FOR THE LESS THAN IDEAL PERSON

Rev. James Singleton

2/27/11
PSALM 15

I love the psalms. They are a means of inspiration and comfort. But I must confess I don’t like Psalm 15. It neither inspires me nor comforts me. Rather, it frustrates me and leaves me feeling worthless and hopeless. In fact, I would like to tear it out of my Bible!

Psalm 15 asks some serious questions: Who is worthy to enter the sanctuary and be in God’s presence? Who is worthy to be here in the worshipping congregation? Are you worthy to be here? Am I worthy to be standing here? What kind of person deserves to be saved? Those are certainly crucial questions to answer.

It’s not the questions that I have trouble with, but the answer to the questions the psalm goes on to give: Who is worthy to come before God? Who will end up being saved? Those who are blameless, those who live morally right, those who love equally, those who are good and holy and pure and all that they should be.

Those who are worthy are the ones who are just in all their ways; who speak truth from their heart; who abhor wrong; say no lies; speak no evil; and do nothing that would hurt another.

In other words, it is the ideal person; the one who is spotless, without blemish, and without reason for guilt who is the one worthy to be in God’s presence and to be saved. Are anyone’s palms sweating besides mine? Who here measures up to this psalm’s criteria?

As the Bible translation called The Message puts it: “God, who gets invited to dinner at your place? How do we get on your guest list? “Walk straight, act right, tell the truth. Don’t hurt your friend, don’t blame your neighbor; despise the despicable. Keep your word even when it costs you, make an honest living, never take a bribe.”

It’s not that I don’t agree that is the sort of person that God wants. It’s not that I don’t strive to be that kind of person. But…you know. This Psalm would make the basis for a great ought and should sermon. I could preach about how we ought to be better than we are and should be living more moral lives than we are living.

But I believe that most of us have tried to do what is right most of the time, and we are frustrated that we fall far short of the ideal person we seek to be. We want to be better than we are but we just never seem to make the grade. We know that we are to blame for a whole lot of our problems. We know that we have hurt others, our family, our friends, and our neighbors. We do the things we don’t want to do and we don’t do the things we want to do.

Who does not have a little voice of conscience sounding off in the back of your mind accusing you of your unworthiness to be here, chastising you for being less than the ideal person you know you should be?

We all know in our hearts that there is a good way to live and a bad way to live. And we all strive to be good, moral, righteous, and pure. But there’s something about us that keeps tainting our purity, corrupting our good intentions, polluting our moral integrity, and making it impossible for us to think of ourselves as blameless because we feel too guilty.

Writer Don Reeves wrote: “Lord, yesterday I stood for a moment and watched a man wallow in his own humanity. It was frightening. He wants so much to be unselfish, yet he secretly harbors unbelievable loads of envy and greed. He wants so much to love others, but he spends hours thinking only of his own needs. He wants so much to give himself away, but even while he gives he’s subtly trying to receive.

“He wants so much to look outwardly secure and be secure, yet inside he trembles with uncertainties. He wants so much to succeed, but he lives in constant fear of failure. After watching him, Lord, I turned away from the mirror and thought, ‘God—if you won’t change what I’m like, at least keep me honest about who I am!’”

Let’s at least be honest about who we are. We are not the person Psalm 15 is speaking about, at least not all the time. Compared to Psalm 15, we are a poor excuse for a child of God and we can just forget about being worthy to be in God’s presence, either here or in heaven.

If all we had was Psalm 15, I would end this worship service right now and tell all of you that we don’t belong here so go home. And I would be the first one out the door! But I’m staying and you should stay and I’ll tell you why. Psalm 15 is not all that we have.

I don’t think Jesus was a big fan of this Psalm either. I say that because of what he taught in his Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God…Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”

Those who are blessed, according to Jesus, are not those who are perfect, not those who are blameless, righteous, good, or virtuous. But rather, those who have fallen short and know they have fallen short, and know they need help if they are to be saved.

The Apostle Paul proclaimed that it is the foolishness of the cross that saves us. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:30-31: “By (Christ) we are put right with God; we become God’s holy people and are set free. So then, as the scripture says, ‘Whoever wants to boast must boast of what the Lord has done and not in ourselves.”

A couple of weeks ago I had a surprise guest show up at my house. I was eating breakfast when I heard a funny noise coming from the front room. I went in to see what it was and found myself starring face to face with a squirrel that had fallen down the chimney and was trying to get out through the glass windows of the fireplace. When he saw me, he immediately disappeared and I assumed he had gone back up the chimney and out of the house. I was wrong.

Jan and I left to run some errands and when we returned the glass doors of the fireplace where pushed open and the wooden window frames in the family room were chewed to pieces in the squirrel’s frantic and desperate attempt to get out of the house.

I searched the house over and couldn’t find him so I assumed that he went back to hide in the chimney. What to do? One person advised that I put out antifreeze for him to drink and poison him. Given the damage he caused, I was tempted. But instead I purchased a squirrel trap made by a company called “Havahart.” I baited the trap and set it in the fireplace and closed off the fireplace so he couldn’t escape.

As I waited I got to thinking: if only this squirrel understood his situation. He’s trapped and on his own he cannot escape. Given the damage that he has caused, he deserves to die. But I don’t want him to die. If he thinks he can climb out of the mess he is in, he will fail and eventually starve to death. His only hope is to trust that I have a heart, go into the trap I have set and get caught. Only then will he be taken out of the house and set free in the park. That is what happened.

We are less than ideal people and we cause damage to others, to ourselves and thereby to God to the point that it’s a wonder God doesn’t do away with us. We find ourselves trapped in our own predicaments, imprisoned in our own addictions, enslaved to our own ignorant and misguided ways. And at times we frantically try to fix ourselves and free ourselves and make everything all better all by ourselves—only it doesn’t work.

Our only hope is to trust that God has a heart and allow him to trap us within his grace. It is grace that sets us free when we find ourselves in a place we should not be. 

We think that God helps those who help themselves. But in truth, God helps those who cannot help themselves. We try and try, but we also fail and fail. So God, in Christ comes and says, “Trust in me. I have a heart. My grace is sufficient for you.”

Rev. James Nelson died not long ago. You probably never heard of him, but he threw The Church of Scotland into a deep controversy. James Nelson had come before the church seeking ordination. The problem was that he was a 39-year-old ex-convict who was just paroled from a life sentence for killing his mother nine years previously.

While in prison he had a profound Christian experience and submitted himself as a candidate for the ministry. The entire Church of Scotland had become divided on the issue of Nelson's candidacy. Some felt that the moral purity of the ministry would be irretrievably compromised by admitting a man who had murdered his mother. Others said it was the greatest evidence they had seen in years of the redeeming power of God.

James Nelson said, "I could not at first believe that God could be so gracious to someone like me, but I know now that he has indeed been gracious enough to love and forgive a repentant sinner, gracious enough to call that sinner to tell others the good news."

Eventually, Nelson was ordained where he served as a prison chaplain proclaiming the gospel to prisoners. His message was that, even though they were less than ideal, even though they were blameworthy sinners, there was one who could set them free by His grace. 

Christianity proclaims that regardless of how much we are to blame, how poor in spirit we have proven to be, how we have failed to live up to Psalm 15’s ideal person, if we hunger and thirst for Jesus Christ, his grace will set us free. The greatest Christian is not the one who has achieved the most but rather the one who has received the most.

This is a word for all the morally frustrated and exhausted. On our own, we will never be worthy to stand before God on the hill of Salvation.

But there is one who is the ideal person and the good news is that he is willing to share his worthiness with all who believe in Him.

I think I will keep Psalm 15 in my Bible after all. Not because it inspires me to be blameless, but it reminds me why I need to maintain my faith in the only one who is blameless and why I call Jesus Christ my Savior.

AMEN.