Living Words

A Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

St. Luke 7:11-17

by William Klock

Think of the worst day of your life.  Maybe it was a day a long time ago, maybe it was relatively recent, or maybe it’s a day you haven’t experienced yet, but that you know is coming and that you dread.  Now remember that Jesus has promised never to leave us or forsake us.  The one who came to preach good news to the poor, give sight to the blind, to fill the hungry, and to give joy to the sorrowful is there with us in the worst events we can imagine: in the loss of a job, in economic collapse, in the destruction of a reputation, in the death of a love one.  Even in war, famine, and disease, Jesus is with his people to remind us that even on the worst day of your life, God is sovereign and we can still trust in his promises.  Consider that Jesus is there with you in your suffering on the worst day of your life and he, his lordship, and his kingdom are made manifest by the trusting witness of faith that you and I give in the midst of our tribulation.

We see this in today’s Gospel, Luke 7:11-17.  Luke shows us Jesus bringing good news to the poor.  And he shows us as the Messiah has full authority over even death itself.  And Luke deliberately tells the story so that it parallels another story in the Old Testament.  A familiar story to the Jews and, hopefully, familiar to us as well.   It’s the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath found in 1 Kings 17—more of that in bit.

The story takes place in a small Galilean village, this one called Nain.  It’s a bout 10 kilometres south of Nazareth.  It was a small agricultural community of at most a couple of hundred people.  Being close to his hometown, it’s entirely possible that Jesus knew the people involved.  Look at verses 11 and 12.

Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.  As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.

 

People are starting to pay attention to Jesus.  His disciples are following him, but Luke says that a “great crowd” was following him too.  They’ll be important at the end of the story.

As Jesus and this crowd approach the city gate they run into a funeral procession.  The widow is at the centre of the story and the picture Luke gives us is one of total destitution.  Jesus meets her on the worst day of her life.  She was already a widow.  She knew what it felt like to be touched by death.  That’s sad enough and most of us know what that feels like to lose someone close to us as she had.  But remember that in the First Century there were no RRSPs, no pension plans, no Old Age Security.  The local synagogue wasn’t like the Church in the sense that the people she worshiped with would gather around to give her support.  That’s a uniquely Christian reality.  She had nothing of her own and was totally dependent on her one son for a livelihood.  And now her son has died.  She was like Ruth: dependent on gleaning the leftover wheat from the fields and leftover fruit from the orchard after the harvesters had done their work.  She has nothing.  She has no support, she has no connection with the local community, and she has no social standing.  She’s become an outsider, maybe not religiously, but in most other ways.

In that warm climate the burial took place quickly before decomposition could set in.  Pall bearers carried his washed, wrapped, and anointed body to the burial place.  It was “open casket” with the body on a bier.  His mother, his only living family member, walked in front of the bier.  In the city, there would have been professional mourners paid to process with the bier, weeping and wailing out loudly so that the poor mother could weep freely without embarrassment.  In a small place like Nain, the townspeople—maybe some distant relatives—filled this role.  They were much less “clinical” when it came to death.

The procession was on its way to the family plot—probably a small cave.  Inside there was a shelf on which to put the body.  Her husband’s body would have been there previously, but someone would have gone there to reverently collect his bones and put them in an ossuary or bonebox, making room for the son to be placed on the shelf.  And as the procession made its way it would have attracted the people of the village, who joined in as it passed by.  It was a sad scene, but it was also a scene of utter destitution for this woman who was faced with the very real consequences of death in her life—not her own, but the death of her husband and her son and her means of support and connection with the community.  This is the scene that Jesus finds as he and the crowd approach the village gate.  And this is exactly what the woman needs.  She’s been left destitute by death, but Jesus is the conqueror of death and the grave.  Look at verses 13-15:

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”  Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still.  And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”  And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

 

In the midst of the deepest sorrow and desperation we can imagine, Jesus had compassion.  The story isn’t about the dead son.  It’s not even so much about the widow.  It’s a story that reveals Jesus’ mission and ministry.  He has come to manifest the compassionate love of his Father: to proclaim good news to the poor, to free the captives, to give sight to the blind, and to set at liberty the oppressed.  These miracles in which we see Jesus doing just these things in literal and physical ways point to his much larger and more important ministry to all of humanity.  He has come to release us from sin and death and from their eternal consequences.  The fact that he could forgive and heal and that he could raise the dead are the evidence he gave while he was physically with us on earth and that evidence now gives us assurance that he has indeed forgiven our sins and gives us hope as we await our final resurrection and our restored access to the tree of life.  These stories remind us that he is with us, even still, in all of our trials and tribulations.

Jesus does three things here and, again, in telling us about them, Luke deliberately parallels the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.  That story, again, is told in 1 Kings 17.  Elijah had fled from the wrath of King Ahab and as he fled, God sent him to the village of Zarephath, where he would find a widow who would hide him and take care of him.  Of course, the widow knew nothing of this.  As it turns out she was destitute.  When Elijah found her, she was gathering sticks for a fire so that she could use the handful of flour and oil she had left to bake a final meal.  She expected that she and her son would eat it and die.  Like this widow of Nain, she was destitute.  Now here was Elijah, asking her to bake that last loaf of bread so that he could eat it.  But he promised that if she did, the flour and oil would remain as long as the famine lasted.  And so Elijah stayed with the widow, hiding from Ahab.

Some time after that, the widow’s son died.  Elijah carried him to his room, put him on the bed and cried out, pleading with the Lord.  Three times he stretched himself out on the boy, each time crying out to God in desperation to restore his life.  Finally, the Lord heard and the boy came back to life.  Elijah then took him down to his mother, giving him to her, and saying, “See, your son lives.”  The woman responded to the miracle saying, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth” (1 Kings 17:8-24).  The miracle was the evidence that Elijah was the Lord’s representative—his prophet—and that he spoke for the Lord and with his authority.  Remember that as we watch Jesus.

Jesus said that he’d come to comfort those who mourn—to restore their joy and to make them laugh again—that’s the word of the Lord in his mouth.  The first thing he does as he approaches is to tell the woman not to weep.  This was an enormous breach of etiquette.  You didn’t stop funeral processions.  If anyone else had done this it would have been seen as a sign of great disrespect.  But Jesus is different.  He tells her not to weep.  That might sound pretty hollow coming from anyone else.  Imagine someone trying to comfort you on your worst day ever by telling you not to cry.  But it’s different coming from Jesus.  He’s the one who has conquered the very things that make us cry and he’s the one who has and will make them right again.  He speaks for the sovereign Lord of Creation.  Think of John’s vision of the saints before the throne of God, praising him day and night.  He asked one of the elders who they were and was told that they were the saints who had passed through tribulation, through the troubles, the pain, and the sorrow of persecution and martyrdom trusting in Jesus.  And now they sing to him:

For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,

         and he will guide them to springs of living water,

and God will wipe away every tear form their eyes. (Revelation 7:17)

Jesus asks this widow to stop her weeping because he is the one who makes right what is wrong and restores the joy of his people.

Next Jesus moves from the widow to the bier carrying her dead son.  Luke says he reach out and touched it.  The pall bearers probably thought he was a crazy crank.  They weren’t going to let him stop the procession, but Jesus steps up and grabs hold of the bier and stop them anyway.  Now, not only was this another major breach of etiquette, according to the law it rendered Jesus unclean: unclean for a day for touching the bier and unclean for a week if he were to touch the boy’s body.  But things don’t work that way with Jesus.  A few weeks ago we read the story of Jesus and the ten lepers.  He didn’t touch them, but two chapters back in Luke there’s another story about a leper.  The leper came to Jesus looking for healing, but no doubt kept his distance.  It was bad enough that he had come to town.  It would have been inexcusable to actually touch anyone, let alone Jesus.  That would have left Jesus unclean and possibly infected with his disease.  And then Jesus did what no one expected: he actually reached out to the leper himself.  Jesus wasn’t worried about uncleanness or about disease.  There was no impurity and no sickness that could touch him.  In fact, just the opposite, instead of the impurity infecting Jesus, his purity, his cleanness, his health “infected” the impure and diseased leper, driving the impurity from his body.  And the same thing happens here.  Jesus is lord over death.  And so as he touches the bier—and quite possibly the boy himself, although Luke doesn’t say—instead of the impurity of death infecting Jesus, the life of Jesus “infects”—is transferred to—the boy.  Jesus speaks, “Young man, arise!”  And the boy sat up.

Like Elijah, he raised the widow’s son from death.  As Luke tells the story, everyone familiar with the Old Testament would make this connection.  Like Elijah, Jesus is the Lord’s prophet.  He speaks for God; he bears his authority on earth.  And yet Luke reveals a difference.  Elijah pleaded with the Lord in prayer.  He went through an elaborate ritual of stretching himself out on the boy’s body as he prayed over and over for the Lord to restore the boy to life.  But Jesus restores this boy to life with a touch and a word.  There’s nothing here of Elijah’s desperation.  There’s no uncertainty.  There’s no pleading with God.  Jesus simply touches and speaks and the boy sits up and begins speaking.  Jesus is a prophet and more than a prophet.  The people probably didn’t fully understand what it all meant on that particular day, but Luke is setting things up.  Jesus is God’s representative in a way that no one else ever had been.

Finally, Jesus “gave him to his mother”.  The way Luke tells it, it’s almost a direct quote from 1 Kings.  As Elijah gave the widow’s son back to her, Jesus gives this widow’s son to her.  He had met her on the way to the grave, weeping and destitute.  He now sends her back home full of joy.  It’s temporary, yes.  The boy will grow up and someday grow old and sick and die again.  But Jesus shows the core nature of his ministry here: he’s come to conquer death and to restore life to all those whose sin has made them death’s captives.  This healing is a physical foreshadowing—something everyone could see and touch—that pointed towards his real and greater mission.

Now, remember that there was a crowd with Jesus and his disciples.  In God’s providence they’re there for a reason.  Look at verses 16 and 17:

Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!”  And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

 

Fear—phobos—seized them all.  This is the reaction people have in the Bible when they realise that they’re in the presence of God or in the presence of his agents.  Peter had shouted out that he was a sinful man and that Jesus should go away.  The holiness of God inspires awe and reverence, but it also inspires fear because in its presence men and women are immediately reminded of their sinfulness.  And yet the people, as much as they stood in reverent fear, glorified God, Luke says.  They’d seen something wonderful.  They saw the joy on the widow’s face.  The people saw the authority and power that Jesus had and they knew that it could only come from God.  “A great prophet has come” and through him they knew that “God has visited his people”.  That’s a loaded statement.  That’s what the people had been waiting for—for God to “visit”—to return—to his people.  They’d been living without his presence in a sort of exile for hundreds of years.  So this is an acknowledgement that Jesus must be the long-awaited Messiah.  The crowd didn’t understand everything that meant, but they understood enough to know that God was with them in some way, that he had sent his Messiah, that he was returning, and so they spread the word.

Brothers and sisters, you and I are now part of that crowd—witnesses to the saving power of God in Jesus the Messiah, people called to spread the good news.  But the widow also represents each of us.  Jesus has stepped into the worst days of our lives—he has visited us and makes his presence known to us—whatever it was that caused that worst day, and he restores our joy with the knowledge that he has conquered our enemies: sin and death.

Does that mean the immediate cause of our sorrows is gone?  No.  Remember, as much as Jesus restored that widow’s joy on the day in Nain, the healing Jesus gave was simply a reprieve of the inevitable.  We all, including that young man, we all eventually get sick or get old and we die.  Jesus has conquered sin and set us free from its slavery, but that doesn’t mean that we stop living in a world full of people still enslaved to sin.  We still have to live daily with the consequences of our own past sin, the sins of the people around us, and with the consequences of all of humanity’s sinful rebellion.  Physical death is still a reality for all of us.  St. Paul, in Romans, describes the whole of Creation groaning under the weight of sin as it waits for the consummation of Jesus’ victory.  What Luke reminds us here is that the pain and the sin and the death of our fallen world serve as opportunities to witness Jesus’ victory to the world.  We’re the great crowd who has seen him at work and our duty is to “spread this report about [Jesus] through all the surrounding country.”  We do that as we tell others of his mighty deeds, but Brothers and Sisters, we proclaim his mighty deeds as we live in hope in the midst of pain and sorrow and death, because as we live in hope, we reveal our faith and our trust in Jesus and his victory—how we respond to the spectres of sin and death in our lives has the potential to witness to the world around us that Jesus has visited us, forgiven us, and given us hope in a future resurrection, a foretaste of which we’ve already experienced in Baptism and at his Table.

I was reading St. John’s Revelation this past week.  I’ve been thinking it might make a timely sermon series in the new year—although not for the reasons a lot of people may think.  Anyway, John’s vision begins with a scroll sealed with seven seals.  No one but Jesus was able to break the seals and open the scroll to reveal the wonderful things inside.  But as the seals were broken, Jesus released—amongst other things—four horsemen representing war, famine and disease.  And yet as the vision unfolds and as we see the horsemen wreak havoc on the earth we see God’s kingdom made manifest as the saints live through these great trials in faith.  Human sin rampages through the earth, but none of that sin is outside of God’s sovereignty.  Jesus remains Lord and as his people trust in his lordship and in his final conquest of sin and death—which we see later in John’s vision—the kingdom is made known and spreads.  We’re heavenly colonists and we spread the kingdom as we respond to our enemies with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  In our trials we reveal our faith in Jesus.  We make the world constructively curious and in doing so we draw ever more people to Jesus where they find their own freedom in him.

Brothers and sisters, never forget that God is sovereign and in his sovereignty every trial and every tribulation becomes an occasion for him to manifest his glory and his grace.  He was sovereign when the widow’s son died and through the sorrow of his death, he gave an opportunity for Jesus to reveal his compassionate victory.  The sorrow, the pain, the persecution, the death, even the martyrdom that confront the saints of God today continue to be God’s sovereign means of revealing himself, his compassion, his grace, and his victory through his people.  They are opportunities to remember that in Jesus he has visited us with his presence.  They are opportunities to recall that our hope is in his victory over sin and death.  They are opportunities to show the world the power of the faith and the hope that we have in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  As St. Paul wrote to the Church at Rome: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5).  When faced with the worst day of your life, leave behind the works of the flesh and respond with the fruit that Jesus’ Spirit has caused to grow in your life.  Weep not, but take joyful comfort in Jesus and his victory.  And, Brothers and Sisters, sing of the faithfulness of God and give him glory.

Let us pray.  Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the forgiveness and life you offer through the death and resurrection of your Son.  Remind us each day of his presence with us.  Remind us each day that he has filled us with his Spirit and united us with himself.  Remind us each day to live the new life of our Baptism and the new life you give at your Table.  And as we remember, teach us to live in hope, giving witness of your forgiveness, of our life, and of your grace as we face the trials and tribulations of this life, daily giving evidence of our faith in the future hope you have promised.  We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Galatians 6:11-18 & St. Matthew 6:24-34

by William Klock

In what do you glory?  What is it that you want people to remember you for?  What is your passion?  Or let me put it this way: In what do you trust?  Would people remember you mainly as a person of generosity?  Of good works?  Of graciousness and mercy?  Or in a different vein: For your passion for the environment?  Your patriotism?  Your devotion to your work and your career?  Would they remember you for a hobby you were devoted to?  Maybe an old classic car?  Or a bunch of old camping lanterns?  A sports team?  What about a lifetime of delicious baking or handicrafts?  Would people remember you for your devotion to your money or the earthly possessions you worked so hard to accumulate?  On exactly what do you stake your reputation?  What is your heart passionate about?  And in what do you trust for your security?

I’m sure all sorts of answers have been running through your heads as I’ve asked these questions.  Now compare the things that came to mind with what St. Paul says in Galatians 6:14.  This is the verse that sums up today’s theme.  Paul writes, “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  Brothers and Sisters, the cross of Christ changed everything for Paul.  It was his devotion to Jesus and, more importantly, his complete trust in Jesus that he wanted to be known for.  When Paul died, no one was talking about what a big Canucks fan he was.  They were talking about what a big fan of Jesus he was.  He spent his life making tents for a living.  Considering his work ethic, I bet he made a really great tent.  But when Paul died, no one was talking about his tents or how he’d made such a secure future for himself financially because of his superior product line.  No.  Paul died for the sake of Christ—in the line of gospel duty—and people remember him for his devotion to Jesus—for the fact that he trusted in his Lord so much that he was willing to follow him to death.

In our Epistle we see Paul closing his letter to the Christians in the Galatian churches.  In fact, half-way through this last chapter—Chapter Six—Paul brings his argument to a climax and to make his point even stronger he takes the paper away from his secretary and writes the words himself.  In verse 11 he writes, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.”  What he has to say here was incredibly important and it was important because it was on what he writes here that the Gospel stands or falls—and more importantly, it’s what he writes here on which their hope stands or falls.

As I explained last week, the letter to the Galatians was written to a group of churches that were under the influence of some people we call the “Judaisers”.  They were people who insisted that in order to be a true Christian, you first had to be a good Jew.  You had to be circumcised, eat only clean foods, follow the Jewish calendar, and ultimately live according to the Old Testament law.  The problem is that this wasn’t the Gospel that Paul had taught them.  It wasn’t the Gospel at all, in fact.  If what you trust in is flesh the only works you’ll ever produce are the works of the flesh—those things like sexual immorality and drunkenness and fits of anger and strife that Paul listed in last week’s Epistle.  The flesh is in bondage to sin and it’s dead.  Jesus gives life.  He’s the one who plunges us into the Holy Spirit when we reach out to him in faith through the waters of Baptism.  Only Jesus gives life.  Only the Spirit unites us with him and causes us to bear good fruit.  And so Paul reminds us that we need to trust in Jesus and Jesus alone.  This is what it means to repent.  And so in verses 12 and 13 Paul warns them:

It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.  For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.

 

Remember that the first Christians were Jews.  Christianity wasn’t a new religion so much as it was a new way of being Jewish—of being the people of God.  They struggled with incorporating Gentiles.  Did they have to become Jews first?  Circumcision was important.  In many ways it was the Old Testament equivalent of Baptism.  It’s what marked you out as a Jew.  It’s also worth noting that Jerome and Augustine both thought that the Judaisers really got a foothold in the Galatian churches during one of the times of persecution.  In the Roman Empire Jews had a special status.  Normally the Romans required that conquered peoples submit to their gods and to the lordship of Caesar.  Over the centuries the Jews had caused enough trouble and put up a loud enough fuss that the Romans granted them an exemption.  The Jews promised to pray for Caesar in exchange for not having to acknowledge him as divine.  In the first years after Jesus’ ascension, Christians continued to worship in the Jewish synagogues and as far as the Romans were concerned, Christians were just another Jewish sect and they left them alone.  It took a while before Christianity reached the Gentile world and a few decades longer before people started seeing Christianity as something independent from Judaism.  And so when the Romans started persecuting Christians, it became very tempting for Christians to sort of deny Jesus and claim they were Jews.  Maybe they didn’t deny him outright.  They still claimed they were Christians, but when the Roman soldiers came, instead of clearly proclaiming Jesus as their Lord, they’d hedge around the issue and claim they were Jews—they could even show the soldiers they were circumcised—and of course everyone knew that Jews didn’t worship Jesus.  Not only was it an utterly terrible witness, it demonstrated very plainly that these people really did not trust in God.  In contrast, Paul, who was a Jew and could have made the same kind of claims, consistently claimed Jesus as his Lord even though it meant his own martyrdom.

The end result was that these Judaisers were pushing their brothers and sisters into a life of religious legalism that undermined the gospel.  They were trusting in the flesh, not in Jesus and the Spirit.  From what Paul describes here, we can almost envision them clapping the gentile men on the back after they were circumcised, as if they were now somehow real Christians.  They revelled in the law and yet, Paul rebukes them, they didn’t really keep the law.  For all their law-keeping—circumcision, diet, and Sabbath keeping—they were biting and devouring each other.  But that’s so often how legalism works.  We keep the parts of the law we want, but ignore the others.  That’s what it means to live by the flesh.  But we do it because it makes us feel good if we can keep score—if we can find some way to feel like we’re doing well and earning God’s favour.  Fallen men and women are prideful by nature.  Turning to Jesus requires humility—it requires we admit our sins, it requires repentance, it requires letting go of everything, and putting all of our trust in Jesus and Jesus alone.  And so Christians are always finding new ways to say they trust in Jesus, while still trusting in themselves—even if only just a little bit—so that they don’t have to completely give up their pride.  We glory in our good works, we glory in our right doctrine, we glory in our financial contributions to the kingdom, we glory in our ministries or our church buildings.  There are all sorts of things we take pride in, as if we did it on our own.  Or maybe we know better than to trust in the things we do, but we compromise the faith to make it easier for ourselves—or more palatable to the unbelievers around us.  But Brothers and Sisters, that’s not what true repentance looks like.  And so Paul steps in and reminds us that there’s only one thing we should glory in.  Look at verses 14 to 16:

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.  And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

 

The word Paul uses when he talks about “boasting” is a word that refers to the thing or things that we put our confidence in.  The Judaisers were putting their confidence in their circumcision and in their living by the law.  Paul had been there.  He was a Hebrew of Hebrews.  He had been a member of the Sanhedrin—the governing religious body of the Jews.  He had been a rabbi and more specifically a Pharisee.  And yet on the road to Damascus to persecute more Christians Paul had been met by the risen Jesus and realised that not one of all those things he valued, boasted about, and put his confidence in would see him into the age to come.  The life of God, the life of the kingdom comes only through faith in Jesus, God’s Messiah, Creation’s Lord, who died to conquer sin and rose to life again, putting death itself to death.  There is nothing else; only Jesus.  God doesn’t care if you’re circumcised in the flesh; he cares if you’re circumcised in your heart and if you’ve been made a new creation in Jesus and by the work of the Spirit.  Paul says, “Peace and mercy” be on you if you walk by this rule of the Spirit.  He crushes the Judaisers.  They were trying to mark themselves out as God’s people by keeping the Old Testament law.  Paul says, “You won’t find peace or mercy there.  Relying on the flesh won’t get your there.  It comes only by faith in Jesus.  Forget the rule of the law; all that does is make you look like Israel.  Follow the rule of grace, the rule of the Spirit, the law of love, and Jesus will bind you into his body and make you part of the true Israel.  And, as we read last week, in Jesus and the Spirit, you’ll end up keeping the law—loving God and loving neighbour—better than the old Israel ever did.

In verse 17 Paul appeals to his own example when he writes:

From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

 

Paul’s sort of calling them spiritual wimps.  When it came to persecution they had found a way to get around declaring Jesus to be their Lord.  They should have been shamed in that, but instead they took pride.  In contrast, Paul points to the scars he had received for the sake of the Gospel—scars and injuries from the times he’d been whipped and beaten, and from the rocks that had been thrown at him when he was stoned and left for dead.  He wasn’t afraid to call Jesus Lord.  He didn’t look for a way out of it or a way to save his skin—even years later when it meant that he was martyred for that faith.  Do you know what a martyr is?  It’s from a Greek word that means to be a witness.  The Church has always honoured martyrs because they’re the ones who stick to their guns and refuse to deny Jesus as Lord even when it means torture and death.  It was that kind of a witness along with the ordinary witness of faithful men and women that gradually turned the Roman empire away from paganism and to the Gospel.

Think of that now in terms of the time and place we live in.  Every few months I read about a new survey on religious trends in North America.  More and more people are turning away from the Church.  It’s not really that people are less “spiritual”, but that they’re looking for salvation—or really they’re looking for affirmation—in false religions and idolatry of their own making.  A few years ago I was with some other pastors and we got to wondering what percentage of our community attends church.  We ran through all the churches in town and how many each seats and figured that if every church had one service on Sunday and filled every seat, there would only be room for a couple per cent of the Comox Valley’s population.  Brothers and sisters, we truly live in a pagan world.  It’s a mission field not that unlike the one the early Christian martyrs lived in and we need to see it that way.  We need to have a heart to see people come to Jesus and that means that we need to by martyrs—we need to be witnesses—for the gospel.

We don’t witness the faith as well as we should.  But compromising the faith, as the Galatians did, isn’t the only way that we compromise our witness.  Think back to those questions I asked when we started.  What do you think you’ll be known for after you’re gone?  Will people remember you for your devotion to Jesus or for your devotion to other things in life?  Will they remember that you served God with your whole being and trusted him wholly to provide for you?  Or will they remember someone who was always stressed out about how to make ends meet or maybe someone who worked hard so that he could have all sorts of really nice “stuff” and go on expensive holidays?  Paul worked for a living, but ask yourself: Do we remember him for his trust in God and his devotion to the Gospel or do we remember him for the tents he made?  In our Gospel lesson Jesus tells us:

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and [mammon].  (Matthew 6:24)

Mammon is an Aramaic word that describes earthly goods—all of our “stuff”—and always in a derogatory sense.  “Stuff” is necessary to live, but mammon has connotations of materialism, of “stuff” that displaces God.  Devotion to mammon is the exact opposite of what Jesus refers to when he talks about laying up treasures in heaven.  Jesus’ point is that the heart can only have one master and that our heart’s master needs to be God.  It’s not that there aren’t other things that we need to take care of in this life.  Again, Paul spent plenty of time making tents so that he could earn money to buy food and shelter and to pay for all his travel expenses.  The thing to remember is that Paul didn’t let his work—or even his need for food and shelter—become his master.

Our problem is that we too often let anxiety rule our hearts.  As Christians that doesn’t make sense.  We say we trust God for our salvation—something huge and with eternal ramifications—but then when it comes to the things of today—food, clothing, shelter—we get anxious and we trust in our own ability to meet them instead of God’s ability to take care of us.  Do we really think that our Creator—the God who made heaven and earth, who made each of us, who tells us how much he loves us, who has promised us life in his new creation, isn’t capable of taking care of us here and now—and even when we’re faced with death?  And yet what does it communicate to the unbelievers around us when they hear us talk about trusting Jesus, but see us going through life fretting over our daily bread?

This is why Jesus tells us: “Don’t be anxious about your life or about what you’re going to eat or drink or wear.  There’s more to life than that.”  He points to the birds and reminds us that they don’t have jobs, but God takes care of them.  He points to the flowers in the field.  They don’t work, but God clothes them in beauty.  He reminds those of you from Saskatchewan of the fields of wheat and how beautiful God has made them and then asks, “If God makes something so beautiful that’s only going to be cut down and ground into bread flower, what makes you think that he won’t take care of you, the child that he loves?”

Jesus reminds us, “Gentiles get stressed out over things like this.”  They don’t know God.  They haven’t experienced his love and provision.  They don’t have the Scriptures to give them example after example after example of how God takes care of his people.  But you!  You’re his people, his children, why do you trust him with eternity and then act like the Gentiles do when it comes to the things you need today?”  Jesus gives us that reminder that I’m sure we’ve all memorised even if we haven’t done very well living it out:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Seek first the kingdom of God and be a living witness to God’s goodness.  Devote yourself to him and he will take care of you.  Show the people around you your faith and the power of the Gospel by truly living it—by trusting in God for everything in life even when life is hard and even when it doesn’t make any worldly sense to trust him.

Brothers and Sisters let me close by saying that our Lord calls us to be witnesses—to be martyrs for the faith.  We live in a world that is in desperate need of the Good News.  We aren’t being put to death for our faith like those early Christians were.  Our problem isn’t necessarily that of the Galatian Judaisers who were compromising their faith in Jesus in order to save their skins from the arena.  But, Brothers and Sisters, how often do we comprise our witness in other ways?  Do we find ways to avoid a clear witness to our faith in Jesus in order to avoid the world’s ridicule or to avoid controversy with friends or family or co-workers?  And how often does the world look at us and see only divided loyalties?  They know we go to church on Sunday and that we profess Jesus to be Lord, but they see us devoted to and serving other things.  When we die they’ll say, “So-and-so was a devoted Canucks fan, or he was a workaholic, or she spent every waking hour on her hobbies and handicrafts…oh, yeah, and he went to church too—as if that last bit was only an afterthought.  That’s not really much of a witness. Our lives may not be on the line, but consider that if our witness is weak, we’re putting the lives of unbelievers on the line.  If we don’t witness Jesus to them in word and in action, who will?  God asked Isaiah, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for me?”  God asks the same thing of us and I think our tendency is to duck and cover.  “Who, me?  No, not me!  I don’t know how.  I’m not equipped.  I’m not a radical.  I don’t want people to think I’m a crazy religious zealot!”  Friends, we need to be like Isaiah.  He had seen the holiness of God.  He knew his own sinfulness and the sinfulness of his people and because of that he knew what the eternal consequences would be if no one went and he cried out, “Here am I!  Send me!”  Friends, that doesn’t necessarily mean travelling a half-world away from home.  More often than not we can answer God’s call—we can say, “Here I am!  Send me!”—by simply devoting ourselves to Jesus, by being unwilling to compromise our faith, and by consciously and whole-heartedly trusting in the promises of our heavenly Father in such a way that everyone around us sees.  In Christ we have been crucified to the world and the world to us, like St. Paul, let us then glory, boast, and trust in the cross and only in the cross.

Let us pray:  Heavenly Father, thank you for your saving grace and for your promise of care.  Forgive us for the times when we put other things in life first.  Forgive for the many times that we compromise our witness to your Gospel.  Teach us, we pray, to trust you in every area of life that the people around us might see our witness and be drawn to you.  We ask this in the name of Jesus our Saviour.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

Galatians 5:16-25

by William Klock

People don’t like being told what to do.  Anyone with a two-year-old or a teenager knows this well and if you’ve never had either of those, all you had to do was pay attention for the last year-and-a-half.  People who until now had all their shots and never had a problem remembering to wash their hands now have the government telling them they need to wash their hands, wear a mask, and get a vaccine are screaming, “You can’t tell me what to do!  I’ll never wash my hands, wear a mask, or get another vaccination for as long as I live!”  We value our liberty.  And that’s not a bad thing.  We should value our liberty.  The problem is that liberty doesn’t work when it’s not exercised in the context of love.  Think of our Gospel last week and the lawyer’s summary of the law: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and your neighbour as yourself.  The law restrained.  It limited liberty, but it did so to teach Israel what it means to love God and to love neighbour.  And it was necessary because this love is what’s missing from fallen human hearts.  And yet even with the law Israel struggled.  The law was external.  It was carved on stone.  It could reveal what is wrong with the fallen human heart, it could restrain the wickedness of the fallen human heart, but it could not of itself fix the fallen human heart.    Something greater was needed.  And so the new covenant rather than giving us law carved on stone, gives us God’s own Spirit who indwells us and writes the law of love on our hearts—love for God and love for neighbour.  And in doing that, the Spirit sets us free from the law to live a liberty shaped by love.

This is the heart of St. Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia.  Let me read the first words of our Epistle again.  This is Galatians 3:16.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

 

How does that work?  I think it’ll help if we back up a few verses to get some context.  Look at verses 13-15:

For you were called to freedom, brothers.  Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

 

You were called to freedom.  Think back to the Exodus, when the Lord delivered Israel from Egypt.  He liberated the people from Pharaoh’s slavery, he set them free—but he did that because in reality they belonged to him.  They were his people.  They didn’t belong to Pharaoh.  And so in setting them free from Pharaoh, the Lord claimed them as his own—“Israel is my firstborn son”, remember that—and he took them into the wilderness to worship, to serve him.  And he gave Israel the law to set them apart from the nations, to mark his people out as holy.  As much as we, being gentiles, might rankle at the old covenant law when we read it, for Israel the law was actually a symbol of freedom.  It represented their deliverance from Pharaoh and it marked them out as the people of God.  The law was a beautiful thing and the Jews loved it dearly.

And so it’s no surprise that we see some of the problems we do in the New Testament.  As gentiles heard the good news about Jesus, as they saw in the gospel the faithfulness of the God of Israel, they came to the Messiah just as the old prophets had said they would.  Here was a god completely unlike the gods they knew as Greeks and Romans.  But what was to be done with them?  Remember that those first Jewish believers in Jesus didn’t think of believing in Jesus as having changed religions.  At that point there really wasn’t any Judaism versus Christianity thing.  Being a Christian was simply a new way of being Jewish.  And so as gentiles began entering the church it posed a problem.  Some of these Jewish believers didn’t want them at all.  They were unclean.  Well, the Lord solved that problem for Peter.  The gentiles were to be welcomed.  But then the assumption was that, well, they first had to become Jews.  They had to be circumcised.  They had to start observing the law.  The first church council was called to address this and they settled the matter, largely thanks to Paul.  Gentiles were gentiles and they had no obligation to the torah.  But this was still difficult for many.  The problem didn’t go away.  There were Jews who believed in Jesus but were still putting their confidence “in the flesh” as Paul puts it—in these outward signs that had historically marked out God’s people.  And there were gentiles who were being taught that they had to do the same.  This was happening in the churches of Galatia, so Paul wrote these words to them: You were called to freedom.

This new exodus in which Jesus had led his people carried the old exodus even further.  In the Messiah, the Lord had accomplished something even greater than he had in Moses.

And Paul’s first point here is that in Jesus we have been freed to love.  He reminds us of the law, summarized in those familiar words: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbour as yourself.  In pouring out God’s Spirit on his people, Jesus has set us free from the law written on stone and inscribed this law of love on our hearts.  Israel struggled.  The law written on stone told her what she was supposed to love, but the fallen human heart has other ideas.  But for the Christian, God’s own Spirit indwells the heart, making it new, and turning its desires towards God and then towards neighbour.  Here Paul only mentions the love-your-neighbour-as-yourself part, because the specific problem in these churches was what he refers to as biting and devouring each other.  We don’t know specifically what he means by that, but it involved some kind of squabbling and fighting.  Whatever the specifics, this biting and devouring, instead of witnessing the renewing work of the Spirit, revealed that these folks still had a serious heart problem.  It raised the question: Were they really free?  Or were they still enslaved to sin?  And it also risked the church.  If church members are biting and devouring each other, will the church even survive?  Some of us have seen the results of this sort of thing first hand as churches implode or split.

In this case, Paul’s diagnosis of the problem is that these men and women have forgotten that what marks out the new covenant people of God is faith in Jesus.  Clearly they’d known this at some point in the past, but they’d allowed these “Judaisers”, these false teachers to lead them astray and they were back to emphasizing the marks they once bore in their flesh—things like what they ate or observing the Sabbath and, especially, being circumcised.  And so Paul rebukes them: Is it any wonder you’re devouring each other?  After all, you’ve been putting your confidence in the flesh when you should have been putting it in God’s Spirit.

Look at verses 16-22.  Here’s what Paul writes:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.  Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

 

The flesh—that’s the human heart that hasn’t been renewed by God’s Spirit—the flesh is all about self.  The flesh needs the law to remind it constantly what its values and loves and desires are supposed to be.  The flesh needs the restraint provided by the law.  Even then, as Israel illustrates so dramatically over her long history, the law isn’t enough.  But the Spirit changes everything.  Jesus pours God’s Spirit into his people and the desires of our hearts are transformed.  The Spirit sets us free from the burden of the law.  And yet, what do Spirit-filled people do?  They do the law anyway.  They love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.  And they love their neighbours as themselves.  That transformation is what takes place when we place our confidence in Jesus.

If you place your confidence in the flesh, well you’ll get what a fleshly heart desires—even if you do have the law, because it’s just not enough.  You get the biting and devouring that was taking place in these churches.  Paul lists a string of truly awful sins and I don’t think he intends to say that all these things were actually happening in the Galatian churches.  He’s trying to get their attention.  After all, they were mostly Jewish people who knew the law and many of the things Paul lists here are things that would have appalled an observant Jew.  But he works that biting and devouring into the list of really bad stuff: things like rivalry, dissensions, jealousy, enmity—the more mundane sins that often break up Christian fellowship and churches—right along with sorcery and orgies.  His point is that even these more mundane sins come from the same place as sorcery and orgies and they’re what you get when you put your confidence in the flesh instead of Jesus and the Spirit.

It’s a remarkable thing that Paul gets at here.  It’s important to think about what we believe marks us out as God’s people.  Get this wrong and the whole thing falls apart.  God’s law was a good thing.  Circumcision and Sabbath were good things.  But if that’s where you put your confidence you’re going to be in a world of hurt.  And it isn’t just a matter of Judaising as it was in Galatia.  Christians today can put their confidence in all sorts of good things as well: our charity or our church attendance, our Bible reading and prayer, and even our holiness and our spiritual giftings.  But none of those things is Jesus any more than circumcision or Sabbath is.  What marks out the people of God is faith in Jesus.  And if you remember from our study of Romans, Paul stresses there that even in the old covenant, even though the law and things like circumcision did mark out the people as belonging to the Lord, what was really important was the faith behind them—even in the days of the law, faith was the real mark of God’s people.  It always has been and always will be.

In contrast to the works of the flesh, Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit.  I think it’s worth noting that he describes these characteristics as fruit.  You can’t force fruit to happen.  You can’t just glue apples on a tree or grapes on a vine.  Fruit is cultivated and it comes naturally when a plant is healthy.  And just so these are the things that grow naturally out of a true and living faith in Jesus and a heart indwelt by God’s Spirit.  Look at verses 22 to 24:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

 

Not only is love there at the head of the list, but the rest of the list: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are all things that flow from and reinforce love.  The works of the flesh destroy, but in the fruit of the Spirit we see the life of the God at work in his people.  And here’s what’s really interesting.  Remember that Paul was dealing with Jewish people who were stuck on the law.  Not only did they insist that they had to obey it, but they were insisting that gentile believers had to as well.  And Paul writes here that against these things there is no law.  In other words, if your life—and if the collective life of the Church—is characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, we will have fulfilled the law.  It will have no condemnation for us.  Because the fruit of the Spirit is the epitome of love for God and love for neighbour.

In verse 24 Paul stresses this transformation.  Those who belong to Jesus the Messiah, those who are part of his family, part of the renewed people of God, he writes, they have crucified the flesh and everything that goes along with it.  Our broken, selfish, sin-filled hearts have been put to death with Jesus.  Like the Israelites leaving behind Pharaoh’s slavery as they passed through the waters of the Red Sea to new life with the Lord on the other side, so we have left our fallen hearts—sometimes Paul writes about our “old man”—we’ve left that behind when we passed through the waters of baptism.  As we rise from our baptism, we are raised to a new kind of life with Jesus and the gift of the Spirit is the earnest, the down payment on his promise of resurrection, that day when Jesus finally makes everything new and evil and death are finally wiped from creation completely.  Until then the Spirit keeps our hearts focused on God and grows his fruit.

Of course, we all know—and it’s why Paul had to write this to the Galatians—we all know that none of this just happens.  There will come a day when sin and temptation and selfishness are gone forever, but until then the flesh wars with the Spirit and so he writes in verse 25:

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

 

It’s not good enough to just say that we live by the Spirit.  Every Christian is indwelt by the Spirit.  You can’t be a Christians without him.  But we need to actively “keep in step” with the Spirit, as the ESV puts it.  It’s sort of a military image of soldiers marching in step with their drill sergeant or their commander.  The battle with the flesh will never be won if we aren’t diligent in pursuing the life that Jesus has given us.  Put things into neutral, do what comes naturally and the flesh inevitably reasserts itself.  And it’s important to remember that the battle won’t be won by our own moral effort.  That’s just putting our confidence in the flesh.  We’ve got to keep our eyes on Jesus, we’ve got to put our faith in him, and we’ve got to put our confidence in the Spirit who breathes life into our hearts and causes us to bear fruit.

And, again, Paul’s point here within the context of Galatians, is that if they would do this—if they would maintain this gospel-centred, this Jesus-centred life rather than putting their confidence in things like circumcision, they wouldn’t have to worry about the law anymore, because love for God and love for neighbour come naturally from such a life centered on Jesus and in step with the Spirit.

Now, the Galatians’ problem isn’t really our problem—although there are parts of the modern church where something very similar crops up—but we need to hear this as much as they did.  Paul steers us down this path—the way of Jesus and the Spirit—and we have our own tendency to fall into the ditches on the side of the road.  There are a lot of Christians who stress the fruit of the Spirit, who emphasise love and peace and kindness, but who end up neglecting the Jesus part of the equation.  Often they’re troubled by the exclusivity of the gospel.  Sometimes it’s the gospel’s call to a kind of holiness that is increasingly at odds with the world around us.  Brothers and Sisters, without faith in Jesus and an uncompromising commitment to the gospel, the fruit of the Spirit part of the equation will fall apart.  And once we compromise Jesus and the gospel, not only does the fruit of the Spirit part fall apart, but we end up losing the church as well.  That sort of Christianty degrades into do-gooderism and since it’s ultimately rooted in the flesh, you eventually lose even the do-gooderism.

If we don’t fall into that ditch, we can easily fall into the ditch on the other side of the road.  That’s the ditch where we stress the importance of Jesus and the gospel, remembering just how vital they are and knowing we can never compromise them, but we fail to keep in step with the Spirit.  We have truth, but the fruit of the Spirit has withered on the vine and we end up trying to defend the truth of Jesus and the gospel with the very fits of anger Paul lists amongst the works of the flesh.  We defend Jesus and the gospel in ways that cause strife and division within our own ranks, with other real Christians.

Brothers and Sisters, it’s vital to maintain a balance.  The truth of Jesus and the gospel is just as vital as the fruit of the Spirit.  And, vice versa, the fruit of the Spirit are just as vital as the truth of Jesus and the Gospel.  I think this is how Paul could write those words we read a couple of weeks ago to the Corinthians.  Remember that.  He was writing to a church that had rejected him, that told him not to come around or to write anymore.  They were worldly, there was serious sin being tolerated in their church.  Their worship was messed up and they were abusing the Lord’s Supper.  And yet when they demanded his credentials, he pointed back at them.  Those messed up, infuriating people were his credentials, because despite their failures and shortcomings, despite their failure to fully live into the gospel and walk in step with the Spirit, they did have Jesus and the Spirit and that was because Paul had brought the gospel to them.  And so he could write to them and stress the truth of Jesus and the gospel without compromise, he could rebuke them of their sins, but he could do it all out of a loving heart that throughout displayed the fruit of the Spirit.  Brothers and Sisters, let us walk by the Spirit.  Let us find our confidence in Jesus rather than the flesh, so that the fruit of the Spirit will grow in abundance, so that our love for God and love for neighbour are on full display.  Let us live in such a way that the law cannot condemn us.

Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and love; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

St. Luke 10:23-37

by William Klock

Our Gospel this morning is another familiar parable.  And familiarity isn’t always a good thing.  It can lead us to read the Bible out of its context and we can often end up assuming we already know what the parable is all about and we fail to let Jesus’ stories speak to us in the way they were meant to.  A big part of that is that we read these parables as if Jesus spoke them directly to us, forgetting that he actually spoke them to very different people in a very different setting two millennia ago.  The parable of the Good Samaritan is a great example of all this.  Christians read it almost universally as a story meant to instruct us in morals, but in doing that we ignore not only the immediate context, but also the larger ministry of Jesus.  Jesus was not a moral teacher.  That’s not to say that he didn’t teach about morality and ethics, but when he did it was as part of his ministry as the Messiah and in the role of a prophet to the covenant people of God, to Israel.  It’s important to remember the narrative, the big picture—the story of God and his people.  It’s important to remember what Jesus said of himself in John 3: “I came not to condemn, but to redeem.”  This is where he came into conflict with people like the Pharisees.  They—and most of the rest of Israel—expected that when the Messiah came, he would bring history to its climax.  He would rain down the Lord’s judgement on gentiles and sinners—on the nations—he would set righteous Israel on top of the heap where she belonged, and he would set this fallen world to rights as King.  He would usher in the long-awaited age to come.  And they were right.  This is what Jesus will do—more or less—at history’s climax.  But what no one—or almost no one—had anticipated is that the Messiah would come in the middle of history to prepare the people for his eventual coming at the end—that he would come in the middle of history in order to bring redemption to sinners, in order to set his people to rights, so that they could avoid the coming day of judgement and know the life of the age to come.  That’s what so many of these parables are about.  The people were looking forward to judgement coming on sinners, but Jesus was actually eating and drinking with sinners and told stories to remind the Pharisees that the Lord rejoices when the lost are found—and that they ought not only to be joyful when their lost brothers and sisters are found and reconciled to God, but that just maybe they ought to make assisting in that effort a priority themselves.  Shouldn’t God’s people be concerned about their own lost brothers and sisters?  If you’re not, well, you’ve misunderstood what it means to be the people of God.  Not only that, but there’s something wrong with your heart.  And since judgement was coming—Jesus’ eschatological horizon was always the war with Rome and the destruction of Jerusalem that would come in about forty years—since judgement was coming, you’d better do something about this lest you find yourself on the wrong side of that judgement.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of these stories.  Now, unlike some other parables, it’s hard here to avoid the immediate setting that prompts Jesus to tell this story.  This lawyer puts Jesus to the test.  On the one hand, he stands—a sign of respect—and he addresses Jesus as rabbi.  But he does this “to test him”, Luke says.  This lawyer, at least, has reservations about Jesus.  There really is something messianic about Jesus, but he was doing so many things wrong.  And he asks, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  He’s not asking, “How do I go to heaven when I die.”  That’s a question that just wasn’t on the radar of any First Century Jew.  Again, think of the narrative.  The Messiah would usher in God’s new age.  He would judge the nations and restore Israel to her rightful place.  Our common English translation “eternal life” obscures what the lawyer was getting at.  He’s asking what a Jew must do to inherit, to have a place in the life of the age to come, in the messianic kingdom.

Now, in a way it’s a silly question and everyone already knew the answer.  You don’t do anything to receive an inheritance.  Israel’s inheritance was based on God’s election of her as his people.  In the Old Testament they typically talked about this inheritance in terms of the land.  And they didn’t do anything to get it.  It was the Lord who led them out of Egypt and into Canaan, and it was the Lord who vanquished the Canaanites.  They didn’t do anything to possess it, but the way to keep it was faithfulness to their covenant with the Lord.  They didn’t do anything to inherit it, but they could do something to lose it.  When they didn’t keep their end of the covenant, when they disregarded the law and worshiped false gods, the Lord took it away.  The northern kingdom of Israel ceased to exist.  The souther kingdom, Judah, was defeated and the people exiled.  And note, it was the Lord who returned them to the land when they’d learned their lesson.  So for Israel to keep her inheritance meant faithfulness to torah, to the law.  And as time went on and the messianic hope grew, the inheritance of the land became the inheritance of the age to come.  And so we have someone like Hillel, a rabbi contemporary with Jesus, writing, “Who has gained for himself words of Torah has gained for himself the life of the world to come.”[1]

But from the perspective of a lot of people, Jesus was messing this up.  They all knew that they would have a place in the age to come because they were faithful to the law.  Those who weren’t faithful—people like the tax collectors and sinners—would lose their inheritance and be left outside, wailing and gnashing their teeth.  But then along came Jesus—whom his people said was the Messiah—and instead of sending sinners away, he was welcoming them.  And that’s not how it was supposed to work.  That’s what this lawyer’s question is getting at.  He’s asking, “Rabbi, is the torah and faithfulness to it not the marker of who is in and who is out?”

And even though the lawyer didn’t even mention the law, Jesus knows that this is what the question is really about, so he asks a question in return, “What is written in the law?  How do you read it?”  And the lawyer responds with those familiar words that we recite every Sunday after the kyrie: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  He gives a summary of the law drawn from Deuteronomy 6:5—“Love the Lord your God”—and Leviticus 19:18—“love your neighbour”.  The whole law can be distilled down to these two basic points.  And it’s worth noting that love of God precedes love of neighbour, because at the end of the day, to love one’s neighbour depends on and is an outgrowth of love for God.  There’s nothing controversial here and I don’t think the lawyer expected Jesus to argue with him on this point.  It just wasn’t where he was expecting Jesus to go in response to his question.  Jesus himself taught the same thing.  Love for God is the key defining characteristic of the people of God.  And love for God was to manifest itself in Israel in things like loving one’s neighbour and in being obedient to the Lord’s commandments.  But, you see, where the lawyer and people like him were getting frustrated with Jesus was that he was welcoming people who didn’t keep the Lord’s commandments.  It kind of looked like Jesus was looking to some other marker to define the people of God—and if that was true, well, then Jesus was the unfaithful one.  But for now Jesus has side-stepped that issue.  The lawyer asked what it is that will mark out the faithful in Israel who will inherit the Lord’s promised age to come and Jesus asked him what the torah says.  The lawyer has responded correctly, and now Jesus tells him: “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

Well, now the lawyer is getting frustrated and probably annoyed.  He and Jesus agree that faithfulness to the law is what marks out the people of God.  But the lawyer still doesn’t have an explanation or justification from Jesus as to why he seems to have such disregard for the law.  And so he asks, “But who is my neighbour?”  And this is where the problem arises.  The answer might seem obvious to us, but at the time it was debated.  Leviticus 19:17-18 equates one’s brother and a “son of your own people” with one’s neighbour.  Pharisees tended to see only other Pharisees as their neighbours.  One rabbinical saying ruled that “heretics, informers, and renegades should be pushed (into the ditch) and not pulled out”.[2]  Tax collectors and sinners, well, most people wouldn’t consider them neighbours and there was no question about were gentiles stood.

In response Jesus tells the story we know so well.  A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.  That 27 kilometres of road was notoriously dangerous.  The Roman army had to deal with robbers who at entrenched themselves along it.  A thousand years later the Crusaders had to build a fort mid-way along it to protect pilgrims.  And somewhere along the road this man is waylaid by robbers, beaten, and left for dead.  Everyone listening to Jesus would have assumed the man was Jewish, but being unconscious and having been stripped of any clothing that might have marked him out as a Jew, no one passing along the road would have a way of knowing that.

Now, along comes a priest.  Priests, Levites, and a certain class of Jewish laymen travelled to Jerusalem to serve two-week stints in service at the temple.  This man is presumably on his way home.  Priests were at the top of society and so he was probably on horseback.  It might seem obvious to us that a priest should be the most likely person to stop and help.  He could easily carry the man on his horse to a place where he could get help.  But Jesus says that the priest passed by on the other side of the road, making as wide a berth as possible.

We think, “What a horrible priest!”  But a lot of people listening—probably including the lawyer—would have applauded the priest for his actions.  After all, a priest had to be ritually pure.  Coming near a dead body would render the priest unclean, but so too did contact with a gentile.  Without getting close enough to risk defilement the priest couldn’t tell if the man was dead and, with the man being naked, the priest couldn’t even tell if he was a Jew or not.  Defilement meant buying a red heifer, burning it to ash, and returning to the temple to stand in shame with the unclean.

The Pharisees stood in the same tradition of Jesus ben Sira, who wrote:

Do good to a godly man, and you will be repaid…Give to the godly man, but do not help the sinner.  Do good to the humble, but do not give to the ungodly…For the Most High also hates sinners and will inflict punishment on the ungodly.  Give to the good man, but do not help the sinner.  (Sirach 12:2, 4, 6-7)

So, you see, many people in that day would have applauded the priest for avoiding the man.  First, some people weren’t your neighbour.  Some people shouldn’t be helped.  In fact, to help them was thought to be thwarting God.  But, second, for the priest keeping his ritual purity was the highest priority.  He had to have that to serve both the Lord and the people, and since he couldn’t know who this man was or his condition, well, it was sad he had to pass by, but it was the right—even the godly—thing to do.

Not long after a Levite makes his way along the road.  He passes by as well, although the text seems to indicate that he got close enough to investigate, while not getting close enough to defile himself.  The Levite was probably on his way home after temple service, too.  Defilement was a problem for him as it would have been for the priest, but not nearly as drastic or potentially humiliating, but still, the big question: Is this man my neighbour?  The Levite couldn’t tell, wasn’t willing to risk defilement, and so he passed by.  And few people would have thought less of him for doing so.

Now, it appears that Jesus is telling the story according to a common formula.  If I tell a story that involves a priest and a minister walking into a bar, before I say it, you know that they’ll be followed by a rabbi.  That’s the formula.  And the common formula in Jewish storytelling involved first a priest, then a levite, and then one of the Jewish laymen who served in the temple.  And so the people would be thinking, “The layman can help the man.  He can risk defilement.”  Remember, there actually was no source of defilement here.  The man isn’t actually dead and is presumably a Jew.  It’s just that no one could tell this without taking the risk.  But a layman could do that.  Hope isn’t lost for this poor man.  But then Jesus breaks the formula.  The third man to come down the road is a Samaritan.  If there was anyone whom a Jew would know for absolute certain was not his neighbour, it was a Samaritan.  They were worse than gentiles.  They were their cousins who had remained in the land during the Babylonian exile.  They’d intermarried with gentiles and they’d corrupted the faith and the scriptures.  They even had their own rival temple.  They were compromisers and heretics of the worst kind and the Samaritans and the Jews absolutely hated each other.  Again, to quote Jesus ben Sira: “There are two nations that my soul detests, the third is not a nation at all: the inhabitants of Mount Seir, the Philistines, and the stupid people living at Shechem” (Sirach 50:25-26 NJB).  Those stupid people at Shechem, those are the Samaritans.

Now, the Samaritan had the same concerns about defilement from a dead body.  And Samaritans were no more likely to consider a Jew to be his neigbour than a Jew was to consider a Samaritan to be his.  And yet this man stops to help the man.  He had compassion, Jesus says.  And that compassion put everything else: the law, defilement, race hatred, fear of robbers—it put everything else in perspective.  He treated them man’s wounds with wine and oil and bound them up, then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn.  He risked the return of the robbers.  He risked the Jews of Jericho or whatever town he took the man to.  If anyone figured out the man on his horse was Jewish, they would have come after the Samaritan.  As if enough hadn’t happened already to this man, contact with the Samaritan would have left him defiled—nevermind that without the Samaritan he would have died up on the road.  And the Samaritan risked being ripped off by the innkeeper—which was apparently a very common thing.  But without the innkeeper having been paid, the dying man would have been stuck with no way to pay and likely sold into slavery as a debtor.  And in conclusion Jesus asks the lawyer, “Who was this man’s neighbour?”

Now, if there was nothing more to this episode than just the parable, the lawyer probably would have told Jesus he was crazy or otherwise condemned him.  Jesus was speaking blasphemy.  But we can almost hear the lawyer’s quiet humility in his response.  The parable at least gives him pause for reflection if it doesn’t move him to actual repentance.  And it does that, because in telling the story Jesus draws on Israel’s scripture and the lawyer—and most of the audience that day—knew their Bibles well enough to catch the references Jesus made.

The imagery of Jesus’ story is drawn from Hosea 6.  Hosea spoke words of warning spoken to the kings and people of Israel—otherwise known as Samaria—and of Judah.  Samaria had been unfaithful to the Lord and imminent judgement was coming if something didn’t change.  And in the longer range, what was about to happen to the northern kingdom would happen to Judah, too.  Hosea writes:

“Come, let us return to the Lord;

         for he has torn us, that he may heal us;

         he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.

After two days he will revive us;

         on the third day he will raise us up,

         that we may live before him.

Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;

         his going out is sure as the dawn;

he will come to us as the showers,

         as the spring rains that water the earth.”

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? (That’s the northern kingdom)

         What shall I do with you, O Judah? (That’s the southern)

Your love is like a morning cloud,

         like the dew that goes early away.

Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;

         I have slain them by the words of my mouth,

         and my judgment goes forth as the light.

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,

         the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

But like Adam they transgressed the covenant;

         there they dealt faithlessly with me.

Gilead (a prominent city in Samaria) is a city of evildoers,

         tracked with blood.

As robbers lie in wait for a man,

         so the priests band together;

they murder on the way to Shechem (the place of Samaria’s rival and unsanctioned temple);

         they commit villainy.

In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;

         Ephraim’s whoredom is there; Israel is defiled.

 

Jesus shifts the story of the northern kingdom’s judgement and destruction into the present day and applies it to the imminent judgement awaiting Jerusalem.  As in verse 4, the people love the Lord, but their love is like a morning cloud, like the morning dew that evaporates so quickly.  They offer their sacrifices.  Like the priest and the levite in the story, they are committed to God’s law, but they’ve missed the point.  They know that they are to love the Lord and to love their neighbours, but then they put all sorts of qualifications on who their neighbours are.  They’ve forgotten that the law was never an end in itself.  The reason the Lord had delivered Israel and made her his people was so that they in turn could reveal him to the nations.  They’d forgotten that.  In verse 6 the Lord reminds them that steadfast love, that mercy is more important than sacrifice and burnt offerings.

And in verse 9 the Lord exposes the blood on the hands of Gilead, one of the chief cities of the kingdom.  And he condemns the priests, who lie in wait like robbers on the road to Shechem—the city where the northern kingdom’s rival temple was.  Jesus simply shifts the location to the road to Jerusalem.  Judgement is coming.  That’s the point of the parable and people like the lawyer need to amend their ways lest they find themselves destroyed as Samaria was.

But I think Jesus, too, drawing on the same passage from Hosea gives hope and points to his own ministry.  The Lord has torn down, but the Lord will restore.  He will raise his people to live in his presence.  As the Samaritan did for the injured man, the Lord will bind up the wounds of his people.  It’s hard to miss the reference to rising on the third day.  But, too, the fact that the rescuer in Jesus’ parable is a Samaritan, points to his own ministry and the failure—even the refusal—of so many to receive him.  Rescue, deliverance, life is coming, but it’s coming in an unexpected way.  The Lord has come to bind up his people’s wounds, but to receive that mercy, they will need to set aside their prejudices and their wrong expectations.  But Jesus’ key point here is that men and women like the lawyer need to rethink what it means to be God’s people.  First it was the scribes and Pharisees rebuking Jesus for eating with sinners and Jesus had to remind them that heaven rejoices to see the lost restored, to see the sick healed.  And now we see the sick of Israel dying on the roadside while those who are well—or so they think—pass by on the other side—and they justify it by thinking that they’re being faithful to the Lord.  They’ve misunderstood what it means to be the people of God and if they don’t figure this out, if they don’t get it right, well, judgement is coming and they’ll be on the wrong side of it.  The age to come will arrive, but they will find themselves left out, wailing and gnashing their teeth.

Now, what does this mean for you and I?  Jesus’ eschatological horizon is long past.  The judgement on Jerusalem came and went.  And yet here we are, the covenant people of God, because in renewing the covenant and the covenant people, in rebuilding the covenant around himself, in fulfilling God’s purpose for Israel as his means of revelation to the nations, we gentiles have been welcomed in.  We who are Lo-ammi—like Hosea’s son with the prophetic name of judgement—we who were not the Lord’s people, because of his compassion, have been made his people through the cross of Jesus.  For us the parable has been reversed.  We were the Samaritan dying on the roadside and Jesus, the one who took on himself the identity and mission of Israel, the Jew of Jews, has had compassion on us, has come near, and not with wine and oil, but with his own blood, has bound up and treated our wounds and has taken us not to an inn, but into his own household.  He has made us part of his family.

The first gentile believers—fulfilling the Lord’s promise to Abraham—were drawn to Jesus in faith, because in him they saw the faithfulness of the God of Israel.  And now you and I have known that faithfulness as he has welcomed us into his covenant family, a people now defined not by the law written on stone, but by the gift of God’s own Spirit who writes his law of love on our hearts.  Jesus has resolved the heart problem that has plagued humanity since the fall and that plagues his people in the old covenant.  Our love for God—and flowing from that our love for our neighbour—is not rooted solely in what God has done for us, but flows from his Spirit who dwells within us and who renews the desires of our fallen, sinful, and selfish hearts.

You might think the problem manifest in the parable of the Good Samaritan has been done away with forever, but as we all know so well, we continue to struggle.  The people of God are still prone to losing perspective.  Another day of judgement is coming and the Church of Jesus has a mission to accomplish—a mission to make him known to the nations.  And we know better than to narrow our definition of neighbour as the Jews did.  And yet, Brothers and Sisters, how often do we lose our perspective?  How often do we pass by the dying on the side of the road, when the duty of love tells us to stop and help, whether with physical acts of mercy or the proclamation of the good news about Jesus?  How often do we meet sinners, people in desperate need of the life in which Jesus has given us a share, and instead of sharing with them the redeeming message of the cross, we self-righteously heap condemnation on those who are already condemned?  Friends, we have known the grace of God made known in the forgiveness of our sins by Jesus.  We have known the grace of God made known in the gift of the Spirit.  We have known the grace of God that has made us inheritors of the life of the age to come.  If we truly understand that grace, we cannot help but be channels of it ourselves.

Let us pray: Almighty and merciful God, by grace you have forgiven our sins and made us your own.  May we who know your grace be faithful in cultivating the life you have given, that your grace may spring up in us, overflowing into the world in our lives, in our deeds, in our prayers, in our proclamation, that all the world might know your grace as we have.  Through Jesus our Lord we pray.  Amen.

[1] Pirke Aboth 2.8

[2] Joachim Jeremias The Parables of Jesus (New York: Scribners, 1972), 202.

A Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

2 Corinthians 3:1-11

by William Klock

Letters of recommendation were a big deal in the ancient world.  If someone showed up claiming to be someone or something, they often carried letters of recommendation to prove it.  You couldn’t just look someone up on the Internet back then.  And it wasn’t just important in the secular world, it was in the Church, too.  A document from the late First Century called the Didache or “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” describes churches writing letters of recommendation for people so that when they went from one church to another claiming to be teachers and servants of Jesus the people in the new church kne these folks were legit.  This is the background of this morning’s Epistle from 2 Corinthians.  In 3:1 Paul writes:

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you?

 

Paul had a difficult relationship with the Corinthians.  Even though he’d started the church and had spent a lot of time with them, the Corinthians didn’t have much respect for Paul.  The Christians in Corinth, in particular, were especially prone to getting carried away with the values of their Greco-Roman culture.  Greeks placed very high value on a certain kind of rhetorical skill.  They valued people who were good speakers and fast thinkers and from what we can gather, Paul may not have shone in those areas the way some other teachers did.  The parallel in our culture might be the value we place on flashy production values and preachers and churches that appeal to our egos and felt needs.  Paul’s would be the preacher who sometimes stumbles over his words, isn’t handsome, and wears a shabby suit and if the Corinthians were modern North Americans they’d be passing him over in favour of the slick, handsome, prosperity huckster in his expensive suit and whose services seem more like rock concerts.  Paul didn’t meet their expectations and so when he heard about their problems and wrote to them giving advice, they wrote back and told him “Thanks, but no thanks.  We’d rather take advice from So-and-so.

Reading between the lines, it seems that they’ve told Paul that if he wants to come back to Corinth he’ll need a recommendation from someone they respect.  And at this point we might think Paul would have been in the right to shake the dust off his shoes and forget about these ingrates in Corinth.  After all, this whole recommendation thing was pretty much the opposite of what Paul was all about.  The gospel commends itself and so does a real gospel preacher.  And so look at how Paul responds to them in light of that.  If you want to see what grace looks like, here it is.  He writes to them:

You yourselves are our letter…

They rejected him.  They’ve told him not to come around and not to write to them anymore to give advice.  They’ve disrespected and insulted him.  And Paul writes: I don’t need a letter of recommendation to prove my credentials as an apostle and servant of Jesus.  No.  You people yourselves are my letter of recommendation.  You people, even though you’ve rejected me, you’re the proof of my credentials.

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

 

If that’s not grace I don’t know what is.  Paul doesn’t need a letter written in ink on paper.  These messed up, confused, infuriating people are still loved by Paul, because despite being muddled and confused, they’re filled with the joy of the Lord and the hope of his kingdom.  For all their faults and for all their inability to see how they’ve been shaped by their culture in their rejection of him, their joy in the Lord and their hope in the Good News is the result of Paul’s ministry to them and that says everything about Paul that needs to be said.  Despite their imperfections, they’re his credentials.

When you think about, what Paul writes to them is pretty amazing and it says something about the power of the gospel and Paul’s expectation of its power to transform people, even when they looked hopeless.  These were people he rebuked for putting the wisdom of the Greeks over the truth of the gospel.  These were people he rebuked for tolerating a church member who was sleeping with his step-mother.  These were people he rebuked for dragging each other through the courts, for divorce, for not treating each other as equals, for abusing spiritual gifts, for abusing the Lord’s Supper, for having crazy, disordered worship.  The list is a long one.  And yet despite their multitude of failings, he says, “You want to see my credentials as a gospel minister, as an apostle?  You’re it.”  Paul could see the gospel at work in them.  As he had written to them in his first epistle, no one affirms that Jesus is Lord apart from the transforming work of the Spirit.  Paul could see through the flaws and knew that they believed, that they loved Jesus, that they were full of the Spirit.  He had proclaimed the good news about Jesus to them and it had done its work, it was continuing to do its work, and he was confident, it would in time complete its work.  This is important.  Sometimes we look at other Christians or other churches and they’re a total mess and we’re tempted to write them off completely.  Brothers and Sisters, stop.  Is Jesus being proclaimed as Lord?  If he is, that means that the gospel and the Spirit are at work there.  Maybe the gospel and the Spirit have a lot of work yet to do.  They needed a correction—a lot of it.  But don’t write those folks off.  They’ve got the gospel.  These aren’t the other folks Paul warns about who preaching another, a different gospel.  That’s a whole other problem.  No, they’ve received the gospel and the gospel is a powerful thing.  It’s the power of God to save.

Now, to make his point Paul takes the Corinthians back to the idea of “covenant”.  Covenant is critical to who we are in Jesus, but it’s something we often forget.  We’ve been shaped more than a little by our own culture’s way of thinking.  For about the last century we’ve largely exchanged the biblical language of “covenant” for the language of “relationship” when we talk about how we relate to God.  Describing our relation to God in terms of “relationship” or talking about Jesus as our “personal Saviour” isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s not the language of the Bible and it doesn’t carry anywhere near the depth or the significance of the biblical language and it often tends to miss the bigger picture.  The Bible never speaks of “relationship”—that’s squishy modern language; it’s also very individualistic language.  God himself, speaks in the Bible of covenant and adoption.  There’s more to salvation than me and Jesus.  God works with families, with peoples—this is why we baptise our infants as we did Luke this morning.  The Church, like Old Testament Israel, is a covenant family.  And that’s what Paul goes back to: this idea of being in covenant with God.  We aren’t just in a “relationship” with him.  We’re his people.  We’re his sons and daughters.  And we’re in it together—all of us—as the Church, the Body of Christ with all its many parts and members.

 

Paul takes the Corinthians back to Jeremiah 31.  Israel was in exile at that time.  God had judged her and allowed the Babylonians to conquer her, to destroy Jerusalem, to tear the temple down to the ground, and to carry the people off into captivity, away from the land they’d been promised.  His judgement came on Israel because she was in covenant with him and had failed and refused to live up to that covenant.  Relationship may or may not involve responsibility and commitment, but at the core of the idea of covenant are the ideas of mutual commitment and responsibility.  Israel had failed to live according to the law the Lord had given her, she’d refused to trust in his goodness and his care, she’d worshipped foreign pagan gods, she’d failed to obey him.  Ultimately, she had failed to love him as he loved her and she was unrepentant in her rejection of him.

Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord promised the people that he would redeem them.  They may be covenant-breakers—like a cheating spouse—but he was not.  And so one day he would restore Israel by establishing a new covenant.  There would be a new agreement between the Lord and his people.  There would be a new marriage between Israel and her Lord.  He had established the old covenant through Moses when he gave Israel his law, written on stone tablets.  But that law carved on stone did not have the power to give the people the real life they needed and that the Lord desired for them.  And so the Lord promised a new covenant that would restore Israel.  The new covenant would deal with the sins of the people—that’s what the Cross of Jesus is about.  And the new covenant would give the people the new life they needed to truly be the renewed people the Lord wanted them to be—to remake humanity into what we were meant to be—God giving his people his own life, transforming their hearts and minds in a way that the law written on stone was never able to do.  In this new covenant, the Lord promised through Jeremiah, he would carve the law on their hearts—he would give his people his own Spirit.

And despite how muddled and confused and wrong the Corinthians were on so many things, despite their rejection of Paul, he could write to them and say that they were his letter, they were his credentials, because the life of the Holy Spirit was evident in their life as a church.  They themselves are a letter from Jesus the Messiah.  The powerful work promised through Jeremiah and the other prophets is manifest in the amazing work that the Spirit has accomplished in them.  Think about that.  Some of them had been Jews—the same sort of Jews that Paul himself had been when he persecuted Jesus’ people.  Some of them had been Greek pagans, worshipping Aphrodite with ritual prostitution and some had been sold out to Caesar who claimed to be the divine saviour of the world.  But Paul had brought them the good news that Jesus is Lord.  He preached Jesus’ death and resurrection.  And they had been transformed.  The Spirit had moved them to repentance and given them a totally new life.  The living God had written something powerful on their hearts and they would never be the same people again.  And the pagan world around them could see it even if these people couldn’t see it themselves anymore.  Again, think about that.  Think about your own stories.  Think of the way you were once met with the Good News.  Think of the forgiveness you have found at the Cross.  Think of the new life Jesus has given you.  Just like the Corinthians, each of us has a long road ahead of us as we grow into a mature faithfulness to Jesus and his lordship, but Jesus has poured his Spirit into us. In our baptism he has plunged us into the Holy Spirit and we are not the people we once were.

And so Paul goes on, getting back to his credentials, writing in verses 4-6:

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.  Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

 

All the proof of Paul’s faithfulness as a minister of the Gospel, as a minister of God’s new covenant is right there in the work accomplished in the Corinthians by Jesus and the Spirit.  It’s not that Paul is competent himself.  He merely showed up in Corinth and preached the Word as he’d been called to do by Jesus himself.  But as a result of Paul preaching the Good News of Jesus and the kingdom the new covenant has unfolded right there in a powerful and very visible way.  The “letter”—the old law written on stone—brought death, but the Spirit now poured into them has given them life.  In his resurrection Jesus unleashed life into the world.  All Paul has done is preach that Good News and where he’s done that the Spirit has brought transformation.

At this point Paul changes tack a bit.  The reason the Corinthians rejected him and the reason he’s had to explain all this about the new covenant to them is that they’ve lost sight of what’s important.  Again, they’d been captivated by teachers who met superficial criteria of Greek culture as to what a wise teacher was supposed to be like.  Again, the parallel today would be the way people are attracted to programs and high production values and slick talkers in faddish clothes or slick suits who pander to the consumerism, the materialism, the individualism of our culture.  And so in verse 7 and 8 Paul starts trying to stress the glory of the new covenant that the Corinthians seem to have forgotten.

Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory?

 

Paul takes them back to the Exodus as he does so often.  They all knew the story.  For those who were Jews this was part of their national and cultural identity.  In Exodus 34 we read how the Israelites became afraid after Moses had been up on Mt. Sinai for a long time.  They saw the thunder and lightning and they thought God was angry.  Ironically, Moses was up on the mountain being given instructions on how the tabernacle was to be built, how all the furnishing and vestments were to made, and how the people were to worship the Lord.  But down at the base of the mountain the people were convincing Aaron, Moses’ brother, to take their gold and make them an idol in the shape of a calf.  Here they were on their honeymoon, prostituting themselves to an idol.  Moses came down from the mountain and the first words he was given by the Lord to speak to the people amounted to a death sentence for their idolatry.  Moses pleaded with the Lord to spare the people despite their guilt and as a result of his pleading prayer the Lord revealed his nature and character even further.  Even though the Lord insisted that Israel’s wickedness had to be addressed and dealt with, he was still a god of abundant mercy.  As a result of that revelation, Moses went down the mountain and his face was shining.  The radiance of the Lord, reflected from Moses’ face was so great that the Israelites were afraid—they knew their sin and cowered in the presence of the holy, even though it was only the reflection of the Lord’s holiness.  Moses had to veil his face.  The only time he unveiled it was when he went into the Lord’s presence in the Tabernacle, to speak with him face to face.  Now, Scripture doesn’t explain the mechanics of it.  I know I can’t quite picture how Moses’ face radiated the glory of God, but somehow it did.  And it was absolutely magnificent and utterly overwhelming.

And Paul’s point is this: If the law carved on stone came down from the mountain in such amazing glory, and if the judgement of the Lord on Israel’s idolatry was manifested in such glory, how much more glorious is ministry of the Spirit?  He goes on in verses 9-11:

For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!  Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

 

Like the Christians of Ephesus who, in Revelation, are described as having lost their first love, the Corinthians had lost sight of the glory of the Holy Spirit’s ministry.  It wasn’t that they’d lost the Holy Spirit.  That’s impossible.  It’s the Spirit who binds us to Jesus, he’s the one who unites us to his life, he’s the one who renews our minds and regenerates our hearts, turning us from everything that is not Jesus and giving us the desire and the faith to take hold of Jesus with both hands.  You cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit.  But somehow they’d lost perspective.  The Spirit had empowered them remarkably, they had no shortage of gifts, but they’d lost sight of the gospel, Jesus was no longer their centre, and they misused and abused those gifts.  And they let the values of Greek culture displace a gospel-centred life.

Brothers and Sisters, we can all too easily fall prey to the same sorts of things.  Our own culture infiltrates the church in many, many ways.  Our culture is overwhelmingly commercialistic, materialistic, and individualistic and too often, without even realizing it’s happened, we start building our churches around these things.  We treat the gospel like a commodity to sell.  We displace it with programs and we tailor our preaching to appeal to our culture’s self-centred individualism.  Programs can be good and useful in accomplishing the work of the Church, but most of the time these days they’re seen as sales tools.  But God doesn’t give us programs.  He gives us his Word.  Through the ministry of the Spirit he caused his Word to be written by prophets, apostles, and evangelists so that we can know him and proclaim him to the world.  And in Jesus he sent his Word to become flesh—not to give us programs or gimmicks or to tickle the itching ears of sinners—but to die for our sins and to rise again to unleash life into the world.  A Church should never have its identity tied up with anything other than the gospel.  A Church is a place where the Word is faithfully preached and the Sacraments faithfully administered.  That was the definition the Protestant Reformers developed.  What constitutes a Church?  A Church is a body that preaches the Word and administers the Sacraments.  But today it seems many preach everything but the Word and the Sacraments are often side-lined or even sometimes considered optional.  As ministers of the Gospel, we—and that’s both you and I—are not called to be flashy, we’re not called to preach the pop-psychology and self-help that our culture obsesses over, we’re not called to be motivational speakers, we’re not called to preach health and wealth even though that’s what people want to hear—we’re called to proclaim that Jesus has died and risen and that he is Lord.  And we’re called to back-up that proclamation by living the life of the Spirit, by manifesting the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control that the Spirit bears in our lives.  We’re called to live justly and to do mercy.  We’re called to use the giftings of the Spirit not for our own ends, but for the sake of the gospel and for the well-being of the Church.  We’re called to be gloriously counter-cultural: being poor in spirit, mourning sin, living in meekness, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, and making peace—even when it means rejection and persecution.  Brothers and Sisters, it’s this Jesus-centred and Spirit-empowered life that manifests the glory of God to the world, that makes us the light of the world and the salt of the earth—the marks us out as the covenant people of God.

Let us pray:  Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning for the forgiveness and new life you’ve given us through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We thank you for pouring your Spirit into us, uniting us to Jesus and transforming us.  In us you’ve revealed your glory.  We ask that you would, in your grace, keep us from taking the life of the Holy Spirit for granted and that you would keep us focused on your priorities despite the competing priorities that surround us in the world.  Keep us faithful to Jesus, to his kingdom, to your Word and to your Sacraments, and to preaching the Good News that Jesus has died and risen and is Creation’s true Lord.  We ask all of this through him.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

St. Luke 18:9-14

by William Klock

This week there was a meme going around social media.  It was a photo of Westminster Abbey and it was captioned, “The world’s great Cathedrals weren’t built by Christians looking for the rapture.”  Well, obviously.  Those cathedrals were built hundreds, in some cases more than a thousand years ago and the theological system of which the idea of the “rapture” is a part has only been around since the 19th Century.  But what it was really getting at is that we often misunderstand the nature of the kingdom of God.  What the meme gets at is the idea common today that the kingdom of God or the coming of Jesus are about escape from the world—and often with that, judgement and fire and brimstone falling on sinners.  But the idea of Jesus as a means of escape from the world never occurred to the builders of the great cathedrals.  What they built was beautiful and enduring, because the kingdom of God, inaugurated by the risen Jesus, is beautiful and enduring.  Through the Spirit-empowered work of the Church, the good news goes out to every people and nation.  Because the word of God and that good news about Jesus are backed by the power of God and the work of the Spirit, they will, without doubt be successful in doing what God has sent them out to do.  The proclamation that Jesus is Lord renews and redeems until the glory of the Lord fills the earth as the waters cover the sea.  The people of God have a mission.  It’s not about escape from the world.  It’s about bringing the power of the gospel to the world to redeem and renew it.  And—think of our gospel lessons these last few weeks—heaven rejoices as the gospel sets right what our sin once set wrong.

Brothers and Sisters, the Church’s mission—while unique in the sense that it is empowered by Jesus and the Spirit—our mission is a continuation of the mission the Lord originally gave to Abraham and his family: to make him known to the nations.  And just as we don’t always get it right.  Just as we sometimes end up with a skewed perspective, so did Israel.  The context of our gospel today is, again, Jesus disputing with the Pharisees.  Now, the Pharisees weren’t about escape.  They understood the enduring nature of the kingdom of God.  Where they went wrong was the mission.  They’d lost their love for their own lost brothers and sisters and they’d lost the big picture—the making the Lord known to the nations part of their mission.  They were righteous.  They were faithful.  They were obedient.  (And by all accounts, they were.)  But when it came to the lost—whether the lost in Israel or the pagan gentiles—that problem was to be solved not by redemption and restoration, but by judgement.  When they looked at Jesus they saw that he had the power and authority of God with him, but this is what frustrated them so much.  He was using that authority to redeem and restore when they thought he should be using it to judge and condemn.  So they confronted him.  And he turned that confrontation back on them.

God will judge sinners.  Jesus was clear about that.  But that comes at the end of the story.  This is why God sent his Son into the middle of the story to provide a means of reconciliation so that sinners can escape judgement on that last day.  Jesus came not to condemn, but to redeem.  That’s one of the key defining values of his kingdom and it’s why the Pharisees and most of the Jews missed it.  They were looking to be vindicated for their righteousness; they were looking for judgment; they were looking for fire and brimstone on their enemies.  In many ways, they were looking for the end of the story.  So the Pharisees asked Jesus—in the passage just before today’s Gospel—they asked when the kingdom of God was coming.  And Jesus turned the question around to get to the heart of the matter.  More importantly, when the kingdom does come, who will be a part of it—and why.

To answer the question of “Who?” Jesus tells two parables.  Look at Luke 18:1-3.

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.  He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.  And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’

 

Jesus has been talking about judgement and now he takes us into a courtroom.  An ancient Jewish court was very different from a modern court, but we can imagine one of our own civil courts easily enough.  You’ve got a plaintiff bringing a complaint against a defendant.  Both of them come before a judge to have the complaint decided.  In Israel there were no juries; every case was basically like a modern civil case where a judge makes the decision.  Each side would come to make their case.  A just or righteous judge would rule fairly and in accordance with the law and the person he ruled in favour of would leave vindicated or “justified”.  The Gospels almost never address this issue of justification, but it becomes very important in St. Paul’s epistles.  This court language and imagery is what St. Paul is drawing on when he talks about the justness or righteousness of God and about God justifying his people.

In the parable Jesus tells us about the judge and the plaintiff.  This judge is a bad judge.  In the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles we read about King Jehoshaphat.  He wasn’t perfect, but he was a good king who tried to bring the nation back to the Lord.  He opposed the worship of false gods and idols and he cleaned up and reformed the judiciary.  We’re told specifically that he appointed judges and he gave them this commission: “Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the Lord. He is with you in giving judgment.  Now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the Lord our God, or partiality or taking bribes” (2 Chronicles 19:6-7).  That’s the profile of a good judge, but Jesus describes someone just the opposite.  The judge in Jesus’ parable neither fears God nor respects man.

And in front of the bench Jesus places a widow.  It’s not without reason that throughout Luke’s Gospel he uses widows as examples of piety and of people to whom God shows his goodness.  Widows were often the poorest of the poor.  They had no one to look out for them, which is why throughout the law, the Lord commanded his people to care for widows.  But this judge does just the opposite.  It’s safe to assume that this woman’s case had something to do with property or inheritance that was righty hers, but that was being withheld.  Other people would simply bribe the judge to give them justice, but this woman is too poor for that.  All she can do is go before the judge over and over and over in the hopes that she can wear him down.

It’s popular to take this parable out of context and to twist its meaning.  A lot of people understand this parable to be telling us that if God doesn’t answer our prayers, we need to keep praying.  If we keep praying long enough, we’ll wear down God the way the widow wore down the unjust judge.  Brothers and Sisters, stop and think about what that says about the God we worship.  First, the God of the Bible is a God who is sovereign.  He’s also a God who is perfectly good and perfectly wise and perfectly patient.  If God hasn’t answered our prayers the way we expect, it’s not because we need to wear him down.  A god who can be worn down by our constant petitions is no god at all.  No.  If God isn’t giving us what we’ve asked for, it’s because what we’re asking isn’t what he wants for us.  Jesus’ point is that our prayer is meant to be an expression of our trust in God’s goodness and wisdom and faithfulness.  And we can trust him precisely because he is the polar opposite of the unjust judge of the parable.  We pray and we don’t lose heart because we pray to a God who is faithful and just and who isn’t worn down or manipulated by our shallow, short-sighted petitions and complaints.  Look at how Jesus continues the story and consider how dramatically this unjust judge contrasts with our perfectly just Lord:

For a while [the judge] refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”  And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.  And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?  I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. (Luke 18:4-8a)

The judge eventually gives in and does the right thing—he sends this woman away from his court justified or vindicated.  He does what’s right, but he only does it because he’s feeling beaten down.  Jesus uses imagery from the boxing ring: the poor widow eventually corners the unjust judge and forces him to do justly.  Now, does that sound like God?  Can we beat God down by our persistence in prayer?  If that’s how we’re praying, friends, we’re praying to an idol, to a false god.  In contrast to the judge, Jesus points to God who is perfectly just and who is faithful to justify and to vindicate those who cry to him out of their suffering.  In contrast to the judge, who only did justly when forced to, God will justify his people speedily.

This is important.  Consider the context.  Jesus was preparing his disciples for a time of coming suffering and persecution.  He knew that he was going to Jerusalem this last time to face his own death.  He was probably considering the possibility that some of his disciples might be executed with him.  Even if they weren’t, Jesus did know that as they carried on his mission, taking his good news to the world, they would face persecution.  Jesus promised them that they would suffer and be persecuted—the slave is not above his master.  But in the midst of that, Jesus reminds them, the Lord will hear their cries and will vindicate them.  “Keep praying,” Jesus is saying, “keep crying out to God in faith, and know that he will vindicate you.

And that’s just the point.  Look at the last part of verse 8:

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

 

Prayer is an expression of faith in our perfectly good, perfectly wise, and perfectly just God, would he find faith when he returned in judgement to Jerusalem a generation later?  And in our case, will he find faith when he comes in judgement to consummate his kingdom?  We ask “When?”: When is Jesus coming back?  And Jesus turns the question back on us: Better to ask, will I be found faithful on that day?

This is the point of the second parable that Jesus tells.  What does the faith of kingdom people look like?  Look at verse 9:

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:

 

“He told this parable to some who trusted in themselves.”  There were Pharisees in the crowd.  They certainly “trusted in themselves”, but Jesus doesn’t just address the parable to them.  The parable is addressed to everyone there who had this problem: to the Pharisees, to others, and even to his disciples.  And he addresses it to us.  The characters in the story may have changed over the two millennia since Jesus told the story, but you and I have this same struggle.  Too often we trust in ourselves instead of God.  Too often we are too sure of ourselves—too sure of our guaranteed place in the kingdom and sure for the wrong reasons and just as sure of the spot that others will have outside of the kingdom.  Jesus goes on:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ (Luke 18:10-12)

The Pharisees goes into the temple and he sets himself apart from everyone else.  As far as he’s concerned, he’s better than all of them.  And he prays.  But his prayer is nothing more than a boast of his own righteousness.  And since people in those days prayed out loud, the implication is that he’s boasting to the other people gathered in the temple as much as he’s boasting to God.  He boasts that he’s one of the righteous: not an extortioner, not an adulterer, not like the sleazy tax collector in the back.  He boasts that he fasts twice a week—not just on the required days, but twice a week—and that he doesn’t quibble about tithing on just the things he’s required to tithe on, but on everything he gets.  He boasts that he’s not “unjust”.  And that brings us back to the courtroom.  What started out looking like a religious setting takes us back to the court.  This man is certain of his status before God.  He’s certain that were he to stand in the dock before the judge, he would be vindicated and his cause found just—because he’s not a sinner like all the others, because he does good, because he keeps the law.  This man represents Israel.  He was circumcised, he ate the right food, he kept clear of gentiles and unclean people and so he was pure.  He’s convinced he’s in the kingdom, and yet he trusts only in himself.  He embodies the rebuke the Lord gave his people through Isaiah: “this people draw near with their mouth and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).

In contrast Jesus describes the other man:

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13)

Here’s the opposite of the Pharisee.  This man was a social and religious outsider.  He collaborated with the Romans and spent his days in contact with unclean gentiles.  He knows that he has nothing in which to boast, he knows he’s a sinner, and so he comes to the temple and throws himself humbly on the mercy of God in repentance.  It’s an expression of faith in the one who judges justly.  And so Jesus says:

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

Again, we’re back to the courtroom.  As much as the Pharisee, like so many, went into the court confident of his case, it was the poor tax collector who was vindicated—not for his righteousness, but for his faith.  That doesn’t mean he won’t pursue righteousness from this point on.  That’s not the point.  Think of the parable of the workers.  The Pharisee is upset because he’s worked long and hard through the heat of the day and now this guy who’s done none of the work receives the same denarius for an hours work.  The Pharisees has forgotten the grace of God and, more importantly, he’s forgotten God’s desire for sinners—that he desires their repentance and rejoices over them when they do.

Now, when Jesus told this story, a lot of people would have been confused.  The Pharisee should have gone home vindicated, not the tax collector.  The tax collector was one of those collaborators who should have gone down in flames with the Romans and Herodians when the Messiah came.  And this is just the problem with so many people who are so eager for the Lord to return and who are eager for judgement.  Like the Pharisees, we’ve forgotten the grace of God and his love for sinners.  And what Jesus is saying here is that this is precisely the attitude that kingdom people do not have.  Kingdom people may well have assurance of their status before God, but they have that assurance not based on what they’ve done, but on their faith in Jesus.  And kingdom insiders don’t look with eager expectation for their enemies to be judged.  No, in fact, just the opposite.  Kingdom people do good to their enemies, pray for them—pray for them to repent and turn to Jesus that they might be reconciled with God rather than judged when he returns.

Brothers and Sisters, God’s kingdom is about reconciliation and redemption.  It always has been, ever since he called Abraham to himself, blessing him in order to be a blessing to the nations.  Jesus brought that mission of blessing to its climax as he created a new people, his Church, to be a light to the world that the whole human race might be drawn to the Lord and know him and go home justified by faith.  That’s our mission.  And that means that our lives ought to be characterised by humility—by the knowledge that, like the tax collector, we are poor sinners redeemed by grace.  We can stand before God only because Jesus because Jesus has taken our place on the cross and stands beside us in the heavenly court.  And kingdom people, because of our humility, because we have experienced and known the love of God for sinners, will always be about redemption and reconciliation—about seeking not to condemn the lost, but to summon them to Jesus.  Because kingdom people were once lost, because kingdom people know what it means to be lost, and because we desire to share this life we know only by grace with everyone around us.

But all too often we forget the true nature of grace.  We look at the sinners around us and we start to think like the Pharisee in the parable and we start looking down on others.  And it isn’t a big step from looking down on sinners to longing for their judgement.  Think of all the times we look at others with judgement and condemnation.  Think of our attitude towards the people who hurt us.  Think of our attitude towards the Mormon who knocks on the door or the Jehovah’s Witness handing out cult literature on the street corner.  Think about our attitude towards the people we hear on the street cursing up a storm with the Lord’s name or the same-sex couple holding hands.  Think about our attitude towards the members of the “wrong” political parties who are ruining our country or ushering in an era of persecution for the Church.  Think of our attitude towards criminals and prisoners and our attitude towards the people in far off countries who follow false religions.  What’s our attitude towards all these people?  Brothers and Sisters, the answer to that question reveals our place in the kingdom.  It reveals whether we’re the Pharisee who went home condemned in his self-righteousness or the tax collector who went home justified for his humble faith.  Yes, God’s people hate sin and long for justice and we seek justice in this world—that’s part of our mandate—but if we are truly following our Lord, we’ll recognise and we’ll remember that Jesus went to the cross, not to reconcile good people to God, but to reconcile sinners—all sinners, including you and me, including the people who hurt us, including the cultist interrupting our dinner to argue doctrine, including the kid dropping f-bombs and the same-sex couple, including Liberals and New Democrats and Conservatives and Greens, including criminals and prisoners.  We have a duty to oppose evil in this world, to speak against it, to take action against it, but Brothers and Sisters, let us never be like the Pharisee.  Let us never speak out of self-righteousness.  Let us always remember that the final and enduring triumph over sin comes through the proclamation—the Church’s proclamation and that means our proclamation—of the good news that Jesus was crucified and risen and rules as Creation’s Lord—and that he rejoices to forgive and to be reconciled with his enemies.  Let us long to rejoice with the heavenly court over every sinner who repents.

Let us pray: Lord God, you declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace, that we, running the way of your commandments, may receive your gracious promises, and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

A Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity

St. Luke 19:41-48

by William Klock

Last Sunday, in our Gospel, St. Luke allowed us to follow along behind the scribes and Pharisees as Jesus ushered them into the heavenly courts by way of parable so that they could know the rejoicing that took place there when the lost in Israel were found, when sinners repented and were restored to the covenant family.  Heaven rejoiced, like the shepherd who found his lost sheep, like the old woman who found her lost coin, like the distraught father whose prodigal son returned home.  It was some perspective that those who weren’t lost needed so that they would understand the ministry of Jesus and the kingdom of God.

But if heaven rejoiced at the restoration of the lost sons and daughters of Israel, there was also reason for heaven to grieve.  There was a larger context to Jesus’ ministry.  He hadn’t come to simply restore tax collectors and sinners to the covenant family.  The covenant family was in trouble, was broken, had gone off the rails.  The scribes and Pharisees had their problems too, so did the Sadducees, so did the Zealots, so did all the others.  The whole covenant family needed to be set to rights and prepared for this new thing that the Lord was about to do through Jesus the Messiah.  And most of them just weren’t getting it.  Throughout the Gospels, right alongside the all the rejoicing, Jesus also preaches and warns about the judgement that was soon to come on Jerusalem—a judgement for which there would be great mourning.  And that’s where our Gospel leads us this morning.  Luke at Luke 19:41-48.

Jesus weeps.  It might not be what we would expect.  This follows on the heels of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday.  He acted out the prophecy of Zechariah 9 where the people rejoice at the return of the Lord to Zion.  Israel’s God had returned and Israel’s God is King.  But here he’s not a king like Caesar or like David.  He’s not a revolutionary like Judas Maccabeus.  He doesn’t ride in a chariot or on a warhorse; he comes to take his throne and he rides into Jerusalem in humility and on the back of a donkey.

The people didn’t really understand it all.  As Jesus left Bethany on the donkey and crested the Mount of Olives, ready to travel down into the valley and back up the other side to Jerusalem, the disciples got the crowds started.  They put their coats on the road in front of Jesus and started singing the words of Psalm 118: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Pretty soon the crowds of people travelling with Jesus joined in, putting down their coats too and waving palm branches.  Before long new crowds were lining the road to see what was going on.  Even though he didn’t look the part of the Messiah, the Lord’s King, people saw Zechariah’s prophecy being fulfilled and joined in.  They gave Jesus his royal entry into Jerusalem.

We can imagine Jesus cresting the Mount of Olives as the people cheered him on.  Everyone was excited and happy.  Everyone except Jesus.  He knew what his coming to Jerusalem meant.  Even though the people were celebrating the coming of the King—the Day of the Lord—Jesus knew that it was going to be a day of darkness for them, not the day of light they expected.  And then as the city came into view—first the temple high on Mount Zion, and then the rest of the city around it—Jesus broke into tears.  Luke says in verse 41:

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it…

 

Why did Jesus weep over the city?  Jesus had come to set right what human beings, by our sinful rebellion against God, have made wrong.  It’s important to remember that this work began with the Lord’s own people.  As St. Paul wrote, “Salvation is of the Jews.”  It had always been their task to a light to the nations, to make the Creator known.  But Israel had failed in that duty.  And so Jesus came not as any human being, but specifically as one of the Lord’s own people, he took up their identity and he took up their mission.  Salvation came to them first, but so did the Lord’s judgement.  He rejoiced over the lost sons and daughters of Israel who came to him and found forgiveness and restoration, bu the nation as a whole, most of Israel would have nothing to do with him.  He came to redeem, but as he came over the crest of the mountain he looked out over a city that he knew would reject him just as it had rejected the prophets.  Even as he was surrounded by cheering crowds hailing him as King, he knew that only a few of them truly understood and only a few of them were ready to repent.  Even as he saw the great temple on top of Mount Zion, he knew that it was in the control of priests and scribes and religious leaders who had invested themselves in a worldly system utterly opposed to the Lord and his kingdom.  The Lord had given them a treasure as the king had given his servants their minas, but the religious leaders of Israel hadn’t just hidden that treasure away for safe-keeping in a handkerchief; they had invested it in another kingdom and in a completely different set of priorities.

Through his sobs, Jesus speaks over the city:

“Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:42-44)

Jesus makes two indictments against Israel.  First, they have not known the things that make for peace.  Second, they did not know the time of their visitation.  We’ll come back to those in a minute, but first the consequences.

Jesus describes the city surrounded by enemies.  They set up a “barricade” around the city—the Greek word describes military fortifications or earthworks set up for a siege or for a defensive position as the army prepare to make an attack.  Enemies will surround Jerusalem on every side.  There will be no escape and when the enemy is victorious, they will tear the city to pieces.  The imagery goes back to Jesus’ warning in 13:1-5.  The Jewish men slaughtered by Pilate and the people on whom the Tower of Siloam had fallen were just a foretaste of the death and destruction that would come when the Romans would bring God’s judgement on Jerusalem, on the temple, and on Israel.  There on top of the mountain was Herod the Great’s temple.  It was built on solid rock, but the spiritual reality was that it had been built on sand.  Think back to Jesus’ parable of those two houses, one built on rock and the other on sand.  The first stood and the second fell.  This is exactly what Jesus was getting at there.

And so we come back to Jesus’ indictment.  Think back to the prophetic song that Zechariah sang over Jesus as a baby in Chapter 1:

    “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

       for he has visited and redeemed his people

    and has raised up a horn of salvation for us

       in the house of his servant David,

    as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

    that we should be saved from our enemies

       and from the hand of all who hate us;

    to show the mercy promised to our fathers

       and to remember his holy covenant,

    the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us

    that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,

     might serve him without fear,

    in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” (Luke 1:68-75)

Visitation, redemption, salvation, mercy, restoration.  Israel missed all of this.  Israel did not know the things that make for peace.  Israel didn’t recognise her visitation—she longed for the return of the Lord to Zion, but when he came in Jesus, she rejected him and crucified him.  The Lord had redeemed Israel from Egypt, he’d given her a home, and he’d given her his law so that she could be a blessing to the nations—so that she could lead the pagan nations to the Lord that they might find peace and reconciliation, but Israel had rejected her mission.  Circumcision was meant to be a sign of God’s gracious election, but Israel turned it into sign of privilege.  In the centuries following King David, she prostituted herself to pagan gods and made alliances with pagan kings.  She betrayed her covenant with the Lord and so he brought the Babylonians on Jerusalem in judgement.  They destroyed the city and carried the people into exile.  When Israel returned and rebuilt the temple she recommitted herself to the Lord.  This time there were no pagan idols setup in the temple alongside the Lord’s altar, but Israel, and especially her leaders and her priests, prostituted herself to the pursuit of wealth and nationalistic ambitions.  She even reimagined the person of the Messiah around her new idols and corrupted religion and, as a result, when the Messiah came—when the Lord returned to visit his people—Israel missed it.  She missed the time of her visitation, she missed her opportunity for salvation, and now she stands condemned.  Before the generation alive that day passed away, judgement would come.  As the Babylonians had come six-hundred years earlier to bring the Lord’s judgement, so the Romans would come and leave no stone standing before driving the people into a permanent exile.

Why?  Because the Lord cannot stand by as his covenant with his people is broken.  The Lord will purify his people.  Through Malachi he described his coming to the temple—his visitation of Israel and his return to Zion—as a day of judgement and purification:

The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple…But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.  Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. (Malachi 3:1-4)

Sin will be judged, the wicked punished, and the faithful remnant redeemed and established.  Jesus is now gathering this remnant, this new Israel, this new priesthood around himself, but he still weeps for the coming judgement.  Sin must be punished, death must be conquered, but the Lord’s ultimate desire is for repentance and restoration.  The Lord does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23).  And so Jesus weeps.

And after his royal entry into the city, Jesus makes his way to the temple.  Luke telescopes the storyline.  If we look at Mark’s Gospel we see that after his triumphal entry into the city Jesus went back to spend the night in Bethany and then returned to the temple on Monday.  But Luke compresses the story to make a point.  Just as Jerusalem represented Israel and the Jewish people, the temple represented Jerusalem.  And so Luke doesn’t simply have Jesus entering the city; Jesus enters straight into the temple—into the heart of everything, in fact, into the very heart and soul of Israel.  That’s what the temple represented.  And Luke says the humble King on the donkey now rises up in judgement on the heart of his people.  Look at verses 45-46:

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”

 

This is another acted out prophecy.  Jesus is acting out the coming destruction that he was weeping over.  We often think that Jesus was upset because there was buying and selling going on in the temple.  Some of the moneychangers and vendors may well have been fleecing the poor, but the fact is that for the system of temple sacrifices to take place people had to buy animals for the sacrifices.  Buying and selling animals and changing money wasn’t wrong in and of itself.  The key to understanding what Jesus is upset about is this word “robbers”.  The Greek word doesn’t refer to common thieves or even to the sort of people who would overcharge for a sparrow or a lamb.  The same word is used to describe the thieves crucified with Jesus.  It’s also used to describe Barabbas, the violent revolutionary whom Pilate released instead of Jesus.  These “robbers” were people who took from the poor with violence.  Think of the men in the parable of the Good Samaritan, who waylaid the travelling man, beat him, and left him for dead.  Barabbas was one of these sorts: a violent man seeking revolution and who was willing to rob and kill for his cause.  The temple was supposed to be a house of prayer, but the chief priests, the scribes, the religious leaders—the Sanhedrin—had turned it into a den of robbers.  Think of a mountain hideout where violent revolutionaries and thieves run to escape from the law.  That’s what the temple has become.  The temple—the heart of Israel—had become horribly corrupt.

Jesus is acting out the prophecy of Jeremiah 11:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place.  Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

    For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.

    “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail.  Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations?  Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? …And now, because you have done all these things, declares the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh.  And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim. (Jeremiah 11:3-11, 13-15)

The temple had become a symbol of the rebellion and sins of Israel.  The people came and the priests cried out “Peace! Peace!”, but there was no peace.  Israel had no understanding of the things that bring peace.  Israel was to be a light to the nations and the temple was to be a shining beacon in the middle of it, but instead Israel did the opposite.  She condemned the nations and the temple became the symbol of her nationalistic hopes for the downfall of the nations.  Israel’s priorities were the opposite of the Lord’s priorities and so, like the servants of the king in the parable, when Jesus came they declared: We do not want this man to rule over us!

And all of this because the temple was no longer a house of prayer.  Had the temple been a house of prayer the people would never have forgotten the priorities of the kingdom and of the Lord’s covenant.  Had the temple been a house of prayer all along, Israel would have known the things that bring peace and she would have recognised the Lord when he returned to Zion in Jesus.  Prayer—real prayer—involves the persistent pursuit of justice as we saw in the parable of the widow who refused to give up seeking justice from the judge.  Real prayer involves humility before God and others as Jesus described in the tax collector who stood at the back of the temple with his eyes on the floor praying: “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”  These are the things that make for peace.  These are the things on which the kingdom of God is built.  But without prayer—true prayer—Israel took to oppressing the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.  She stole, murdered, committed adultery, and swore falsely.  And all the while the priests and the scribes and the religious leaders absolved them from their “den of robbers”.  The heart of Israel had become corrupt through lack of prayer.  And so the temple had to go.  Jesus acts out now what will happen in forty years.

And so Jesus acts out the coming judgement as he drives the merchants from the temple and shouts the words of Jeremiah.  The religious leaders were angry.  Jesus was upsetting their world.  Many of them no doubt feared he was going to bring the wrath of the Romans down on them if he stirred up too much trouble.  They wanted him gone, but the people loved him.  In verses 47-48 Luke writes:

And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.

 

Brothers and sisters, The Lord had promised through Ezekiel:

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

The old temple was a temple of stone.  The new temple is a temple of flesh, established by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of Jesus’ people.  The old temple had failed and God caused it to be swept away forever by the Romans.  And now we—you and I—are the covenant people with the heart of flesh.  We are the people indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  We are the people given the life of Jesus.  The Church, wherever her people live and work and worship, is the temple of the Lord.

But we need to ask if we are a house of prayer, truly living the way of peace that Jesus brought, or have we become a den of robbers?  Like Israel, have we confused the Good News that Jesus is Lord—a message we’ve been given and called to carry to the nations—have we confused it with our own nationalistic, patriotic, and political agendas?  Like Israel in the days of Jeremiah, have we compromised our worship of God with divided loyalties?  They setup altars to pagan gods in the temple.  Too often we setup altars to security and wealth in our hearts.  Israel oppressed the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow; she stole and murdered and swore falsely, but thought she could come to the temple for absolution without repentance.  How often do we do the same sorts of things?  On a big scale we often support the agendas of our governments that make enemies of the very people to whom we should be taking the Good News—letting politics blind us to the fact that sin and death are the common enemies of humanity.  We play along with economic policies that dishonestly debase our money and that place obscene loads of debt on our children and grandchildren, that heap riches on the corrupt, while defrauding the poor.  And on a small scale, how often do we simply ignore or even avoid opportunities to manifest Jesus to the people around us?  How often do we reach out to help the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow?  I think most of us are more inclined to ignore them and to hope that someone else will help.  Jesus calls us to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who abuse us.  I think we’re more inclined to hate those who hate us.  And yet Jesus points us in the right direction with that command: Pray for those who abuse you.  Prayer—real and true prayer—was what was missing from Israel.  Prayer for justice, for mercy, for grace, for humility and prayer that leads to action—to doing justice, mercy, grace, and humility—that’s the kind of prayer that leads the people of God to the heart of God.  And Brothers and Sisters, that’s the sort of prayer we should be praying and living and doing.  It’s the prayer of a people who have been given a heart of flesh, a heart after God’s own heart, and who are indwelt by God’s own Holy Spirit.

Let us pray: Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and, that we may obtain what we ask of you, teach us to ask for those things that please you, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity

St. Luke 15:11-32

by William Klock

Today’s parable of the prodigal son is a familiar one.  We’ve all heard plenty of sermons on the story.  Some of us have preached plenty of sermons on it—although it’s interesting that it isn’t part of the historic lectionary we use on Sundays.  The folks who revised the American Prayer Book in 1928 included it to replace the traditional reading of the parable of the unjust steward, probably because they thought the parable of the prodigal son was more positive.  It’s certainly more familiar.  And yet we’ve become so familiar with this parable that I think we often fail to really listen to it.  We tend to forget or to ignore the context.  Most often we think of this parable as teaching our doctrine of salvation by grace.  The young prodigal rebels, but eventually returns to his father and learns that salvation is not by works, but by grace.  Then, as often as not, we leave out the part of the parable about the older brother, which doesn’t quite fit and throws a wrench in the grace versus works narrative.  If we do include that last bit, we then ask: “Who am I?  Am I the younger brother who received the grace of the father or the older brother confident in his works?”

Now, our doctrine of salvation by grace is important.  It’s wonderfully true.  But this is not about that.  You might remember that not very long ago, on the Third Sunday after Trinity, our Gospel lesson included two parables, one about a lost sheep and the other about a lost coin.  This story of the lost son is the third in that triad.  And if we remember back six weeks ago we’ll remember that this series of parables was introduced by St. Luke this way.  He wrote:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”  (Luke 15:1-2)

Notice, Jesus didn’t tell the parable in response to someone asking, “What must I do to inherent eternal life?”  A rich young ruler who had been faithful in keeping the law once ask that of Jesus and, interestingly, Jesus didn’t condemn him for his works.  Instead, he told him to go even further—sell everything you have and give it to the poor.  That’s a sermon for another time.  Today we need to grapple with the parable we’ve been given and we need to do that in its context—which is the grumbling of the scribes and Pharisees over the fact that Jesus was welcoming sinners.

So Jesus responds to their outrage with three stories.  In the first a shepherd loses one of his one hundred sheep.  He secures the ninety-nine in the fold and sets off into the night to find the lost one.  When he finds that lost sheep, he carries it home on his shoulders, and rejoices with the other shepherds.  What was precious had been lost, but was now found.  In the second story Jesus tells of a poor old woman who loses one of ten silver coins, probably her dowry.  She can’t find it anywhere.  The story is very short, but we nevertheless get a vivid sense of how frantic she was as she searched.  Eventually she sweeps the whole house and finds the lost coin.  In her great joy she runs to tell her friends so that they can rejoice with her.

And Jesus likens the joy of the shepherd who found the lost sheep and the joy of the woman who found the lost coin to the joy in heaven when a lost sinner repents—a joy that stands in stark contrast to the grumbling of the scribes and Pharisees.

Notice something important about these stories.  The shepherd owns the sheep.  The woman owns the coin.  The problem is that they were lost.  And just so with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the sinners in Israel.  They were part of the people of God.  They were his children—and brothers and sisters of the scribes and Pharisees.  They belonged to God.   but they were lost, and so he sent his son to seek them out, to find them, and to restore them.  The problem isn’t with the righteous—with the Jews who kept the law—although Jesus has things to say to them in other places and at other times.  No, they were faithful to those things that marked them out as God’s people: circumcision, sabbath, diet, and all those other things.  Unlike the “sinners”, they didn’t need to repent.  What they needed was a heart for their lost brothers and sisters.  Judgement was coming.  It was a judgement they’d been praying and longing for, but instead of longing to see their lost brothers and sisters repentant and restored, they seemed to be looking forward to their judgement.  They saw Jesus showing mercy to sinners and instead of rejoicing, they grumbled that Jesus wasn’t giving these folks their comeuppance.  And that revealed a problem on the part of the righteous.  They were doing everything right, but their hearts were, in at least this very important way, in the wrong place.  In Jesus the Lord was fulfilling his promises to his people, promises of forgiveness, restoration, and new life.  Think of Mary’s song, the one we call Magnificat, where she sings about the Messiah and glorifies God, know he was about to do what he promised: Bring down the strong and raise up the lowly, fill the hungry with good things and send the rich empty away.

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel.

         As he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed forever.

Sinners needed the mercy the Lord had brought through Jesus to take part in those fulfilled promises.  But the scribes and Pharisees and those like them also needed something if they were to participate in this new thing the Lord was doing.  They needed to recognise that mecy for what it was and rejoice.

And so this third parable in the series takes things a step further than the lost sheep and the lost coin.  It’s less abstract.  Now Jesus puts both the sinners with all their ugliness and the Pharisees with all their righteousness unmistakably into the story.

Jesus presents the younger brother as a truly despicable character.  He demands his share of the heritance from his father.  Now, a father could give his property to a son while he was still alive, but this didn’t mean the son could do whatever he pleased with it.  Ordinarily the son wouldn’t have the right to sell the property until his father died and until he died, the father would have the rights to everything the land produced.  But this brat demands more than that.  He wants money to go off on his own, so he’s not just demanding his father give him the right of possession, but the right of disposal so that he can sell the property and run off with the proceeds.  It’s wrong in all sorts of ways.  In selling the property, he’s depriving his father of the living that was rightly his.  The other thing that people today easily miss is the issue of this boy leaving his family.  We up and move across the country, leaving parents and family behind and we do it pretty regularly in our culture, but such a thing was virtually unheard of in Jesus’ world.  Family was everything and to abandon it this way was impiety.  Not only that, but to go to a far country meant leaving Israel to go and live amongst unclean gentiles.  I’m not sure we have an equivalent offense today other than for a child to abandon the covenant family of the Church.  So Jesus paints this boy in the worst possible light.  When Jesus says that the boy squandered his money and ended up feeding pigs just to have a place to sleep and that to eat he had to steal the pig food, as much as this would foster even more disgust for the boy, most people would have thought, “Serves him right!”  The pig sty is a metaphor for the boy’s reprobation.  He rejected his family, he rejected his people, he rejected his God, and he ends up in a place of abject ritual uncleanness in a foreign land.  He rejected God and now God has rejected him.

But then, having hit rock-bottom, this impious lout of a son decides to go back to his father.  Now, he knows that he has no rights.  He knows what he’s done and that his only chance is to beg.  And nothing will be the same.  The best he can hope for is to be a hired hand, not a son.  And so he rehearses his spiel all the way home.  But to his surprise, his father, having seen him from a distance, comes running down the road to him, sandals flapping and robe billowing out behind him.  What Jesus describes is a horribly undignified thing for a father in Israel.  But this father loved his lost son, in spite of everything he had done, and when he saw his repentant son at a distance, out of love, he ran to welcome him home.  He didn’t wait for his son to come to him, but threw propriety to the wind and ran to meet him.  Not only that, but he called for shoes and robe, put a ring on his finger—Jesus brings to mind the exaltation of Joseph in Egypt—and he calls for a feast to celebrate the return of his son.  To kill the fattened calf was a big deal in a society where animals were kept more for what they produced than for their meat.

At this point I expect the point of the parable was sinking in on the Pharisees as Jesus was digging deeper with each of his stories.  Sheep are stupid and if one gets lost, you can’t really blame the sheep for it.  Coins have no will of their own.  If the woman lost a coin, it was her own fault.  In those cases it was simply the rejoicing over what was lost that Jesus wanted to highlight.  Even the Pharisees rejoiced to find things they’d lost.  But in the third story Jesus gives them a not-so-subtle picture of Israel.  The father, like God, loves his sons and there were many sons and daughters in Israel who were “lost”—people like the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and other “sinners”.  Like the prodigal son, they had rejected their father and abandoned his covenant.  And while there were many in Israel who were faithful to the Lord and to his covenant and thought divine judgement was likely the best thing that could happened to such impious louts, the fact is that Israel belonged to God.  The lost were his sons and daughters as much as the scribes and Pharisees were.  The Lord had a claim on them all, those who knew their place and those who were lost.  And so, like the shepherd, like the old woman, and like the father, he rejoiced when what was lost to him was recovered.  I can’t help but think that Jesus must have had in mind, too, the great cost at which the Lord was recovering his lost people: humbling himself and taking on their flesh and soon to be giving his life in payment for their sins.  This is what the scribes and Pharisees needed to understand.

So Jesus continues.  This last bit that we often leave out when we tell the parable is where the point actually lies.  Jesus started out telling us that a man had two sons, but so far we’ve only heard anything about the younger.  Now Jesus gets to the older of the two.  He’s a good son.  While the father is welcoming home the prodigal, the older brother is hard at work in the fields—or what’s left of them after the younger son liquidated his share.  He asks one of the slaves what all the festivities are about and is told how his brother has returned and how their father has welcomed him.  Instead of rejoicing, he becomes angry.  He refuses to join the party.  Eventually his father comes out to him, not only welcoming him into the party as well, but even pleading with him when we refuses.  If the older brother had had any sense, it would have been natural for him to join the party in the first place and to rejoice over his brother, but something’s gone wrong with him.  Even as his father pleads with him—and here we see Jesus telling these stories to the scribes and Pharisees—even as he pleads with him, the elder brother only gets angrier—to the point where he finally rebukes his father.  “I’ve spent my whole life working for you!  I’ve worked like a slave!  I’ve been faithful!  I’ve done everything you ever asked of me!  And where was the celebration?  And now this no-good son of yours”—notice he won’t own him as his own brother—“this no-good son of yours, this impious lout who rejected you and our family and our God and spent what you worked so hard for on parties and prostitutes, he comes home and you throw a party for him?  What are you thinking, Dad?”

Now, I’m sure, the scribes and Pharisees clearly saw Jesus’ point.  Here they were, angry with him that he welcomed tax collectors and sinners—their wayward brothers whom they’d rather see under God’s judgement than restored to the household of Israel.  And to make it even clearer Jesus continues, telling them how the father responded: “My son, you’ve always been with me.  What is mine is yours.”  The scribes and Pharisees understood the covenant.  They understood duty and obedience.  They loved the Lord.  But now they needed to grasp what the Lord was doing through Jesus as he finally fulfilled his promises to his people.  “Celebrate and rejoice,” says the father to his faithful son, “because this brother of yours”—yes he’s your brother!—“he was dead, but is now alive.”  The words the father speaks recall an image that had been with Israel since the time of the prophets and one that was particularly meaningful to the Pharisees.  Think back to Ezekiel and to his vision of the valley of dry bones.  Those dry bones represented Israel.  She had forsaken the covenant and the Lord had disciplined her by sending her into exile.  But the Lord promised that one day his word would come and restore his wayward and faithless people to life.  What was dead would be made alive again.  And not just in some figurative sense.  One of the central doctrines of the Pharisees was the dearly held belief that one day the Lord would literally raise the dead of Israel to life in his presence.  One day he would set everything to rights, beginning with his people.

And by way of the parable, Jesus is now saying to the Pharisees that he’s the one who’s come to do it.  But he hasn’t just come to reward them with the life of the age to come, he’s come to offer that life even to the prodigals of Israel.  Prostitute and Pharisees, both are part of the people of God, both are the Lord’s children, both belong equally to him.  The Lord had rescued the ancestors of the prostitute from Egypt just as he’d rescued the ancestors of the Pharisees.  He desires life for the prostitute just as much as he does for the Pharisees.  That’s what they need to wrap their heads around, because if they don’t, despite all their faithfulness to the Lord, they will not have a place in the age to come if they aren’t willing to submit themselves to the Messiah.

You see, judgement was coming for Israel, but not quite like the Pharisees thought.  They thought that in the end, the Lord would recognise his people by their faithfulness to the law—to circumcision and sabbath and diet.  That meant the tax collectors and sinners were out.  But the fact was—and this is the point of Jesus’ parables—that when judgement came on Jerusalem and on Judah, what would mark out the people of God was not faithfulness to the law, but faithfulness to Jesus the Messiah.  Jesus had taken on Israel’s identity, he had picked up her failed mission, he died the death that she deserved, and when he rose from the grave and sent God’s Spirit, he formed a new family, a new covenant people not centred this time on law, but on himself.  As St. John wrote, “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13).  And, Brothers and Sisters, at the heart of Jesus’ ministry was mercy—and God the Father rejoiced in heaven to see that mercy at work amongst his people, and especially as what was lost to him was restored by it.

So the story doesn’t easily apply directly to us because we’re not Pharisees, but it does have something to say to us.  Brothers and Sisters, this is a story about the love, grace, and mercy of God.  Reading the parable in context reminds us of the faithfulness of God revealed in Jesus as he fulfils his promises to his people.  And it was that faithfulness, revealed in Jesus and proclaimed by those first Jewish believers, that brought the first gentiles into the Church.  And that, itself, was a fulfilment of the Lord’s promises.  This new people of God, this new Israel centred on faith in Jesus, brought the nations to the Lord, to the God of Israel, in awe, in reverence, and in faith.  That membership in this new family was based not on law but on faith in Jesus made it possible for the nations—for you and I—to become children of God and fellow heirs with the natural brothers and sisters of Jesus.  And this opens that category of “the lost” to encompass an entire world.  In the parable Jesus was talking about the lost of Israel, but through Jesus the sort of restoration that the Lord sought with the lost of Israel has been opened to all of humanity—to the sheep not of Israel’s fold.  You and I ought to see the lost of our own world, people created to bear the image of God, but lost to him because of their sin, you and I ought to see those people and desire for them the same mercy and restoration that God has shown to us through Jesus.  We ought not only to rejoice when we see that mercy at work, the joy of our own experience of God’s mercy ought to be sending us out to the lost.  But all too often we become blasé about what God has done for us.  We lose the joy we once found in our salvation.  Or, for those of us who have never known life apart from God’s covenantal mercy—like so many in Israel—we take his mercy for granted.  Brothers and Sisters, take time to think on what the Lord has done for us in Jesus and rejoice.  Make a point of it.  As you read scripture.  When you come to the Lord’s Table.  Make a point of it.  Rejoice at the mercy of God.

And, I think, if we do that, we will avoid the stance of the Pharisees who had forgotten the nature of God’s mercy, who chafed at Jesus offering the mercy of God to sinners while they worked so hard to be faithful.  We’re prone to something very similar.  We forget the mercy of God.  We forget his forgiveness.  We forget that as much as God is pleased with us when we are faithful and pleased with our good works, we too are only part of this family because of his mercy and his forgiveness.  And then we start looking at the lost, not as people to be found, but as people who deserve their comeuppance, who need God’s judgement rather than his mercy.  And, in that, we forget what the kingdom of God is all about.

Brothers and Sisters, think on the mercy of God and rejoice.  Come to his Table this morning and be reminded that he sent his Son at great cost to seek out the lost and to restore them to the fold.  Here we see the faithfulness of God, a witness that has now brought you and I who were not even of that flock.  A witness that has brought us in awe and wonder and in faith to Jesus the Messiah—a faith by which the Father has welcomed us, too, into the sheepfold.  Rejoice in the mercies of God and carry that rejoicing to the lost that they, like us, might see and know themselves the mercies of God at work in Jesus.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, we pray, to know your mercy and never to take your salvation for granted.  Make us faithful stewards of your mercies that we might rejoice as you do at the restoration of the lost; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 8:12-17

by William Klock

Our Epistle this morning continues the walk we’ve been taking through St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  We’re looking at Romans 8:12-17 today.  For several weeks the lectionary has had us skipping through this section of the epistle, hitting the high points of Paul’s argument as he talks about what it means to be rescued by Jesus from our bondage to sin and death and made alive to God.  Through these chapters of Romans Paul describes how we’ve been rescued by Jesus and he does this by putting our own rescue in the terms of Israel’s rescue form slavery in Egypt.  We picture the Israelites dancing and singing in praise of their God on the far shore of the Red Sea.  The Lord had rescued Israel and he hadn’t just rescued her, he’d rescued her in an amazing show of his power and authority as he parted the sea and then as he drowned the Egyptian army.  The people weren’t just dancing and singing because they were happy; they were praising the Lord and they were ready to serve him and to follow him out of gratitude for what he’d done for them.  And now Paul’s headed in the same direction with us.  That same God has rescued us from our slavery to sin and death and he’s done it by becoming, himself, one of us in Jesus.  He humbled himself, he suffered, he died, and he rose from the grave for our sake.  He’s freed us from our bondage and he’s given us new life—his own life.  But it’s even greater than that.  If God has rescued us from bondage as he did the Israelites, that means that just as he made and called Israel his children, so through Jesus he has adopted us as his own and made us his children.

But then Paul realises that he needs to stress another point before he goes on.  And so Paul stops and he switches gears for just a moment and he says in verse 12:

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

 

We are debtors, he says.  We’re all, you and I, in debt.  For most people that sounds like bad news.  Unless you’re a politician and can raise taxes or get your central bank to monetize your debt, debt is something that weighs heavily on people.  And, of course, once you’re in debt that debt often ends up dominating everything in your life.  And now Paul says that we are debtors.  That sounds bad, but he lifts at least some of the weight off right away.  We’re debtors, but not to the flesh—not if we are in Jesus.

Last week I talked a little about how our baptism into Jesus changes everything.  In our baptism we are regenerated.  That means that our ownership is transferred from death to life, from sin to God.  Our citizenship is transferred from the world to the kingdom of heaven.  Think of Israel in the Exodus.  They were slaves to Pharaoh.  The Lord led them to the sea.  They thought they were trapped between the sea and the army of Egypt, but then the Lord separated the waters and called them to pass through.  The parted sea embodied his promise of a new life.  They passed through in faith and they came out the other side a new people, no longer in bondage to Pharaoh, but belonging to the Lord.  And so with us.  In our baptism we step out in faith as we pass through the waters embodying God’s promise of life.  We renounce the old way of life.  We renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil.  That’s repentance.  We turned aside from and renounce everything that is not Jesus and in faith we pass through the water and put on Jesus.  We let go of every sin and every false source of security and we take hold of Jesus with both hands.  He is now our life.  We owe nothing to the flesh (or to the world or the devil, for that matter).  That’s not where our debt lies.  That old life never did anything for us.  Like Pharaoh holding the Israelites captive, it once held us, it ruled and controlled us, and all it did was give us death in return.  Again, we owe nothing to the old life of our unredeemed flesh.  That’s not where our debt lies.

And so Paul goes on saying:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

 

So here’s the reality.  Here’s why Paul assures us we are not in debt to the flesh.  We may be Christians, we may be in Jesus, we may be washed clean, but temptation is still here.  We’ve renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil, but they still call to us.  And that makes people doubt.  It makes people think that just maybe we are in debt to the flesh.  There’s a myth that many Christians easily believe that says that the moment you become a Christian all temptation and all your problems are supposed to instantly vanish.  But anyone who’s honest knows that doesn’t happen.  Sanctification—that’s the theological name for the process of being made holy—sanctification is a process—a life-long process—that happens as the Spirit transforms our hearts and minds, as we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures he’s caused to be written and learn and grow and are confronted by that word about our sins and called again and again to repent.  It’s a process that unfolds as the word and the Spirit send us out into the darkness of the world and give us opportunities to shine the light of Jesus.  It’s a process.  And this is why Paul tells us so many times and in so many places to put the old way of life to death.  He tells us that it’s been crucified with Jesus.  He tells us that it’s been buried with him in baptism.  Yes, the temptation is still there.  The world, the flesh, and the devil scream at us, they grab hold of us, they try to shackles us to themselves and drag us back into sin and that’s why Paul calls us to actively and to daily put that old life to death.  A few weeks ago we read how he tells us to consider or to reckon that in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus and in light of his gift of the Holy Spirit we are dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus.  It’s a fact.  It may not always feel that way, but it really does add up.  All we have to do is live it out in faith and rely on God’s grace and in doing that is the way of life.

In verses 14-15 Paul writes:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

 

Paul’s now leading us into the wilderness with Israel—he does this especially over the course of Romans 8—as he uses Old Testament imagery to describe the Christian life.  He reminds us that Israel was led by the Lord himself when she left Egypt.  Remember the cloud by day and the fire by night.  So the Spirit of God leads us.  And then Paul reminds us of Israel’s struggle in the wilderness.  Right from the start, at Mt. Sinai, as Moses was on the mountain receiving the law, the people forged and danced around a golden calf.  The people grumbled against Moses and grumbled against the Lord.  At first they grumbled because they had nothing to eat, so the Lord gave them manna.  Then they grumbled because they got tired of eating boring old manna.  They whined about how they missed the fleshpots of Egypt.  Even as they prepared to enter the promised land, they heard the report of the spies who were sent to scope thing out and they whined that there was no way they’d be able to take the land—they were all going to die.  The very people who had been delivered at the Red Sea, the very people for whom the Lord provided miraculous care for forty years in the wilderness repeatedly fell back into idolatry and rebellion and even grumbled about how much better they’d had it in Egypt.  But the Lord wouldn’t let go of Israel.  Why?  When the Lord spoke to Pharaoh through Moses he had said, “Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.”  Israel was the Lord’s son by adoption and nothing would stop the Lord from redeeming his son so that his son could worship him in the inheritance of the land he had promised.

St. Paul echoes all of this in Romans.  Israel was in the wilderness and constantly tempted to return to Egypt—to return to the very bondage from which the Lord had rescued her.  And here we are in our own wilderness.  Jesus doesn’t recue us and zap us straight to the New Jerusalem any more than the Lord zapped Israel straight to a depopulated promised land.  We continue to struggle against the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.  God led Israel, manifesting himself in the cloud and the fire.  He leads us too, having poured his Spirit into us in our baptism.  Think about that for a minute.  Imagine the awe the Israelites had for the cloud and the fire.  Where it moved they followed.  Where it stopped they stopped and set up the tabernacle—and then the cloud or the fire would descend to rest in the holy of holies.  Again, imagine the awe of that and then consider that we have something far more awesome—we have God the Holy Spirit in us!  And yet just like Israel, we somehow allow the miraculous presence of God with us and in us to become mundane and we give in to the temptation to grumble and to return to our bondage to sin.

Paul knows all this.  He wasn’t immune to temptation either.  And this is why he so adamantly tells us not to lose hope and not to stop fighting.  We weren’t given the spirit of slavery, he says.  That’s what we’ve been rescued from.  No, we’ve been given the Spirit of adoption.  As he made Israel his sons and daughters, the Lord through Jesus has made us his sons and daughters, he has taken our dead wood and grafted it into the living vine.  We’ve been made a part of that “family tree” called “Israel”.  We are his children and we can cry out to him just as Jesus did, “Abba! Father!”  He is as much our Father as he is Jesus’ Father and Paul stresses that he’s not a distant Father; he’s near, he loves us, he cares for us.  That’s the point of “Abba”.  It’s not that we should think of “Daddy God” as is sometimes said.  It’s that the God to whom we rightly fall on our knees in humble submission as we cry out, “Holy, holy, holy!” is not just the Father, but our Father just as he is Jesus’ Father.  We are his beloved sons and daughters.  And this is the first reality the Spirit drive home to us when he’s poured into us.  In Chapter 5 Paul writes about a love for God that the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts.  That’s what he’s talking about here.  In verse 16 Paul writes,

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…

 

Somehow and in some way our adoption by God in Jesus is confirmed by this witness that comes as the Holy Spirit being poured in and our now regenerated and renewed spirit connect.  When I read this I can’t help but think of the old days of using a modem to dial up to another computer or to the internet.  You’d hear the modem dial, the other modem would pick up and then you’d hear what sounded like static and pings and pongs back and forth as they negotiated a connection that they could both maintain.  The technical term for that was “hand-shaking”.  And when it was finished you were connected.  God’s Spirit and our spirit do something like that on a spiritual level and the end result of that “connection” is the assurance that we are children of God.  And, Paul goes on in verse 17:

…and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

 

Children receive an inheritance.  Israel was promised that her inheritance would be the land of Canaan, but there was a broader aspect to it too.  She was also called to be a blessing to the nations as part of that promised inheritance and we see this in Jesus.  As far back as Psalm 2 it was promised to the Messiah: “I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.”  But now Paul shows us what it means in Christian terms—what it means for those of us who are in Jesus.  It means that the whole earth, all of creation is the inheritance of Jesus and his people.  It means that when the end of the age finally comes, God will vindicate Jesus and his people, he will resurrect us all as he already has Jesus, and somehow our resurrection will be worked out in Creation itself as literally everything is made new and set free from the sickness, corruption, and death to which our sin has bound it.

This is what Paul means when he says that we will be glorified with Jesus.  We’ve talked about this before.  We often think of “glory” as a place: heaven when you die.  But glory isn’t so much a place as it is a state.  Jesus will come into his glory as he is given dominion over God’s renewed creation and we, his people, will be glorified with him as we human beings are restored to our rightful state—to the state for which God created us.  Remember Adam and Eve, created to be God’s stewards as they exercised dominion over his creation—caring for it, subduing it, and growing and expanding the garden until it filled the whole earth—maybe even somehow the whole cosmos.  That’s what it means to be God’s image-bearers.  And that is the task that Jesus has come—like a second Adam, Paul has said—to set Creation to rights and to get everything back on track.  This is our inheritance as God’s sons and daughters.

And this, finally, brings us back to Paul’s statement about our being debtors.  We’re not debtors to the flesh to fall back into that old way of bondage to the world, the flesh, and the devil.  No, we are debtors to the God who created us, who loves us, who loved us even when we rejected him, rebelled against him, and sinned against him.  We are debtors to the God who still, despite our ugliness, desired to reconcile us to himself by providing a means of forgiveness.  We are debtors to the God who humbled himself to take on our flesh and to die for us so that we can be reconciled to him and restored to our place as his children and the stewards of his creation.  This is love so deep and grace so wide that even in a lifetime we can never fully grasp its depth and its width, but it is our inheritance in Jesus and, Paul says, it puts us forever in God’s debt.  And as debt tends to dominate the life of the debtor, this debt ought to dominate our lives.  The good news is that this isn’t the crushing sort of debt we’re sadly so often accustomed to living with.  Instead, this is a debt of love and mercy and grace and freedom.  It’s a debt that moves us out of love in return for the love we’ve been shown to make that love manifest to all.  And, Brothers and Sisters, it’s an inheritance so great that we ought to be living in hope and anticipation, so excited that we can’t wait for that last great day when we see it in full, but that we spend each day as Jesus did making it manifest in whatever way we can today: preaching good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and looking forward to the day when the glory of the Lord fills the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Let us pray: Gracious Father, in Jesus you have redeemed us from sin and death and forgiven us our rebellion.  Teach us, we pray, the depth of your love and grace that we would be moved, loving you in return, to put to death sin and to live for righteousness so that the whole world will give you glory as they see your grace at work in us.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

Romans 6:19-23 & St. Mark 8:1-9

by William Klock

The Old Testament prophet Hosea called Israel back to the Lord.  The people had turned their backs on him, they were worshipping idols, and even offering their children as sacrifices on the altars of pagan gods.  Instead of trusting the Lord to take care of them as he had promised, they had thrown themselves into the game of geopolitics and had put their trust in horses and chariots and made alliances with their pagan neighbours—all things that the Lord had forbidden.  Through Hosea, God call his covenant people back to himself.  He did it by turning Hosea’s life into a series of living object lessons, the best known of which took place when God told Hosea to take a prostitute named Gomer for his wife.  Repeatedly Gomer left him, going back to her life of prostitution, and repeatedly and lovingly, Hosea sought her out, bought her out of her slavery, and brought her back to his home to be his wife.

People thought Hosea was crazy.  What kind of idiot would take a prostitute for his wife and keep buying her back out of that life as she was continually unfaithful to him?  But through the prophet the Lord eventually says to them, “I’m that ‘idiot’ and you’re the prostitute!  I brought you out of Egypt, I loved you and fed you in the wilderness, I conquered the Canaanites for you and gave you homes that you didn’t build and an abundant harvest that you didn’t plant, and yet you continually turn your back on me and play the harlot with false Gods and with the nations of the world.”  And having given them that dramatic object lessons, Hosea calls the people back to their God:

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the Lord; say to him, “Take away all iniquity; accept that which is good and we will pay with bulls the fruit of our lips. Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride on horses; and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands.  (Hosea 14:1-3)

Israel continued to struggle to be faithful to the Lord.  That’s why Jesus came.  Israel’s God, himself, taking on human flesh and being born of Mary.  He humbled himself, becoming one of his own people.  And as if that wasn’t enough, he was despised, rejected, and killed.  But in that, as the perfect Israelite, Jesus took on himself the death that Israel deserved.  He brought a means of forgiveness, a means of restoration, and in his resurrection he brought a means and a promise of life to people who were dead.  And each of us, though Gentiles, have been called into the redeemed life of Israel through Jesus.  Our God is a god who gives his life out of love for his people—the very people who reject and despise and rebel against him.

And yet even as Jesus’ people, given his life and his Spirit, how often are we like Hosea’s wife Gomer?  How often do we turn our backs on the Lord?  Consider our priorities in life.  All too often we put everything else first, and feel good about ourselves if we’re willing to give him an hour or two on Sunday morning and maybe a few minutes of prayer during the week.  Instead of devoting our time, our talents, and our treasures to the one who gave them to us, we squander them on the things of the world.  We profess with our mouths that Jesus is our Saviour and Lord, but we fail to put our trust in him and instead trust in the ways and systems of the world for our security.  Through the prophets the Lord condemned his people for their false view of worship.  They thought that they could live their lives however they wanted as long as they came to the temple to offer the Lord the sacrifices he required—even thinking they could worship other gods on the side.  Jesus paraphrased God’s response to that when he told the people, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”  True worship involves our whole selves given over to God for his use all of the time.

Think about the vow we took or that our parents took for us when we were baptized.  The priest asked: “Do you renounce the devil and all his works, the empty display and false values of the world, and the sinful desires of the flesh, so that you will not follow them and be led by them?”  In our Baptism we renounce the powers of the present evil age and we take hold of Jesus and the new age he has ushered in.  In our Baptism we are consecrated to the Lord.   But what does it mean to be consecrated to something or someone?  Notice that in our baptismal vows we don’t promise to renounce the world the flesh and the devil when it’s convenient or when it doesn’t cut into our own plans or our own enjoyment or sense of security.  In our vows we give ourselves over to the Lord entirely.  We put ourselves firmly in his kingdom and renounce everything that stands opposed to it.  Like the Israelites, we’ve been called by the Lord to a new life.  They were slaves to the Egyptians and he brought them to a new life of freedom.  We were slaves to sin and he does the same for us spiritually.  Look at Romans 6:19-22.  St. Paul says:

I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

   For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.   But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?  For the end of those things is death.  But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

 

When it came to conveying the depth of our total devotion, first to sin and then as redeemed men and women to Jesus, Paul chose to compare it to slavery. A slave is literally owned by his master and is expected to be totally devoted to him in body and soul.  For Paul, to serve Jesus was everything—it was his life.  Remember that a slave’s life belonged to his master, and so while the analogy isn’t perfect—the negative side of slavery isn’t what Paul has in view here—it illustrates the level of devotion that the Christian has to God.  He has bought us out of slavery with the blood of his Son, and we serve him; not out of fear or slavish obligation, but out of gratitude for what he has done for us.  There’s no way we can pay him back for his sacrifice, but we do the best we can and he gives us the Holy Spirit to enable us to do more than we can ever do on our own.

At one time each of us was a slave to sin.  That’s a point where all the negative connotations of slavery are appropriate.  Oddly enough, though, when we were slaves to sin most of us didn’t really see the negative side of it.  Read some 19th Century American history and you’ll read about slaves that ran away from their masters.  They didn’t want to live that miserable life.  But before Jesus found us, how many of us tried to run away from the master of sin?  We were slaves to sin and we enjoyed it.  Like the drug addict who is a slave to his drugs that get him high, all the time ignoring the harm the drugs do to his body and mind and the life of crime those drugs often lead him to, the sinner is slave to the momentary pleasures of sin, oblivious to or ignoring the deathly consequences of that sin.  In our natural and fallen state each of us is a slave to sin.  We have absolutely no desire to get away from it and no way to master its temptations if we did want to get away, and so we serve it body and soul.

By contrast, as redeemed men and women we are called to serve the Lord with the same level of commitment we used to have to sin.  We used to seek sin out.  We left no stone unturned in a search for pleasure and gratification.  Brothers and Sisters, we need to put at least the same amount of effort into serving Jesus that we used to put into serving sin.  Where our wills were once submitted to unrighteousness, we are now to submit them totally to righteousness.  That’s the total consecration that has its beginning in our baptismal vows.

And note that there’s no middle state and there’s no compromising. You can’t say you’re no longer a slave to sin and at the same time not be a slave to righteousness.  Just like a real slave, God bought us from our old master, sin, with the blood of Jesus, who has become our new master.  In a very real sense we’ve gone from one form of slavery to another.  It’s not uncommon to hear people refer to someone as a “carnal Christian”—someone who professes to have made Jesus his Saviour and Lord, but doesn’t really live out that faith.  St. Paul doesn’t leave any room for someone like that.  Either you’re a slave to sin and serve the world, the flesh, and the devil, or you’re a slave to Jesus, serving him with body and soul.  St. James reminds us that faith without works is a dead faith.  You can’t be a Christian, you can’t have experienced the amazing grace of God in your life, and at the same time not be wholly driven to serve Jesus with everything you’ve got!

Do you ever notice how non-Christians usually don’t want to have anything to do with Jesus?  I know a lot of people who take a big interest in God, but they don’t want to talk about Jesus unless it’s their own distorted version of him.  A distant and non-interfering God is okay, but a Saviour who comes into our lives and calls us to account makes people uncomfortable.  This is why churches that teach pop-psychology and self-help, that affirm people in their sin or in their spiritual immaturity, and that don’t hold their members accountable are often so popular.  Nobody likes to be convicted of sin.  We’d rather have a religion that makes us feel warm and fuzzy and comfortable.  St. Paul makes the point that the problem isn’t that man doesn’t want God—what we don’t want, he says, is Jesus.  We want God and the good things he has to offer, but on our own terms.  Jesus, however, reminds us that we are sinners and can only come to God on his terms—that we have to give up our sin and acknowledge his lordship.  Paul tells us that when we were ruled by sin, we didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus—he only convicted us of our sin.  Our redemption flips things: now that Jesus rules us, he must be our master and we should have no desire for sin.

St. Paul’s slavery analogy drives home the absoluteness of our duty under Jesus.  Some translations render the word as “servant.”  That misses the point of the absoluteness of what St. Paul is saying.  We are to have a total devotion.  Our love for our master changes our desire.  How much of a chore is it to sin?  In our natural state we love to sin.  Our desire to serve Jesus should be like that.  Serving him isn’t a chore, it’s a pleasure because we love him.

If we go on and look at verses 22 to 23, Paul shows us the contrast made between the wages of sin and the wages of Christ:

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:22-23)

Sin may give us pleasure today, but it only has one end.  The only place it ultimately takes anyone is death.  Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve living in the presence of the Lord, their Creator, and under the branches of the tree of life.  They were made of dust, the point being that they were mortal creatures.  But he brought those two mortal creatures into his presence and in the presence of the Lord is life.  In choosing to sin, in choosing to rebel against their creator, Adam and Eve chose to be outside his presence.  They chose mortality, they chose death over life.  Brother and Sisters, God is the source of life and each and every sin we commit widens the gulf that stands between him and us.  Each sin takes us further away from the life found only in God’s presence.

In contrast, in return for serving Jesus we are daily brought closer and closer to God’s life.  I think a lot of Christians sit around and passively wait for the life of eternity.  A lot of Christians look at the problems of the world around us and take an escapist attitude.  We want out.  “Come, Lord Jesus!”  And yet too often in just looking for escape, we miss out on the life that God gives us right now.  When we’re grafted into his vine we start bearing fruit—that’s his life manifested in us right now.  Sin has its own fruit, but it’s like a cancer that gradually kills the vine.  God, on the other hand, nourishes us and makes us grow.  That’s the sanctification that St. Paul writes about—it’s the journey we take as we travel the road to eternal life, each day getting closer and closer to God.

Paul also notes that God’s gift of eternal life is free.  It’s free because the life of the Christian isn’t the result of his own goodness—it’s in spite of his sinfulness.  Every one of us has earned the deathly wages of sin—it only takes one time, one sin.  Each of us deserves death, but life in God can never be deserved or earned.  It’s God’s gift.  And as we follow our new master we will find his sustaining grace will grow; our yoke will become easier, our burden will become lighter, our peace will become deeper, and our hope will become more and more assured.

Our Gospel lesson gives us the assurance we need as we put on Jesus’ yoke and carry the burden he’s given us.  In our lesson today we read St. Mark’s account of Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fishes for the crowd that had gathered to hear him preach.

Jesus expects us to follow him just like those people followed him into the country where there was nothing to eat.  He didn’t cut his sermon short thinking, “Hmm, some of these people came a long way and I’d better let them go early so they can go home to dinner.”  He preached for three days.  But all the time he understood what they’d given up to be there.  He said,

I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. (Mark 8:2-3)

Jesus demands our all, but in return he gives us all the grace we need to follow him.  When he calls us to seek him first, he knows what we’ve left behind to follow him.  He knows how far we’ve travelled to be with him and to sit at his feet.  As he cared for the Israelites in the wilderness, he will take care of us too.  The Gospels tell this story more than once, and each time they tell us how everyone ate until he was satisfied and that there were still plenty of leftovers.  God isn’t stingy with his blessings.  These accounts of his generosity ought to confirm our faith in him.

Brothers and sisters, God has promised this all along.  Go back to our Old Testament lesson from Hosea.  This is what he promises in verses 4-8:

I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon; his shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive, and his fragrance like Lebanon.  They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow; they shall flourish like the grain; they shall blossom like the vine; their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon. O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit. (Hosea 14:4-8)

It’s easy to be wholly devoted to Jesus and to stay away from sin when we’re surrounded by our brothers and sisters as we worship the Lord on Sunday morning.  But when we step out of the church door and into the world it’s not always easy to take that little pocket of the Kingdom of God with us.  God’s promise to us is that he will give us the grace necessary to follow him—and we know from what he’s done in the past that he’s never stingy with his grace.  Too often we foolishly go off into the world and try to “be good” on our own.  It doesn’t work that way, because without the Lord’s life sustaining us we have no life of our own.  We make the mistake of focusing on eternal life as a reward we’ll get after we die.  Our hope lies in the life of the age to come, but Brothers and Sisters, life is also God’s reward to the faithful every day, right here and right now in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus has pulled the life of the age to come into the present and he pours it into us in our Baptism.  All we have to do is take our collect for today and make it our daily prayer and our daily commitment:

“Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things, graft in our hearts the love of your Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and so by your mercy keep us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.”