of a fog waiting for the punch line on the 'love your enemy' and 'don't retaliate' stuff. A bit more on this would end my suspense (and let me off the hook with a couple of awkward sorts into the bargain.)
Also, I'm sure you didn't mean to leave us without giving us a little more of a steer on the bit about forgiveness. Unless I hear otherwise from you, I'll assume that if I forgive someone, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm wrong in any way and it still lets me keep some of my private suspicions about the person duly forgiven. And when you say you forgive us, I'll assume a 'but' at the end of the sentence. If not, I don't think I could handle the responsibility.
I hope this list, though not exhaustive, gives you some ideas for the supplementary material to be delivered when this promised Advocate of yours comes. I'd appreciate it in good English, like the original, and a decent cover for that added bit of solemnity. I won't be looking for bulk discount, but I'm sure that you'd like to use my services for distribution purposes, so as to avoid any of the other lot who've already been getting things wrong and taking some dreadful liberties with the initial volume. A week from today would suit me fine, as you suggest, and I'll make sure that someone's in to receive delivery of my copies.
Yours etc. John
Well, I did get a reply and this is how it goes.
Dear John, You, my people, have all that you need. So it's over to you and that Advocate who will come, but empty-handed and open-hearted. See you next week.
Worship >> Sermons >> Sermons