Year B, Ephesians 2.1-10, John 3.14-21, Wherefore we flee for refuge to Thine infinite mercy. . . (2024)

Most holy andmerciful God,
we confess to you and to one another,
and before the whole company of heaven,
that we have sinnedby our fault,
by our own fault,
by our own most grievous fault,
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.

ALMIGHTY God, ourMaker and Redeemer, we poor sinners confess unto Thee, that we are by naturesinful and unclean, and that we have sinned against Thee, by thought, word, anddeed.

Wherefore we fleefor refuge to Thine infinite mercy, seeking and imploring Thy grace, for thesake of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“For God so lovedthe world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him maynot perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God didnot send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that theworld might be saved through him.

For by grace youhave been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the giftof God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what hehas made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God preparedbeforehand to be our way of life.

Words which havebeen at the heart of our confessions.

And words of loveand forgiveness.

This is thespiritual journey on which we have embarked.

And apart fromthis, there is no true spirituality, no genuine human experience, and no knowledgeof the depth of God’s grace.

We often livewith an illusion.

That illusion isof our own righteousness.

We defendourselves as good, often afraid to admit otherwise, ashamed, perhaps, of theperson we truly are.

As I was growingup, one of the most troubling phrases of all, spoken during our confession ofsin, contained the words: “our secretthoughts and desires which I do not fully understand, but which are fully knownunto thee.”

If you had knownme at that time, you would have seen a young boy whose behavior was generallycommendable, at least my outward actions.

But these wordstroubled me for I knew that what was going on within me, did not match whatappeared to others.

We are our ownworst judges.

We judge ourinsides by other’s outsides.

And we recoil atwhat we see.

One response toour own self judgment is to deny what we see, and to seek to craft an image ofourselves that is more presentable to the world.

Underlying thisquest to create a public image of ourselves is a question. “Would you love me, if you truly knew me?”

And the fear isthat you wouldn’t.

Secret thoughtsand desires. . .

What if peopleknew?

We shudder at thethought.

God knows, and thatis what is frightening.

God knows.

Paul writes in 1Corinthians:

A friend of minein college once related an image of the final judgment. It began with an understanding that we livemuch of our lives as though in a deep fog, hidden from one another. And then on the judgment day, the fog lifts,and everything is exposed in the bright light.

We stand nakedbefore God. That is the scary thing.

We cannot hidebehind a fig leaf.

We cannot hide atall.

Our humanresponse to this transparency is twofold, shame and guilt. We are ashamed of who we are, and feel guiltyfor what we’ve done.

There are momentsin life when we are exposed for who we truly are. These moments when others are given a glimpseof who we really are can be frightening, but not nearly as much as when we lookinto the mirror and see ourselves.

Sometimes, wesimply don’t like what we see.

We’d like to runfrom the mirror.

I had thatexperience when I hit rock bottom as an alcoholic. When I woke up in the morning after my lastnight of drinking, the first thing I did was to reach for my glasses.

They were amangled mess, evidence of the fall I had taken the night before.

I rushed to themirror in the bathroom, and discovered my face was not much better, with scabson my eye and ear from where I had injured myself.

And then I beganto remember what had transpired.

I wanted to flee.

I consented togoing to the hospital that day, and entering the treatment program there, inpart because I simply wanted to flee and hide.I literally did not want to show my face in Sandpoint, and beinghospitalized in Coeur d’Alene was one way to avoid that.

I was runningfrom the image in the mirror.

But even thoughwe’d like to run, there is another option:

Wherefore we flee for refuge to Thineinfinite mercy, seeking and imploring Thy grace, for the sake of our Lord JesusChrist.

The grace andmercy of God.

Divine intimacy.

To be fullyknown, and fully loved.

To be entirelyexposed, and entirely forgiven.

Most of usunderstand physical intimacy more than we do spiritual intimacy.

A gentle touch, ahug, or a kiss. And for many of us, theclose intimacy of a spouse, who knows our own body better than we do ourselves.

Physical intimacywe understand.

God knows notonly what we have done, and left undone, but the secrets thoughts and desiresof our hearts.

And he loves andforgives us.

That is intimacy.

We need not hide,because there is nothing left to hide.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into theworld to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved throughhim.”

Two of the mostgrace filled experiences I have had, and there have been many, are going toA.A. and engaging in years of therapy with a psychologist.

In A.A. the firstthing we learn is that we are not alone.As ashamed as we maybe, we quickly discover that others have had thesame experiences, and that in spite of those experiences, there is hope.

And as I turnedover every stone in my life, or at least the greater share of them, seeking outthe skeletons in my closet with the counselors I have seen, one of thediscoveries of that process is to realize that these things that had causedsuch deep shame and guilt were simply a common part of the human experience.

There is grace inthe word “we”.

We are not alonein our sinfulness, nor in the forgiveness God offers to us.

There is no sinyou have ever committed, that is not common to many others.

And theforgiveness God offers to you, freely, as a gift, is the same forgiveness heoffers to all.

Intimacy.

To be fully knownby God, yet even more fully loved.

Can we graspthat?

This intimacy isalmost too much for us to understand and embrace.

The unwrittenrule of polite society is that discretion ought to be practiced. Those “secret thoughts and desires that I donot fully understand” are best kept to myself.

That is one ofthe reasons we will never experience the type of intimacy God envisions for uswith each other. We simply don’t want toknow each other that well. It’s too muchwork.

And perhaps wefear that the other does not have the capacity for grace and mercy that Goddoes.

If my wife knewmy secret thoughts and desires would she still love me? Is she that gracious and merciful?

What about mychildren?

Or you?

I don’t know theanswer to those questions.

But what Godassures us is that he will still love us.

In fact, it isprecisely because he knew us fully, that he sent his Son to save us.

Intimacy. To be fully known, and more fully loved.

That isgrace. And it is a gift of God for you.

Amen