Sermon delivered on Trinity 21C, Sunday, October 20, 2013, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

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

Lectionary texts: Jeremiah 31.27-34; Psalm 119.97-104; 2 Timothy 3.14-4.5; Luke 18.1-8.

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

This morning we are going to present our proposed 2014 budget and as promised, you are going to get a very short sermon. I want to remind us quickly what our marching orders are as Christians. As our mission statement puts it, we are changed by God to make a difference for God. We live in a world created good but despoiled by human sin and the evil our sin has allowed to enter into it. As a result, we find ourselves alienated from God and cut off from our very source of life, without hope and purpose of living. We see the sad spectacle of this reality all around us as people try desperately to forge meaning and purpose of living for themselves by chasing after all kinds of false gods—money, sex, power, security, rampant individualism, and radical self-autonomy, to name just a few. But this is not how God calls us to live. God calls us to find real life and purpose of living by loving him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves. We do this best by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God. But for whatever reason, we are not built this way. We naturally want to love ourselves most while ignoring God and the rest. The result is chaos, fear, isolation, alienation, anxiety, loneliness, and ultimately death. This isn’t a pretty picture and it is painful to talk about. But it is the reality of what happens when human beings choose to love themselves instead of God.

Despite this (or perhaps because of it), we have been given a gracious and merciful gift from God. As Paul put it, God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In the cross of Jesus, we are reconciled to God and by giving us his Holy Spirit, God equips us to be his kingdom workers who are to use our gifts and talents to work tirelessly to bring about God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven (Colossians 1.13-20; 3.1-17). We are called to do this because creation matters to God and God intends to heal and rescue his world, not destroy it (cf. Genesis 1-2; Romans 8.18-25; 1 Corinthians 15; Revelation 21.1-7; 22.1-5). We can best participate in God’s kingdom-building work by imitating our Lord Jesus, the very embodiment of God, who did justice by his mighty acts of healing and putting to rights all kinds of wrongs, who loved mercy through his many acts of forgiveness, most notably on the cross, and who walked humbly with his God by taking on our human form and dying on a cross so that we might be healed and reconciled to God (cf. Philippians 2.5-11).

This same Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him so that as we learn to surrender to him he can use us to be his salt and light to the world. Let’s be clear about this. In many, if not most, cases the world will not welcome our light or us being Jesus’ salt. We can expect scorn, rejection, and outright hostility and persecution. But this is our call and in it we find real life and real purpose in living, counterintuitive as it may seem. This is the “making a difference for God” portion of our mission statement. We do this work as individuals because each of us is called to be the light of Christ to those with whom we interact in our daily living. But mainly, we are called to do this work together as Christ’s body, the Church, because God intends for life to be lived relationally, not individually. We do all this by faith, of course, and our faith, if it is real, must always manifest itself in action. Otherwise it is not faith at all. There is no such thing as a navel-gazing Christian. We are called to be active in God’s world, i.e., we are called to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

But we cannot make a difference for God unless we are first changed by God. As we have seen, especially in today’s OT lesson, God doesn’t call us to be his kingdom workers and then leave us to our own devices. He has graciously given us his Spirit to live in us and transform us into the very image of Jesus. But God does not force himself on us and like any healthy relationship we must do our part to cultivate and nurture the Spirit’s presence within us. We do this primarily in three ways—through regular Scripture reading as Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson, through prayer as Jesus reminds us in our gospel lesson, both individually and together, and through fellowship so that we can build up and support one another in our struggle to live faithfully to Jesus.

As Paul reminds us, doctrine matters. We must know what to believe and why we believe it. Otherwise we are prone to believe all kinds of screwball things, which will negatively affect our behavior as Christians and diminish the light of Christ in us—belief must always precede behavior. We learn how to imitate Jesus with the help of the Spirit through our own personal devotions and prayers using, e.g., the Daily Office, through weekly worship and corporate prayer, and in Bible study together in small groups. A parish that devotes itself to these things will be a parish that tells God it is ready for him to use them as his kingdom workers. I think St. Augustine’s is that kind of parish.

In a few moments, Sarah et al. will be presenting our 2014 budget proposal. As you listen to the presentation, it should be clear to you how our budget proposal supports our mission statement and these activities I’ve just talked about. If it isn’t clear to you, then please do ask one of the Leadership Team members or one of the priests for clarification. Once you are satisfied we are using our resources faithfully and effectively, prayerfully consider your pledge for 2014. How we use our financial resources will give us keen insight into the state of our faith because money is very important to each of us and how we use it is always a true indicator of how faithful our stewardship of God’s gifts really is. My prayer for all of us is that God will set our hearts on fire with love for him by the indwelling of his Spirit so that we know without a doubt we have Good News to proclaim and that consequently we will be moved to make a tangible demonstration of our faith to the glory of God and for all the world to see.

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