Sermon originally preached on August 30, 2015. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon.

Follow your heart. We hear that a lot today. But why should we follow our heart if what the prophet Jeremiah says about it is true: “The [human] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17.9)? Fortunately there is a solution for this human condition of ours. Read on Macduff. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Song of Solomon 2.8-13; Psalm 45.1-2, 7-10; James 1.17-27; Saint Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

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

On this day when we celebrate the founding of our parish, now well into its fourth year, and our patron saint, Augustine of Hippo, whose feast day was this past Friday (August 28), the anniversary of his death, how appropriate for us to consider the question, what makes a person righteous? In other words, how can we live our lives in ways that are faithful to God’s good will and purposes for us as his image-bearing creatures who are charged with being stewards over his good creation? The short answer is this: It’s a matter of transformation, and this topic was near and dear to Augustine of Hippo. This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

In our gospel lesson, we see Jesus again being confronted by his adversaries, this time over the matter of cleanness and uncleanness. Not being first-century Jews, these terms can seem strange to us, so let’s use the terms we are better acquainted with, righteous (or right) and unrighteous (or wrong). Yes folks. You heard me correctly. Despite what some would have us believe, there still are ways of thinking and acting in this world that constitute right and wrong. At the heart of the matter, Jesus’ adversaries are arguing that external things we do can make us right in God’s eyes. The immediate context in our gospel lesson was ceremonial (not hygienic) washing. Do this, say Jesus’ opponents, and you will distinguish yourself from the hated pagans who surround and control us, and make yourself right in God’s eyes at the same time. Sweet.

Nonsense, replies Jesus. It’s not the ceremonial things you do that make you right in God’s eyes, things like attending worship or praying or reading the Bible regularly or doing acts of charity (you know, stuff we Christians are called to do). You are focusing on the wrong things. What defiles you is what originates within you, within your heart. For it is out of the heart that all kinds of nasty things come. This is what alienates you from God and destroys your relationship with him. In other words, this is what makes you unclean and not right with God. Your corrupt heart is what makes external, ceremonial stuff necessary in the first place. It’s possible to do all those things well and still have a bad heart. For Jesus, the heart was not just the center of our emotions, but the center of our will.

This, of course, runs against our current thinking. Listen to your heart, we are told, and be true to it. Doing so is the key to success or happiness or whatever. But if we take Jesus’ claim here seriously, we can see the folly of that advise. We dare not listen to our heart, at least until it has been healed and transformed by Jesus in the power of the Spirit, because our heart is corrupt. Fixing this problem is not a matter of superficial window dressing (external acts), but of tearing down and rebuilding the very structure of the building (transformation)! 

Jesus’ teaching also refutes an argument we hear a lot these days, that “God made me this way.” God did not create us with corrupt hearts that lead us to follow our own proud and selfish desires. God did not create babies with birth defects, etc. This is the result of human sin in the garden and God’s subsequent curse on it. Anyone with a realistic and biblical perspective understands that while there are many things in this world that are good, right, and beautiful, there is also something terribly wrong with the world, and here Jesus tells us what part of the problem is. We have corrupted hearts that make us act in unwise, unhealthy, and outright sinful ways. Fix the heart and the behavior corrects itself. Jesus wasn’t railing against human tradition. He was railing against human tradition that sets aside God’s teaching about how we are to conduct our lives. He didn’t say stop washing or tithing or doing the things we do here at St. Augustine’s as the Lord’s people. He said stop thinking that doing those things make you right in God’s eyes because they may simply be covering a corrupt heart. Augustine himself saw the wisdom of Jesus’ teaching when he said that, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you,” i.e., until our corrupt hearts are healed and regenerated by Jesus.

Now at this point, I can hear some of you grumbling to yourselves. “I hear what Jesus is saying, but surely that doesn’t apply to me. I’m not a murderer or a rapist or a terrorist. I don’t preach long sermons like Father Maney. I’m basically a good person.” Well, you may be a good person at some level, says Jesus, because I created you good. But you are no longer pure. Every time you say a hurtful word to others out of anger, or tell a lie, or gossip, or speak evilly about someone else, or are indifferent to the plight of another, you are bearing the fruit of your corrupted heart because none of these things is from God. None of these things are after my example. And until your corrupt heart gets healed, you have a fundamental problem with God, the source and author of all life, because your corrupt heart inevitably alienates you from God. 

Now that I’ve sufficiently depressed you and made you feel all uncomfortable and stuff, let me tell you that a corrupt heart is not the end of the story. While we must certainly acknowledge our brokenness as humans and the estrangement our hard heart causes between God and humans and between humans, it is a testimony to the love and faithfulness of God that he would move to heal our corrupt hearts by becoming human and dying on a cross to end our alienation from him and each other. No matter who we are or what we have done, there is nothing too great for the love of God poured out in Jesus Christ to overcome or heal. Nothing. God wants us to live rightly so we can finally begin to enjoy real happiness and purpose of living, something that is only possible when he replaces our hard hearts with human ones. So in addition to addressing the basis of our alienation with him by dying for us, God poured out his Spirit in our hearts to heal us and give us hearts of flesh, human hearts, that will help us to live in the manner pleasing to God and us. Contrast this response to our own when we are the victims of someone’s hard heart. Our own hard heart doesn’t tell us to forgive the offender and be reconciled to him. Our unhealed hearts make us want to lash out and seek revenge on the offender, inevitably escalating the conflict and alienation we feel. This is not what we are hard-wired for. We are hardwired for relationship and goodness and peace. But our sin changed us and gives us just the opposite. That is why God’s mighty acts of justice and mercy on the cross and his giving us the Holy Spirit are such wonderful, life-changing things, thanks be to God!

Jesus hints at this in our gospel lesson. Don’t replace God’s teaching found in the broader story of God’s redemption contained in Scripture with your own human traditions. Instead, examine your motives and seek a pure heart, a heart that can only be healed and changed by me. I am available to you in the power of the Spirit and in God’s word contained in Scripture. This means that until our consistent desire is for God to cleanse and purify us by healing our hard hearts, we will never know the real transformative power of God. Failing to desire purity and then not doing the things on our end that must accompany a real desire to be healed, e.g., obeying Scripture, etc., is simply another manifestation of our corrupt heart. 

This is why Saint James urges us to take our human condition and the resulting sin seriously. Don’t be deceived, he tells us. Sin is deadly and will ruin you if you do not embrace the gift you’ve been given in Jesus. To be sure, your sins are forgiven by the blood of the Lamb shed for you. To be sure, you have been rescued from the dominion of darkness and transferred into God’s kingdom of light because of what God has done for you in Jesus. But if you really believe God has done this for you, you must respond to the gift you’ve been given. For starters, you will begin to see your utter inability to change and heal your corrupted heart and understand that only Jesus can do that for you (humility anyone?). Faith in Jesus will also open your eyes to the utter deadliness and horror of your sin and cause you to seek to pattern your own lives after Jesus so that you can be freed from the sin that will destroy you. And how does Saint James think we do this? Through accepting the word of God in our lives, i.e., by obeying the clear teachings of Scripture found in the broader narrative of God’s rescue plan of his creation and creatures, not just the parts we happen to agree with. When we are cafeteria Christians, picking and choosing what we will obey in Scripture and what we will ignore, we are demonstrating that we prefer to follow our corrupt heart rather than submit to God’s word. This is fundamentally self-defeating because all Scripture points us to Jesus our Lord and Savior, and only Jesus can truly change us for the good for which we were created. This is why we must obey all of Scripture, not some.

As our hearts get healed by Jesus so that we become more consistently like him, it will inevitably lead us to work for God’s justice to protect society’s weakest and poorest and those least able to defend themselves, i.e., we will begin to practice our faith. Why? Because our healed hearts lead us to have real compassion for the least and the lost, folks just like us before we were touched by the love of God. But our healed hearts will do more than this. Our heart of flesh will cause us to recognize that we must consistently work to develop new behavior patterns to replace our old corrupt ones. This is what Saint Paul meant by putting on Christ. So, e.g., we must learn to put aside our anger, our evil speaking, our gossip, our pride, our selfishness, and all the other manifestations of our corrupt hearts. We don’t do this on our own, of course. We do it in the power of the Spirit. That’s why our urgent pleas for purity must inevitably lead to our transformation, maddeningly slow and idiosyncratic as that seems to us at times. But this is what Saint James is talking about when he talks about us being the firstfruits of God’s good and generous gift to us made known in and through Jesus and the presence of his Spirit in and through his people. Thanks be to God! Our healed hearts cause us to bear good fruit and give the world a preview of what will be SOP in the new creation. Right now, healed hearts are an exception to the rule. When the kingdom comes in full, it will be the rule, no exceptions. I can assure you, Augustine would be all about healing and transformation that leads to action!

As I look at the fruit we bear as a parish, it is evident to me that the Spirit is at work in and through us and our hearts are being healed. I see how we care for each other and those who are not part of our family. I sense the spirit of goodwill and charity when we gather together and I rejoice at seeing us work tirelessly for our Lord who loved us and has claimed us. This isn’t an invitation for complacency and self-congratulations. Our healed hearts cause us to know better. But it is a sin not to celebrate our Lord’s good gifts to us as we resolve to continue to work tirelessly and joyfully on his behalf. Doing so is the best way we can witness to the world that God really does heal corrupt hearts and that we really do have Good News to offer others and ourselves, now and for all eternity. 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 originally preached on August 26, 2012. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts for today by clicking on our tapping their links below before you read the sermon. Want to know the one true God? Only in Jesus Christ will you find him. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 1 Kings 8.1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6.10-20; St. John 6.56-69.

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

Have you ever longed to know what God is really like? Have you ever worried that maybe God doesn’t really exist, or if he does, he isn’t really all that accessible to us so that we can ever really hope to know him or take comfort in him or be protected by him? If you have ever had these kinds of questions—and I suspect if we are honest, almost everyone here has had questions like these at one time or another in our lives—then you will begin to understand why the temple was so important to God’s people Israel. Like us, and before the temple was built, they often wondered if God was with them or whether he was really all that accessible. So imagine how wonderful you would feel if you longed for God to dwell with you and your people as he promised, and now you believed that God had finally done just that by coming to dwell in his temple, not as we humans occupy a house and live there, but that you could come to a physical place where you believed heaven and earth intersected so that you could actually be in God’s presence. If you understand how comforting and awesome that would be, you can begin to understand why today’s OT story was so important to God’s people. We want to know that God is with us and is accessible to us, and so this morning I want us to look briefly at this notion of temple and why we Christians don’t go to a temple to find God.

A temple, by its very definition, means that it is a dwelling place for a deity, in this case the God of Israel. Now in one sense, God had always dwelt among his people, especially from the time he called them out of slavery and bondage in Egypt. God had led his people through the wilderness by the pillars of fire and cloud and he would eventually have Moses build a tabernacle, which would house the Ark of the Covenant. But the tabernacle was designed to be a mobile dwelling that moved when God’s people moved. There was really no permanence about it, at least in a geographical sense, and despite God’s presence among his people, there were plenty of times when they rebelled against God or grumbled about whether God was really going to take care of them and deliver on his promise to bring them to a new land and give them rest from all their enemies. But after a long and checkered history that was characterized by chronic rebellion and unfaithfulness on the part of God’s people, God had finally given them the land and the rest from their enemies as he promised so that Solomon—whose very name is derived from shalom, which means peace—was able to build God a temple in which to dwell. 

And as today’s OT story tells us, when Solomon dedicated the temple, God did indeed come and dwell there. His presence was so powerful that it drove the priests out from it so that they could not do their duties, at least temporarily. Finally God’s people had a place to come and bring their thank offerings as well as their fellowship and sin offerings. In other words, they had a place to come directly (well, almost directly) into God’s presence and through the mediation of a priest find forgiveness and reconciliation with God. But even then, as our story alludes, God wasn’t entirely accessible to his people. Initially the cloud hid his presence and afterward only the chief priest was allowed once a year to enter the holy of holies where the Ark of the Covenant rested, which was God’s “footstool.” God was so close to his people but in some ways still so far away. How then could the people really get to know God and experience his presence first-hand among them? In other words, how is it possible for the Creator to dwell with his creatures? After all, the OT writers made it clear that to see the face of God meant death because sinful mortals were unable to gaze directly on the presence of God’s perfect holiness and survive. Was God’s presence in the temple the best they (and we) could hope for?

If we understand these dynamics, we have some of the background to help us understand today’s gospel lesson in which Jesus finishes his discourse about being the bread from heaven. We are also in a position to understand why Jesus’ words drove so many folks away. But first a bit more background. Earlier in St. St. John’s gospel we see Jesus driving the money-changers et al. from the temple (cf. St. St. John 2.13-25). This was not an effort to reform corrupt temple practices. Jesus’ actions went way beyond that. It was Jesus acting out a prophetic judgment on the temple and all that it had come to stand for in a manner similar to OT prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And if we remember that in Jesus we see the very embodiment of God, we quickly realize that in this episode we are watching God pronounce judgment on his temple and all that had become distorted in and through it. It is quite a sobering thought.

Now in today’s gospel lesson we see one of the logical outcomes of Jesus clearing the temple. When Jesus pronounced God’s judgment on the temple and made the cryptic reference to his body being raised in three days when asked by what authority he had done so, he was effectively telling his challengers and us that he is the new temple. Jesus is the place for us to come and interact with God, not the temple, because he is the Word made flesh. No longer would God’s people have to bring animal sacrifices to a priest to find forgiveness for their sins because in Jesus’ costly death on the cross we are directly offered forgiveness of our sins once and for all, and with it, reconciliation and peace with God. Jesus was going to do for Israel and the world what God had called Israel to do (and for which Solomon had prayed), but which Israel had failed to do. Just as God had delivered his people from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, so now in Jesus God would deliver his people from our bondage to sin and death. Sadly not everyone will accept this gracious gift offered to us. But it is God’s free gift offered to everyone, regardless of who we are or what we have done. No one is outside the love of God!

Jesus goes on to tell us that he is the giver of life and his claims will be vindicated after he has ascended into heaven, NT code for reminding us the risen and ascended Jesus is now Lord of the universe and rules through his people by the power of the Holy Spirit that he promised to send on us. This is why St. St. Paul reminded us several weeks ago at the beginning of Ephesians that the people of God, both Jew and Gentile who had been healed and reconciled to God and each other, were now the new and reconstituted temple of God (cf. Ephesians 2.19-22). We are Christ’s body, the Church, built on the foundation in which Jesus is the most important stone because only in Christ do we find true forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God and each other. This, in turn, equips us to be the people God calls us to be, holy people whom God will use by the power of the Spirit to bring his healing love to bear on others.

As we think about all this, two things strike us immediately. First, if Jesus really is the embodiment of God (which he is), it makes perfect sense that he would claim to be the new temple where we would come to meet and commune with God. This solves the vexing problem that has always existed for humans—how do we really get to know God? Granted, in Jesus we see God interacting with us as a human and therefore being subjected to human limitations. But if we want to see the face of God, if we want to know the heart of God, if we want to know how God expects us to behave, we have a clear example in Jesus to follow. Jesus is telling us to find healing, forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation in and through him. That is why if we ever hope to be the truly human beings God created us to be, we must establish our very lives and being in him so that he can work in and through us in the power of the Spirit to transform us into his very likeness. This is not a one-off event. It is a process that takes a lifetime and it can be difficult at times because we are so profoundly broken. But it is the NT’s consistent promise to us that if we do our part to cultivate our relationship with Jesus, we will be changed into his very likeness and with that will come a newfound sense of peace, power, and purpose for living. Are you enjoying the fruit of that promise in your life? 

And here we also see the reason why so many people found Jesus’ teachings difficult. The very idea that we can meet the God of this universe fully in Jesus of Nazareth is so offensive to some people that they will immediately be driven away from its truth. The folks of Jesus’ day were not prepared to deal with the possibility that God would finally fulfill his ancient promise to come and live with his people by becoming a human being. They wanted (and in the temple had) something sexier and more spectacular. It’s quite a stretch to think about the God of this universe, not as a brilliant and awe-inspiring presence that dazzles and overwhelms, but as a mere mortal human being. The thought of it rocked Jesus’ world and it continues to rock ours. But if we really do worship the God of this universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we should expect him to rock our world, precisely because he is God and is free to manifest himself to us in any manner he chooses. The day we make God our intellectual and emotional equal is the day we stop worshiping the one true and living God and start worshiping a god of our own making. That’s why we need Jesus if we ever hope to really get to know God, at least as best as we are able.

But true as Jesus’ promises are to us and active and powerful as the Spirit is in our lives, we can get distracted and forget all that God has done for us in Christ. And of course, being the physical creatures we are, we need the physical touch for a lot of reasons, especially to help us remember important things. That is why Jesus has been reminding us to feed on his body and blood. Think about it. We have all kinds of customs and rituals that help us remember what is most important to us as individuals and families because we are so distractible. We give each other wedding rings as a tangible reminder of our marriage vows. We have family holiday traditions to help us remember the good times past and the people we love but see no longer. That’s why newly married couples sometimes have difficulties in finding the right blend of family traditions to celebrate the holidays. Who we are and where we have been are important!

That’s why Jesus gave us a meal. He wanted to give us something tangible to remember him! It has been hotly debated if Jesus is talking about the Eucharist in today’s lesson, but surely he is because we don’t find an account of the Last Supper in St. John’s gospel, at least not about Jesus passing the bread and cup and interpreting what they mean to his disciples. But here our Lord has been reminding us to feed on him so that we have life, to feed on him so that we remember that we meet God through him and find life and wholeness for which we so desperately yearn. We can’t find a much better reason to come to the Lord’s table than that!

But most of us only feed on our Lord once a week. So what about the other six days? What do we do to keep us faithful and firmly rooted in Jesus so that he will use us as visible signs of his new life and creation? St. Paul has the answer for us in today’s epistle lesson. He reminds us that we are in a state of war at all times. There are spiritual forces out there who hate us and want to destroy our faith and us, and we had better take them seriously or they will get us. Their existence is a big reason why many of us struggle in our faith or are confronted by struggles and difficulties in life. Don’t get bogged down in trying to personify these forces and don’t look for the devil under every rock. Accept that they are real and also acknowledge that dangerous as they are, they are still under God’s sovereign rule and that Christ has defeated evil and death decisively on the cross, even if that victory has not been fully consummated.  

In the interim, to help keep us faithful, St. Paul tells us to put on the armor of God. The imagery St. Paul uses is based on the armor of a Roman soldier, which was designed to be used in formation with other soldiers to put up a formidable collective shield. And that’s what we need to pay attention to here. St. Paul is telling us as the Church to put on the armor of God individually and then come together as Christ’s body so that the Spirit can use us to help shield one another in prayer, mutual Bible study, and good works. In addition to feeding on our Lord each week, we need to read the saving narrative of God’s plan to rescue his fallen world and the numerous sub-stories that make up the larger narrative. We need to pray for each other and encourage each other. We need to reach out and provide tangible help to one another and the world when we see need and can do something about it. Every time we act like Jesus in real and tangible ways, we can trust that God uses these acts to help us keep the Main Thing the main thing. 

Of course, none of this is particularly easy. If it were, and if we were not such distractible people, none of this would be necessary. But because we are at war, life isn’t always easy and we do need tangible reminders that will help us keep rooted in the life and power of Jesus. And when by God’s grace we experience his presence and power in our daily lives, even in the midst of our struggles, we will also know what it means to have Good News, now and for all eternity. 

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

Sermon originally preached on August 23, 2020. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon.

How are we to be faithful to Christ when we are so profoundly sin-sick, incapable of fixing/healing ourselves? If we rely on our own power, we will inevitably fail, and this can lead us to fall into despair and become disillusioned. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Exodus 1.8-2.10; Psalm 124; Romans 12.1-8; Saint 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 more delusional thinking)? If you heard our epistle lesson like that, 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 are already 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 Compton 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 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 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 to be 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 nor do we have the power to effect it. 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. 

Sermon originally preached on August 18, 2013. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon.

How can the Lord Jesus be a great divider when he came to bring peace between humans and between God and humans? Well, he divides because we live in a very sin-sick world and many are unwilling to follow Jesus by obeying him, and when that happens division occurs. It’s as simple and complex as that. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

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

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the 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 Christ 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.

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 and murder. 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 to 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 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 thinking, values, and lifestyle 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 New Testament 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 to lead his people out of Egypt against all odds or like Daniel who had the faithful audacity 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—New Testament 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: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon originally preached on August 16, 2015. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon.

Are you wise or foolish? If you’re honest with yourself you will use the overall fruit of your life, good or bad, to answer the question with integrity. How you answer will determine fundamentally if you are happy or miserable in this life. Judging by the alarming number of people who display unhinged behavior these days and from whom nothing good comes out of them, the number of fools increases with each passing day. Please don’t be one of these poor souls. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 1 Kings 2.10-12; 3.3-14; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5.15-20; John 6.51-58.

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

Our lessons today tackle the biblical ideas of wisdom and foolishness. What does Scripture mean when it talks about wisdom and foolishness? What does that look like? Why should we give a fig about either? It is these questions I want us to look at briefly this morning.

Before we look at our lessons, it is helpful for us to have the Big Picture view in mind when it comes to the biblical notions of wisdom and foolishness. In general, as the psalmist proclaims (quoting Proverbs 1.7) the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Those who have good understanding live by this. And as Proverbs adds, fools despise wisdom and instruction. Scripture further distinguishes between godly wisdom and human wisdom. Godly wisdom produces a healthy fear of the Lord, not where we are terrified of God but where we realize God is God and we are not. Such wisdom produces a pattern of living that is consistent with living life fully in the manner God intends for us to live as his image-bearing creatures charged with caring for God’s good creation. Among others, it helps us discern evil from good and ultimately allows us to conduct our lives in the manner of Jesus. It is emphatically not about our ability to follow a set of arbitrary rules. Keep this in mind as we talk about what godly wisdom looks like on the ground, especially when we look at our epistle lesson. 

Human wisdom, on the other hand, is based on our desire to play God. It is typically rooted in our pride and self-centeredness. We see it emerge in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve listen to the tempter: “Did God really say…?”. And so our spiritual ancestors ate of the fruit from the tree of knowledge in a futile attempt to determine their own happiness. They weren’t content to follow God’s good and wise instructions and the ensuing freedom that always produce contentment, wholeness, peace, meaning, purpose, and happiness when followed. The folly of human wisdom is best seen in its failure to recognize our crucified and risen Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, the very embodiment of the living God, for who he is (cf. 1 Corinthians 1.20-25). Think how many today scoff at the notion that a meaningful and happy life, as well as salvation, can be found only in a real and living relationship with our risen Lord, vainly searching for all kinds of human-devised solutions that are bound to fail because they are not anchored in God, our only source of happiness and real life. It is enough to break the heart, especially when we consider the words of Jesus in our gospel lesson this morning: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” 

No, as the columnist Michael Cohen brilliantly argued in a recent piece, we in the west have spent the last 250 years or so trying to find happiness by tearing down all the old constraints and guidelines of religious morality in a misguided effort to become more “free” (a top priority of enlightened thinking), and we are utterly confounded when some of our youth reject their newly-won freedoms for the tyranny of ISIS.

But as Scripture reminds us, there is a problem with notions of freedom rooted in human wisdom. We are so inherently flawed that we really don’t know what is good for us. But being the wise fools we are, we don’t believe this and have rejected the godly wisdom of St. Paul, who correctly understood that only when we are free from our slavery to sin—something that is possible only in and through Jesus Christ, so that we are free to follow his pattern of living—will we ever be truly free and happy (cf. Gal 5.1). And the result of our increasingly “free” society based on human wisdom? More alienation, more meaninglessness, more loneliness, more strife and enmity, more desperate searching for new meaning and purpose of living. We know in our bones (if we are honest with ourselves) there is more to life than the unfettered freedom to pursue our own fallen desires. And yet we continue to pursue those desires relentlessly.

With this in mind, we are now ready to see what light our lessons can shed on the twin notions of wisdom and foolishness. In our OT lesson, we see young King Solomon praying for God’s wisdom. Solomon’s ascent to the throne was anything but routine and peaceful. He emerged only after a deadly struggle with his own family, part of God’s curse on his father David’s sin of adultery and murder that we looked at a few weeks ago. Solomon had relied largely on his own wisdom to gain the throne, not God’s, but now apparently the young king is humble enough to know that he’s in over his head and needs the help, guidance, wisdom, and power of One greater than him if he is to rule God’s people wisely. In effect, Solomon asked God for the ability to live his life patterned after God’s own life so that God’s thoughts permeated Solomon’s thoughts, decision-making, and leadership. Is it any wonder God granted Solomon his request? Should we wonder any less that God would answer our own sincere requests to live wisely by being transformed in our minds and thinking (cf. Romans 12.2)? As Solomon demonstrated, once his mind was transformed by God, his behavior followed. But once Solomon decided to rely on his own wisdom, well, not so much. Apostasy and idolatry followed.

From this story we see that if we are to pursue godly wisdom so that we live our lives in ways that are pleasing to God, you know, by practicing justice, loving mercy (i.e., loving others as ourselves), and walking humbly with our God (i.e., loving God with our whole being) (Micah 6.8), humility is the essential prerequisite. We have to be humble enough to recognize our own condition as being fatally flawed, and that we are not in the position to fix ourselves so that we reach out to the One who can fix and heal us. Life is complicated and we are mortal and finite. Despite what we might think, we are in it over our heads and need help from our Creator who really does know us and knows what is best for us. This realization comes only through humility.

St. Paul likewise urges us to practice godly wisdom in our epistle lesson. Be careful how you live, he says, because the times are evil. Live wisely and make the most of your time. The Greek he uses means literally to buy back your time. Here St. Paul is reminding us that life is not what God intended for us originally. It has been hijacked and snatched away from us by the dark powers and our own fallen nature, and he urges us to get the time we have back under our control. Why? So we can find real meaning, purpose of living, and contentment in our lives.

So how do we take back our time so that we find meaning, purpose, and joy? As we have seen the past two weeks, St. Paul has already told us how: cultivate the Spirit’s presence in you and let him heal and transform you so that you can live as God’s people. In today’s lesson, St. Paul expands on this, adding another dimension to his teaching. He tells us to embrace God’s wisdom. The Greek St. Paul uses here indicates that he sees this as an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Before we look specifically at what St. Paul says, we need a word of caution. I know that when I was a young man, I would read passages like this and roll my eyes. Don’t get drunk, don’t be sexually immoral, don’t party as the pagans do. In other words, I read passages like these with the understanding that St. Paul definitely didn’t want me to have a good time! All these dos and don’ts. All these rules to follow. But I knew better. Oh wait…! My point is this. If we read passages like today’s and see them as nothing more than rules to be followed, and not very fun ones at that, we are applying human wisdom and totally miss what St. Paul is telling us.

St. Paul and the other NT writers want Jesus’ body parts, you and me, to learn to take back the time that’s been hijacked from us so that we can learn to live in ways that are not only pleasing to God but pleasing to us. To do that, we must learn to live wisely, by God’s wisdom, not ours. And so here St. Paul tells us not to get drunk but to be filled by the Spirit. The Greek St. Paul uses indicates that while this is a command he wants us to follow, it isn’t something we can do in our own power. As we have seen, we do not have access to the Spirit until the Spirit chooses to live in us, and that is always God’s initiative. So here St. Paul is telling us that once we have been blessed with the Spirit, we are to do the things we need to do to allow the Spirit to do his healing and transforming work in us. In other words, what St. Paul is telling us to do is to cooperate with God so that God can do his thing in and for us. St. Paul understands that the spiritual world, like the physical world, abhors a vacuum. We must be filled with something, either good or bad (cf. St. Luke 11.24-26). St. Paul has nothing against wine or drinking. Neither does the Bible. What St. Paul (and Scripture in general) is adamantly against is drunkenness. Why? Because alcohol controls us, and usually not in good ways when we are drunk. It controls us indirectly by lowering our inhibitions so that we might say and do things we would never dream of saying or doing when sober. I know in my own experience, some of the things I have done about which I am most ashamed, I’ve done while being under the influence of alcohol: fighting, sexual immorality, evil speaking about others, boasting, selfish acts, and the like (cf. Galatians 5.19-21). By contrast, I’ve never done anything under the influence of the Holy Spirit about which I have been ashamed. Or consider the two daughters of Lot, who by using worldly wisdom, decided they needed to ensure their family line’s continuity after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and so devised a plan to get their father Lot drunk so that they achieved their goal by committing incest with him. Do you think Lot in his sober mind would have entertained such a scheme? If so, why the need to get him drunk? The writer of Genesis reports this, but certainly does not approve of this behavior (Genesis 19.30-36)! So St. Paul is warning us that if we want to be under the Spirit’s influence so that we can live wisely and take back our time, living in ways pleasing to God and building godly contentment in us, we must do things to cultivate the Spirit’s presence. This is a far cry from counseling us to follow the rules!

What are some of those things that can cultivate the Spirit’s presence? Prayer, as our OT lesson teaches. Reading and appropriating Scripture, as St. Paul teaches. Worship, praise and singing, along with partaking in the eucharistic feast each week, as our epistle and gospel less-ons teach. Doing these things help the Spirit to do his transforming work in us so that we can build each other up instead of engaging in thinking and behaviors that tear each other down.

In sum, the world, full of, um, its human wisdom, tells us to seek happiness by following our own desires and giving us the requisite freedom to do so. And so we seek to find happiness in booze, sex, greed, ambition et al. The result? We fail to develop meaningful relationships with God and others. Our drunken euphoria is replaced by a raging hangover in the morning. Our satiated libidos are counteracted by the loneliness and isolation we feel as the result of affairs or watching porn or one night stands. We seek to satisfy our desire for the perfect spouse by marrying, divorcing, and remarrying in an endless cycle instead of finding the joy and fulfillment that comes from a husband and wife working through married life for 30 years, like the Collins’s have, and overcoming all kinds of obstacles, things which while difficult and unpleasant at times, help us develop the kind of true and meaningful relationships we crave. 

By contrast, godly wisdom recognizes that God created us to be his wise stewards and reflectors of his image and glory out into creation. It sees the massive importance of relationships, both with God and others, and understands that this takes hard work, humility, discipline, and commitment. The world’s wisdom will scoff at all this. In fact, they will hate it and us. They will call us fools and worse, and that is why we must be prepared to suffer for the Name. But who knows better about what it takes to make us happy than our good, wise, and all-knowing Creator? Augustine recognized this when he wrote his famous statement that, “Our hearts are restless, O God, until they find rest in you” (Confessions 1.1).

The choice is ours. Living our lives consistently after Jesus (notice I did not say in a mistake-free manner) will produce godly contentment and purpose of living that will surely satisfy us forever. We do that whenever we embody God’s love for all people, pursue justice, work for peace, resolve to be a servant to others rather than try to lord ourselves over them, and whenever we are kind, tenderhearted, generous, forgiving, and the rest (cf. Galatians 5.22-25). Learning to live our lives after God’s own life in which God’s wisdom leads, guides, and counsels us, so that we become Christ’s beacons of light to a world darkened by sin and confusion is surely the hardest thing we will ever do. But nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. Following Jesus is the only way we will ever learn to know real meaning and purpose for living. 

As a parish, then, let us resolve afresh today to live as God’s wise image-bearing stewards, faithfully imitating our Lord Jesus Christ and relying confidently on his power to form us into the fully human beings he created us to be. And as Jesus does his healing and transformative work in and through us in the power of the Spirit, let us confidently, boldly, and joyfully proclaim to the world and each other, that we are wise enough to know we really do have Good News, now and for all eternity. 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 originally preached on August 17, 2014. As always, it will be helpful to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon.

Here I address the issue many struggle with: Is God Present and active in his world or is God an absentee landlord? How we answer this question will make a massive difference in whether we have a real and life-sustaining faith. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

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

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

In all of our lessons this morning, we are confronted with the strange but ultimately trustworthy ways of God and his providence over the affairs of his creation and creatures. What might we learn from these stories to help us better understand God’s ways revealed to us so that our faith and hope in God might be bolstered and we can live without being afraid?

In our OT lesson we see the strange outworking of God’s will in the life of Joseph. Bishop Stephen touched on some of the highlights last week but it will be helpful for us to review Joseph’s story so that we can better understand how God works in the lives of his people. You recall that Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers, who then lied to their father Jacob about Joseph’s fate. Sadly, we get this because we’ve all had to deal with jealousy, competition, pride, anger, and dishonesty on a regular basis. Sometimes we are the ones who act this way.

Joseph was eventually sold to Potiphar, an officer of Egypt’s Pharaoh, and we wonder how that could have possibly happened. He quickly found favor with Potiphar and was put in charge of Potiphar’s household because as the narrator tells us, the Lord blessed Joseph—even as a slave. But Joseph’s good fortune didn’t last long because Potiphar’s wife came on to him and when Joseph refused her sexual advances, she lied to her husband about the whole sordid thing and Joseph found himself prison, lucky (or was it luck?) that he hadn’t been killed. 

Joseph’s fortunes didn’t seem to get any better while in prison. Despite helping one of Pharaoh’s chief servants who had managed to get himself imprisoned along with Joseph, the servant forgot to plead for Joseph’s release when the servant gained his freedom and Joseph languished in prison another two years. Finally the servant remembered Joseph and he was summoned to interpret a troubling dream of Pharaoh. Before we go any further, let’s stop and put ourselves in Joseph’s shoes. We’ve been sold into slavery by our brothers. The wife of our master falsely accuses us of sexual advances when we are totally innocent and we are thrown in prison to languish there. While imprisoned, we help a fellow prisoner out and he promptly forgets us when he is released, despite our plea to him to intercede on our behalf to the country’s leader. Are you feeling the love and providence of God? But that’s part of the point.

Now we come to our story today. Joseph has become Pharaoh’s right-hand man and has been reunited with his brothers. We don’t know how much time has passed but it is not unreasonable to think that it has been several years because the brothers do not recognize Joseph. And this is where the story gets really interesting. We might expect Joseph to be bitter toward both God (how could you let this happen to me, God?) and his brothers (you sold me as a slave, you @#$%*!) and want to exact a full measure of revenge on them. But this is not Joseph’s demeanor at all. To the contrary, he tells them he is not angry at them because these events were all God’s doing to preserve life (cf. Genesis 50.15ff)! What is going on here?

Or consider the story of Esther and Mordecai, a Jewish girl and her cousin who were living in post-Babylonian exile in Persia. By a series of remarkable “coincidences” Esther is made queen and Mordecai also finds favor in King Xerxes’ sight. But almost immediately both are confronted by the wicked Haman who hates their people and tricks Xerxes into issuing a decree to effectively exterminate God’s people. Again, by a series of remarkable events and “coincidences” Haman’s wickedness comes back on his own head and God’s people are not only saved but prosper (Xerxes, e.g., can’t sleep one night and this triggers a chain of events that leads to Haman’s downfall and Mordecai’s vindication). You will search the book of Esther in vain for God’s name. It is not there in the Protestant version of Scripture. But the writer surely wants us to see God’s presence and guidance in the “coincidences” and events as they unfold in the story to protect God’s people.

And here is the main point of these stories. Despite human wickedness and rebellion, despite how things seem to us from our limited perspective, God is firmly in control of things and uses even human evil and rebelliousness to advance his plan to heal and rescue his world and its creatures created good but badly corrupted by human sin and rebellion. The story of Joseph is ultimately about the story of God’s faithfulness to his promise to Abraham to use Abraham and his descendants, the people of Israel, to heal and bless his sin-sick world and its creatures. God made that covenant with Abraham and the rest of the story of the Bible is about how God has worked out his covenant promises despite human rebellion and unfaithfulness! 

Not only is God faithful to his covenant promises to heal and redeem us, God has the power and the will to overcome any and every opposition to it. As Joseph would tell his brothers later, “You intended evil for me but God intended it for good ” (Genesis 50.20). God knew a great famine was coming, a famine that had the potential to wipe out his people Israel before God could use them to fulfill his covenant promises to Abraham, and so he sent Joseph ahead to prepare for that famine, which Joseph did. Likewise with the story of Esther. Had Haman prevailed in his wickedness, God’s people Israel would have been destroyed and God’s covenant promises would have gone unfulfilled. But God simply would not allow that to happen because God is a God who is utterly trustworthy and faithful to his promises, and who is intimately involved in our lives. Notice carefully the dynamic in these stories: God working through humans, willing or otherwise. From our perspective, we can see only humans at work.

Not only that, God called his people Israel to come to Egypt so that he could ultimately demonstrate a mighty act of deliverance on their behalf. The Exodus is still the defining event for Jews to this day. We’ll hear that story beginning next week. But for right now, the story of Joseph is all about God’s faithfulness to his promises and his called-out people, you and me, and God will not allow anything to prevent his plan to heal and redeem the world through his people from succeeding. As we have seen, this is not always obvious to us. Perhaps it rarely is. That is why we must keep reading stories like these to keep reminding ourselves of the truth they teach about God’s love, faithfulness, and providence in our lives and history. 

We see a similar dynamic in our epistle lesson this morning where St. Paul is finishing up his complex musings about the fate of God’s people Israel. We have seen that St. Paul genuinely feared that those Jews who did not believe Jesus to be their Lord and Messiah would be cut off from God’s promises. But this created an obvious dilemma for St. Paul. How could the very people God called to extend his blessings to the nations of the world be cut off from God? This would make God a liar and show God to ultimately be unfaithful to his covenant promises. What’s the answer? “God’s gifts and promises are irrevocable,” says St. Paul (do you believe that?). So God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that God might show mercy to all. Say what? 

To understand this we have to summarize St. Paul’s previous arguments. St. Paul has argued elsewhere in Romans 9-11 that God used Israel’s disobedience in rejecting Jesus as their Messiah as the vehicle to rescue the Gentile nations. The Gentiles, whose disobedience God used in his mercy to call Israel into existence to make them his own in the first place (Genesis 12.1-3; Romans 9.4-5), were now offered mercy through their faith in Jesus so that they could be grafted into the olive branch that was the true remnant of Israel, defined by St. Paul as those Jews and Gentiles who believed that Jesus was their true Messiah. And God would use the believing Gentiles to offer mercy to his people Israel by making them jealous so they would return to him by believing in Jesus. So it was through everyone’s respective disobedience that God was able to offer mercy to all those who would accept it, both Jew and Gentile.  

To us who are on the ground, this logic might seem convoluted and even tortuous. We  ask why God would work like that. We might even add that from all appearances it doesn’t look as if God’s plan is working all that well. But here again, we are confronted with the consistent witness that God is in charge and we are to relax. At the end of the day, we are not God. So who are we to challenge God’s plan and his manner of fulfilling his covenant promises ultimately through Jesus the Messiah? To be certain we do not always understand God’s ways. In fact, we only understand that which God chooses to reveal to us. But this begs the question. Do we  believe God is good to his word to heal and redeem us through the death and resurrection of Jesus and God’s sending the Spirit to live with us in the midst of our often chaotic lives or not?

This leads us to our gospel lesson where we see Jesus hinting at the strange and often puzzling ways that God works. He has just sparred with the Pharisees about ritual purity. The issue for Jesus is about heart health. What makes us holy and therefore fit to stand before the perfect and holy God? The Pharisees argued that it was ritual and works based on the law of Moses. Not so, says Jesus. It is not what you put into your body that makes you clean or unclean. It’s what comes out of your mouth because that is indicative of what is in your heart (the essential you). Jesus does not offer a remedy for the condition he has diagnosed. But here again if we follow the story to the end we will have our answer and discover perhaps the most astonishing and strange outworking of God’s love and grace because we see that Jesus himself is the ultimate remedy to our sin-sickness. We are washed clean by his blood shed for us and healed by his body broken for us, and we continue to partake in God’s gracious act of healing and redemption when we come to the Lord’s Table every week to partake in the eucharist. 

Moreover, we are given the Holy Spirit to dwell within us to help us learn holy lifestyles so that what comes out of our mouth will sooner or later become more edifying than not. For many of us this takes a lifetime to achieve and no one ever gets it entirely right. But that is not the point. The point is we are healed and reconciled in and through Jesus’ death on the cross. This in itself is far from obvious and this is the foolishness of God about which St. Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 1.18-31. Those who are hostile to God’s kingdom and hold an opposing worldview mock us and ask how God could have healed and redeemed and forgiven us through the suffering of Jesus. How could God have defeated evil on the cross? Jesus was executed. The bad guys won! God didn’t rescue his people in the way an all-powerful God should act to destroy his enemies and so rid the world of evil in the manner they demand. So it is foolishness.

But no. Now we are back to Joseph’s story. What the dark powers and their minions intended for evil, God intended for good. To be sure, the cross would have been an everlasting symbol of shame and defeat had it not been for the resurrection of Jesus with its foretaste of the culmination of God’s covenant promise to heal and redeem his world through Israel embodied in the one faithful Israelite, Jesus. I’m talking of course about the New Creation and that is why we as Christians must always be resurrection people. The extent we can appropriate the resurrection and make it our living reality is the extent we can live as people who do not fear and who have real hope, even in times of great suffering, because we believe that God uses even our suffering to draw us closer to him so that he can use us to heal and bless his world, a world redeemed ultimately by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Let the church say, “Amen!”

Notice this same dynamic was at work in Joseph’s story. God’s plan was not obvious to Joseph’s brothers and they were constantly afraid. God’s plan was made clear to Joseph and he was not afraid and never lost his faith in God, despite the substantial suffering he endured during his life. In fact, Joseph’s sufferings apparently helped bolster his faith because in his suffering Joseph was able to discern the will and purpose of God, strange and wonderful as the out-working of God’s purposes were and are.

These lessons about God’s sovereignty and covenant faithfulness can help us as we are confronted by all kinds of evil in our life, from the terrible news around the world to the trials and tribulations we are currently enduring. All these things can make us fearful or angry or doubtful (or all of the above). But the consistent message of Scripture is that we are not to be afraid because we worship a God who is bigger and more powerful than the sin and evil that bedevil us and his world. We are not promised immunity from suffering, but we are promised power and redemption and healing because God has not abandoned us and is always true to his word. 

What is it that you are struggling with right now? Whatever it is, keep these stories in mind as you bring your hurts and fears to the Lord Jesus in prayer. Don’t misunderstand. I am not suggesting any of this will be easy or straightforward. But keep wrestling. Don’t give up. Ever. Remember that you might not see your prayers answered for some time. Joseph’s surely weren’t. Perhaps your prayers will never be answered as you desire. But it is precisely at this point that you must remember that you are one of God’s people in Jesus and God will not let you ultimately be destroyed or separated from him because his steadfast love endures forever as does his faithfulness to his people. You are greatly loved by God and you have the cross, the resurrection with its promise of New Creation, and the power of the Spirit as living witnesses to this truth. So embrace the promise, despite all the mysterious and apparently ambiguous ways of God, and fear not. God is firmly in charge and you are always within his healing love and embrace, even when it is not self-evident to you. And if you know this, you will know you have Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. 

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