Jesus: The Great Divider

Sermon delivered on Sunday, Trinity 12C, August 18, 2013, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

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

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 5.1-7; Psalm 80.1-2, 9-20; Hebrews 11.29-12.2; Luke 12.49-56.

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

If you have ever wondered what the modus operandi of a prophet looks like, you need to look no further than today’s OT lesson. In it we see God’s prophet taking God’s people to task for not being the people God called them to be, in this case to be doers of justice (cf. Micah 6.8). How are we to read texts like these? More importantly, how are we to read texts like these and not fall into utter despair and hopelessness? After all, are we as God’s people in Jesus the Messiah any less broken than God’s people in ancient Israel were? It is these questions I want us to look at briefly this morning to see what kind of answer we can glean from our texts. But first some review. 🙂 

You recall that last week I talked about the overall story of the Bible being a five-act play, vis-a-vis Bishop Wright’s model, and we can locate our OT lesson as being in Act 3 (Israel). I also encouraged you to look for grace notes in the midst of judgment oracles and in today’s lesson we have to look carefully for a grace note because it’s not easy to spot at first blush. We see God’s prophet Isaiah use some trickeration on God’s people Israel (Judah). Isaiah plays the part of a wandering troubadour and as he enters Jerusalem, he announces he is going to sing a love song to God’s people. We can imagine the people eagerly gathering around Isaiah to hear him sing of God’s love for them. The song starts off well enough. He tells the people about a vineyard—a well-known metaphor for God’s bride, Israel—and how God has called her into existence and tenderly cared for her over the years even though by definition a vineyard would not be able to ask for such treatment or deserve it, other than to be the beneficiary of the caretaker’s kindness and loving care (there’s the grace note; did you catch it?). So far so good.

But then Isaiah begins to speak about the caretaker’s expectations for his vineyard, i.e., for his people Israel, and here is where things start to go south. Isaiah asks why, in light of the TLC the caretaker has showered on his bride (vineyard), is it not reasonable for the caretaker to expect his vineyard to produce good fruit? Instead, however, the vineyard is only producing wild grapes—bad fruit. Isaiah’s audience would surely have understood that he was talking to them about being the people God called them to be but that clearly they were failing to live up to that calling. And if there was any doubt in their minds, Isaiah begins to speak directly to the people to confirm their suspicions. Was God to blame for their failure to respond to his call to them to bring his healing love and justice to the nations? After all, hadn’t God done all he could to care for and nurture his people? But they had not produced the fruits of their calling and now there would be terrible judgment on them and they had no one to blame but themselves.

So why the trickeration on Isaiah’s part? Isn’t it a bit unsporting of God to have his spokesman use this kind of strategy to deliver his message? Not at all, especially when we consider how none of us likes to hear hard truth about ourselves. Think of how the prophet Nathan confronted David about his adultery. Nathan told David a parable about a rich man and poor shepherd, which at once aroused David’s anger and condemnation. Only then did Nathan confront him with the awful truth that David was the man. Likewise with Isaiah here. The people of Judah were not ready to hear the hard truth about themselves, that they had failed to be the people God called them to be. We see evidence of this in our psalm lesson. Writing on behalf of his people, the psalmist asks God why God has allowed foreigners to overrun his people and Promised Land. We can sense a bit of “What? You’re mad at little ole me, God? Pshaw. What have I done?” And so Isaiah had to invite his audience to sit in judgment of a third party before he could tell them about God’s hard truth and impending judgment on them. God called them to do justice, to take care of the oppressed. But instead all God saw was the rich murdering the poor for material gain and heard the agonized cry of the oppressed as they cried out to God.

If you want to understand the prophetic view of justice, here it is. It isn’t Lady Justice blindfolded, holding balanced scales. Justice in God’s view is about action, about advocating for the powerless whenever and wherever we reasonably can, just the way Jesus exhorted us to do when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. And as we think about God’s stern warning of judgment on his people, we cannot help but wonder how it will go for us. After all, do we advocate consistently (or at all) for the powerless in our speech and actions? Do we love to be merciful all the time? Are we always walking humbly with our God? The answer, of course, is no. And so we must ask ourselves if we too must face God’s righteous judgment on us.

Well, yes we do have face that judgment unless something radically changes. We are too profoundly broken and self-centered to heal ourselves. But just when we are tempted to cry out in hopeless despair over our situation, we hear God speaking a further word to us, a word of hope and good news. The very love of God that grieved over his stubborn and rebellious people is so faithful and strong that it dared to become embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, to bear the baptism of fire, a symbol of God’s judgment on us, so that we do not have to bear it ourselves, and so be healed and reconciled to God, thanks be to God! And as the writer of Hebrews hints at in our epistle lesson, in Jesus’ resurrection we are given a glimpse of the world to come, of God’s new creation in which God will finally put all things to rights and heal all of our wounds, banishing evil from his good creation forever. This is the new Promised Land we are to inherit as Jesus’ people and it God’s free gift to us in Jesus, accepted through faith. More about that anon.

But being Jesus’ people comes at a cost. I am not talking about the gifts of mercy, forgiveness, and eternal life because they are freely given. But accepting God’s gifts to us by faith requires that we come and die as Bonhoeffer put it. Like ancient Israel, we are called as Jesus’ followers to work to bring about God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven by bringing God’s healing love to all people without exception. To do this requires that we put to death our sinful nature with the help of the Spirit so that we are equipped to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. It means we embody kingdom values in a world that is increasingly hostile to those values. Whether it be in the area of economic or social justice or sexual ethics or how to treat each other as part of Christ’s body, the Church, Jesus calls us to embody the love and values of Scripture, the values that he himself embodied. Moreover, as Jesus makes clear elsewhere, he expects us to be his followers in deed, not simply word (cf. Matthew 7.15-27; Luke 13.23-30).

And this is where it can get really costly because as our Lord reminds us in our gospel lesson, when we choose to follow him and adjust our lifestyle, values, and thinking accordingly to align them with God’s good will and intentions for us as his image-bearing creatures, we are going to meet opposition and sometimes outright persecution. Sadly, not everyone will accept Jesus’ offer of new life. Not everyone will embrace life as God intends for us to live it and when that happens there will be division and conflict, even among families and even among churches! But we are to take heart and hope when we suffer for our Lord because Jesus himself tells us he was willing and eager to suffer for us so that we could be reconciled to God and become citizens of God’s promised new creation. Evil remains alive and well right now and that often puzzles and perplexes us. But it is the consistent testimony of the NT writers and countless Christians over time and culture, that in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has overcome the evil of this world and launched his promised new creation. However, because God’s new world is only partially established and not yet fully consummated, this takes faith on our part.

Faith, as we read in last week’s epistle lesson is, “The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11.1). This means, of course, that faith is much more than wishful thinking. It means we have to use our brains and find examples of the things hoped for, i.e., God’s in-breaking kingdom on earth as in heaven under Jesus’ rule (the new creation), so that we can have confidence in the veracity of our faith and act accordingly. Put another way, if we are not convinced that we have been reconciled to God through Jesus’ death on the cross, if we are not convinced that in Jesus’ resurrection we have seen the first-fruits of God’s promise to abolish evil and death, we would be out of our minds to act as Jesus calls us to act. If we do not believe in the promise of new creation, then why would we continue to kick against the pricks and act in ways that engender the world’s opposition and hatred? If this world is all that there is, we’d better get with the program and do as the world does, baby! Otherwise, time’s a-wasting and we are simply playing the fool.

But like Moses who had the faithful audacity (stupidity?) to lead his people out of Egypt against all odds or like Daniel who had the faithful audacity (stupidity?) to remain faithful to his God, even in exile, we too have the faithful audacity to live our lives in the manner of Jesus in our world today, despite its increasing hatred toward us. And just as the examples in Hebrews surely raised the derision and scorn of people living around them, surely when we choose to live faithfully to Jesus we will arouse the same kind of scorn and derision. This is why it is so important for us to remember, to remember God’s faithful acts in history on behalf of his people and to remember the lives of faithful people, both inside and outside the Bible. Doing so reminds us we are part of a bigger project and that our job is to be faithful builders for, and not fulfillers of, God’s kingdom. It will remind us to keep our eyes on the prize, even in the midst of our suffering, and it will also remind us that we are not in this project all alone. Others have gone before us, especially Jesus, who now sits at God’s right hand—NT code for Jesus reigning as Lord of this universe—ready to hear our intercessions as we cry out to him in our struggles to be faithful to his call to us to be his people and to help us endure opposition when it inevitably comes. When our faith is bolstered like this, we will be like Peter and John, who rejoiced that they were counted worthy enough to suffer for their Lord after they had received a severe flogging (Acts 5.27-42). They rejoiced because like us, they knew that suffering for Jesus meant they were one of his people. And being one of Jesus’ people means they (and we) have Good News, now and for all eternity.

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

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