January 11, 2016: Day 8 – Matthew 8

Last evening for the first time in my life I was a participant in an ordination service.  Simeon Harrar was ordained into the position of Director of Youth at First Presbyterian of Lancaster and he asked me to do the sermon.  What a humbling experience.  The centurion in Matthew 8 who tells Jesus that he is not worthy to have Jesus to come into his house marks the approach and the attitude that we ought to have when we find ourselves in the presence of the Lord.  We are not worthy.  When our new officers were trained on Saturday they were told that if you find yourself overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy that is exactly where Jesus wants you to be.  We are inadequate, we are not worthy, we cannot contribute a single cubit to our span of life nor contribute a single bit to our salvation.  

When we went to Israel we were able to spend a significant amount of time in Capernaum and we visited what is thought to be Peter’s house.  There really is nothing so powerful as actually going to a site that you  know that Jesus walked and where he performed miracles.  We went to a location where we were told that it could have been someplace like this where Jesus sent the herd of swine into the sea.  If you notice the people were not appreciative to have a few demoniacs off  their hands because they were so focused on the profit loss of the pigs who went racing into the sea.  Isn’t that also the case with us sometimes.  We are so focused on that which we consider important in our lives that when Jesus performs a miracle we just might miss it because of our misguided tunnel vision.

We learn from Jesus today that he is able to calm the storm in our lives but only when we find ourselves throwing ourselves at the Lord crying out: Save us!  When we are humble enough to accept that we cannot contribute to his saving grace, then he is able to work with us.