Sermon delivered on Sunday, Trinity 11C, August 11, 2013 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you would like to hear the audio version of this sermon, usually somewhat different from the text, click here.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 1.1,10-20; Psalm 50.1-8, 22-23; Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16; Luke 12.32-40.

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

As I am inclined to do from time to time, I am going to try something a bit different with you this morning. You may or may not like it and if you don’t please tell me before you leave. The idea stems from last week’s sermon. From it, you recall we saw that living the Christian life is all about dying and rising with Jesus, about taking off our old sin-stained clothes and putting on new ones like Jesus’ (you do recall this, don’t you?). In other words it is about developing a real relationship with Jesus and learning to become like him in our thinking, speaking, and acting. We certainly have to use our minds in this endeavor but we also saw that Paul was adamant in insisting that we don’t do this on our own. We do this with the very help of Jesus in the power of the Spirit. Like any good relationship, our relationship with Jesus is never one way and we hamper our relationship with him when we think we are the ones doing all the work.

But we also must acknowledge that developing a living relationship with Jesus is a bit different from how we develop our other relationships. When we develop relationships with others, we can see them, talk to them, and hear them as they talk to us. We note body language and voice inflections. We can see people’s love for us in their eyes and how they act toward us. We don’t have the same dynamics with Jesus. Yes, we can certainly talk to him in prayer, but because he is currently hidden from us in heaven, we can’t see him or hear him audibly (although there have been some notable exceptions to this rule). And because we can’t enjoy Jesus’ physical presence with us, we have to learn how to listen for his voice if we are to ever grow to become like him in the power of the Spirit. There are many ways to do this but from the very beginning the Church has recognized that reading Scripture is one of the best ways to listen to our Lord so that we can learn to recognize Jesus’ voice and see his behaviors in others. This is why I constantly, um, encourage you to read Scripture on a regular basis and this is what I want us to look at this morning. How can we read Scripture in a way that will help us recognize the love of God for us expressed chiefly in and through Jesus Christ our Lord? To help us in this task I want us to look at passages from Scripture from the last three weeks to see what we can learn about God’s character as revealed in them.

But before we do this, we must first keep in mind Scripture’s meta-narrative, its Big Picture story of how God is rescuing us and his creation from the power of evil, sin, and death. In his book, Scripture and the Authority of God, Bishop Tom Wright has a good analogy that can help us better understand the Bible’s Big Picture of God’s rescue plan. Wright compares the overall narrative in Scripture to a five-act play: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus; and (5) the NT and people of God. Scripture tells us that God created his creation good and appointed his image-bearing humans to be wise stewards and rulers over it. But then human sin entered the picture and corrupted God’s good creation and intentions for us. Sin gave evil a foothold into God’s good creation and resulted in God’s curse, and with it came death. We find this story contained in Genesis 1.1-3.24 and these chapters constitute the first two acts of the biblical play. As you read these stories, read them for what they intend to tell us, not what they don’t tell us. In other words, don’t try to make the creation and Fall narratives into a science narrative or look to them to answer ultimate questions the text simply doesn’t answer, e.g., why was there a snake in the Garden of Eden in the first place? This isn’t why Genesis was written. Instead read the creation narratives as the story of how the Creator God called into existence things that were not (cf. Romans 4.17) because it pleased him to do so and fulfilled his creative purposes.

The rest of Scripture tells the story of how from all eternity, God in his wise providence has chosen to rescue us and the rest of his creation from the ever increasing ravages of evil, sin, and death, i.e., how God is reestablishing his good rule on earth as in heaven. God chose to rescue us primarily through human agency, which is itself a glorious testimony to God’s love and faithfulness to his human creatures. Specifically, as the writer of Hebrews reminds us in this morning’s epistle lesson, God called his people Israel into existence by establishing a covenant with Abraham to bring God’s healing love and rule to all the nations (cf. Genesis 12.1-3), and as Jesus reminds us in our gospel lesson, it pleases God to do so.

But from the beginning Israel was as much part of the problem as the solution and so God became one of us and lived as Jesus of Nazareth to be and do for Israel and the world what Israel could not even be and do for herself, let alone the world. We know that God rescued us from evil, sin, and death in Jesus’ own death and resurrection and then called both Jew and Gentile to be people of God’s Messiah Jesus, who are empowered by the Spirit to be the reconstituted Israel whom God uses to help bring in his kingdom on earth as in heaven. Of course the kingdom has not fully come yet, but in Jesus’ resurrection God has launched his promised new creation and so we as Jesus’ people live in the “already-not yet,” where we live by faith and await the promise of God’s new creation to be fully consummated when our Lord Jesus returns in great power and glory. We live by faith, in part, because we have seen God’s mighty acts on behalf of his people as recorded in Scripture, e.g., the Exodus. This part of the story comprises acts 3-5 of the biblical play where we are living out Act 5 with all its hope, promises, and ambiguities, precisely because we are living in the “already-not yet.” Again, as you read these parts of the play, try to resist taking potshots at God and calling into question why he has chosen to rescue us in this fashion. Sure there are things about God’s plan we don’t understand. But we would expect that, given we don’t have God’s knowledge or perspective.

With this Big Picture narrative in mind, we are now ready to look at some of our passages from the last three weeks to help us better read for the love of God contained in them. I’ve chosen excerpts from our last three OT lessons because we can see a pattern emerging in them.

What stands out to you in these passages? On one level these are hard passages to read because there is certainly God’s judgment on his people. But this is where understanding the Big Picture of Scripture is helpful because it reminds us that God called his people Israel to embody his healing love to the nations but that Israel steadfastly refused to obey God’s calling to be his people. Israel’s disobedience as God’s people is the reason for God’s judgment, not because God is some capricious and angry god who delights in punishing people.

But on another level there is also something else going on in these passages. Even in the midst of judgment, we see God’s love and compassion for his people. We see God speaking to his people as a jilted husband might speak to his wife after he catches her with another lover or as a heartbroken parent might speak to a stubborn and rebellious child as the parent watches the child head down the path of certain destruction by becoming involved with drugs or porn or other highly addictive and destructive things. Yes, there is anger. But there is also love, tenderheartedness, and a steadfast faithfulness in these passages, and we realize to our astonishment that nowhere does God cancel his covenant promises to Israel to be their God and for them to be his people. To be sure, God threatens to do so but he never does. Instead we see that promises of ultimate redemption always accompany promises of God’s judgment on his stubborn and rebellious people whenever they turn back to him in penitence and faith.

But we also wonder how this can be. How, for example, can God go from telling his people Israel they are not his people to calling them his children? How can their (and our) many sins that stain our lives and the lives of others be turned into something as pure and white as snow? These passages do not give us the answer but elsewhere the OT writers tell us that God will accomplish this through his Messiah and the new covenant he will make with his people (cf. 2 Samuel 7.4-16; Jeremiah 31.31-34). This, of course, points us to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and this is why from the very beginning the NT writers and first Christians saw Jesus in the OT. As they reflected on the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, they saw the fulfillment of God’s love and promises to his people in Jesus. This is also why we need to understand the Bible’s Big Picture so that we don’t fall into the error of seeing an “angry God” of vengeance in the OT and a “loving God” in the NT. God remains God throughout the entire biblical story and his character never changes. And as we think about our own unfaithfulness to God, we dare to hope that even when we are unfaithful, God will likewise be gracious to us when we repent, even as he is to Israel because we know God’s love for us is constant. This is especially true when we dare stand at the foot of the cross in faith and experience God’s love poured out for us so that we are reconciled to God and thereby healed.

And just as God called his people Israel through Abraham to bring his healing love to the nations, so God calls us as Jesus’ people to do likewise and we are equipped for this work precisely because we belong to Jesus who heals us of our sins and restores us as God’s children. This is also why there is such an emphasis in the NT on good moral conduct and imitating Jesus as his people. We are part of God’s reconstituted Israel and are given the power and presence of the Spirit to help us fulfill God’s call to us to be his kingdom builders. But we have to act accordingly and like the old ethnic Israel who chased after false and destructive gods, we cannot be God’s people if we worship our own idols that prevent and distract us from imitating the love of God embodied in Jesus. When we understand what God calls us to do and be as his people, we discover a wonderful consistency throughout the unfolding story of God’s rescue plan contained in Scripture.

I’ve only scratched the surface here. We could do the same exercise with the psalms and NT/gospel lessons. But I hope you have gained some insight into how to better read Scripture for the love of God. If you have, and if you are not doing so already, resolve this week to start reading Scripture in this manner. Remember the overall story of God’s rescue plan and then read both the OT and NT with this in mind, seeing how each story you read fits into the broader narrative of God’s rescue plan for his creatures and creation. Equally important, read Scripture to better learn about God’s wonderful and gracious character as revealed in Jesus. Dare to appropriate the promises that the writer of Hebrews talks about. Accept the love, mercy, and forgiveness of God that is contained in Scripture and make it your own. As you do, you will learn more and more about Jesus and his great love for you in the power of the Spirit so that it will change you and empower you to be his kingdom builder. And when that happens, you will surely know more fully what it means to have Good News, now and for all eternity.

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

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