Father Philip Sang: Sincere Love

Our preaching series on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans continues this morning. Sermon delivered on Trinity 12A, Sunday, August 30, 2020 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Sang continues to boycott the written word, so if you want to listen to the audio podcast of his sermon, click here.

Lectionary texts: Exodus 3.1-15; Psalm 105.1-6, 23-26; Romans 12.9-21; St. Matthew 16.21-28.

On His Feast Day 2020, St. Augustine of Hippo Muses on the Sacraments

iuYour Lord is seated at the Father’s right hand in heaven. How then is the bread His Body? And the chalice, or rather its content, how is it His Blood?

These elements are called Sacraments, because in them one thing is perceived by the senses and another thing by the mind. What is seen has bodily appearance; what the mind perceives produces spiritual fruit. You hear the words “The Body of Christ,” and you answer “Amen” [so be it].

—Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 272.

Becoming What You Already Are

We continue our preaching series on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Sermon delivered on Trinity 11A, Sunday, August 23, 2020 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: Exodus 1.8-2.10; Psalm 124; Romans 12.1-8; St. Matthew 16.13-20.

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

This morning we continue our preaching series on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. In our epistle lesson, St. Paul urges us not to be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind so that we can present our bodies as living sacrifices to God. What in the world is he talking about? Is he here exhorting us to try harder to be a good Christian or advocating for  a more robust self-help program (like we need even more delusional thinking than we already have)? If you heard our epistle lesson like that this morning, you probably missed that little adverb “therefore” at the beginning. What is the therefore there for, you ask? I’m glad you did. Maybe now I can get into the heart of this sermon.

The therefore reminds us that St. Paul is not talking about human power, the power to make ourselves better, an oxymoron at best. No, St. Paul is talking here about the power of God. And this should make sense to us if we review quickly how St. Paul has gotten us to this point. Recall that in Romans 1.18-32 he talked about a good amount of wrong thinking, the kind of thinking that darkens our minds, makes us hostile to God, and begins to erase God’s image in us so that we behave more like animals than humans. It results from humankind’s universal enslavement to the power of Sin as St. Paul emphatically states in Romans 3.9. This kind of wrong thinking produces in us lusts of all kinds, malice, envy, murder, and strife. It makes us inventors of evil, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. Left to our own devices—and that’s the key phrase—we refuse to submit to God’s rule and are quick to blame others for our problems and the problems of the world, rather than acknowledging that we too are every bit as enslaved to Sin’s power as those we blame and rail against. It started with Adam and Eve and has continued unabated ever since. No wonder St. Paul talked about the futility of self-help in Romans 7! Try as we might, the human race does not have the power to fix itself from our sin-sickness and all that alienates us from God and each other.

That’s the bad news, of course, and to our detriment we avoid talking about it like the plague. After all, who wants to talk about God’s judgment on our sins? But St. Paul has also proclaimed the gospel boldly to us in this letter, reminding us that to truly be Good News for us, we have to see what he teaches as the power of God working on our behalf to heal us and reconcile us to himself and to each other. Hear him now from previous chapters in Romans:

Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory (Romans 5.2)

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners (Romans 5.6)

[S]hould we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, (Romans 6.2-5, 6a-9b).

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins (Romans 8.1-2, 4).

And then from last week’s epistle lesson, perhaps this most remarkable statement of all: “For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone” (Romans 11.32).

In all these statements St. Paul reveals to us the character and power of God. The operative agent is Christ, not us. In Christ’s death and resurrection, we are freed from God’s terrible but just judgment on our sins and are promised healing, reconciliation, and new life forever in God’s new heavens and earth by virtue of what Christ has done for us. Here’s what this means for us as Christians. It means that our broken minds, bodies, and relationships will be restored, partially in this life and fully in the age to come. It means God is our friend and lover, not our enemy, so that we really do have nothing to fear, not even death and dying. We have these gifts and promises, not because of who we are, but because of who God is made known supremely to us in Christ. Christ died to free us from our sins and draw us to him so that on the last day he can raise us up to everlasting life, complete with new bodies, to live in a world where there will be no more tears or suffering or injustice or fear or alienation. All that was broken will be made new. Christ keeps us united to him by the power of the Holy Spirit who makes Christ known to us. We deserve judgment and death. Instead those of us who have a relationship with Christ get mercy, pardon, and life. This is the kindness of God and the power of God at work in his world and our lives to save us from ourselves and to free us from our slavery to the power of Sin, thanks be to God! Amen?

This is why the therefore is there for. St. Paul wants to remind us again that we aren’t transformed by our power—if that were the case, he would be laying a supreme guilt trip on us in a most cruel way because we are bound to fail—but by the power of God. He reminds us that we already are new creations, people who have God’s image restored in us by virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit living in us. Yeah, I know. If you’re like me it doesn’t feel that way very often. I still am conformed to the ways of the world more than I want to be. I still get discouraged and frustrated and angry more than I want to be, but as St. Paul reminds us here, it isn’t about me. I can’t raise myself from the dead. I cannot heal my sin-sickness. Only Christ can (and does) do that in me by the power of the Spirit, and he does that in you as well. Don’t rely on your feelings as a valid basis to judge if Christ is working in you to renew your mind and transform you into the image-bearer God created you to be so that you can run his world on his behalf. Feelings in this matter are notoriously fickle and unreliable because like us, our feelings are weighed down and distorted by our sin-sickness. Instead, St. Paul encourages us to let God renew our mind so that we can think rightly and faithfully about our new status before God and what that means for the living of our mortal days with all of its flaws, imperfections, sorrows, injustices, and evil. 

So how do we do this? If St. Paul is talking about the power of God at work in us by virtue of our relationship with our crucified and risen Lord, does this mean we can just kick back, act snotty, and wait for the Lord to fully heal and transform us? I don’t think so (unless you are an incorrigible slacker like Carl or Father Bowser or my wayward Methodist friend who is with us today). No, God thinks too much of us not to make us invest in his great love and mercy for us so that we can slowly be healed and transformed by Christ in the power of the Spirit. God expects us to put in our sweat equity and God will do the rest. What does that look like? It starts with worship, reading and studying Scripture, and regular partaking in the eucharist—there’s more to it than these things, but not less, and I am only going to focus on Scripture today because of time constraints. As Christians, we should be able to retain chunks of Scripture to help us in the living of our days. We should memorize and rehearse snippets from the psalms, from Proverbs, from the prophets, and from the gospels and other NT writers. As we have already seen today, there is a rich treasure of wisdom and Truth in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. How much of it can you pull up right now to reflect on? Then of course there is 1 Cor 15 and Rev 21.1-7 that talk about Christ’s resurrection and the promised new world. This should be stuff we think about, talk about, and rehearse every day. That’s our sweat equity. We see it at work in our gospel lesson. St. Peter clearly knew enough of his Scripture and had seen enough of his Lord to declare him God’s promised Messiah. Christ commends him by telling him that he didn’t come up with this revelation on his own. He did so by the power of God. This is what transformation looks like when God renews our minds. It’s not necessarily spectacular or sexy. It’s just real and good and healthy and wholesome; we see reality much more clearly. But as we will see next week, St. Peter quickly reverted back to the mindset of the world when he denied that his Lord would have to suffer and die. Whoever heard of a crucified Messiah?? This earned him a sharp rebuke from Christ and this poignant story reminds us that until Christ returns to finish his saving work, we must get used to living in a messy world where things are not always cut and dried, much as we would like them to be. 

So we read Scripture and worship God together and feed on our Lord’s body and blood together to open ourselves to the power of God. God will take our sweat equity and use it to further heal and transform us by renewing our minds. Here are two quick examples of how God’s transformational power might work. I’m sure you will find many parallels in your life to which you can apply this dynamic. I have a friend whose father effectively disowned him when he left home to attend college at an out of state university. Sadly, he and his dad never reconciled and his father has since died. It’s as sad a story as you will ever hear because reconciliation and redemption are no longer possible. My friend has carried his heavy burden very well but you can see the hurt bubble up from time to time and anyone with an ounce of compassion and empathy, themselves gifts from God, understands the underlying pain that continues to roil just beneath the surface and can never be adequately resolved. How can God heal that deep and awful hurt? Well, since both father and son were (and are) Christian, despite their breach, God can use the promise of full healing and restoration at the renewal of all things made possible only by their relationship with Christ who was crucified and raised from the dead to give my friend real hope (expectation) and promise. By an informed faith he can meditate on the love, mercy, and power of God made known in Christ along with God’s promise to restore all things to himself for those who are in Christ. The unresolved conflict becomes a season of hurt rather than a permanent failure with its accompanying hurt, allowing God to bear the brunt of the pain on behalf of my friend. How that will happen is not up to us or in our power. But it is in God’s power made known supremely in Christ’s death and resurrection and God will use that knowledge to transform and heal my friend if my friend will let God do so. I’m not talking about a quick fix solution. I am talking about my friend reminding himself in a sustained way about the love and power of God made known in Christ and letting God start to bring about real, if only partial, healing in this mortal life. Complete healing will have to wait for God’s new world, but what a blessed hope and promise to anticipate! What hurts, heartaches, and sorrows in your life do you need to let God begin to heal (transform) by the renewal of your mind?

Or consider our upcoming elections—and you are going to hear a lot from me on this topic in the coming days because the Church needs to be bold in our leadership by living out the high standards of our gospel proclamation. Our nation is torn apart by bitterness, division, and rancor. We are quick to condemn our enemies and love to play the blame game. There are people on both sides of the divide who truly loathe their enemies and are ready to call them all kinds of vile things, sometimes even wishing for their death! This is being conformed to the ways of the world where we look to our own false righteousness instead of God’s to justify our darkened thinking and behavior. So how can the power of God renew our minds so that he can begin (or continue) to transform us back into his full image-bearers again? Consider this. What would it look like the next time we are ready to lambast our favorite political enemy if instead we reflected first on the reality that Christ died for that person too, whether he/she believes or accepts that fact or tries to live by it? What if we stopped and remembered that we too are sinners unworthy of Christ’s love but who enjoy it anyhow and have therefore been made into new creations, warts and all, because of our relationship with our crucified and risen Lord? If Christ has forgiven us, why can we not forgive our enemies in the power of the Spirit and speak kindly and/or gently about them (or simply remain quiet)? To be sure, this isn’t easy to do. But if we resolve to reflect on Christ’s love for our enemies and his command to us to forgive those who mistreat us, then we may find ourselves less willing to engage in ad hominem attacks on those whose views/behaviors disgust us. If we get to that place, we will know that God is indeed transforming us by renewing our minds. Can you imagine how differently our country would look if Christian voters resolved to open themselves to the transformative power of God to renew their minds? Can you imagine what this little parish might accomplish if we all availed ourselves to the power of God made known to us in the death and resurrection of Christ? 

This is what it means to offer our bodies, i.e., our entire selves, as living sacrifices to God. For you see, my beloved, our transformation must always lead to changed behavior, speaking, and thinking and that takes place within the framework and context of our bodies. It must mirror what we already are and what we will fully become when Christ ushers in God’s new creation. God gave us bodies and intends to raise them from the dead one day. He therefore calls us to use our bodies in his service and service to others. When we do, we are assured that we are seeing the fruit of our transformation, the power of God at work in us so that we can live to become the fully human beings that God created us to be, the people we already are because we are united with Christ. This isn’t about self-help. This is about the power of God at work in us. Rejoice and be thankful for God’s great gifts and mercies he showers on you. It may not feel like you are making any real progress. In fact, sometimes you may feel like you are actually regressing! But don’t be afraid or get discouraged. That’s your fallen self trying to prevent God from transforming you by renewing your mind. God is greater than your fear and doubt. So let us encourage each other and remind each other that we are already new creations, even when that reality is hidden from our sight. Let us also read Scripture together and serve and worship the Lord together, rejoicing that we love and serve such an amazing, generous, kind, and loving God. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. 

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

Dr. Jonathon Wylie: He Will Not Leave You or Forsake You

Sermon delivered on Trinity 10A, Sunday, August 16, 2020 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Dr. Wylie was trained at Wisconsin. He therefore doesn’t believe in sharing his written manuscripts. He’d rather make you listen to him actually preach his sermon (you have our condolences). To do that click here.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 45.1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11.1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15.10-28.

V-J Day 2020: Honolulu HI Celebrates V-J Day in 1945

From Vimeo.

[On V-J Day 1945] my Dad shot this film along Kalakaua Ave. in Waikiki capturing spontaneous celebrations that broke out upon first hearing news of the Japanese surrender. Kodachrome 16mm film: God Bless Kodachrome, right? I was able to find an outfit (mymovietransfer.com) to do a much superior scan of this footage to what I had previously posted, so I re-did this film and replaced the older version There are more still images from this amazing day, in color, at discoveringhawaii.com

On this, the 75th anniversary of V-J Day (Victory Over Japan Day), a wonderful snippet from time. Watch it all and remember. Give thanks as you do for the greatest generation who have largely passed from our view.

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Remember V-J Day, 2020

vj-day pict

Today marks the 75th anniversary of Victory Over Japan (V-J) Day and the end of World War II (the formal, unconditional surrender was not signed until September 1, 1945). Stop and remember the brave men and women who fought against the evil of Nazism and Japanese militarism in the 1940s.

Remember too our brave soldiers today who are fighting against another form of evil and keep our soldiers in your prayers.

From the History Channel.

On this day in 1945, an official announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies is made public to the Japanese people.

Read it all.

Also read the text of President Truman’s radio message broadcast to the American people on September 1, 1945.

From here:

My fellow Americans, and the Supreme Allied Commander, General MacArthur, in Tokyo Bay:

The thoughts and hopes of all America–indeed of all the civilized world–are centered tonight on the battleship Missouri. There on that small piece of American soil anchored in Tokyo Harbor the Japanese have just officially laid down their arms. They have signed terms of unconditional surrender.

Four years ago, the thoughts and fears of the whole civilized world were centered on another piece of American soil–Pearl Harbor. The mighty threat to civilization which began there is now laid at rest. It was a long road to Tokyo–and a bloody one.

We shall not forget Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese militarists will not forget the U.S.S. Missouri.

The evil done by the Japanese war lords can never be repaired or forgotten. But their power to destroy and kill has been taken from them. Their armies and what is left of their Navy are now impotent.

Read it all as well.

Dr. Bethany Christiansen: Who are God’s People?

Sermon delivered on Trinity 8A, Sunday, August 2, 2020 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17.1-7, 16; Romans 9.1-5; Matthew 14.13-21.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, Oh Lord. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

Good morning, St Augustine’s! And welcome to the month of August, which means you never know who’ll be preaching on a given Sunday. 

You may be wondering how I was blessed with the peculiar joy of preaching for you all today. Well, it turns out that Fr. Kevin had his heart set on someone preaching on the Romans passage from today’s lectionary, and lo and behold, no one wanted to preach on these meager verses. I think I was his fifth or sixth choice. And why did I say? Well, being the overeducated nincompoop that I am, I misread the schedule and thought I was preaching on last Sunday’s verses from Romans. Last Sunday, you’ll remember, we had an excellent sermon from Fr Phillip on how nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. That’s an easy one! I thought. Nothing can separate us from God’s love: even could write a sermon on that. 

Then I found out what I was actually preaching on: five verses from the beginning of Romans 9 that read: 

I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. 

And I thought… Hmm. That’s tricky. 

But as I contemplated these verses, I realized that there was something I wanted to talk about buried here, and that something can be summarized in the title of my sermon today: “Who are God’s People?”

Maybe you’ve heard this phrase that the young folks use: “She’s my people.” People here refers to your close circle, including the family members you actually like, your close friends, and maybe people that you feel responsible for but wouldn’t call your friends. And if someone is not to your liking, you say, “He’s not my people,” as in, “I would just as soon ignore him forever.” 

So who are God’s people? Who does God say he cares about? 

Paul says that his heart breaks for “his people,” his own race, the people of Israel. He is so pained by their separation from the risen Lord that he would even be willing to forego his own relationship with Christ if it meant that they would be redeemed.

Are there people in your life who are lost? people for whom you pray with “great sorrow and unceasing anguish”? A loved one, a family member, a dear friend who always comes into your heart when you pray? Perhaps a brother who left the faith; a friend who’s mired in broken relationships; a neighbor who struggles with addiction, feelings of unworthiness, lack of purpose, lack of meaning…? Paul feels that pain, struggles with the same sense of desperation that his people come into relationship with Christ.

In the next verses, we hear Paul’s sense of frustration with his Jewish brethren. He says: Hey guys! YOURS is the adoption as heirs; YOURS is the divine glory. YOU have covenants, YOU received the law, the temple worship and the promises. YOUR lineage produced the prophets, and ultimately, the Messiah.

He’s saying: “You were given EVERYTHING – how are you missing the most important piece, the arrival of the Christ??” You know that thing we’ve been waiting for?? It’s here! Jesus is the Christ, and it’s better than we ever imagined it! We’re reunited with God: the problems of sin, separateness, and sickness have been solved! This is it! and it’s great! What’s wrong with you guys??

The Jewish people were the protagonists of the whole divine story, from Creation through to Paul’s own day: they had the books of the prophets and the words of God himself; they had the laws that pointed toward a God of justice, orderly living, and personal righteousness. And what were they doing with it? They were deliberately holding onto the law – which can only condemn – and refusing to let their understanding of the law be transformed into the person of Christ, who offered salvation rather than judgement. In short, they had their heads buried in the sand. And while Paul was in agony over their lostness, he was also expressing his disgust: you were given everything and still you won’t see. 

Maybe Paul had certain people in mind when he wrote this passage. There must have been men and women whom he loved, whom he prayed for, whom he longed to bring before the throne of glory. 

I can’t help but think of St Augustine in this context. And when I think of Augustine, I have to think of Monica, his mother. She was a Christian woman from North Africa, and she had married a pagan man, Augustine’s father. We don’t know much about his father, because Augustine didn’t write much about him. But Monica looms large in his autobiography, titled Confessions. 

If you haven’t read the Confessions, you really ought to: this book shows Augustine at his most relatable, his most human; and you’ll be impressed with how profoundly familiar Augustine, the fourth-century Christian, will feel. Until he was in his 30’s, Augustine belonged to a cult called the Manichaeans. Fearing for his soul, his mother prayed for him constantly and pestered the Christian priests to refute the false doctrines her son was learning. The priest responded: “Go away. As you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish” (1991: 51). She took these words as prophetic. And indeed, they turned out to be so: her son became one of the greatest fathers of the church. 

Even if Paul had been thinking about a loved one when he wrote the passage we’re looking at, his words apply, not to a person or a handful of people, but a whole race. “My people” he calls them: “The people of my own race, the people of Israel.” 

Is there a group of people who weigh heavy on your heart when you pray or meditate? A group who seem lost, hurting, or struck with a particular misfortune? 

Maybe you think of the service workers who have lost their jobs since the pandemic started; or the children who can’t go to school; or the families of people killed by police. You might think about Christians who are persecuted for their faith around the world; or Syrian refugees; or the people of Hong Kong. Or maybe your heart focuses on family issues: the pregnant teenagers who are scared and alone, or children growing up without fathers, or the unborn infants who have been labeled “unwanted.” 

In short, who does our heart go out to? Where is our heart? 

What about those groups of people who, we sorrow to see, are racing in the opposite direction of truth, love, and God himself? In this category, I see my generation – the millennials – and the generations after me. And while I think some of the criticism leveled against millennials is unfair, I do think that they are lost and running hard in the wrong direction. This generation was handed a world where all the old rules and old promises seemed not to apply anymore. We were handed shards and were told that it was still a pot. Friends, that pot is not holding water. Millennials see the unfairness of the world: its racism, sexism, rising economic disparity, underemployment, stagnating wages, increasing division between cultural values and Christian values… and their response has been: Smash the patriarchy. This generation says, “If it’s old, destroy it. All the old ways – reliance on God, belief in institutions, hope for a better world – all must go out the window.” I see the nihilism and hopelessness of a generation without God, and it breaks my heart. 

We should pray for those people who are on our hearts, no doubt about it. I pray for my generation. But it’s so easy to draw the line there, to say: THESE are the people deserving of my prayers, my compassion, my love. But who are the people towards whom our hearts are not naturally inclined? That is, who do we despise?

That answer is different for every person. We have to search our hearts in order to discover the groups that we villainize, despise, or simply lack any pity for.

Is it along economic lines? When you’re poor, it’s easy to despise the rich. When rich, it’s easy to despise the poor. 

Is it along social lines? When you’re white, it’s easy to villainize those who are brown or black. When brown or black, it’s easy to villainize those who are white.

Is it along political lines? When you identify as Democrat, it’s easy to demonize a Republican. When you’re Republican, it’s easy to demonize a Democrat. 

Is it along religious lines? Do you find yourself disregarding the lives of Muslims, atheists, Jews or Buddhists? 

What about when you watch the news? Do you take sides, and hate everyone on the other side? The graffiti in my neighborhood reads “ACAB,” which stands for “All Cops Are Bad.” In some corners of the media, I see all protesters labeled “anarchists.” Neither group seems to think the other side has any value as human beings, or any right to fair treatment under the law.

Our hearts find natural affinity with some groups, and a natural antipathy for others. And the highly polarized media makes sure that our natural tendencies are hardened, wherever possible, into tribalism and enmity. Brothers and sisters in Christ, is that who God has called us to be? 

I challenge you to meditate this week on whom you have hardened your heart against, and pray for them. Love them. Reach out to them in the Spirit. Even if that group is your enemy, Christ teaches us that we are blessed when people insult us, persecute us and falsely say all kinds of evil against us because of him (Matt. 5:11). Even if the group you despise is actually your enemy – though, so often, those we despise are not our enemies – Christ died to redeem them. Christ died for the perpetrator of injustice. He died for the villain as much as the victim. 

You may protest that you don’t have any enemies. There’s no one you despise. 

If true, that’s great. Sometimes, even if we don’t despise anyone, we stop focusing on people.

That is to say, it’s easy to focus on things over people: a book you loaned out and never got back; a plant that the neighbor promised to water and then let die; the car your kid wrecked. In these cases, the image of Jonah often comes into my mind. No, not Jonah in the whale. Jonah sitting under a plant growing in the desert. Jonah hadn’t wanted to be a missionary to Nineveh. And when people of Nineveh actually repented, he was annoyed. He was kind of hoping to see the fire and brimstone. So after everyone repented, he went to sit in the desert. The sun was hot and burned him; but God caused a plant to grow to provide shade for him. Then God caused the plant to shrivel up and die. Jonah was really upset; He loved that plant. God said to him, “You cared more about that plant than you did about the people of Nineveh.”

How often do we care more about the plant than the people? I find myself doing this a lot. I care more about having a quiet beer on the porch than I do about my friend in crisis who needs a listening ear. Sometimes, we don’t have enemies. We’re just insensate to the image-bearers of God who suffer around us. 

So we ask ourselves: Who are my people? Who are the people on my heart? And who are the people I despise or ignore? 

As fallen creatures, we find it easy to divide the world into “my people” on one side, and “not my people” on the other. But who are God’s people? Does God say to some: “You’re my people, and I look out for you” and to others “You are not my people, and I don’t care for you?”

That’s the central question in the next part of Romans chapter 9. If you have your Bible, you can follow along with me as I read the next verses: 

It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.

Here, Paul is dealing with one aspect of the central paradox that the early followers of Christ had to confront: Are followers of Jesus simply a cult of Judaism, or are they something new? And if they are something new, then do God’s promises made to the Jewish people apply to the non-Jewish followers of  Christ? 

Indeed they do: Paul affirms that “it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of promise.” No longer do people need to be ethnically Jewish in order to be included in God’s promise of redemption, reconciliation, and healing. No longer is God’s protection and mercy extended only to a closed community of Israelites living under the law; rather, Gentiles have been welcomed in as children of promise. No longer are God’s people figured in terms of physical descendants, geopolitical nations, or dietary law. The doors are open for all. Christ says: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7). That means everyone who stands and knocks, everyone who seeks the Lord will find him. 

Unlike the God of Judaism, our God’s favor is not limited to specific people in specific cities. Unlike the Gods of Hinduism, our God doesn’t need us to please and placate Him in order avoid his wrath or curry his favor. Our God works all things together for our good, even though we’ve done nothing to earn it. Our God washed his disciples’ feet the night before they betrayed him to his death. 

So I ask again: does God say to some: “You’re my people,” and to others “You are not my people”? No, God doesn’t do that. God opened the doors, saying Come to me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). The last I checked, we are all tired and carrying heavy loads. We are all in need of a God of infinite love and infinite power who knows our inmost hearts and says to us, “You are loved. You are exactly as I made you to be, and you are mine.” 

With a God like that, how can we have hearts that harden against anyone? 

Think about those groups of lost souls I conjured in your minds at the beginning of this message: the people that your heart goes out to, those that you pray for, those that you long to bring into the joy of salvation and wholeness. Notice how you feel about that person, or that group of people. That’s how Paul felt about the lost Israelites who didn’t know Christ. That’s how God feels about the lost Israelites still, yes; but that’s also how God feels about the people you love who have strayed from his light. When your heart aches for a friend who moves from one abusive relationship to the next as he looks for love, or for a child who has left the faith, God’s heart aches for them in exactly the same way yours does. When you lament that a group of people has wandered away from God and endures the pain and brokenness that a life without him entails, God laments with you. 

What about the people you despise – those you see on the news who seem intent on destroying something you care about, or those you see as perpetrators of crimes and injustice – How does God feel about them? How about those that you never think about because you, like me, are focused Jonah’s plant instead of God’s image-bearing creatures? How does God feel about them? It turns out that God feels about them the same way he feels about the people we find it easy to love and pray for. 

God loves the lost. He loves the violent, the broken, the destroyers of statues, the despots, the people carrying guns on both sides of a conflict. Can we try to look at these people, not with our own human minds that insist on an “us vs. them” narrative, but with God’s mind? God sees them as his own dear children, lost and wandering in a hostile desert. Like sheep, they fall into crevices, headbutt each other, and refuse to come home. These are people for whom Christ died, whom he calls into his presence for healing in grace. Those we find hard to love are God’s people, too. So let us pray for them, and minister to them. We know that the grace and love we were freely offered has healed us, and shall heal them too. 

in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.