Sermon delivered at St. Augustine’s annual Parish Dedication Festival, Year C, Sunday, August 25, 2019 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: 1 Chronicles 29.6-19; Psalm 122; Ephesians 2.19-22; John 2.13-22.

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

Today we celebrate the founding of our parish eight years ago on May 1. I remind you that we transfer our celebration to the Sunday in August closest to the feast day of our patron saint, Augustine of Hippo, which falls on August 28, marking the anniversary of his death in 430AD. What does it mean to be part of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church? What are we really celebrating today? What privileges do we as people of God enjoy and what responsibilities must we bear? These are some of the things I want us to look at this morning.

What do you think of when you hear the word church? Chances are you think of a building (let’s go to church today) and at first blush, our OT lesson seems to reinforce this notion of church as a place to worship. But not so fast, my friends, because what we get a glimpse of in our OT lesson is the Lord’s promise to dwell with his people; and before Christ’s arrival that place was the Temple in Jerusalem, the place where most of God’s people Israel believed that heaven (God’s space) and earth (humans’ space) intersected. To be sure, as King Solomon would later acknowledge, no place could hold God, the Creator of heaven and earth. But God’s people believed that God would be true to his promise to dwell with his people here on earth. So the Temple was a place for God’s people to meet with God. The Temple was important to be sure, but it was more important that God would dwell with his people on earth because God had called Israel, Abraham’s descendants, not a building, to bring God’s healing love and blessing to a sin-sick and God-cursed world.

And as our gospel lesson makes clear, the Temple in Jerusalem came under God’s final judgment when Christ cleansed the Temple and accused those who dwelled there of turning it into a den of thieves rather than using it as house of prayer where all the nations could come to find healing and refreshment in the presence of the Lord, cf. Mark 11.17 (the Temple was destroyed almost forty years later, never to be rebuilt). From now on, said our Lord Jesus, I am the new Temple, the place where heaven and earth intersect, the place where people come to meet God and find healing and refreshment and reconciliation of all kinds. And as St. Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson and elsewhere, we are connected to Christ, the head of his body, the Church, in the power of the Spirit and through baptism. Now God makes his presence known on earth through his people in the power of the Spirit, people who have faith in, and give their lives to, Jesus Christ. It is a staggering promise if we allow ourselves to think about it and begin to wrestle with the full implications of the promise.

It means first and foremost that the Church is not a building but a living, breathing organism linked mysteriously and organically to its head, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, in the power of the Spirit, i.e., it is a family. It means that you and I are family members and part of Christ’s body, the Church, with all our flaws and weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. It means we are called to live our lives in ways that embody the Spirit of the living God who loved us and gave himself for us, imperfectly as that might look to outsiders. It is a call that is fitting with our human dignity as God’s image-bearing creatures and with God’s original creative intent for humans to run God’s good world on God’s behalf, reflecting his image out into the world and receiving and reflecting back to God the world’s thanks and praise for the goodness, generosity, and love of God the Father and Creator.

We who are God’s people in Christ (AKA, Christians) are a people who enjoy the gift of God’s grace. Without the love and intervention of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, we deserve nothing but God’s terrible wrath and judgment on our sins and wickedness because no one can live up to the moral perfection of God nor can God tolerate any kind of evil because it flies in the face of God’s perfect goodness and good intentions for his world and its creatures. God wants the very best for us and the only way we can accomplish that is to live as his creatures rather than trying to live as God’s equals. But the history of the human race demonstrates sadly that we are incapable on our own to live as God’s creatures. We want to be God’s equals or to live as if God didn’t exist at all. It is our terminal sin-sickness and without God’s help, mercy, and grace, we are all destined for God’s terrible wrath on our sins. 

But this too is intolerable to God because God did not create us for destruction. He created us for relationship with him and as we’ve just seen, to be his image-bearing creatures. So God did something on our behalf to end our grim standing with him and to bring about our reconciliation with him so that we could once again be the human creatures he created us to be. God did this, of course, by becoming human and taking on himself the weight of our sins and his own terrible judgment on them. There is now no longer any condemnation for those who have a real relationship with Jesus Christ. Having broken the power of Sin over us on the cross, God then broke the power of the ultimate evil over us, Death, by raising Christ from the dead, thus vindicating his saving death. Why does this matter? Because in baptism we are united with Christ in his death and risen life (Romans 6.3-5). Where Christ is, so will we be. Despite our ongoing rebellion against God, God has chosen to rescue us anyway. This is why the story of Christ is called Good News. As St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, at the very right time, while we were still sinners and God’s enemies, God sent his Son, i.e., God became human, to die for us and reconcile us to himself. That’s why we are no longer aliens and strangers to God. God has ended our alienation from him and reconciled us to himself so that we have a real hope and a future. None of us deserve this love or grace. None are worthy of this mercy and forgiveness, but God offers it to us anyway. We just have to have the good sense and grace to accept God’s invitation to us.

Why am I spending time with this? Because this defines us as God’s holy people and it had better change us, otherwise our membership in God’s family is suspect. Hear me carefully. I am not suggesting we must live perfect lives to qualify as God’s people. We don’t. We aren’t God’s people by what we do or don’t do. We are God’s people because of what God has done for us in Christ. Let us be very clear about this. But God did not rescue us from the power of Sin and his terrible wrath on our sins to allow us to keep doing business as we did before we knew Christ or as the world does business. You don’t help rescue someone from destruction by imitating their behavior. No, if we have a relationship with Christ, we seek to become like him with the help of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. St. Paul makes the bold claim that our Spirit-mediated union with Christ transforms us into the image of Christ, which allows us to do business in ways that are pleasing to God rather than the world. Again, we don’t imitate Christ perfectly because none of us are done with sin until we die (Romans 6.7). Having said that, we strive to be like Christ and this is how we become the Church, the embodiment of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

Christ’s presence with us in and through the power of the Holy Spirit means we realize like David and his people realized, that all we have comes from God. Yes, we are called to use our time, talents, and effort to help sustain ourselves, but nothing comes to us, especially life, without the Father’s permission. This knowledge must humble us and motivate us to please the Father by imitating his Son. This in turn means we forgive when wronged, are generous with our time, talents, and resources for the sake of the Lord and his people, not to mention the world. It means we are to park our egos and selfish ambitions and listen to God’s call for us as his people. It means we work for peace, not rancor. All this is inherent in our mission statement here at St. Augustine’s, that we are “changed by God to make a difference for God.” It means we love God enough and hate our sins enough (not ourselves, but our sins) that we want God’s word, God’s Spirit, and God’s people to heal and change us. It means we learn the story of salvation contained in the Bible and have faith that in so reading, learning, and inwardly digesting God’s word in Scripture, God will use our efforts to heal us, edify us, and equip us to do the work he calls us to do. If you do not have a burning desire to learn and be changed by God’s word in Scripture, you might want to take a hard look at what kind of faith you really have (or lack) and then turn to Christ to help you get where he wants you to be. You are his beloved and he died so that you can live. Why would he not help you grow to his full stature if you really desire to get there?

Being healed and transformed by God’s word and through prayer and fellowship allows us to roll up our sleeves and go into a hostile world to minister to it and preach the Good News of Christ and him crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended. We do this by word and deed. People should look at us and see humans interacting and operating in fundamentally different ways than the the secular world does. Of course we are going to have disagreements on how best to do this, but we learn to work through them and we never let our disagreements poison the well or our love for each other. When we find that we must have our own way, it usually means we are in need of repentance because we are looking out for ourselves rather than others. Christians are no different from non-Christians. We have our own perspectives and peccadilloes, our own broken history and fears. We are not immune from the world, the flesh, or the devil. But we have Jesus Christ as our head who is present with us if we will give him the proper attention and effort. When we do, we will find our troubles and disagreements can be transformed and healed, just like us, to the glory of God the Father. I think overall we do a pretty good job of loving each other and bearing each other’s junk that we all bring to the table. That’s one sure sign that our head is here and active among us. 

This is what and why we celebrate. This is what it means to be the Church. Together we are to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus, trusting him to heal and transform us according to his good will for us. And here I want to say something that may surprise you given all that I have just said. For us to let Christ heal and transform us to the fullest extent possible, we need a building we can call our own. It simply won’t do to be satisfied with a nice chapel in which to worship, massively important as worship is. We have no place to call our own, to call home. Why does that matter? For starters, we have a group of young people who need to study God’s word together and learn to love each other as they grow up physically, emotionally, and spiritually. To do this they need a place to meet and discuss and plan and dream. We don’t have that for them now. Neither can we offer adults a full set of opportunities to grow and be enriched, or for all of us to use as a base of operation to serve God’s world, or to rejoice and mourn together when we need to do so. The Spirit lives in us to be sure and Christ is present among us. But we are a homeless people and that is never good for anyone, especially God’s people. This has become an intolerable burden for me and I pray it becomes an intolerable burden for you all because only then when we show God we really are ready to end our homelessness will God give us our heart’s desire. This fall I am going to give you a chance to show God your holy desire and impatience for a home. More about that in two weeks.  

In the meantime, we have much to celebrate as God’s people here at St. Augustine’s. We also have much work to do. We are a healed and reconciled people who have been given the best gift of all, eternal life. We are given the spectacular privilege of engaging in God’s kingdom work in the power of the Spirit. We have been given this, not because we deserve it, but because of God’s great love and mercy for us. Let us therefore show our love for him by seeking to grow in Christ and fulfill our call to bring his healing love to a hostile world that desperately needs to be healed and loved. May we always answer Christ’s call to us to be his people and may he bless us with a home to better help us answer his call. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.   

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

Sermon delivered on Trinity 9C, Sunday, August 18, 2019 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Sang cherishes Kenyan Time™. He runs on it alll the time (no pun intended). That’s why his manuscripts always follow his podcasts. So take your (Kenyan) time reading his sermon below or click here to listen to the audio podcast.

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

Last week Father Kevin preached on Faith focusing on what a genuine biblical faith looks like on the ground. In today’s Epistle lesson, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews encourages us to persevere in our life of faith, no matter what difficulties we face. “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” The writer says, you have begun a good thing in becoming Christians. I want you to finish strong in what has been started in you.

It happens that I come from a community that is 0.1 % of the world’s population but holds 80% of the worlds marathon. I myself am not a good runner as bishops Dobbs and others are but I like watching the sport. Those who run marathons, be it boston, new york or chicago marathon all runners are lined up at the same starting line including runners who hold the best marathon times in the world and they all ran the same course and pass the same cheering crowds.”

“But I suppose it’s the finishing that really makes the difference. The elite runners are crossing the finish line when others are about half way through the course. The elite have about two hours to enjoy refreshments and rest, while others are still having more than ten miles to reach the goal, However the beauty of the event is that for many, just finishing the race is the accomplishment, it is the goal.”

Very few have to run a marathon — participation is for fun. But the author of the letter to the Hebrews asks us a similar question: Will we finish the race that is our life with faith? Will we persevere? Or will we run off course, or give up? And the race is hard. In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us, if we follow him, if we stand up for what is right, we will experience conflict.

The writer of Hebrews, like a good coach, gives four pieces of advice about how to finish the race. To finish the race: recall who surrounds us. Remove what ways down on us. Rely on strength within us. Remember who goes before us. Recall who surrounds us: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” The epistle writer wants us to picture ourselves as athletes in an arena. As we strive toward our goal, to finish with faith, in peace and holiness, we run surrounded by people. The people in the stands are people who have demonstrated faith — faith that persevered, people who by the grace of God overcame great obstacles, and finished the race. These are people of the Bible, the men and women of the Church throughout the ages, people known personally by you and by me whose witness encourages us.

The writer says they are witnesses, not just spectators. There is a huge difference. A spectator watches you go through something. A witness is someone who has gone through something herself someone who knows, and the root meaning of the word witness, from which we get the word “martyr” is someone who may have given his life going through it. We have witnesses cheering us on, not just spectators, people who have gone through what we struggle with, people whose testimonies of the strength God gave them can, in turn, give us strength and courage. We have witnesses rooting for us, weeping with us when we stumble, calling to us when we wander, urging us to finish the race.

The writer of Hebrews, our coach, tells us also to remove what weighs down on us. Have you ever seen a track stars running a race wearing winter boots, or with weights tied to their ankles, or carrying a backpack full of weight? “Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,” says our coach. What attitudes and actions, what past behavior and present entanglements weigh us down? What weights of sin and brokenness do we carry that cause us to stumble rather than sprint? We can set those weights down. God is ready to take them from us. God is ready to forgive and heal whatever we let get between us and God, whatever has come between us and other people, whatever wrongs we do to ourselves.

Our coach also tells us to rely on the strength within us. We are told to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” When the going gets tough, when the road is difficult, when the miles drag on, obstacles come up around every bend, when every stretch of the road seems like another steep hill to climb, we can rely on spiritual resources within us — spiritual resources we develop in training: in gathering with other Christians, in hearing and reading God’s word, in participating in the life of the church.

The word “perseverance” has also been translated as “patient endurance.” Endurance is one thing. We can endure and whine and complain all at the same time. Patient endurance looks like praying without ceasing for ourselves and others. It looks like encouraging others even in the midst of difficulty. It looks like saying something kind, or saying nothing at all when something unkind comes more readily to mind. It looks like giving of ourselves generously, even when we’re not sure what’s ahead of us and our inclination may be to think of ourselves first.

Most important of all, remember who goes before us. We can look “to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

We can and will finish the race strong in faith if we look to Jesus, if we keep our eyes focused on him, not being distracted by other things along the way that can cause us to lose our direction or footing and stumble. Jesus has gone before us, has shown us the way that leads to victory. If we keep our eyes on Jesus and follow him, we will not only make a good beginning in faith we too will finish and win the race.

In the race of our life, we have people cheering us on. We have someone willing to take on our burdens. We can train for patient endurance. We have a guide who leads us and will not leave us. Let us keep running until the prize is ours and we hear God say to us, “Well done faithful servant!”

In the name of God the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

Sermon delivered on Trinity 8C, Sunday, August 11, 2019 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, 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: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

In our epistle lesson this morning, the writer of Hebrews speaks about faith. Given that the NT writers claim that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone, it is vital for us to understand what genuine biblical faith looks like on the ground. This is what I want us to look at this morning.

“Faith,” says the writer of Hebrews, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” St. James tells us that faith without works is dead and useless, and St. Paul tells us in several of his letters that we are only made right with God by having faith in Christ’s atoning death and resurrection. But what does that all mean? To answer this question, we start by looking at what faith isn’t. When the biblical writers speak of faith, they didn’t have in mind some kind of spirituality that is an entity unto itself (she’s a person of faith). Neither did they have in mind some kind of resolute belief that their faith would guarantee them wealth (gee, I’ve got faith so God will surely make me rich). Nor did the biblical writers define faith as a blind leap against known facts. Atheists and other critics of the Christian faith often parrot this latter understanding of faith when ridiculing those of us who have faith. But these criticisms are patently false and inaccurate because this is not what the Bible means when it speaks of faith.

Faith, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews articulates, involves confident action in response to what God has made known to us through his word in Scripture and through his involvement in his created order. Faith is closely related to hope in Scripture, with both terms often used synonymously. And before we go any further, we need to be clear as to what the biblical writers meant by hope. Hope in Scripture is not wishful thinking or whistling through the graveyard. No, hope as the biblical writers use it, means a sure and certain expectation that something is going to happen in the future based on what has happened in the past. Our Christian hope of forgiveness of sins and new creation, a future hope, is based on the death and resurrection of Christ, past historical events. Without these past events, we really would be fools to believe in a future new world made perfect as well as the resurrection of the body. There would be no historical basis on which to pin our hope on God’s promised new world. But because we believe that Christ was raised from the dead, we believe that instead of judgment for our sins after we die, we will find mercy and new bodily life when Christ returns to finish his saving work because in baptism we share in Christ’s death and resurrection. We weren’t witnesses to these latter events but we believe the testimony contained in the NT of those who were. This is what the writer of Hebrews is talking about. We have faith in the power of our baptism to bind us to Christ and have the hope of bodily resurrection and new creation because the word of God promises such, both in the story of Christ and the subsequent testimony of those who witnessed these saving events. And because we trust God’s character, we trust God’s word and believe it to be truthful. Obviously if we do not know God, we will have a hard time knowing God’s character and trusting God’s word. But if we know the story of God’s salvation contained in Scripture, if we have a robust prayer life, if we are firmly ensconced in the household of God, i.e., the Church, even with all its warts, if we pay attention to how God works through human agency, then we have the basis for trust. This is why we have the assurance of things hoped for and why Christian hope is always a sure and certain expectation. 

Faith therefore is never blind because it is always based on the promises of God contained in the OT and NT, nor are we called to have a blind faith. If we do not know God, it is impossible to have a mature biblical faith because there will always be doubt in our minds as to whether God is really trustworthy, especially when things go south for us or our world. It would be really easy, e.g., for us to look at the chaos of the seemingly never-ending mass shootings and conclude God’s promise to heal and redeem his broken and sinful world and its creatures is false and unbelievable. But this mindset is present- and human-oriented. True biblical faith by contrast is always God- and future-oriented because it is based on known instances of God’s mighty power, goodness, mercy and justice at work. That is why when faith is threatened by doubt—always a threat to us, especially in the ever increasingly chaotic world in which we live—Scripture exhorts us to remember, just as the writer of Hebrews does in our lesson. Listen to these following examples taken from the psalms:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far away when I groan for help? / Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night I lift my voice, but I find no relief. / Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. / Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them. / They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you and were never disgraced (Ps 22.1-5, NLT).

I cry out to God; yes, I shout. Oh, that God would listen to me! / When I was in deep trouble, I searched for the Lord. / All night long I prayed, with hands lifted toward heaven, but my soul was not comforted. / I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help./ And I said, “This is my fate; the Most High has turned his hand against me.” / But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago. / They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works (Psalm 77.1-3, 10-12, NLT).

Do you see faith in action here? The psalmist is riddled with doubt. It feels like God has abandoned him and he is in danger of giving up and losing his faith. But then he remembers. He remembers God’s mighty intervention on behalf of his people at the Red Sea. In God’s dealing with his people, the psalmist is reminded of God’s character and trustworthiness. We aren’t told how the crisis the psalmist faced turned out. We simply see him working to maintain his faith, the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. When things are desperately dark in your life or when news of current events threatens to overwhelm you with its reporting of new evil and perversity, seemingly every day, do you keep your eyes on God by remembering his mighty works on your behalf (Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit to name but two examples) to help you maintain your faith, or do you let the darkness overwhelm you by focusing on it? 

Notice carefully in these examples from the psalms that the focus of biblical faith is on God’s promises contained in the story of his rescue of his good world gone terribly wrong. God created this world. Our faith tells us this is true because Genesis proclaims that God is our Creator and the psalms reinforce this belief. Consider Psalm 19, for example: 

The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. / Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. / They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. / Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world (v.1-4).

This same God, Creator of all that is, is perfect, good, loving, just, merciful, and holy. God created humans in his image to run his good creation on God’s behalf and when we failed that call and our sin allowed Evil and Death to enter and corrupt God’s good world and us, God declared he would rescue us through a human family, Abraham and his ultimate descendent Jesus Christ! This totally unexpected plan is fitting for the dignity of human beings and is another sign that God honors us and wants us to return to him. Along the way, Scripture tells us the story of how God repeatedly came to his people Israel’s rescue, requiring them to choose between the old covenant’s blessings and curses outlined most notably in Deuteronomy 27-28. Covenant curses are God’s judgment on his people’s lack of faith; they chose not to submit to his way of living, in part, because they don’t believe God’s promises to them. Covenant blessings, on the other hand, result from God honoring right living which is indicative of faith in the God who promised his people to be their God and commanded them to live by his laws (more about that anon). This is what was going on in our OT lesson today. The Lord through his prophet Isaiah exhorts his people to faith by living righteously according to his laws. If God’s people Israel really had faith in God, the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen, they would have behaved accordingly. But Israel didn’t have faith in God because they choose to worship and follow false gods. This is why true worship of God the Father requires faith. Nothing else will do in God’s eyes. By worshiping false gods, Israel in Isaiah’s day showed where their faith really was focused, and it wasn’t on the God who called them out of their slavery in Egypt and gave them the Promised Land as a base of operation for their saving mission. They could therefore expect nothing but exile and death, the ultimate covenant curses, just like we can expect nothing but judgment and death when we fail to put our hope (faith) in Christ.

The NT modifies and completes the OT theme of covenant blessings and curses by proclaiming that Jesus Christ ultimately rescued us from exile and death, even after we had fallen away. Jesus Christ was and is the game-changer because lack of faith cannot fully explain human rebellion against God. We all know that from personal experience! We rebel against God, in part, because we lack faith and, in part, because we are held captive by the power of Sin and unable to break free from its grip. So God broke Sin’s power over us on the cross and accomplished his justice. We believe this because we believe God raised Jesus from the dead and in doing so, vindicated his death. And while God has not consummated his rescue of his sin-sick world and creatures, we know it’s coming because we believe in the efficacy of Christ’s saving death and resurrection and are convinced it comes from God. With St. Paul, we believe in the God who creates things out of nothing and who raises the dead; therefore we have hope against hope (God’s hope vs. human hope) that our salvation is assured. As St. Paul also reminds us, our life with Christ is hidden with him in heaven (Col 3.3). We cannot currently see him, but we will see him one day when he returns and so we have the sure and certain expectation (hope) that he will finish what he started. In having this hope in Christ and trusting he is God incarnate because the NT writers proclaim him to be, we demonstrate our faith in the power of God and his revealed word. Simply put, our faith is based on Jesus Christ crucified and raised from the dead. Only God is capable of doing this as the whole story of Scripture attests. Our future is linked to God’s power and we are gradually transformed by it.

As we saw earlier, St. James reminds us that faith must be actionable because our actions are usually consistent with and based on our beliefs. Our faithful actions are always consistent with God’s clear commands to us to live rightly, both as individuals and as communities. That is why we forgive when wronged, are generous with our resources, show grace where none is deserved, advocate for families and life, demonstrate love for all, and pursue real justice based on God’s laws. We will live like that in God’s new world and are given a chance to show our faith in our future citizenship there by how we act in this present world. Much of faithful living is counter-intuitive and runs against our natural grain because we are all sin-corrupted and self-centered by nature. That’s the sad outcome of the Fall that Genesis 3ff describe, so faithful living does not come naturally or easily for us. But God the Father is greater than our sin-sickness and gives us his Spirit to help us answer his call to us to be truly free to live as fully human beings made in his image, a life patterned after the perfect life of Jesus Christ our Lord. And here again we must be clear that living faithful lives, however imperfectly that may manifest itself, does not guarantee us health, wealth, and prosperity. God’s blessing there will be for our faithful living, but that blessing does not guarantee or automatically lead to health, wealth, and power, even if the ancient Israelites often saw it doing so, a mistaken notion that our Lord himself repeatedly had to correct (see, e.g., Mk 10.17-27; Mt 16.24-27). No, living faithful lives can (and often does) result in ridicule and persecution as our actions and words challenge the fallen and death-dealing ways of our culture and the world. Even the writer of Hebrews admits that the exemplars of faith he cites died without seeing the promise of their faith fulfilled; and barring Christ’s return before we die, we too will not live to see the promise of our faith in Christ fulfilled. But we believe it nevertheless because we believe in the God who creates things out of nothing and raises the dead to life. Nothing is impossible for this God and he has the track record to prove it. 

Having said this, we must also acknowledge that God promises to reward faithful living and this promise of reward makes many of us very uncomfortable. Our reluctance to count the importance of rewards as a motivator for faith stems from a mistaken notion that real Christians shouldn’t desire a reward for faithful living, that doing so is selfish. But that thinking would have surprised the biblical writers and our Lord Jesus himself (think for example about our gospel lesson this morning or about the parable of the ten talents found in Mt 25.14-30). Why then should we blush or apologize for seeking to be rewarded for our faith? We seek all kinds of lesser rewards in the things we do, things that will pass away. Why not seek the ultimate prize of living with and loving God forever as our most desired-reward? 

With all this in mind, we can see that the theme of faith runs through all our lessons today. For example, when we look at Christ’s parable in our gospel lesson through the lens of faith, we see him calling us to faith. Be ready for the Master’s return (Christ himself), he tells us. Demonstrate your faith by doing the things that show God and others where your true riches are, by demonstrating your hope and trust in God’s love and power. It gives the Father great pleasure to give you the kingdom where you will have light and life forever. Don’t let the darkness of this world lead you astray so that you follow its values and dehumanize yourself. If you live faithfully, you will find your reward. The master will serve you when he returns (think Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper in St. John’s gospel). So demonstrate your assurance of things hoped for and your conviction of things not seen by living in ways that are consistent with the Father’s great love for you. Don’t make money or sex or power or security your gods. Make me your God by following and imitating me for I am God become man. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Don’t let the darkness of this world fool you. I am going to die to rescue you from God’s terrible judgment on your sins and reconcile you to the Father, and my Father will raise me from the dead to prove to you that this unbelievable promise is really true. And what do we require from you? Faith made manifest in your living according to our will for you. My Father loves you and wants to rescue and restore you to your rightful place in his creation and has sent me to accomplish what you cannot accomplish for yourself. Please have the wisdom and humility to accept our gracious gift to you. 

 This is what real faith is all about, my beloved. As with all things from God it is rich, multifaceted, complex, and often challenging because we are mere mortals with limited understanding who live in a dark and challenging world in the midst of our own conflicting fallen and noble desires. So do what the biblical writers tell you to do when your faith is challenged. Remember, so that your assurance of things hoped for and your conviction of things not seen—forgiveness of sins and your place in God’s new creation—will not be overcome by people or forces who hate you and want to destroy you. Remember that it is the Father’s pleasure to give you his kingdom, so focus often and regularly on this God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead. This is the God who creates things out of nothing and gives life to the dead. He is the same God who wants to give you a place in his kingdom forever, starting right now and culminating fully when he raises you from the dead at his Son’s return to finish his saving work on your behalf. That’s a faith worth living and dying for, even as we live constantly in a world of uncertainty and enigma. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.   

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