Sermon delivered on Sunday, Trinity 7C, July 14, 2013 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: Amos 7.7-17; Psalm 82.1-8; Colossians 1.1-14; Luke 10.25-37.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, a lawyer challenges Jesus, asking him what one must do to inherit eternal life. This is a question that all of us are keenly interested in, especially as we grow older, and this is what I want us to explore briefly this morning. Before we look at how Jesus and the rest of our texts answer the lawyer’s question, let us be clear about what he was not asking. The lawyer was not asking if salvation by works is possible (it’s not as Scripture makes clear). Rather, the lawyer was asking Jesus how he could be sure that he would be part of the resurrection of the righteous when God’s kingdom finally comes in full on earth as in heaven. As God’s chosen people, this would have been a question many Jews of Jesus’ day asked and in today’s story it appears that the lawyer is testing Jesus to see if he could trap him.

The first thing we notice about Jesus’ answer is that he asks the lawyer what Scripture says, i.e., what the OT says. This alerts us to the fact that there are not two gospels in our Bible (one in the OT and another in the NT). There is just one and so we had best pay attention to the whole of Scripture, not just the parts of it we like. The lawyer responds correctly, citing what we rehearse every Sunday and call the Great Commandment. To inherit eternal life we must love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves. “Very good,” says Jesus. “Do this and you will live.” “So what’s the problem?” you ask. “Loving God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves sounds pretty straightforward. How are you going to get a sermon out of this, Fr. Maney?” Ye of little faith!

The problem, of course, is that we do not inherently love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. We are more inclined to love ourselves more than God and neighbor or to give our ultimate loyalty to all kinds of goofy causes and gods, and we get downright testy when we are confronted with a prophetic word from Scripture or from those whom God calls to be his spokespersons today. We see this clearly and painfully illustrated in our OT and psalm lessons. In our feel-good lesson from the prophet Amos, we see God’s prophet confronting the movers and shakers of Israel’s political and religious establishment. God’s people have misbehaved. They’ve not loved mercy, done justice, or walked humbly with their God (Micah 6.8). No, God’s people have run after other gods who are not real at all and who cannot give life the way the living God can and does. And as we already know, God is jealous for his people’s love and loyalty and wants them to be the people he called and created them to be, to bring his healing love to a sin-sick world. Of course they cannot do that when they worship other gods and follow their own broken and self-centered nature. So God sends his prophet Amos to call them on their waywardness and stubborn rebellion against God (if you want to know what the Bible means to have a hard heart, look no further than this story). God reminds his people that he has given them plenty of chances to turn from their evil ways and live like his people who will love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with their God. But they have refused and now their time is up. God’s judgment is coming and his people are going to reap the awful consequences of what they have sown. The places where idols are worshiped will be destroyed and so will Israel’s political and religious leaders. This is a chilling account of what will happen to anyone who decides they do not want to live as fully human beings and in accordance with God’s good will and intent for his human creatures, and we delude ourselves if we think it will be different for us as God’s people in Jesus if we choose to act likewise. More about that in a moment.

So what’s the answer? How do we inherit eternal life, a place in God’s new creation, when Jesus returns to usher in fully God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven and to consummate his victory over evil that God achieved in Jesus’ death? Paul has the answer for us in today’s epistle lesson. We inherit eternal life through God’s grace powerfully manifested in Jesus the Messiah. The Father has rescued us from the power of darkness–both our own and the dark powers’ and principalities’–and transferred us into the kingdom of his risen Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. As Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, on the cross, God condemned our sin in the flesh by taking on his own just punishment so that we would be spared it. We don’t like talking much about God’s holy wrath these days, preferring instead to turn God into a doting old grandpa who really doesn’t care what the children do because, well, God is just old and it will all turn out well in the end anyway. But that is not the holy and just God of the Bible, either in the OT or NT, and when we realize what a costly and wonderful gift God has given us in Jesus to make it possible for us to have real life, it cannot help but change us and soften our hard hearts. Not only has God rescued us from the exile of our sin by becoming human and dying for us, God raised Jesus from the dead to vindicate him and to usher in his promised new creation. And until the new creation comes in full, God also gives us his Spirit to live in us as a guarantee that his promises are true. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, then we are still dead in our sins and our faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15.12-19). So we inherit eternal life in Jesus, who is the resurrection and the life. As Paul states boldly to the Romans, if we confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved (Romans 10.9).

“But, but” you protest, “that is not what Jesus says in our gospel lesson. He’s talking about doing things. And what about Paul in our epistle lesson? He seems to be focusing a lot on what we do, not what we believe. So how are we saved, by faith in Jesus or through our works?” You sure are asking a lot of good questions this morning, which means you must have eaten your Wheaties! The answer of course is both because faith and works are essentially two sides of the same coin. Our faith in Jesus must always translate into action, into what we do. Otherwise it is a dead and worthless faith, nothing more than an intellectual assent, which may or may not be able to command our allegiance and loyalty (cf. James 2.14-26). You know how it works. We say Jesus is Lord and then go about the business of life making it all about ourselves with little regard for the needs and welfare of others. We’ve all known so-called Christians like this and we all know what a farce their “faith” is. They are Christian in name only and as both Jesus and Paul make clear, that simply won’t pass muster (cf. Matthew 7.21-23; 2 Corinthians 5.10).

But when we realize what a massive and undeserved gift of life we have been given in Jesus, it makes us ripe for the Spirit to work in us to fundamentally change us into people who are empowered to overcome our selfish and disordered nature and desires so that we can truly love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. Paul tells the Colossians essentially the same thing when he talks about their faith in Jesus and the love they have for all the saints (all Jesus’ people) being a result of the hope they have kept for them in heaven. (This, BTW, doesn’t mean that our hope is that we will get to go to heaven when we die but rather that Jesus and the promise of new creation with our resurrection bodies are being kept for us in God’s space, in heaven. To put it another way, if I say to you when you come to my house, I have a beer waiting for you in the refrigerator, I don’t expect you to get into the refrigerator to drink the beer. I’m just keeping it there for you until the time is right to drink it. Just so with our resurrection bodies and the hope of new creation.)

Returning now to our gospel lesson, when the lawyer tries to justify himself by asking Jesus who is the lawyer’s neighbor, Luke is telling us that the lawyer’s worldview is still disordered for someone who desires eternal life because he clearly has in mind that only fellow Jews constitute his neighbors. This, of course, fails to take into account God’s call to Israel to be the light of the world and to embody God’s love for all people, a call that Israel failed to appropriate, which made it necessary for God to come to them in the person of Jesus to be for Israel what she could not be for herself. But Jesus would have none of the lawyer’s misguided thinking and he proceeded to tell the well-beloved parable of the good Samaritan. In telling it, Jesus reminded the lawyer that kingdom living in this fallen world of God’s is about seeing human need and reaching out in compassionate love to address it as best we can. The priest and Levite in the parable represented the religious establishment of Israel. They were the good and proper church people. And they failed to act when they had it in their power to do so. Notice that Jesus does not ascribe motive to either man. Sure they risked ceremonial defilement. But whatever their motive was, they failed to act and this is not consistent with kingdom living. Our ability to love God with our whole being is inextricably linked with how we treat our neighbor and as Jesus reminded the lawyer in a shocking and powerful way, our neighborhood must have no ethnic boundaries or other boundaries of any kind. Being a good neighbor means that we respond compassionately to real human need whenever we see it and are able to do something about it.

And lest we think this command applies just to the Jews of Jesus’ day, we need to think again because the same desire to restrict who lives in our neighborhood is alive and well today. This past week, for example, our governor spoke out against an attitude toward the poor that seeks to dismiss them as being inherently lazy. It’s their own fault, you know, and therefore they don’t deserve our help. The lawyer in today’s lesson would have been proud of this kind of thinking. But that is not God’s call to us as his people. That is not what kingdom living is all about. We live in a fallen world and are called as Jesus’ people to bring his healing love to others, and we must do that in ways that address all kinds of needs: physical as well as spiritual and emotional. This, after all, is how we will act in the new creation and if we are not prepared to love God and each other in this way, why would we even want to inherit eternal life? Think about it. How often do we hear people grumble about living under the rule of a particular leader they oppose. It’s no fun for them and they want new leadership. So why would we expect it to be any different living under God’s rule? Sadly, those who are inherently hostile to God will find no joy or happiness in living under his rule. But those who truly do love God and act like it will revel in the hope of one day living directly in God’s Presence forever in our new resurrection bodies, living in ways that reflect their love of God and neighbor in the new creation, whatever that looks like.

So this week, I want us to focus on looking at who is in our neighborhood and how to respond appropriately. This isn’t always easy because we’d naturally rather be doing things we enjoy. After all, who wants to visit a sick person in the hospital or nursing home? They are depressing places with lots of cooties that might make us sick as well. And who wants to be reminded about growing old with all its problems? We’ve got better things to do with our time and efforts. Or who wants to take a Saturday morning and go down to feed the hungry when that’s our day off and we would rather be golfing or sleeping in? You get the point. Loving neighbor according to Jesus’ definition of who’s our neighbor is not an easy thing to do. But God isn’t concerned about how easy things are for us. He’s jealous for our love and wants us to embody his love for others in the power of the Spirit, just like the saints of St. Augustine’s do overall. Of course there’s always room for improvement because God keeps expanding our neighborhood. Focus on that this week and of course take some time in prayer and Bible study to remind yourself of God’s great gift to you as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As you do, you will surely find any healing you need and discover that more often than not, you are finding joy rather than burden in loving your neighbor as yourself. This is a clear sign that you have inherited eternal life because you have a real and living faith in Jesus Christ your Lord in the power of the Spirit, which of course means that you have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

As I have said countless times, why would others believe our story when many Christians themselves sadly don’t? This study also suggests why it is critically important for Christian groups to have a vital presence on the Internet, but of course only if we really believe our story! It really is time for Christians to be bold for the gospel and that can’t happen unless we know what the gospel is and really believe it to be true.

The study found that ages 14-17 were the decisive years for those who “embraced unbelief.” While many atheists were able to argue their position from what they considered to be “exclusively rational reasons,” at the same time the decision to abandon belief for many arose from a “deeply emotional” experience such as childhood abuse.

Young atheists [also] said that the internet factored heavily into their abandonment of the faith, mentioning videos they had watched on YouTube or website forums they had visited.

Taunton said that the study left a “lasting impression” on his ministry. “These students were, above all else, idealists who longed for authenticity, and having failed to find it in their churches, they settled for a non-belief that, while less grand in its promises, felt more genuine and attainable.” [Emphasis mine]

Read it all.

I am spent, O my Christ, breath of my life. Perpetual stress and surge, in league together, make long, O long, this life, this business of living. Grappling with foes within and foes without, my soul has lost its beauty, blurred your image. Did ever oak such buffeting from winds or ship receive from waves as I do now? Labor to labor, task succeeds to task…Friendship has bowed and illness wasted me…Do not forsake me, my Strength, I beseech you. When the storms beat hard I may have betrayed you, but let me return to you now.

–Gregory of Nazianzus

Gregory of Nazianzus was one of eight great Doctors of the ancient Church at a time in her history that was quite tumultuous (4th century). His prayer above reflects this reality. I share it with you as a follow-up to yesterday’s sermon because it represents powerfully the idea that relying on the power and authority of God does not make us immune from the troubles of life.

Note the almost desperate tone of the prayer. Things are arrayed against Gregory and he knows what it is like to suffer and meet defeat. His work is arduous. There appears to be little reward from it and in it. In fact, he has made enemies by remaining faithful to Jesus. As a result he is assailed with doubts and fears about his life and his relationship with God to the point that makes him sick–literally.

But even within his cry for help (pay attention to that very dynamic), Gregory reaches out to God because he knows that bad is it seems to him, life would be utterly hopeless without God. And in doing so, even in a prayer of desperation, he taps into a power that is not his own to help him live faithfully and continue is work on behalf of the Lord.

This prayer resonates with me because it is so real and reflects what so many who call themselves Christians feel on occasion. Saying that we rely on God does not mean we put on a happy face all the time. It means rather that we acknowledge our powerlessness to deal with all the hurt and evil that exist in God’s good but fallen creation and seek the One who has the power to help us not only persevere but to transcend so that we are more than conquerors through Jesus who loved us (Romans 8.37), conquerors as God defines it, not as the world does. May you know in your daily life this God of love and power who is made known to us in Jesus the Messiah.

I close with an excerpt from Carlos Carretto, a Catholic spiritual writer and one of my favorite authors. His words about the Church are spot on and provide another illustration of what I spoke about yesterday when I observed that the way we think, speak, and behave, especially when dealing with others in our respective congregations, can provide a powerful witness to the risen Presence of Jesus and his power and authority in the world. Every time we love one another instead of selfishly loving ourselves first, we help bring in the kingdom on earth as in heaven.

An assembly where people do not love each other, where they accuse each other, where there is rancor or hatred, cannot call itself prophetic [the very mission of St. Augustine’s Anglican].

A person who keeps silent about the truth, who hides the light, is not a prophet [the spokesperson for and embodiment of God’s presence in and for his world].

A people which kills, which deteriorates the quality of life, which suffocates the poor, which is not free, is not a prophetic people.

That is why it is not enough for just any assembly to call itself Church.

A group of young people which meets for sports or outings with the “do everything” blessing of the up-to-date parish, another group which meets to camouflage some political position cannot be called Church, even if the sports are refereed by a famous devout layman and the social ideas are worked out by a priest.

To call itself Church, an assembly must mirror the first assembly that met in the Upper Room with Christ. an assembly of prayer and prophecy.

But it is not easy to prophesy; it is terribly costly. It has to be drawn from the silence of God, and there is need to swim against the stream, need to pray at length, need to be without fear.

–From The God Who Comes

Sermon delivered on Trinity 6C, July 7, 2013, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: 2 Kings 5.1-14; Psalm 30.1-12; Galatians 6.1-16; Luke 10.1-11, 16-20.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In our texts this morning we are given glimpses about what it is like to live (and not live) under God’s power and authority, and I want us to look at what those glimpses can teach us as Christians who strive to live under the authority of the Lord Jesus and in the power of the Spirit. I want to do this by using our OT/gospel lessons as case studies and then drawing on what Paul and the psalmist have to say.

As we look at whose power and authority are being utilized in our OT lesson, we have a study of contrasts as evidenced by the behavior of the various characters involved. On the one hand we see Naaman, the Syrian commander, who has all the trappings of success by worldly standards and who is the epitome of worldly power, walking away in a rage after being told by Elisha to go dip himself in the Jordan River seven times so that Naaman’s leprosy will be healed. How dare this upstart little prophet refuse to heal him in some spectacular fashion! What an insult to a man of Naaman’s power and authority! Doesn’t Elisha know that Naaman has the power to crush him like a bug? What is Elisha thinking? Welcome to the world of trying to live under your own power and authority. Sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to, no matter how powerful and important you are, because, well, we are only human and cannot control everything that goes on in our lives, much as we try. Naaman would eventually be healed, but on God’s terms, not his.

Likewise, we see Joram, the unnamed king of Israel, who demonstrates, at least in this instance, that he too does not know what it is like to live under God’s authority and power. He sees the Syrian king’s overtures to him as a pretext for war and because Joram’s armies don’t match up with Ben-Hadad’s (the Syrian king), Joram gets more than a little nervous. After all, when you are trying to live under your own power and authority, whether you are a king or a commoner, all that really matters is who has the biggest stick because it is every person for him/herself and in this instance it wasn’t Joram who carried the biggest stick.

We can relate to the anger seen here—and the underlying anxiety that often accompanies it—because we too know what it it is like to be faced with no-win situations or have our earnest and heartfelt prayers apparently go unanswered. When either happen, especially with unanswered prayer, we wonder where God is in it all and whether he really cares about us. This tempts us to want to take matters into our own hands, but like Joram discovered, we quickly find out how futile that strategy is because our own power and authority are vastly limited and overstated. As Jesus reminded his followers, who among us can add a single hour to our life by worry (Matthew 6.27ff)? But we sure do try!

On the other hand we see how both the unnamed slave girl who was taken captive by the Syrians and the prophet Elisha behave, and we quickly see a stark contrast because they demonstrate that they are living under a very different power and authority—God’s power and authority. We notice how unperturbed they are about the whole thing. The slave girl simply tells her mistress that there is a prophet in Samaria (Israel) who can cure Naaman of his leprosy. No big deal. Just go do it. We notice the same peace about Elisha. Unlike his king, Elisha doesn’t get all hot and bothered by Naaman’s visit or the potentially volatile geopolitical ramifications involved. In fact, Elisha doesn’t even bother to meet this Syrian big shot face-to-face! He simply tells Naaman via a messenger to go, um, dip himself in the Jordan River seven times and he will be healed.

So what’s the difference? Why did Naaman and Joram get all whacked out over the chain of events as they unfolded while Elisha and the slave girl who suggested that Naaman visit “a prophet in Samaria” did not? The answer, of course, is that the latter two lived under the power and authority of God. They knew the living God, the God of Israel, and they knew God’s track record. In Elisha’s case, he had seen God act through his mentor Elijah and had witnessed many acts of power. There was no doubt in their mind that God is a God who is actively involved in his good but fallen world and who has the power and willingness to work for the good of his people. Do you believe this about God?

It is important for us to note that this faith in God’s power and authority did not make either Elisha or the slave girl immune from hurts and heartaches that are part and parcel of living in a fallen world. After all, the girl was a slave, captured as a result of warfare, and Elisha knew his fair share of problems as well (see, e.g., 2 Kings 6.24-32). But what was different about these two is that they both believed that God was greater than the evil that sometimes afflicted them and they acted accordingly because they really did know that in the end, the Good Guy wins and in the interim is actively involved for the benefit of his people.

We see this same dynamic of trust and faith in our gospel lesson this morning. There are several points of interest in this story that we could talk about, including the sense of urgency in which Jesus sent out the 70 (72?) disciples and the life and death stakes apparently involved in proclaiming God’s kingdom to people. But for our purposes, we note that Jesus told his disciples to expect both good and evil as they proclaimed the kingdom and above all to depend on God to provide for and protect them. After all, wolves eat lambs and if there is not a power greater than their own, it would be absolutely foolish for the 70 to embark on this missionary work.

The disciples apparently were obedient to Jesus’ commands because Luke reports that when they returned they were overjoyed at their unexpected success. But it is important for us to note that they attributed their success to Jesus’ power and authority, not their own, and anyone who has acted on behalf of Jesus and under his authority will know exactly how they felt. Again, this is not to suggest that the disciples did not encounter difficulties and opposition. It is to suggest that they were able to tap into a power far greater than their own to protect them as they proclaimed the Good News of the coming of the kingdom in Jesus’ name.

But Jesus did not want his newly enthused disciples to focus on power. Yes, he said, they (and we) have power and authority—his power and authority—to defeat the forces of creation arrayed against them (the snakes and scorpions and the forces they represent) as well as the very powers and principalities themselves that are opposed to Jesus and the coming of God’s kingdom. But what is even more important for the 70 and those of us who follow him is to know that God knows us and that nothing can ever really harm us (cf. Romans 8.31-39), i.e., their names (and ours) are written in God’s book of life contained in heaven. Persecution may come, suffering will surely come, and certainly death will come, whether by persecution or otherwise. But none of that matters when we give our life to Jesus and act in the power of the Spirit to proclaim that the kingdom of God is near. Doing so is evidence that we have a life-giving relationship with the Lord of this universe, or what the NT frequently refers to as “eternal life,” and of course that life is available to us right now because we are called to have a living relationship with God through Christ right now (cf. John 17.3).

All this points to the secret for living a relatively anxiety-free life as Christians, even as we live in an increasingly hostile culture. The extent to which we can put our trust in and live our life under Jesus’ power and authority rather than our own is the extent to which we will be able to enjoy the peace and confidence that Elisha, the slave girl, and Jesus’ returning disciples did, not to mention countless others across time and culture. As Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson, the reason for this peace is that we believe that in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has both taken care of the intractable problem of human sin and the alienation and death it causes, and defeated the powers of evil decisively, although that victory has not yet been fully consummated. And as we see in our gospel lesson, when we act as if Jesus is Lord, he will use us to bring his healing love to his broken and hurting world and its people, and in doing so we have the power and authority to overcome even the forces of evil and their boss. That’s what Jesus was talking about when he reported seeing Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. Think about that for a minute. Real forgiveness for our sins and power over evil and all that corrupts. This is power we cannot have on our own and it is literally a game-changer. This doesn’t mean things will automatically go swimmingly well for us or that we will not face great opposition or have to endure terrible suffering for Jesus’ sake. A quick look at Paul’s life will remind us otherwise. What it does mean is that we have the power of Jesus to help us overcome and transcend the world and the evil in it and that in doing so, we will enjoy God’s love and protection from all that can truly hurt us.

So what does that look like on the ground? Our lessons suggest that telling folks about Jesus and the kingdom is critically important for their sake as well as ours. But I want to focus on what Paul says to the Galatians, about how we treat each other as part of Jesus’ body, the Church, when the other sins and what kind of attitude we have toward others. If we truly love each other enough to confront each other when we see the other going down a dark path, if we truly love each other enough to bear one another’s burdens instead of devouring or destroying each other, this will catch people’s attention, usually in a good way, and we will be announcing that the kingdom has come. My point is that we can witness very powerfully to the world without ever saying a word (at least initially) by how we treat each other in the power of the Spirit. Every time we resist being haughty or refrain from backbiting and gossiping and other destructive forms of interpersonal behavior, we are sending a powerful message to the world and the dark powers behind them that Jesus is Lord and they are not.

But the problem, of course, is that we aren’t built that way instinctively or emotionally to bear each others burdens. We are naturally proud and self-centered creatures. As the psalmist reminds us, when things are going well for us, we tend to become delusional and attribute our success to us and our abilities. Of course that is not the case and as the psalmist further reminds us, it often takes an awful turn of events in life to bring us back to reality. That is why humility is always the order of the day for anyone who calls themselves a Christian because like Naaman and Joram, we must learn and acknowledge that we do not have the power or authority to cope with all that is wrong in God’s world, including our own sin and brokenness. We must instead rely on the God of grace and life who calls into existence things that are not, who gives life to the dead, who heals and restores us, and who lives in and among us in the person of the Holy Spirit. When we do, of course, God gives us the power to develop the needed humility to change how we see ourselves and how we treat others who, like us, are made in God’s image and who are therefore worthy of our love and respect. In other words, God gives us the power to develop the needed humility to act in Jesus’ power and under his authority.

Are you living that kind of Spirit-filled life and the peace that usually accompanies it? Are you helping others here to bear their burdens? Do you care enough about others that you are willing to confront them lovingly when you see them sin? Do you have the humility to allow others to do likewise to you? If you are enjoying these gifts, then give thanks to God for them and by all means keep using them! If you are not, ask the Lord of life to give you these gifts and the needed sweat equity to implement them, and then expect your prayers to be answered. After all, the kingdom is at stake and we are called to be builders of it for the Jesus’ sake and the sake of the world!

In closing, here’s a quick test to help you determine whose power and authority you are living under. When things go south, at the end of the day do you say Jesus is Lord? I’m not talking about uttering a trite cliche. I’m talking about making a statement based on a real relationship with the living Lord and the firm knowledge that God has the ability and willingness to act on our behalf for the good of his world and coming kingdom. This knowledge isn’t wishful thinking but rather is based on God’s track record as revealed in Scripture, in your own life, and in the lives of God’s people. If you cannot say that Jesus is Lord when things look hopeless, it suggests that you have decided (knowingly or not) to limp through life on your own power and authority and without much hope. But if you can say Jesus is Lord and really mean it, you will surely know that you have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.