Sermon originally preached on September 26, 2021. 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 look at the terrifying reality of God’s holiness and justice, terrifying that is for the true enemies of Christ. We have spent so much time deluding ourselves about the seriousness of Sin while watering down God’s justice as presented in Scripture—not the phony and unreal justice of wokery in all its various forms of wickedness, but real justice, God’s justice—that many of us, Christians included, don’t take it seriously anymore. Huge mistake that can lead to deadly consequences barring repentance. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5.13-20; St. Mark 9.38-50.

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

What are we to make of the rather sordid but compelling story of Haman’s execution in our OT lesson? How about St. James’ example of God answering Elijah’s prayer only after Elijah had slaughtered the prophets of Baal? And how about Christ’s hyperbolic exhortation for us to rid ourselves of any source of sin? Our lessons this morning all remind us in their various ways that God hates evil of any kind and acts in judgment against it, both in this mortal life and at the Day of Judgment. What then should be our response as Christians to this rather unsettling reality? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

Let us start by acknowledging the terrifying truth that God is no doting old grandpa, willing to look the other way with a wink and a snicker at our sins. To the contrary, it is not too strong a statement to say that God hates evil and sin in all its variety. Why? Not because God is some angry bully waiting to come down hard on wrongdoers. If that were the case, why would God have made us in his image? Why are we still even here? It’s not because of our own virtue and righteousness! No, God hates evil and sin of any kind because sin corrupts us and dehumanizes us, i.e., it slowly erases God’s image in us so that we can no longer be his stewards called to run God’s world as God created us to do. And this should make sense to us because we all know how evil can evoke anger. Who in their right mind doesn’t hate that drug dealers destroy lives and bring ruin on others, all for the sake of money? Who among us doesn’t abhor child molesters and pedophiles for the same reasons? God created us to be fully human beings who bear his image and who have been given the awesome responsibility to rule God’s world on God’s behalf, reflecting God’s goodness out into creation and reflecting creation’s praises back to its Creator. Sin and the evil it creates corrupts and perverts our holy task as God’s image-bearers and God cannot countenance that forever, patient as God has demonstrated he is. God did not speak creation and us into existence to foster madness and loneliness and sickness and alienation, and because God loves us and wants us to live with him forever, God cannot look the other way on our sin forever. In our OT lesson, e.g., Haman plotted to destroy God’s people the Jews, in part to satisfy his megalomania. (I would encourage you to read the entire book of Esther as it is as compelling a story as you will ever read and God’s name is not mentioned in it once). But there God is, operating behind the scenes, judging Haman’s evil to bring justice to God’s people, wicked as they were, because of God’s love and faithfulness to them. 

In our epistle lesson, St. James’ reference to Elijah points us to God’s relenting in his judgment on the land and its people only after the prophets of Baal had been slaughtered. As with the story of Esther, healing could not occur until God had decisively dealt with the sins of evildoers. Why? When we are beset continually by evil, we can never be fully healed, again reminding us why God will not let sin and evil reign forever—it sickens and kills us and God will not tolerate that massive disorder to his good creation and creatures forever. God loves us too much. In our gospel lesson, Christ essentially tells us the same thing. Be prepared to cut out anything in your life—even if the things you must cut out are inherently good and useful—if they cause you to continue to sin because God will one day judge you and you will find yourself in the flames of hell forever. Christ’s warning is a stark reminder that without outside help from a power stronger than the powers of Evil and Sin, none of us have any hope of ever enjoying life in God’s new world when it comes with our Lord’s return. None of us like to think about this and the thought of eternal separation from the healing and life-giving power of God is so terrifying that many of us spend our time living in denial and deflecting the truth, convincing ourselves that God would never do that because God is too loving and merciful. Yes God is loving and merciful. That we are here worshiping God this morning is living proof of that truth. God is not the problem here. We are the problem because we are all slaves to the power of Sin, and unless something is done about that, we are all doomed to eternal destruction. We see it in the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from paradise after the Fall. God cannot tolerate forever that which corrupts his beloved (that would be you and me in all our unloveliness). We see it in the story of God’s Tabernacle in the wilderness. God gave Moses strict rules about how sinful humans could approach God’s holy Presence and those who did not follow those rules found themselves destroyed [when the profane/holy meet]. Our problem today is that most of us have persuaded ourselves that this simply can’t be true. We’ve become too used to living with and rationalizing sin, both ours and the sins of others. This is emphatically not the biblical witness on the subject, however, and by God’s grace we would be wise to take these warnings seriously.

But all is not lost, my beloved. Far from it. While it is true that none of us can extricate ourselves from the death grip of Sin’s power and all of us are evildoers, some worse than others, it is also true that the Father’s great love for us is greater than our slavery to Sin. As St. Paul proclaims in his letter to the Romans, God demonstrated his love for us by sending his Son to die for us (i.e. God became human in the man Jesus), even while we were God’s enemies, estranged from and hostile toward God, to bear his own right and just judgment on our sins, thereby clearing the way for us to have a future and a hope. The Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ was and is the turning point in human history where God the Father acted decisively for us to save us from eternal damnation and open the way for us to live in God’s holy Presence forever. But we don’t have to wait till the new heavens and earth arrive. We can enjoy sweet, albeit imperfect, communion with God right now, enjoying his presence when we worship him together and feed on Christ’s body and blood each week. To be sure, evil still runs rampant in God’s world and we all suffer from it. Every one of us here today brings our sorrows and fears and brokenness to worship. But just like God’s power working invisibly to bring justice to the wicked Haman, God’s power in and through the Holy Spirit, through his word proclaimed and preached, through sweet fellowship with each other, and in and through the Holy Eucharist, God is at work in us now, both individually and collectively, to bring healing and hope as he makes his invisible Presence known to us, thanks be to God. 

So what should be our response to God’s goodness, mercy, love, and truth? How are we to live faithfully in the midst of increasing chaos and disorder? We start by believing the promise that in Christ we are saved from our sins and God’s wrath and judgment on them. Just as God provided for our rebellious and frightened ancestors after he expelled them from paradise, just as God remained faithful to his stubborn and rebellious people despite sending them into exile, and just as God remains faithful to us by blessing us with his Holy Spirit, so we are reminded that God’s promise to free us from our slavery to sin and evil will be ultimately fulfilled, even if only partially now. We have Christ’s Death and Resurrection to remind us always that God’s will and purposes to heal and rescue us will be done fully when Christ returns to finish his saving work on our behalf. Come Lord Jesus. This must create in us thankful and grateful hearts. When we begin to recognize the enormity our sin and rebellion against God and what God has done to rescue and heal us from those sins, we cannot help but have grateful hearts, hearts (or will) to love and serve Christ and others for all that he has done for us. And when we really believe the promises and are persuaded that despite our sins and foolishness, God still loves us and wants us to be with him forever, forgiving us through Christ’s blood shed for us, we will experience new healing, healing that flows from a thankful heart. 

Our healed hearts will also compel us to pray for others, especially our enemies—we may hate drug dealers and pedophiles, but we’d better be praying for their repentance and salvation—even as we long for real justice, not the phony kinds of justice various groups try to foist on us today, but the kind of justice that flows from God’s holy heart. We pray ultimately with the realization that we too are evildoers who deserve God’s justice and so we pray for God to heal our enemies and the hearts of evildoers so that they will not suffer such a terrible fate, the fate we too would suffer without the healing love of Christ. Far from being ineffective, prayer is one of the most powerful weapons we Christians can bring to bear on evil and God’s good but sin-corrupted world. But we pray with eyes wide open, realizing that we are at war with the forces of evil who hate us and want to destroy us, and so we bring our fears and sorrows and needs to God, trusting that God is working invisibly as God always does to bring his world and its disordered creatures to rights. There’s more to all this, but there is certainly not less. Let us as God’s holy people bring our prayers to bear on this world and its people, repenting of our own sins and trusting our holy and loving Father to bring about his promise to heal and restore us according to his good will and purposes for us. And let us make sure we do this together as God’s people in Christ because the promise is for us together. 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 September 30, 2018. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. Another variation on the theme of where’s God in all this? For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

ectionary texts: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5.13-20; Mark 9.38-50.

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

How can a book that never mentions God’s name end up in the canon of Scripture? That is the question the confronts us in our OT lesson this morning. The book of Esther never once mentions God by name, at least in the Protest versions of Scripture. What are we to make of that and how does it relate to the baptism we will celebrate in a little while? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

The book of Esther is unique in all the Bible because not once in its ten chapters is God’s name mentioned. Despite this curious fact, God is very much present in the lives of his exiled people. We see it in the circumstances of the story which are loaded with “coincidences,” an oxymoron if there ever was one. We see God’s activity in the lives of God’s people and even God’s enemies to bring about their rescue from certain annihilation. Consider these examples. An uppity queen who paves the way for Esther to become Xerxes’ queen. A king’s attendant who takes a special liking to Esther that is crucial to her becoming queen. Esther’s cousin Mordecai who thwarts a plot to kill the king by being at the right place at the right time, but who is a forgotten man in the king’s eyes. A wicked advisor who plots the destruction of God’s people  because of his hatred toward Mordecai and who rapidly becomes a favorite of the king. A restless night of sleep for the king that leads to his remembering Mordecai and ultimately leads to the reversal of fortune for Mordecai and Haman. The courage of Esther who risked her life for her people to expose the wickedness of Haman and his evil scheme to destroy God’s people. No, God’s name is never mentioned in the story but God is everywhere present in the circumstances and lives of his people to bring about their redemption! That is why throughout history the book of Esther has not been read as an isolated event in Jewish history but as symbolizing the final salvation of God’s people at the end of time (the eschaton).

This should be enormously encouraging to us as Christians who labor under God’s good but cursed and often-confusing world. The story of Esther reminds us that there are forces of Evil in this world that God has mysteriously and enigmatically allowed to usurp his rightful reign—but only to a degree. God is still Sovereign and ultimately in charge of his world. Despite appearances to the contrary, sometimes to an almost overwhelming degree, the story of Esther reminds us that God is in charge and is working to free his people from the power of Evil. 

St. Mark tells us essentially the same thing when he talks about casting out demons. His message? The forces of Evil and their human minions are indeed active in God’s world. We are at war and have been since human rebellion got us expelled from paradise. But the evil powers do not have free reign. God is still Sovereign. The evil powers must submit to Jesus and in doing so, God’s people find protection and respite from the havoc they wreak. Most of us do not perceive this war raging on with our human senses, but the war is real nevertheless as we all can attest because we all have experienced Evil in our lives. The story of Esther reminds us that God cares for his people, in part, through human agency, just like God did when he rescued his people through the actions of Esther and Mordecai, just like he does when we give a follower of Christ a cup of water or when we pray for healing for the sick. We want to push back at this claim because it strains against our sense of how the “real world” works. “How can that be,” we ask? “How can my small actions be of any importance to God?” Nowhere does Scripture answer that “how does it all work” question. It just reassures us that our actions do matter and are an important part in this ongoing war with Evil as God and his people fight against its forces. This claim about the importance of human agency should make sense to us, given that God created us in his image to run God’s world on his behalf. Why wouldn’t God work through human agency to help reestablish his kingdom on earth as in heaven? The forces of Evil certainly use human minions to impose their chaos on God’s good world and people! So why wouldn’t God use humans as agents to spread his goodness, love, mercy, and justice? Make no mistake. We don’t bring in the Kingdom. God does. But God calls us to do our part in the war against Evil. That is why it is so important that we order our lives according to God’s laws and God’s ordering of his creation. Otherwise, we help the enemy; and as Jesus himself warned us in our gospel lesson, that will result in God’s fearsome judgment on us. There will be no Evil and evildoers, human or otherwise, in God’s new world, the new heavens and earth (Rev 21.1-8).

This is why we must take seriously the underlying theme of the story of Esther with its proclamation that despite the presence of Evil and evildoers like Haman in God’s world, God works through the circumstances of life, chaotic as those circumstances can be, and through all kinds of people, to bring about salvation for God’s people. Every time we see Evil defeated, every time we see the sick healed, every time we see mercy extended or God’s justice carried out like we see in the story of Esther, we are reminded that these are signs meant to help us believe that God is busy at work rescuing his people from Evil, Sin, and Death. Esther reveals for those with ears to hear that life and death are determined by identification with a people—God’s people Israel in the OT and God’s people Israel reconstituted around Jesus Christ in the NT that includes both Jew and Gentile (Eph 2.14-18). We as God’s people in Christ are therefore called to embrace the promise that in Jesus Christ we are rescued from our sin and folly and ultimately from death itself because of the blood of the Lamb shed for us. The eschatological reality of eternal life for God’s people foreshadowed in the celebration of Purim is fully realized in Christ’s resurrection. We live because Jesus lives and because Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Not even our mortal death can prevent this promise from being fulfilled or separate us from the love of God made known to us in Jesus Christ our Lord (St. John 14.19, 11.25-26; Romans 8.31-39)! Amen? Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection our destiny has been reversed from death to life, this against all human expectation, and we as Christians find in Christ God’s ultimate promise to protect us from death. Those of us who are God’s people in Christ will be delivered from death and live forever, just as our Lord Jesus was, thanks be to God! 

This means that even in the darkest circumstances of our life when joy is far from our hearts and everything looks dark, just as it did for Esther and her people before she confronted Haman in front of the king, we are assured of our current good standing with God and our final destiny in God’s new world because of the blood of Christ shed for us on the cross. Our sins are forgiven and we are being transformed into new creations by the power of God’s Spirit who lives in us and who makes the presence of our risen Lord a reality for us. That is why we can face even the darkest times with hope as God’s people. We live now and will live forever because Christ lives now and lives forever. This is the Good News of Jesus Christ that we profess. Without it, life is bleak indeed. With it, we have power to overcome the worst the forces of Evil can throw at us because Jesus is Lord and they are not.

In a moment we will baptize Tori into God’s family and into this breathtaking promise. She will receive the Holy Spirit and be made holy and pure to serve her Lord all the days of her life. Her parents will promise on her behalf to raise her in ways that will open the way for Jesus to be alive and present in her. We see none of this directly and we acknowledge we are dealing with a holy and awesome mystery. But we don’t have to “see” the Holy Spirit because like the story of Esther, we trust in the promise that baptism will accomplish what it promises, even when we cannot perceive its invisible reality—after all, that’s why we call it a sacrament—and our faith in the power and presence of the Spirit causes us to say, “Amen.”  Believe and trust in that promise, my beloved. Embrace your identification as a member of God’s people in Jesus Christ and be refreshed by God’s love, mercy, and grace that allows you to have membership in his holy family now and forever. Let it sustain you in your darkest hour and let it change you so that God can always use you as a force for his good in a world that desperately needs all the good it can get. When you do, you will be participating in the Good News of Jesus Christ, 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 September 27, 2015. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. As Christians are we to desire justice or be merciful? Is there even a conflict? This has tripped many a Christian up in our world today, mistaking God’s mercy for his justice. The short answer to these questions is that Christians must always choose mercy and forgiveness first. That does not mean, however, that we are to abandon our desire for real justice, God’s justice. Moreover, mercy requires forgiveness, and many don’t understand what real forgiveness entails (it is not forgive and forget). The ability to forgive is not possible without the living Presence of the Holy Spirit living in us to help us live out our Lord’s inconvenient demand and truth that those who are without forgiveness and mercy can expect to receive none themselves on the terrible day of God’s Judgment. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Esther 7.1-6, 9-10, 9.20-22; Psalm 124; James 5.13-20; Mark 9.38-50.

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

How many of you got a little uncomfortable with our OT lesson this morning with its description of celebrating and rejoicing over the death of another? Or how many of you, upon hearing the story, reacted with some guilty pleasure. A bad dude got his. The good guys won. Yes! But aren’t we supposed to forgive our enemies and pray for them, even if they are out to destroy us? If you had one of these reactions—and I suspect if we are really honest with ourselves most of us did—you are not alone. You are dealing with a vexing issue for many Christians: how to balance justice and mercy. This is what I want us to look at this morning.

In our OT lesson we witness the culmination of a gripping drama made even more remarkable by the fact that God is never mentioned throughout the entire book of Esther. Yet God is always there as we see in our lesson today. The story is about evil being perpetrated by human agents, in this case Haman, King Xerxes’ right-hand man. Haman had been offended by Mordecai, a Jewish exile who refused to bow in submission to him, and as a result, Haman had resolved to exterminate the Jews by essentially tricking the king into issuing an edict to this effect, an edict that could not be revoked. Because of Haman’s wounded pride and vanity, we are confronted with the real possibility of unspeakable evil being committed. And we all know what genocide looks like. We’ve seen the footage from the liberated Nazi concentration camps.

But we are talking God’s people. So where is God in all this? How can God allow such evil to be perpetrated against his people? After all, isn’t God always faithful to his covenant promises? We expect God to rush in and deliver his people in a mighty act of power, just like he did for his people Israel when he rescued them from their slavery in Egypt at the Exodus. But God doesn’t do it that way in this case. He rescues his people by placing two of them, Esther and Mordecai, in critically important positions and using them to bring about his justice on the wicked Haman. So far so good. Most of us do not have a problem with justice being executed on evildoers. But the possibility that we might have to forgive this guy? Really??

And then we learn that Mordecai issues an order instructing all the Jews living in the Persian Empire to celebrate Haman’s death and their deliverance from destruction, a celebratory spirit that is implicit in our psalm as well, and now our reaction may not be so straightforward. We are Christians, after all, and should never celebrate the death of anyone, no matter how evil they might be. We do this because God himself tells us he takes no pleasure in the death of evildoers (Ezekiel 18.23, 32). Yet most of us remember watching the crowds gather to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden. Some of us may even have wanted to join in the celebration. After all, our archenemy, the face of pure evil, finally got what was coming to him. The good guys won. I’m sure the reaction was the same when the news of Hitler’s death was announced. For those who are not Christian, this is no big deal. After all, they are not bound to follow the crucified one who died to spare us from God’s terrible and right judgment on our own sins. They don’t need to stop and think that they are celebrating the death of an image-bearing creature of God, marred as that image might be [ed. note: think, e.g., about the recent vile reactions of those who celebrated the death of Charlie Kirk recently on the first anniversary of his assassination]. But for us who profess to be Christian? What to do? For many of us, I suspect the answer is that we experience some guilty pleasure over the death of an evildoer. We know we shouldn’t but we just can’t help ourselves. We want justice, especially when it is comes to really bad guys like bin Laden. So what does the gospel have to say about all this? The answer is not as straightforward as some would like us to think.

Of course we are to take to heart and practice Jesus’ teaching and follow his example. We are to love mercy first and practice it. We are to pray for our enemies and forgive them instead of seeking to exact revenge on them. Doing the latter makes us agents of evil and that is simply not acceptable. Rather, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans, we are to leave room for God to execute his good and righteous wrath on evildoers (Romans 12.14-21). We are to leave this to God because God is our Creator and sovereign. Only he has the right to execute justice on evil and those who commit it. Let me be clear. I am talking about us as individual Christians, not the role and duty of the state. As St. Paul would write later in Romans, the state is God’s ordained instrument to carry out God’s wrath on the wicked (Romans 13.2-4). But most of us are not heads of state. We are just ordinary Christians who are called to embody the love and mercy of God made known to us in Jesus.

But it is a misreading of the gospel if we see all mercy and no justice. A closer look reveals that even the gospel acknowledges the existence of evil in our world and reminds us God is doing something about it. So while we are called always to forgive and be merciful to our enemies, even the blatantly evil ones, we are not called to ignore our desire to see God’s righteous justice being executed on those who perpetrate evil. As we saw last week, God will not be mocked and Scripture makes clear that God is implacably opposed to evil of any kind. He simply cannot and will not tolerate it. We see this at the Fall in Genesis 3.1-19. Adam and Eve rebel against God’s good will for them and find themselves (along with everyone else ever since) under God’s curse. We see it in God’s response to the evil his people committed when they worshiped idols and the corresponding lifestyle that developed as a result. You see, we end up becoming what we worship and when we worship false and wicked things we begin to act in corresponding ways. We see it in our OT lesson when the wicked Haman gets his just reward. He was hanged on the very pole he had erected to hang his enemy Mordecai. We see it in our gospel lesson, albeit more subtly. Along with tender words about caring for the little ones who care for Jesus comes the chilling reminder of millstones around the neck and the unquenchable fire of hell. We see it in St. James’ letter with its emphasis on prayer. The example of Elijah’s prayer to which St. James refers contains both God’s mercy and judgment. Elijah had originally prayed for drought as a result of Israel’s wicked idolatry and his prayer for rain came only after he had the 450 priests of Baal slaughtered. God was merciful and rain came, but only after judgment. 

These examples serve, in part, to remind and show us that God is a good God who is implacably opposed to evil of any form and who is simultaneously at work restoring his good but fallen creation back to its original goodness. We are called to be part of that rescue mission and have strict orders to act accordingly—and to let God do likewise. Part of our calling is that we are not to take justice into our own hands. To do that results in holy lynch mobs. But to advocate mercy at the expense of justice would be to violate our sense of what is right and deny that God is both a God of justice and mercy. If God is not both, there would be no need for the cross.

So part of the challenge of living faithfully as Christians is to strike a healthy balance between justice and mercy. We must never turn mercy and forgiveness into forgive and forget, where we deny that any wrong has been done to us. That is not how forgiveness works. To truly forgive someone and extend mercy to that person requires that we first and foremost acknowledge the person has acted evilly and done us real harm. So when we forgive, we acknowledge the harm but resolve not to exact revenge and become evildoers ourselves. The hurt matters and we must work though it and ask God to heal us. This is precisely why forgiveness is so difficult and costly. When we forgive, we resolve not to get into the ditch with the pigs and become like them. We trust God to deal with our hurt as well as those who caused it because we realize God is just as well as merciful, and that we are as much in need of his mercy as our enemies are. And if we are open to this dynamic, God will never let us down.

This is why St. James ends his letter with the exhortation to pray for each other and forgive each other. Healing comes with forgiveness. Real healing. And it’s the only way we will ever be able to experience real healing from sins and evil perpetrated against us as well as from our own sins. St. James has been warning us to follow the way of Christ, precisely because he knows we are at war with our disordered hearts and the powers and principalities who use our disordered desires to entice us into more sin and evildoing. But unlike many today would have us believe, there are terrible and eternal consequences to our sins as Jesus reminds us in our gospel lesson. This is why we are to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with our God. We are to love mercy because we ourselves have received mercy in and through the death of Jesus and St. James warns us not to throw our pearls to the swine by acting and speaking in ways that are contrary to our call as Christians. That is why he links prayer and forgiveness to healing. 

But this doesn’t mean we should ignore our desire for justice. God cannot tolerate evil. Why should we? But here’s the rub. As individuals, we are to let God execute his vengeance and justice on evildoers and are not to take glee when he does. If we truly are being transformed by God’s love in Christ made known to us in and through the power of the Spirit, if we really are Jesus’ people, we should be praying for evildoers so that they don’t suffer the eternal fate of unquenchable fire. To really desire that for someone is a damning indictment of our own hard heart and indicates at some level we really have not accounted for our own sin or have a real faith Jesus. To be sure, there are different levels of sin and evil. But God is opposed to even the slightest trace of sin or evil and that makes us liable to his judgment as well.

St. Mark has some godly wisdom for us in this department. If we take to heart what he tells us, it will help us from becoming hard-hearted and self-righteous folks. Unlike St. James, St. Mark imparts God’s wisdom by telling us stories about Jesus and so we have to pay a little closer attention to what he says. Case in point. Consider Jesus’ rebuke of John. We stopped a man from casting out demons in your name, he tells Jesus, and I suspect he said that rather proudly. In saying this, John was really saying that only those who are authorized by Jesus can do his work. Not so, retorts Jesus. Anyone who isn’t against me is for me. Furthermore, if you hinder anyone from believing in me, you are toast—literally. So what was Jesus talking about? The context of this warning, coming on the heels of John’s statement, suggests that Jesus was not talking about leading others to do immoral things like making someone lie or cheat or steal. Rather Jesus was warning his disciples to take a hard look at their own behavior. He was afraid that people would take offense at him because of what his followers did. So examine yourselves, he tells us. Cut out anything that might cause others to think badly about me because of what you say or do. 

In the context of balancing justice and mercy, what do you think we could do that might make people more readily take offense at Jesus because of our actions: That we are too merciful or too eager to exact justice? Again there is a fine line here and balance is needed. But God help us if we do not take Jesus’ warning seriously. We saw last week why the Nones don’t come to church. They think we are judgmental hypocrites. Here our Lord himself warns us about the same thing. A desire for justice, yes. But each of us who have been rescued from sin and eternal death by the blood of the Lamb had better be as willing and eager to extend mercy to our enemies as we are quick to condemn them. This is true not only because Jesus tells us we will be judged by the measure we use to judge others (Matthew 7.2), but also because we embody his presence as his followers, and he calls us to be better than our enemies. This doesn’t mean we ignore the need for justice to be done. It means that we are as concerned for the welfare of our enemies as we are for our own welfare. This is radical and disconcerting stuff, and there is always the danger that we will offend some folks in our call for justice and others in our insistence that we be merciful to evildoers. But maintaining this balance is being faithful to the entire gospel message and Jesus himself, and this must always be our goal as Christians.

 In closing, then, let us all reflect soberly on these matters of justice and mercy. As Christians we are always called to be merciful and to forgive. That is a gospel imperative and there is no other option for us. However, the gospel is also concerned about the need for justice. Justice is part of God’s healing of the nations, of God putting all the wrongs of his world to rights, and the demand for justice is all over the gospel as we have seen. But the gospel is Good News and should make a difference in our lives. It should transform and heal us in response to God’s love, grace, and mercy extended to us in Jesus. It should give us a real hope that God does not let evil go unpunished, unlikely as that seems to us at times. We have a real future ahead of us, a future devoid of evil and suffering, a future that entails our radical renewal where somehow all of the hurts and wrongs done to us will be fully healed so as to never hurt or wound us again. We don’t have this future because we are worthy of it. We have this future because of the blood of the Lamb shed for us, unworthy as we are. Our Lord calls us to embody his love and to live our lives in ways that will cause others to want to know him as their crucified and risen Lord, just like he is ours. Having a healthy and balanced perspective on justice and mercy a perspective that reflects our need to show mercy to our enemies just as we desire God to show mercy to us, while at the same time acknowledging that God’s restorative justice is part and parcel of the healing of the nations as well as our own, is one of the best ways we can proclaim to the world that 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 September 27, 2020. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. The issue I tackle is a sticky one. What are we to make of God putting us to the test? Is God with us or not. The answer of Scripture and Church are a resounding YES! Are you among those who can say this honestly? For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Exodus 17.1-17; 78.1-4, 12-16; Philippians 2.1-13; Matthew 21.23-32.

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

In one way or another all our passages this morning remind us, uncomfortably so for many of us, that God puts us to the test on occasion. What’s that all about? Toward what end? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

Before we look at why God tests us on occasion, we need to place the question within the context of the overall biblical narrative of God’s rescue plan for us and God’s creation so that we don’t arrive at some screwy or misguided conclusions like we usually do whenever Fathers Sang or Madanu preach. We recall that the overarching story of Scripture is about how God is busy rescuing his creatures and world from our slavery to the power of Sin that results in Death and the corrupting spread of Evil.This story, beginning with God’s call to Abraham and ending with Jesus Christ, also tells us much about the nature and character of God our Father who has acted decisively in Jesus Christ to reconcile us to himself, doing so even while we were still God’s enemies (2 Cor 5.19; Rom 5.6-10). What kind of God would act that way? Short answer: a God of perfect love and justice, a God who calls his wayward people to himself through the self-giving love and death of his Son to rescue us both from our slavery to Sin and from ourselves. God did and does this primarily through human agency because as our founding documents (Genesis) make clear, God created humans in his image to be his wise stewards and rulers over God’s good creation. Before the Fall, before our first ancestors decided to try to be God’s equals, this arrangement worked swimmingly well. God lived with Adam and Eve in paradise causing them to enjoy perfect physical, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being. Because God makes us for himself, we suffer terribly and ultimately die when our sins cause us to be separated and alienated from God. We’ve all been to this dance. We all have experienced anxiety, loneliness, isolation, alienation, hostility, and fear in our lives and these are but a handful of manifestations that happen when we are unreconciled to God. To put it bluntly, our sin makes us sick and ultimately kills us. That is not what God wants or intends for us and we have nobody but ourselves to blame for our predicament. 

But as Genesis also makes clear, from the time of our Fall and the rupture of our perfect relationship with God our Father, God has been at work drawing us back to himself and making himself and his character known to us. From the heavenly ladder and ascending/descending angels in Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Genesis 28.10-16) to God’s promise to be with us (Emmanuel) in Christ’s birth announcement (Mt. 1.21-23) as well as in the Great Commission (I will be with you always even to the end of the age, Mt. 28.20) to the glorious promise of new creation in Rev. 21.1-7, Scripture makes it abundantly clear that God is with those whom he calls to bless and provide for them. This is the biblical context that we must keep clearly in mind as we ask why God tests us. The short answer here is to see if we really trust God’s goodness and promises contained in the overarching story of Scripture, i.e., have we ceased striving to be God’s equals? This is of course more for our benefit than God’s. God knows our hearts and all that we do (cf. Ps 139). We often act dazed and confused about such matters and often don’t know how genuine our faith, hope, and love are until they are tested. As with all things in life, clarity is always our friend because it helps us see with what we are dealing. We need to trust God if we ever hope to live our lives without fear and hopelessness, i.e., we need to know that God is trustworthy so that we can live as fully human beings.

The question for God’s people, then, is pretty straightforward: Do we trust that God is good to his promise to provide for us and to rescue us from our slavery to Sin and Death? Or to use OT parlance, do we believe the Lord with us or not? Each of our lessons this morning provide a case study of sorts to help us answer that question. We start with our OT lesson (and our accompanying psalm lesson that exhorts us to learn that God is trustworthy and teach our children that truth). In it, we see God leading his people in the wilderness after he has rescued them from their slavery in Egypt. God had promised his people to bring them to the land he promised their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but first God had to free them from their slavery to the Egyptians (we read that story several weeks back). For Israel, the Exodus was and is the defining moment where God acted decisively on his promise to save Israel from her enemies. We (hopefully) know the story. God called Moses to lead God’s people out of Egypt and then rescued them from the pursuing Egyptian forces by parting the waters of the Red Sea, bringing Israel through those dark and menacing waters and drowning the Egyptians who pursued them. Once through that first impossible obstacle, God then led his people through the next major obstacle—the wilderness, guiding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Now I am not the brightest star in the sky, but I would think that had I lived in that generation and experienced God’s mighty act of power in both the Passover, where God killed all the firstborn Egyptian males, thereby compelling Pharaoh to let God’s people Israel leave, and then experienced God’s rescue through the Red Sea, that I might be convinced God had the power to rescue me from any situation. After all, I had seen God’s power first-hand and that was proof God was good to his word to rescue my people and me from our slavery. So why would I worry about God providing for us as we wandered through this foreboding wilderness with its lack of food and water? Hadn’t God shown us enough for us to trust God? 

Apparently not because in our story today we see the people grumbling against both Moses and God, clearly showing their lack of trust in both. Why did we follow you out here, dude? Did God bring us out of Egypt to kill us? We’d be better off in our slavery back in Egypt. At least there we had enough to eat and drink. Ah, the human condition in all its glory! Charming. Clearly God’s people did not trust God to provide for them in their current situation, stark and foreboding as it was, despite the fact they had seen God do even mightier things in the Passover and at the Red Sea. And Moses was no better. Of course he would have been concerned for his life; his stoning was a real possibility! But this is the same Moses who had seen God call him kicking and screaming to be Israel’s leader and mighty prophet, equipping Moses along the way to grow into God’s call to him. Surely Moses knew God had the power to deliver on his promises to take care of his people. But there he was complaining and grumbling to God right along with God’s people!

The logic of the story set where it is in Exodus also suggests that God had brought his people to this point to test them. Did they believe in God’s goodness, love, and power to provide for them or not? God knew they didn’t trust him, but surely many of the people there didn’t know that because their faith hadn’t been tested in the context of the wilderness. It’s a sad story with a happy ending because God provided once again for his people. Water gushed from a rock and God’s people found the drink they needed to survive and continue their journey to the Promised Land, but not before they had grumbled to God, effectively accusing God of not being with them or caring about them or being able to provide for them. Sound familiar (if it doesn’t you might look in the mirror!)?

And what did God do? Did God give up on them? Did he leave them to their own devices? Did he destroy his rebellious and unbelieving people? Of course not! That is not who God is. Instead, God provided for his people and invited them to use this episode to bring about repentance and instill a greater trust of him in them. But the people of God were apparently slow learners. It seems the sins of pride and presumption found in Adam and Eve about which I spoke two weeks ago run deep in all of us. Before we stop and sneer at the ancient Israelites’ lack of faith in God’s goodness and provision as they wandered through the wilderness, we should stop and do a self-check as we wander through our own wilderness. 

What wilderness, you ask? We don’t live in the wilderness. We live in metro Columbus. Well, we may not live in a physical wilderness but we certainly wander in a spiritual one these days. Who among us won’t be elated to see 2020 with its pandemic and social unrest and increasing bitterness and rancor give way to a new year? We watch increasingly godless, lawless forces intent on destroying our nation burn down our cities and we wonder where our political leaders are in the midst of it all. We live in fear of getting the “Rona” and it isolates us and makes us more afraid and crazier than we already are. We see nothing but strident partisanship and rancor among our so-called leaders and wonder if there are any statesmen or women left. Closer to home, some of us have lost jobs during the pandemic and have a legitimate concern about financial collapse. We learned this past week that Westerville has rejected our occupancy permit app. Then there have been a spate of serious illnesses in our parish family. We pray fervently and nothing seems to happen. Where is God in all this, we cry out in anger, fear, and desperation? This morning some of you will come up for healing prayer and anointing and then go away, apparently not having your prayers answered (although some of you will experience answered prayers). What are we to do with that? Yesterday I spoke with a woman whose faith is greater than anyone I have personally known. She loves the Lord passionately and unconditionally, yet there she is in a hospital, apparently slowly dying a painful death from cancer. I’ve prayed hours for her and in every way I know how. I’m at the point where I don’t how to pray for her or what to pray for; I can only groan, trusting that the Holy Spirit is present in my groans and is praying for her in and through them as promised (Rm 8.26-27). Why won’t God answer? Does he not care? Is he powerless to answer? This is the stuff we read about in today’s OT lesson, my beloved, and experience in our lives more often than we would like. 

Yet it is the consistent testimony of Scripture, the Word of God, and the lives of the saints that the Father does know our worries and fears and that God does have the power to act on our behalf. But do we believe that? How many of us believe the lyrics of the song, Great Is Thy Faithfulness? Do we really believe God’s mercies are new every morning, lyrics that are based on Lam 3.16 that the prophet Jeremiah uttered as he surveyed the unthinkable: a desolate Jerusalem, the very home of God, burnt to the ground by God’s enemies and God’s people taken into exile. Do we have that kind of faith to sing that song during the times we walk through the dark valleys of life? The Father’s trustworthiness is there to be had every day if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, your presence here among us this morning being proof positive that God is gracious to us every day. It is to the glory of God and further proof that God’s promises are trustworthy and true that so many of us do believe God really is present in his world providing for us every moment, despite our being worn down on occasion by the circumstances and situations of life and the human condition. That is our challenge, my beloved, and that is why God tests us. He wants to show us he is dependable and trustworthy so that we can continue to grow in our trust in God, even when everything swirling around us suggests that God and his mercy and provisions are nowhere to be found.

Turning to our epistle lesson, we see St. Paul asking something similar to the church at Philippi. Do you trust Christ enough to let him change the way you treat your fellow family members in Christ he asks? For those of us who call ourselves Christian, the challenge to trust God can be even greater than for God’s people Israel. While we can recall the Passover and Exodus to remind us about the power and ability of God to rescue and provide, our foundational salvation event is Christ’s death and resurrection. It is harder for us fallen humans who strive and grasp to be God’s equals to see God’s power in the cross. But that’s exactly what St. Paul and the rest of the NT writers proclaim! On the cross we see the power of God to rescue us from our slavery to Sin and Death, the cross being the very instrument of shame and human degradation. It’s hard to see God’s power in a naked and pierced man dying a godforsaken death as a condemned criminal. But that is the surprising power and promise of God made known to us, a promise vindicated by God’s mighty act of power when he raised Christ from the dead to signal the abolition of death one day. It is a hope and promise we must live with because it is yet to be completely fulfilled. We don’t have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight that makes even the dullest of us look brilliant. No, we are in the wilderness right now and so we must walk in faith, trusting in the promise and power of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The extent we believe in the power and promise of Christ’s saving death and resurrection is the extent we will continue to believe in God’s ability to provide for us and rescue us from all that corrupts, dehumanizes, demeans, and demoralizes us.  

The fact that God became human to rescue us from the darkest power of all—Death, despite our ongoing rebellion against God, despite our insistence on kicking God upstairs so we don’t have to bother with him in the living of our days (because of course we think we know better than God), is compelling evidence that God does love us and is providing for us. He’s given us his Holy Spirit to heal and change us for crying out loud! What more do we need? Whatever it is we think we need, we likely won’t get if it goes against what God the Father knows we need to develop a healthy love and trust in his power. And so, as St. Paul reminds us in epistle lesson, our trust starts with how we treat our families. We are to work out our faith in fear and trembling because we know that, “…God is working in [us], giving [us] the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (Phil 2.12-13). What on earth is St. Paul saying? Is he telling us our salvation from God’s wrath is accomplished by following the rules Scripture and the Church have set over the years? Uh, nope.

As v.13 makes clear, St. Paul is talking about the power of God working in his people. As St. Paul reminds us elsewhere, Christ has died for us to rescue us from the ravages of Sin and Death, and here he calls us to believe our story, a belief based on the bodily resurrection of Christ. We call this belief “faith” and faith always manifests itself in obedience. In the context of the letter, St. Paul is reminding God’s people in Christ to embrace our salvation won for us by God himself in and through Christ. God calls us to work with him to bring his healing love to the world around us, starting with our own families and the family of God, the Church, the context St. Paul addresses here. We are to imitate Christ in his self-giving love and treat each other accordingly because to do that is to imitate God the Father himself. When we live this way we demonstrate our belief and trust in God’s promise that he has rescued us from Sin and Death in and through Christ. 

St. Paul is not talking about being a doormat for people. To the contrary, he is urging us to accept our dignity as those who are loved by Christ and rescued from Sin and Death in and through his self-giving death and God’s mighty act of resurrection. We each have different situations and folks to deal with in our lives and we each have to figure out what that looks like as we act together as the people of God. St. Paul immediately reminds us we don’t have to do any of this on our own. The Christian Faith is not another form of failed human self-help. As we have just seen, God has given us the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, to heal and restore God’s image in us one minute at a time. Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, don’t see much spiritual growth in our lives but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. We don’t see ourselves aging everyday or our hair growing. But if we look at pictures from ten years ago or decide we need a haircut, we are reminded that change has indeed taken place despite our inability to perceive it at the moment. The Holy Spirit working in us is like that. Sometimes he produces spectacular results. Most of the time, however, he works in us quietly, gradually healing and restoring us to God the Father. Regardless of speed or outcome, the point is that we are called to live as people of God by the power of God, not our own, and we are called to trust in that power always. We can see that trust in the lives of saints, both living and dead, and we are called to trust their experience and testimony, along with our own, to trust in God’s ability to provide for us, an ability that stems from God’s great love for us. That’s the test we face, my beloved. We see the power of God. We have the testimony from God himself that he is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, you and me in all our unloveliness, so that we will not die an eternal death. That’s why we need to know our story. That’s why we need to encourage and exhort one another. That’s why we need to put the needs of others ahead of our own—not because they are superior to us or their needs are more deserving than ours—but because doing so imitates the self-giving love of God made known in our crucified Savior. That’s why we sometimes have to correct each other, not out of a haughty sense of pride or presumption, but out of a deep love for those whom God loves more deeply than we can ever imagine. That’s what working out our salvation in fear and trembling looks like on the ground. We know we are loved by God and have been rescued from Sin and Death by him. Now we are called to live out that trust obediently, imitating our crucified Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s the challenge and the promise. It can get discouraging that we keep making the same mistakes over and over, trusting in anything and anyone but God our Father (we see the same rebellious distrust in our gospel lesson but I do not have time to interpret that for you this morning). Yet we also know that despite our unbelief, despite our waywardness and rebellion, God keeps pursuing us relentlessly because he loves us and wants us to live forever in his promised new world. Let us pray to the Father for the grace to believe his promises and know his character made known supremely in Jesus Christ our Lord, and revealed to us new each morning by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. And yes, my beloved, let us live out our faith (trust) together as the Father calls us to do. To do so, however imperfectly, means we have passed the test. 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 September 22, 2019. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. What kind of a world would we live in if God were not ever-present and active? Many already think God is akin to an absentee landlord. But bad as things can be right now, it would be exponentially worse if God were NOT active and present in his good creation gone bad. If things are ever to be better, God must come to our rescue because the human race has demonstrated repeatedly that we are incapable of healing/fixing ourselves. Thus our desperate need for the gospel of Jesus Christ. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Jeremiah 8.18-9.1; Psalm 79.1-9; 1 Timothy 2.1-7; Luke 16.1-13.

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

Every once in awhile, the preacher is confronted with lectionary readings that make him wonder how many drugs the selection committee did before choosing them. For me, today’s readings is one of those times. As I read over them, I scratched my head and muttered, What were they thinking? Where is there a unifying theme on which to preach? Why didn’t I make Father Bowser preach today? Is there no balm in Gilead for me? No mercy? Fortunately for me (and you), the Holy Spirit is much smarter than I am and by God’s mercy, he finally showed me a theme on which to preach, and that theme is God to the rescue. This is what I want us to look at this morning.

The whole story of the Bible is about how God has come to rescue his sin-sick and evil-corrupted world, a world and its creatures God never intended to create. God, the writer of Genesis tells us, created all of creation good and pronounced his human image-bearing creatures and the world over which they ruled to be very good (Genesis 1.31). But then we turn to our Old Testament and psalm lessons, more hard-to-hear lessons like last week’s, and there’s not much good to be found in them. So what happened? Two words: Human sin. Our rebellion against God and his good will for us got our first ancestors booted out of paradise and by Jeremiah’s day in the sixth-century BC, the situation had become truly desperate. We see anguish from all parties concerned: from the prophet, from God, and from God’s people. God’s people living in Jerusalem, the place where they believed heaven and earth intersected at God’s Temple located there, desperately wondered where God was as the Babylonians besieged their city. Why was God not coming to their rescue? Had the Lord abandoned them? Yes I have, said the Lord. You have chased after other gods, i.e., you have chased after unreality, and in doing so you have provoked me to anger. You have provoked me to anger because I love you and I am jealous that you are pursuing other lovers even though you are married to me. When you chase unreal things, you don’t even realize how desperately sick they make you and how wickedly you behave. And now, you must pay for your sins of idolatry and social injustice. God’s condemnation of his people Israel’s sins was to send an invading army to utterly destroy Judah and its chief city Jerusalem. Think how we would feel if we knew God planned to destroy Washington, DC, then multiply that fear and horror by a thousand-fold, and we can begin to understand what is going on in our OT and psalm lessons (the latter is a lament after the fact while the former gives us a glimpse into the people’s reality before Jerusalem was destroyed and the Temple burnt to the ground, a sure indication that God had abandoned his people there).

Jeremiah saw all this and was as appalled as God’s people were. Being a prophet is not easy (none of us want to hear our desperate plight before God that our sins cause) nor are prophets immune to having their hearts broken. Jeremiah grieved for his people because like the God who sent him, he loved his people, even though he had to say hard things to them. Jeremiah also grieved for his people because many of them were oblivious to the dire straights they were in. Their worship of all things false in this world had numbed their spiritual senses and this compounded the problem of their sins. Think about it. Besides me, what kind of people irritate you the most? Are they not those who are in trouble but who steadfastly refuse to see their predicament and admit they are in error? Folks like this tend to blow up relationships of all kinds because they refuse to acknowledge that perhaps they are wrong about some very important matters and this creates a sense of arrogance and proud self-righteousness. They are quick to judge and condemn others while refusing to acknowledge their own sins and they make it extremely difficult for others to forgive them. They exist in families, in churches, in government, in businesses, and elsewhere. Their denial of the reality of their predicament or the evil of their thinking/speaking/behavior makes them insufferable and as long as they steadfastly refuse to see the reality of their condition, repentance is never possible. Why repent of something when you are convinced you are doing nothing wrong? This is part of what was going on in Jeremiah’s day and it continues to plague us in our own.

Jeremiah in his wisdom realized that living like fools did not protect his people from God’s judgment on their sins. We can live in La-La Land all we want. We can fool ourselves into thinking that we are the arbiter of truth, that there really is no objective Truth or right or wrong. It’s all a social construct, it’s all what we think truth and right and wrong are. We couldn’t be more mistaken. The prophet was also wise enough and humble enough to realize he was not immune to the human race’s slavery to the twin powers of Evil and Sin and because he loved his people as God loved them, the prophet wept for himself and for his people because judgment was coming and most were going to their destruction, clueless about what caused their fate. That’s why they cried out in terror asking where God was and why God had apparently abandoned them. They couldn’t possibly imagine their sins were the cause. Hard as it is to hear our OT and psalm lessons these last two weeks, there is a reason we must: They, like all the other biblical warnings, are there to remind us that unless we repent of our proud and wicked ways and stop pursuing false gods like money, security, fame, power, sex (insert your favorite idol here), and turn to Christ, we all face the awful judgment of a righteous God who will ultimately tolerate no evil to corrupt his good world. God created us to represent him and run his world. When we act evilly, we in no way reflect our Creator and that’s a problem. So if we are wise, we will thank God for loving us enough to warn us about our desperate plight before him so that we have time and opportunity to do something about it (turn to Christ). 

But here’s the problem with the Old Testament. Jeremiah asked in desperation if there was no balm in Gilead for the healing of his people? Was there no physician? No medicine for the spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health of God’s people? Sadly, Jeremiah would probably have answered no to his desperate questions. God had promised a Messiah to heal and rescue God’s people, but no Messiah was in sight. What a terrible predicament to be in! Many of his people were ignorant of their sins and to make matters worse there was no rescue in sight. 

That is why we Christians are not exclusively Old Testament people. We are old and New Testament people. We no longer have to wait for a solution because it (or rather he) has already arrived. Hear what St. Paul has to say in Romans 11.32. Talking about why many in Israel refused to believe that Jesus was and is the Messiah, and what a problem that was for the veracity of God’s promises to Israel, St. Paul makes the astonishing statement that, “…God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.” Now if we don’t understand clearly our desperate need for God’s redemption, we will forever be ignorant of what great and wonderful things the living God has done for us in Jesus Christ and this statement will make no sense at all. Why would God imprison us in disobedience so that God could have mercy on us? Because without the blood of Christ shed for us to cleanse us from our sins and reconcile us to God, our only Source of life, there is no hope for us. None. What St. Paul is getting at is that God can and will use our disobedience to accomplish our rescue from his terrible judgment and an eternity in hell. When by God’s grace we become painfully aware of our sins and how they separate and alienate us from God so that death and destruction are our only lot, we are ready to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead for our sake. Here is God to the rescue. It is literally in Jesus’ name (the Lord saves), and it is by God’s power, mercy, and grace that we are rescued. Should we mourn our sins? Absolutely. But if we stop there we are no better off than Jeremiah! To the contrary, our mourning should lead to our rejoicing because of what God has done for us in Christ. He imprisoned us in disobedience so that he could use it to rescue us and restore us to life and health, i.e., God turned an utterly hopeless situation into good! As St. Paul tells us in our epistle lesson, this is God’s will for us, that everyone should be saved! God takes no pleasure in the death of sinners, and we who believe that God rescued us from his terrible judgment by taking on our flesh and bearing his right judgment on our sins to spare us, must now align our desires with God’s. That’s why we are to pray for leaders, even when they are pagans and vehemently oppose us. Think it through. God called Israel through Abraham to be God’s light to the world. God continues to call Israel—God’s reconstituted people in Christ—to reflect his goodness, mercy, truth, justice, and righteousness out into the world. It’s hard to do that when we are cursing our enemies and acting just as badly as they are instead of praying for them and bearing patiently with them because we want them to know Christ like we do. How different our political arena would look today if even a majority of Christians took this charge seriously. There would be a lot less vitriol and condemnation. There would be more focusing on issues and less on ad hominem attacks. God wants all to be saved and so should we, especially because God rescued us when we too were God’s enemies and as undeserving as our enemies. 

This is what is also going on in our gospel lesson. Remember that Jesus was telling a parable. He wasn’t giving us financial advice or telling us to cheat our enemies. As we’ve just seen, Israel was called to be the light of the world to bring God’s healing love to all people. But Israel had perverted her call. Instead of praying for her enemies and asking God to heal and forgive them, many in Israel prayed that God would execute his judgment on the nations who were hostile to God’s people. This ran contrary to God’s purpose and charge to them. Likewise with us. It is perfectly acceptable to pray for God’s justice to be done. But we must always do so with the realization that we are no different from our enemies, that all have sinned and stand under God’s just judgment without the intervention and mercy of Christ. The outside world matters to God, just like we do, and God wants us to use all our resources, especially spiritual resources like prayer, to demonstrate God’s concern for all humans, not just the ones we happen to like. This is a tall order for us, my beloved, but we do it in the power of the Spirit who strengthens us to do the work he calls us to do.

There are many applications to this dynamic, but I focus on just one today. This discussion reminds us why the forty day period of prayer and fasting is so important for the life of this parish. God calls us to be his light to the world and we do that now. But our homelessness is not something that pleases God because it diminishes our capacity to do God’s will and to be God’s people. God has rescued us from eternal death and destruction through the blood of Christ and he expects us to call on him in our troubles as well as when the good times are rolling. We are called to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ boldly and we are not to be ashamed of doing so. Our culture tries to beat us down and silence us, mostly in the name of “freedom,” in this context, a euphemism for doing the evil our fallen and disordered hearts desire. But true freedom always comes from being obedient to God our Savior, not following our own distorted and selfish desires. Only then can we be truly human. God has rescued us from that predicament and given us hearts and minds to worship him and proclaim the Good News to others. Can God use a homeless people to do that work? Yes he can. We are living proof of that. But that falls short of the goodness and glory of God who desires the very best for all people, especially those who love him. Let us therefore resolve in the power of the Spirit, to be good stewards of God’s goodness, mercy, and grace, and to live and work and be the people God calls us to be. Let us call on the Lord to end our homelessness and then do our part in cooperation with God. Let us do so always with a thankful heart and spirit because we no longer have to worry about God’s judgment and can eagerly look forward to the day we will get to live in his presence and see him face-to-Face. 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 September 23, 2018. 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 explore the difference between true godly wisdom and the wisdom of the world. We all must choose which path to follow. One leads to life, the other to death. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Proverbs 31.10-31; Psalm 1; James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a; Mark 9.30-37.

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

Since it is Fr. Bowser’s birthday today, he felt compelled to offer me some advice about my preaching now that he is an official geezer and since I’ve been out of the saddle for awhile. “Preaching,” he told me, “is like drilling for oil. If you haven’t struck it after 10 mins, stop boring.” 

In our psalm lesson this morning we are given a stark choice. We can live our lives wisely or foolishly. The former will result in us enjoying God’s blessings while the latter will result in our ultimate destruction. Of course life is not as clear-cut as the psalmist might imply. Real life is much messier because human beings are a mess. This doesn’t negate the psalm’s exhortation for us to live wisely, however, because the love, grace, and power of God are far greater than our messiness and this notion of living wisely is what I want us to look at this morning.  

Before we look at what wise living looks like, we had better understand how the Bible defines wisdom. Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Wisdom as Scripture uses it starts with a healthy fear of the Lord (Proverbs 9.10). But what does that mean? Fearing the Lord does not mean we are to be terrified of God. To be sure, there is an element of judgment to fearing the Lord. After all, our Lord Jesus told us to fear God who can destroy both body and soul in hell (Matthew 10.28). But fear of the Lord is much more than our dread of God’s judgment on us because we have seen the cross of Jesus Christ and we therefore know the great love and grace that flows from the Father’s heart for us. God’s desire for us is life and health, not death and destruction. What truly loving father would not want good things for his own children? So we have a healthy respect for God’s power combined with a grateful heart for God’s love for us and his gracious and generous heart that causes him to shower upon us his undeserved blessings. We therefore live wisely when we order our lives in ways that are consistent with God’s created order and God’s will for us as his image-bearing creatures. After all, God created us in his image so that we could run God’s world on his behalf. To do that, of course, means we have to reflect God’s generous heart, love, and passion for justice for all his creation and creatures. This is why God gave Israel his law, so that they could learn how to live as God’s image-bearers and reflect God’s goodness and blessings to the world as God had promised Abraham (Genesis 12.3). So at its very core, biblical wisdom is always manifested primarily in what we do. We see the advantages of living wisely that Psalm 1 promises in our OT lesson this morning. Rather than seeing the wife as the gold standard for which we must strive (an impossible task even for the best of us), we see the blessings that result from wise living. As a result of this woman’s noble character, her wise living brings God’s blessings to many others. Her family and community are blessed and while the writer never states this explicitly, we can safely presume she finds self-satisfaction in serving as a conduit for helping others experience God’s blessings through her noble character and work. This is how biblical wisdom is supposed to work and manifest itself. 

This all sounds simple enough and it was before the Fall when our human ancestors lived in paradise and enjoyed perfect communion with God. But unfortunately we live in a post-Fall world where we are expelled from paradise and are thoroughly infected by the twin powers of Sin and Evil that make it impossible for us on our own to follow God’s laws. We all know, for example, that such a wife as we read about in Proverbs (or a husband for that matter) does not exist—well, except for my own wife; just sayin’. Does that mean we are free to ignore the biblical exhortation to live wisely? No at all! Help is available to us as we shall see shortly. Our job is to use our will (or to use the language of Scripture, to follow our heart) to choose to live wisely. This is not easy and we should be prepared for a lengthy battle to attain godly wisdom because of our corrupted nature and because as St. Paul reminds us, our real battle is not against flesh and blood but against the dark powers that hate us and have enslaved us with the sole purpose of destroying us (Ephesians 6.12; cp. Colossians 2.13-15).

In our epistle lesson this morning, St. James addresses this struggle to live wisely because of our thoroughly corrupted hearts, the center of our will. Like the psalmist in our psalm lesson, St. James is encouraging us to choose the path of godly wisdom and not worldly wisdom, in part by warning us of the dire consequences of following the latter path and holding before us the blessings of following the former path. Keep in mind that St. James was not a head-in-the-cloud idealist. He was a tough realist who knew well the human condition with all its corruption. He knew life was messy and sometimes ugly. After all, he was martyred for his faith. But St. James also knew the reality of God’s love, grace, and power in our lives, and we would be wise to take some time and reflect regularly on the wisdom he imparts to us.

He starts with a probing question. St. James asks us if we really want to seek godly wisdom, which by necessity is based on humility, or do we seek God’s wisdom just to feed our pride and ambition? Seeking godly wisdom means we seek to follow God’s order, not our own chaos-producing sin. This means we must humble ourselves before the word of God and submit to it, something none of us is particularly eager to do. We must listen and seek to understand so that we can follow God’s order faithfully. It means we embrace our role as God’s image-bearers and seek to order or lives in ways that reflect the goodness, love, mercy, and justice of God to his corrupt and hurting world and its people. Of course, human nature being what it is, there are some who seek to appear godly so that folks will look up to them when in reality they are pursuing their own selfish ambition. The scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church of late or the other horror stories that involve fallen theology and church leaders in our own Anglican Communion and elsewhere remind us that St. James knew what he was talking about, and anyone who is a leader in a church, myself included, had better take this warning to heart and examine prayerfully and consistently his or her own heart and motives in the light of God’s law. Do our actions reflect our profession of desiring God’s wisdom? There is nothing more catastrophic to our duty to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to an unbelieving world than to act proudly and hypocritically or to pervert God’s word by making it submit to our own warped agendas and corrupted desires rather than having the needed God-given humility to learn God’s ways and laws. Scripture calls this kind of living “foolish.” [10 mins]

And how are we to distinguish between earthly wisdom and godly wisdom? Simple, says St. James. Earthly wisdom has its roots in rebellion and Sin and Evil. It is devilish because there are unseen and wicked powers behind wicked and evil human behavior. The result? Warfare and chaos, the defining characteristic of sin—think of God ordering the chaos of nothingness in the creation narratives in Genesis 1-2. We all know how this works because we all have engaged in it. We don’t get what we want so we go on the attack. We slander our enemies to discredit them. We see this happening in the Kavanaugh hearings right now. The enemies of Judge Kavanaugh are trying to paint him as a sexual predator to discredit him. The enemies of his accuser, Dr. Ford, are pointing out examples that call her motives and character into question to discredit her and her accusations. Both sides will be relentless until their enemy is destroyed and victory (in their eyes) is achieved. This is the evil of PC in our culture because this is how PC works. Jesus’ disciples also provide a sad example of what St. James is talking about in our gospel lesson. They were arguing about who would be the greatest when Jesus came to power as Messiah. Do you think that argument was going to produce peace? And the silence that ensued when Jesus asked them what they were arguing about is quite telling. They knew the evil they had committed in their desire to lord it over others. Shame often results in silence.

And it’s not only politics. It’s money (lying, cheating, stealing, drug dealing, embezzling to get it), fame (we all desperately want our minute of fame), power (we oppress others in various ways to impose our will over them), security (gated communities, stealing and embezzling to secure our future retirement, carrying weapons), sex (body shaming to make us feel better, adultery, any kind of sex outside marriage), you name it. We do what we have to do to satisfy our lesser, base, and sin-corrupted desires, harming or destroying others along the way, and the result is chaos. As this nation continues to lose its Judeo-Christian moorings we can expect this phenomenon to accelerate and intensify. This is the wisdom of the world at work and sadly every one of us is intimately familiar with it because we are all thoroughly sin-infected.

By contrast, St. James tells us that godly wisdom is pure, meaning it comes from God. “It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.” To produce this kind of fruit of course requires humility, which is not a natural human trait. It has to be given to us by God and then cultivated by our hard work and willingness and desire to be true image-bearers. A moment’s thought will confirm the truth of how this works. If we are determined to have our way at all costs as earthly wisdom dictates (look out for yourself because no one else will), we will not yield to another person because we subordinate that person and his desires to us and our own. This is human pride at work. But when we understand we are all made in God’s image and that we and our needs are not more important to God than other folks and their needs, we are willing to yield on certain things. I am not talking about appeasement. I am talking about a willingness to help others have their needs and desires met, especially when we see that those desires reflect God and God’s laws. We might see someone in need and seek to help them. We shovel an elderly person’s walk or buy some food for a hungry person. We help Fr. Madanu buy a ticket to see his family when he cannot afford to buy one. You get the idea. When that happens, peace almost always breaks out. Think about it this way. You see two people walking toward you. One is cynical, quarrelsome, and always has to be right: a worldly-wise person. The other is gentle, humble, willing to help, ready to forgive: a godly-wise person. Which one will you try to avoid? 

As we consider all this, it is critical for us to remember that St. James was offering wisdom in the context of community, not just to individuals. We can’t very well make peace if another family member is unwilling to do likewise or is unwilling to forgive us or have mercy on us or is proud and haughty. This community dimension is critical for us as Christians because the kind of wisdom we choose to follow will result in the kind of witness we give to a watching world. When we follow our own devilish and evil desires, what are we proclaiming to the world about our faith in Christ? People will see us arguing and forming into factions and seeking our own interests over the needs and interests of others. Why would they think that the gospel of Jesus Christ has any kind of transformative power? Why would they want to be part of a family like that? So St. James is speaking to all of us here in the St. Augustine’s family, not just the leaders. 

But if we are so thoroughly corrupted that we cannot acquire godly wisdom on our own, what are we to do? It is here that the good folks who put together the Lectionary let us down once again because they omit the following verses from our lesson:

You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4.4-6).

Well, it appears that the folks who choose the readings don’t have a taste for, um, “hard passages.” Adulterers? Life or death choices? Stern warnings? How very preachy and judgmental, no?! Well no, actually. There is nothing judgmental in these verses. St. James is following the biblical definition of love, which has very little to do with sentimentality and emotion and almost everything to do with the good of the beloved. Here he warns us that when we follow the wisdom of the world we commit spiritual adultery against God by giving our heart to the ways of the world rather than to the ways of God in the manner God intended for us when God created us as his image-bearers. That will result in God’s awful judgment on us. So to help us stay loyal to him, God willingly and generously gives us his Spirit and the grace to be humble so that we can learn how to practice humility. St. James says the same thing later in our lesson. He asks how we can stop our incessant warfare and chaos? His answer is by self-discipline and prayer. Chaos results from pride and wicked selfishness. We think we have to provide for ourselves. But no! God provides for us if we have the good sense and humility to ask him, and to ask him for the things that bring glory to God’s name rather than to us. Jesus said much the same when he told us to ask for whatever we want in his Name and it will be given to us. As a young man I thought that was strange. Was Jesus giving me license to ask for money or a new car or sex or anything else that was important to me at the time? No, because those things would not bring God glory through the Son (John 14.13). A heart set on Jesus, i.e., God, desires the things Jesus desires and is more concerned about bringing honor and glory to his Name than our own.

This then is the challenge for those of us who seek to follow Christ. It is a call to examine ourselves, especially in terms of how consistently we live out our profession of faith. It is a challenge because living wisely in the light of God’s law is not natural to us. But as with everything else involving the Christian faith, we are not called to attempt the impossible. The God who calls us to live godly lives that will reflect the glory and goodness of his Name also equips us in the power of the Spirit to give us a humble spirit and the freedom to develop it. Our challenge is not whether we can live godly lives, it’s whether we really want to at all. Examine yourselves, therefore, and ask the Father through the Son to help you develop his gift of humility so that you are empowered to live as you are called to live so that you will enjoy the great blessings God wants to give you. The Father has done the hardest work. He has sent the Son to die for you to break the power of Sin and Evil and free you from its wicked enslavement. Trust that God to help you live as he calls you to live. Doing so will make you real wise guys, my beloved. 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 September 21, 2014. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. In this sermon I look at what happens when our expectations for having faith are violated. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Exodus 16.2-15; Psalm 105.1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1.21-30; Matthew 20.1-16.

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

How many of you, when you became a Christian or when you first started to consider what being a Christian is all about, expected to receive some kind of benefit or reward for being one? I’m not talking about the reward of eternal life promised to those of us who are in Christ. I’m talking about an expectation that being a Christian would somehow make life go better or easier for you. Many of us do have that expectation, but as our readings this morning indicate, we may have to tweak those expectations, at least as they pertain to being rewarded in this world for being a Christian, and that is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

In recent weeks our OT lessons have focused on God’s mighty deliverance of his people from their slavery in Egypt. Recall the great signs and wonders God performed in Egypt on behalf of his people, signs and wonders that culminated in the Passover and God’s dramatic rescue of his enslaved people through the Red Sea. As the psalmist rejoiced in our psalm reading, God brought his people out of Egypt with gold and silver, sure signs that God had plundered Israel’s former captors. We could almost sense the eager anticipation of the Israelites as they watched the Lord destroy their pursuers. After all, God had promised them a land filled with milk and honey. Life was going to be just fine, thank you very much.

And now in today’s OT lesson, we see the reality of their freedom finally starting to sink in for God’s people Israel and they are not too wild about it. Moses’ travel brochures apparently hadn’t mentioned a thing about having to wander through the wilderness before arriving in the promised land. And so the Israelites did exactly what most of us would do as red-blooded 21^st century Americans. They started to grumble to and about their God. “You never told us we would have to spend time wandering around in the desert without food or water! Not fair!” 

And as they grumbled, the strangest thing happened. God’s people started to look back on their days of enslavement and captivity with longing as if Egypt were some kind of exotic resort! Oh that we were slaves again in Egypt! At least we had enough food to eat and water to drink! Say what? Israel was learning an unhappy lesson about putting its faith in God. Being rescued from slavery and captivity does not necessarily mean that all difficulty evaporates. God did indeed rescue his people from their slavery, but even then his people still had to live in a broken world just like we do. Indeed, as Tom Wright observes, wandering in the wilderness is a regular NT metaphor for the life of the Christian family between Easter and God’s final victory. Like Israel, even though we have been rescued from sin and death in and through the cross of Jesus, we too must live in a world still badly corrupted. God’s rescue of us from our slavery does not make us immune to all that can go wrong in God’s world. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t because Scripture reminds us again and again that God never promised us a rose garden, despite the claims made by some today that God wants us to be prosperous and happy. That may be true, but it fails to address the fact that we all must live in a badly broken world where things often do not go as God wants or desires.

Instead, as our lessons remind us, the path to the promised land, whether it be Israel or the new creation, leads through the desert, whether literally as in the case of our OT lesson or metaphorically as in our case as Christians who must navigate through an often dangerous and hostile world. But this is exactly what we do not want! I suspect that deep down most of us who claim to submit to God’s rule or kingdom would like to live in a world not unlike some kind of Magic Kingdom where nothing ever goes wrong and there is nary a hint of ugliness or sadness or brokenness or violence. But life is not that way, even for those of us who live faithfully to Christ. Instead, as we walk with him, there can still be a wilderness of depression or the scorching heat of cancer to afflict us, among other things.

But we are bearers of Good News, not purveyors of doom and gloom. We must therefore pay careful attention to what our lessons are telling us and as usual, think through the implications of these stories so that we are equipped to live our time in the wilderness with courage, joy, and hope so that we too can proclaim the gospel boldly. As our OT lesson reminds us, God’s people looked at their hard times in the wilderness and found God. They saw the glory of the Lord as he appeared to them in a cloud. On one level this should not have surprised the Israelites. After all, God had been with them during their slavery in Egypt and had rescued them from that slavery in a very dramatic fashion. So why would God abandon them now? But this was their first time in the wilderness and as we all know, the things of this world can overwhelm us, and pretty rapidly too. And so they cried out and grumbled against God just like we do.

But notice God’s response. He did not get angry with them (at least this time). His glory appeared to his people so that they knew without a doubt that God was there with them in the wilderness to lead and guide and protect them, i.e., to be true to his word to deliver them to the land he promised to give Abraham hundreds of years earlier. God also gave them manna, the bread of angels (Psalm 78.25), to satisfy their basic needs. Manna means literally, “What is it?”, which indicates the highly unusual nature of this food that was God’s gift to his people. (My beloved regularly puts manna on our table, although I suspect this is not the same thing that the writer of Exodus was talking about, but that is a different topic for a different day.).

As we think through the implications of this story, surely one of the things it is telling us is to adjust our expectations for living in the wilderness (a world ravaged by sin and evil) so that we can see God’s presence with us clearly and take full advantage of it by drawing our strength from him. Our OT lesson powerfully reminds us that life after salvation, whether it be from Egypt or our own sin, is still going to have its share of hardships and heartaches. But the difference is that we do not have to face them alone. The glory of God is here among us in the person and presence of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us so that we learn to develop a profound hope that will carry us through all the trials and tribulations of life. The hope I am talking about is not the simple or naive hope that our faith guarantees us smooth sailing or a pie-in-the-sky optimism that asserts things will get better quickly. Neither is it a hope derived from a health and wealth theology that asserts successful living is the result of a robust faith. Instead, it is a hope that is at once realistic and deep: that God is with us, especially in places of danger and death.  

Sadly, most of God’s people who wandered in the wilderness did not seem to learn this lesson because later on they continued to grumble against God. Despite God’s continued visible presence among them and the fact that God continued to provide for the material needs of his people, they still grumbled against him and still wanted to return to their former slavery. God eventually punished his people for their unbelief, not because God is an ogre who desires to spank us every time we misbehave, but because the people’s grumbling in effect called God a liar in terms of his ability to rescue them from their slavery and make good on his promise to deliver them to their desired destination. Instead of embracing God’s promises and learning to develop a real hope that was based on God’s presence and ability to deliver his people from both their slavery and the dangers of the wilderness in which they wandered, God’s people rebelled and focused on temporary things like food and water that would inevitably disappoint. How then could they be God’s people who were called to bring his blessings to a hurting world? 

And many of us do the same thing today in our wilderness wanderings. We don’t grumble about food and water because none of us here lack those basic provisions. But neither do we focus on developing our relationship with God to help us weather the storms of life. Instead as we wander through the wilderness of our lives we tend to dismiss God as being absent or not caring about us. We consequently put our hope and trust in things that must ultimately fail us: money, health, power, sex, security, fame, privilege, et al. But when these things are taken away from us we panic or become afraid or rage against God, just like the Israelites did in the wilderness. 

But notice what happens if we learn the lesson from our story from Exodus. As the things that we desire and put our hope and trust in are stripped away in the wilderness of life, we have the opportunity to learn to put our hope and trust in God who is eternal and who cannot be taken away from us under any circumstance, not even in death. God is the one and only constant we have in this world and only God has the strength, wisdom, and grace to help us navigate through our own deserts, no matter how terrible they are. That’s part of the point of Jesus’ parable in today’s gospel lesson.

This is the secret of St. Paul’s hope and joy that comes through so clearly in our epistle lesson. Remember that St. Paul wrote this letter while in prison, probably in Rome. But even in that awful condition he had praised God that his imprisonment would help him spread the gospel because it gave him a chance to witness to his captors, a chance St. Paul otherwise would not have had (Philippians 1.12ff). And let’s make sure as we read what St. Paul says here about suffering and his almost cheerful manner in regard to it, that we read 2 Corinthians 1.8-11 along with it. There St. Paul tells us that he suffered so badly he despaired of even life itself! Reading both passages will remind us that in suffering, our belief that Jesus is Lord, i.e., that Jesus is with us in all circumstances, especially those in which we suffer, may or may not correspond to our feelings about our suffering. Learning to distinguish the difference between the two is a sure sign that we are becoming mature Christians.

So what should we take from our lessons today? We are first and foremost reminded that God is always present with us, especially in our suffering, and has the capacity to help us so that we have the basis to develop a real hope that will sustain us. As Christians, we do not believe God is with us in the pillars of cloud and fire but in the presence of his Holy Spirit who lives in us individually and together. As St. Paul reminds us, we are to stand firm in the Spirit and strive side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel. In other words, we are to encourage each other to remain true to our hope of being rescued from evil, sin, and death in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus so that when we are required to wander in the wilderness, we do not develop unChristian or even anti-Christian thoughts and beliefs. And if you don’t think this can happen, consider how many denominations have abandoned a saving theology of the cross and a belief in bodily resurrection and the new creation, and how this has ruined them as a result. Without a firm belief in the saving work of Jesus on the cross that has rescued us from our sins and allowed us to be reconciled to God the Father, without a firm belief in our hope and future of living as resurrection people in God’s new creation with all of its hope and promise, and without the firm belief that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in his people to shape and guide us, we will quickly lose hope just like God’s people did as they wandered through the wilderness. 

So as we think about the implications of Jesus’ saving death on the cross and how without it God would have to destroy us if he were to destroy evil entirely, we are reminded that our grumbling about God being indifferent to our suffering is without basis. A God who acts on our behalf like that and who suffers more than we ever could to rescue us from sin and death is hardly indifferent to our needs and suffering. And as we think about God with us in the power of the Spirit and the fellowship of his people, we are reminded that our grumbling about God being an absent God is also without basis. God often uses human agency to minister to us in our suffering if we have the faith to see it. Without this knowledge and faith, we will never see or experience the radical and deep love God has for each of us and how he can use our suffering to draw us closer to him, and for our good, as we wander through the wilderness of life. 

But when we do have the knowledge and faith to see the glory of God in our midst, we are equipped to see life in this world for what it is: a mixture of joy and sorrow, life and death, peace and suffering, brokenness and healing. We will also realize that the God whom we worship is bigger than all our hurts and is actively inviting us to give ourselves to him so that he can show us he has the character and the ability to rescue us from all that besets us. When by the grace of God we are able to rejoice even in our suffering because we understand that this is one of the primary ways God draws us to him, we will have the needed power and perspective to help us navigate safely through the wilderness of this life. And we will also know we 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 September 12, 2021. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Proverbs 1.20-33; Psalm 19; James 3.1-12; St. Mark 8.27-38.

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

We turn our attention today to the biblical teaching on wisdom and foolishness, looking at both in the context of how our other lessons apply them. When Scripture speaks of wisdom and foolishness, what is it speaking about? In the Bible’s economy, how do we know a wise guy (or gal) from a fool? How do we become wise? These are some of the things I want us to look at today.

We are introduced to Lady Wisdom in our OT lesson. At first glance she appears to be quite harsh and demanding, threatening to mock those who do not seek to know her and wind up in a pickle. But when we look closer at her words, we see she is warning us to do what we can to escape the consequences of our foolish thinking, speaking, and behaving. Unlike current “wisdom,” Scripture is very clear in teaching us there are consequences to our words and actions. Better to be wise than to get jammed up over our foolishness. We would be wise to heed her advice.

And what is the essence of wisdom? Pr 1.7 tells us: Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge (wisdom). In other words, wisdom is based on us developing a real relationship with God so that we know him and as a result of that knowledge can develop a healthy, reverent appreciation and awe of God (and sometimes knee-knocking fear when necessary) to help us navigate through life with all its changes, chances, and complexities in ways that allow us to become fully human and thus live up to our status as God’s image-bearing creatures. Simpletons in biblical language are those who have not yet learned this truth regarding our need to conform our lives to God’s teaching, will, and created order but are open to it; whereas fools and mockers have been exposed to this truth and reject it, and worse yet, even mock it. As we shall see, wise folk have a hope and a future. Fools and mockers do not.

Before we look further at wisdom and foolishness, let us first acknowledge that the human race is prone to foolishness because of our fallen nature and enslavement to the power of Sin. We only become wise by the grace and power of God, not chiefly our own efforts, important as those efforts are. So what does wisdom and foolishness look like on the ground, in the context of our mortal lives? All our lessons provide us with some key insights and wisdom (no pun intended) into this question, although the manifestation of wisdom is certainly not limited to what our lessons show us. As we shall see, Scripture usually teaches us truth inside the story of the history of God’s people contained in it. We would be wise to learn this simple truth as it helps provide us with needed context to better see how God operates in his created order and its creatures. 

We turn first to our Psalm lesson with its declaration that all creation declares the beauty and handiwork of its Creator (cf. Rm 1.18-20). We see the breathtaking beauty of God’s created world and order—the beauty of nature, of a starry sky at night, of families and all healthy relationships, especially the God-ordained relationship of husband and wife consecrated at marriage. All these proclaim God’s goodness, wisdom, and beauty without ever speaking a word. Wise folk experience them and we just know in our bones that it’s all good, reflecting the bold declaration of Gen 1-2. Fools do not and mockers actually scorn this truth. Then of course there is the beauty of God’s law, how God’s created order is intended to run and how we are to conduct ourselves as God’s image-bearers. Wise people follow God’s law and created order, submitting themselves to it. When they do, they find God’s blessing (not necessarily a reward) in the form of God’s peace and contentment. God’s wisdom teaches the wise to be humble and act accordingly toward God and people because we know we are only mortals and our days are but as grass: fleeting, temporary, prone to the vicissitudes of life. Fools reject this truth, generally favoring their own disordered and brave new world, a world that produces chaos and madness and disorder, a world that swirls around us with increasing intensity. The psalmist puts it like this: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good” (Ps 14.1, 53.1). Despite the testimony of God’s created order and of Scripture and God’s people, fools and mockers reject it all and even mock it. Perhaps the best biblical example of this is the chief priests and scribes at Calvary, mocking our Savior as he was dying for them (Mk 15.28-32). They were too foolish to accept God the Father’s appointed way to save them from eternal destruction because they didn’t have the needed humility or wisdom to see that they were incapable of saving themselves. And their formal training made them too proud to allow themselves to consider the possibility that when God’s Messiah did come, he might come in a way they never expected or anticipated. And we don’t get a free pass on this one either. How many times do we read and study God’s word and truth only to reject it by not believing it? How many times do we in effect say, “There is no God” because we think we know better than God in how his created order and our lives should be run? Every time our pride leads us to refuse to repent of the sins, or refuse to forgive someone who has wronged us, or refuse to advocate for the poor, the oppressed, the elderly, and the unborn, or worse yet when we fail to challenge the lie that Jesus is just one of several ways to God, to name just a few, we are those fools about whom the psalmist speaks. Doing the opposite shows we are learning wisdom because we seek to follow God’s will made known supremely and uniquely in and through Christ.

This leads us to our gospel lesson where we see wisdom and foolishness clearly on display, the latter in abundance. The story is a classic. St. Peter goes from the penthouse to the doghouse in the blink of an eye! He shows wisdom by acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Messiah or anointed one, presumably from his interactions with our Lord up to that point. No beating around the bush for St. Peter! He comes right out and answers Christ’s question clearly and boldly. You are the Christ! But then St. Mark tells us Christ used St. Peter’s confession to teach his blind and foolish disciples that their thinking about God’s Messiah was all wrong. Christ was indeed God’s anointed one, but he had come to rescue not only Israel but God’s entire sin-sick world from our slavery to the power of Sin, not by being a mighty conquerer and lording it over others, but by dying for us to take on himself the Father’s holy and just wrath on our sins so that we would be spared of that wrath and made fit to live in the Father’s holy presence forever, starting right here and now in this mortal life. Ain’t nobody got time for that nonsense, Lord! St. Peter exclaimed. You see, Christ had totally violated his expectations of who God is and how God works. End-time judgment there will be and there will be no mistaking it when it comes. But not before our Father came to us in weakness and love to save us from ourselves and the power of Sin. The Kingdom comes on earth as in heaven via the cross and Christ’s blood shed for us, not via shock and awe as the world understands power. Only the wise, those who know the heart of the Father and are able to recognize and see it in the life and teachings of God the Son, God become human, can possibly hope to learn God’s radical new (yet very much old) wisdom made known in Christ. And to learn this wisdom requires the God-given humility to listen, ponder, and talk it over, both with God and each other. It is the humility and wisdom needed to submit ourselves to the power and authority of God’s word contained in Scripture, rather than putting ourselves above it so as to interpret it in ways that make us feel good and comfortable. If we don’t know God and are unwilling to get to know Christ and his ways, denying ourselves and carrying our cross so that we can follow him, we can never hope to become (or be) wise. Like the big shots of Jesus’ day (and ever since), we consider ourselves too smart, too sophisticated to believe in all this dying for our sins stuff. And the Resurrection? No way, baby. We all know dead people don’t rise from the grave. Yet here is Christ our Lord, inviting us to see him for who he is as he lives out the very heart and love and goodness and justice of his Father. Know God and we will know Christ. Know Christ and we will know God. Peter at this point in the story didn’t know either very well and he attempted to fit both into his own scheme of things. The result? His Master’s doghouse. Satan had tempted him in the wilderness to abandon his path to the cross and in St. Peter’s (likely) well-intentioned rebuke, Jesus saw the same dynamic at work. Christ could go to the cross because he knew without a doubt the Father’s will for him and had the humility to do that will, massively hard as it was (cf. Phil 2.5-11). The wise know Christ for who he is—the embodiment of the Living God—and believe his promise that we are freed from our sins by his blood and by the sending of the Holy Spirit, and that one day we too will have eternal life in a new embodied existence, all because of the Father’s great love, mercy, and grace. Fools reject this and live their lives accordingly. It’s no small thing to have to deny ourselves, our base and disordered desires in us, and be willing to learn how to live in the manner of Christ. It takes a lifetime and none of us do it perfectly. In fact, most of us do it rather imperfectly most of the time. But Christ is the only way for us to ever enjoy eternal life in the manner the NT promises it. Are you wise in this matter or a fool?

Last, we turn to our epistle lesson because here we see an important way we as Christians learn to live out our faith in Jesus Christ: taming our speech. We just saw how St. Peter’s tongue got him in trouble. We also spoke of the foolish speech we heard at Calvary as the leaders of Israel mocked God as they crucified him. We add our own folly to this. How many times has a thoughtless word caused harm and sometimes irreparable damage? (This is why gossip is so severely condemned in all Scripture.) It causes damage and harm, division and rancor. It is also a terrible witness to our faith. When we speak and act in the manner of the world (think Twitter, FB, all the discordant voices that swirl around us), how are we witnessing to Christ? How are we demonstrating a different and better way, a way the world desperately seeks but can never find in the secular domain? I see some of our own people regularly post things on FB that make me cringe. If I were one who hungered and thirsted for truth and beauty and real life and saw some of the stuff we post, I would high tail it as fast as I could. And we will have to give an account for our loose tongue as Christ himself warns us—rather worryingly to me—about this: “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire” (Mt 5.22). Here we see wisdom and folly in action again, this time in the realm of speech. A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger, says Proverb 15.1. Wise folks understand and practice this wisdom. But at other times, a stern word may be needed. Wisdom tells us when, where, and how to apply it (or not). Fools reject this wisdom and act according to their own selfish and myopic desires.

I could give thousands of examples to illustrate the above, but you get the point and I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on this and talking about it together. In short, if we are putting anything or anyone above following Christ to the best of our ability in the power of the Spirit, or if we do not believe him to be who he says he is, the crucified and risen Son of God, we are fools and headed for utter and eternal destruction. There is no cause, no person, no identity, no political party, nothing in all creation other than Christ, that deserves to have our ultimate love, loyalty, and devotion because only Christ offers us eternal life. Learn this wisdom, my beloved. As Christ’s body we are called to live out God’s wisdom (and all that that entails) together, not just individually, and that means we must delve into the word deeply and together. To know God requires that we have a robust prayer life as well. And of course when we come to the Table to receive our Lord’s body and blood, we learn wisdom because we actually consume Christ as we rehearse and become part of God’s wisdom proclaimed in our Lord’s Death and Resurrection. May we all become wise guys and gals as we grow up to the full stature of Christ. 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 September 15, 2019 at our quarterly healing service. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon. Here I deal with the enigmatic biblical proclamation regarding God’s healing power. It is enigmatic because even though God has the power to heal our infirmities, sometimes God chooses not to or to answer our prayers in ways other than we intended or wanted. This can lead us to fall away, the ultimate disaster for any human being. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Jeremiah 4:11–28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1.12-17; Luke 15.1-10.

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

Today we hold our quarterly healing service. But what is the basis for our healing? Obviously the power of God but are there other factors involved? Our lessons today give us some insight into this question and this is what I want us to look at this morning.

Our hard-to-hear OT and psalm lessons remind us in a graphic way that we are a sin-sick lot. God tells his prophet Jeremiah that his people Israel are stupid and lack understanding. Why? Because they are skilled at doing evil and do not know how to do good. Likewise the psalmist makes the stark observation that there is no one who does good, not one single person. To the contrary God sees that many increasingly refuse to believe that God even exists! The result? God’s people and the human race in general are alienated from God and ripe for God’s terrible judgment on our wickedness. This is tough stuff because it refers to you and me. Not only that, our rebellion against God’s perfect and good ways corrupts the land. God created us to care for his creation, land included, and when we refuse to reflect God’s goodness out into the world, the land suffers along with us (strip mining and pollution-caused catastrophes, anyone?), this on top of the fact that creation already suffers under God’s curse for the sin of our first ancestors. 

Not only do our sins result in God’s judgment on them (if you haven’t figured it out yet, God detests any form of evil, even as he loves us), our sins make us sick: physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally because they separate us from our only source of life and health: God our Creator who sustains us. End our sin-caused alienation from God and every kind of illness, malady, and land corruption go away (new creation, anyone?). So today you get the punchline to the sermon’s title right away. Value added. You can nap in peace now and still pass the quiz at sermon’s end. But here’s the problem. If we believe the OT (which we should), we are powerless to heal our sin-sickness by ourselves. Our sin destines us to wander in the wasteland of the wilderness even as we live in our million dollar mansions and grow fat on our sumptuous diets and enjoy the glut of consumer goodies produced by our economy. Human knowledge and technological advancements may allow us to overcome the corruption of the land and to an extent heal many of our sicknesses, but we cannot cure the root cause of all illness: our alienation from God.

But it is to the glory of God our Father that the grim message about Sin contained in the OT is not the final word, that the OT was always a story awaiting its completion, and that final word is the coming of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. To be sure, the human condition about which I have just spoken did not change from the OT to the NT periods. Neither has it changed today. We are more sophisticated in hiding, rationalizing, and dressing up our alienation from God, but the psalmist’s charge about the wickedness of the human race remains true and valid today. So what changed?

The Good News of Jesus Christ, of course, with its proclamation that God has fulfilled his promise to Abraham to address our sin-sickness and heal us through Abraham’s family. God has accomplished that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God become human, to rescue us from our slavery to the power of Sin that has bound us ever since our original ancestors got booted out of paradise. We get a glimpse of the heart of God in our gospel lesson this morning and it is the key to our healing at the deepest level of our being. In response to his opponents’ criticism that he was always partying and hanging out with folks who were most despised in his culture, our Lord told two parables about the relentlessly loving heart God the Father has for his image-bearing creatures. 

In the first parable, we see the shepherd (God through Christ) leaving his flock behind to search for the one lost sheep. What kind of sheep was that? Was it the cutest one? The one who nestled up to the shepherd to sleep? The one with the finest wool? No, the shepherd went after the sheep because it was lost. No prerequisites, no qualifications except disqualification (sin). No structure of personal piety, no good sense (it got lost), no obedience. This was the one that got a ride home on the shepherd’s shoulder. This one is you and me in all our inglorious chaos and vanity and baggage we carry around. The message here is that there is nothing we can do to get a ride home; it is entirely up to the Shepherd searching for and finding us, and the Shepherd is willing to search us out! And here we need to be clear about what this parable isn’t saying because too often it has been used to excuse ongoing sin which fosters ongoing alienation from God. Christ was not saying that God accepted the people he hung out with as they stood. Sinners must repent so that God can heal us. The sheep didn’t run away from the shepherd once found; it let the shepherd carry him back home. God searches for us and calls us to repentance, not because God hates us but because God loves us and wants to heal us. He searches for us as we are (rebellious and hostile toward him, skilled at doing evil and not knowing how to do good without the help of God), but God doesn’t expect us to stay as we are. The folks who hung around Jesus had to resolve to give up their lifestyles that made them sick so that God could thoroughly heal them. Likewise with us. 

None of this negates the power of the parable in which our Lord tells us about the great love the Father has for us; in fact, it reinforces it. That is why there is rejoicing in heaven. God has brought another lost sheep back into the fold and the Father’s heart overflows with joy because he loves each and every one of us in all of our disarrayed glory! Imagine you are that lost sheep our Lord finds. What would be your reaction? Would it not be one of instant relief and healing? Would you not be rejoicing and want to please the One who loves you despite your hostility toward him and wants you to be his forever?

Elsewhere the NT tells us a definitively about the Father’s great love for us made known in Jesus Christ. We are washed clean by the blood of the Lamb shed for us. Our sins have been put away. God’s desire for justice and mercy has been accomplished on the cross so that we are spared of God’s terrible judgment on our sins because God took it on himself; and our slavery to the power of Sin has been broken. We know this because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and we have been given God’s Spirit to help us lead new lives when we have the good sense and humility to let the Shepherd carry us home on his whipped and crucified back.

So why aren’t we all healed? There are many reasons (as well as a great enigma in it all), but I only have time to explore one of those reasons with all its complexity. Some of us are self-loathing. Like David in Psalm 51, we know our transgressions and our sin is ever before us. We can’t believe that a good and righteous God could ever love us, let alone have mercy on us. We read about God’s hatred of all things evil and we conclude that because of our sins, we too are evil and therefore outside of God’s love and mercy. The Good Shepherd would never come looking for us. We are beyond saving. But our self-loathing comes from the world, the flesh (usually from within ourselves), and the devil. It ignores the truth about the love and mercy of God made known in Jesus Christ and him crucified for our sins and for our sake. When our self-loathing prevents us from accepting God’s love for, and mercy upon us, we effectively run away from the Good Shepherd or refuse to let him put us on his shoulders to carry us home. Our self-loathing is a subtle form of pride and alienation against God, all dressed up in pietistic language and thinking, and it distinctly goes against the parable of the lost sheep, which is all about the love and mercy of the Shepherd, who seeks out the least, the lost, and the self-loathing. As a result, our alienation from God continues because we falsely believe God can’t and won’t love us and we never are open for the core healing that comes when we are reconciled to God our Father through Christ. If you are one of those self-loathers, STOP IT!!! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!!! I plead with you to take this parable to heart and give your Father a chance to show his love for you. You will not be disappointed.

And here is where the parable of the lost coin comes into play because it speaks as much about God’s perseverance as it does about rejoicing over finding the lost. As we saw, Christ implicitly calls us to repentance in the parable of the lost sheep, and many of us consciously seek to repent but often find ourselves failing miserably. This is especially bad for you self-loathers; it just adds fuel to the fire. Does that mean we really haven’t repented and remain lost? The parable of the lost coins suggests otherwise. Repentance is not a one time deal or event. Neither is our relationship with God a one time event. We are a work in progress. St. Paul recognized this when he made the astonishing claim in Romans that we will share in a death and resurrection like Christ’s because we are baptized in him (Romans 6.3-5). He then immediately acknowledged that we are not done with sin until we die (Romans 6.6-7). That means we will sometimes fail to miss the mark but that in no way negates the power of the cross and Christ’s victory over Sin and Death for us. The cross is the eternal sign of God’s great and relentless love for us, that God is patient and perseveres in his pursuit of us, despite our flaws, weaknesses, self-loathing, and rebellion. This is because God created us for life and creation, not death and destruction. God’s love for us means the Father wants the best for us and has acted as only God could on our behalf to bring us safely home to him where there will be no more sickness or sighing or alienation or death. 

St. Paul also serves as a poster child for this mind-boggling promise. He wasn’t just a lost sheep. He was a wolf who actively devoured the sheep by persecuting God’s reconstituted people in Christ out of a sincere but mistaken belief that Christ was not the real deal until Christ got a hold of him. St. Paul’s story reminds us that sincerely held beliefs about God, wrong as they can be when we do not humbly submit to God’s word, cannot rescue us. Only God can rescue us. St. Paul, chief of sinners because he actively persecuted God’s people in Christ, is saved by the One who pursued him relentlessly and patiently until he repented of his evil. The message? Nobody is beyond hope. Nobody is beyond the healing love and mercy of God. We simply have to accept the gift offered to us unconditionally. The extent to which you have accepted the gift is the extent you will find healing.

In a few moments we will invite you to come for intercessions and anointing to be healed. As you come forward, do so with a thankful and believing heart and mind, imperfect as both are. Your faith and resolve to follow Christ, however imperfectly you might live it, is evidence of God’s love for you and his willingness to heal you. Therefore, don’t be afraid. Continue to examine your heart and your life and resolve to ask the Lord Jesus to heal you of anything that causes you to remain alienated from God. Give thanks to the Great Shepherd, the one who pursues you relentlessly because he loves you beyond your ability to understand—not because of who you are or aren’t, but because of who God is—and let this God heal you to your very core. The Good News of Jesus Christ is this: You are created in the Father’s image to reflect his goodness and love, but you rebelled against that purpose. Despite your rebellion, God loves you and has acted on your behalf to end your stupidity and skill at doing evil so that you are freed to do what is truly human, good, and life affirming (i.e., it’s not about you, stupid, it’s about God). In giving you this great gift you will find both his peace and your healing, thanks be to 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 September 13, 2015. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts for today before reading the sermon by clicking on or tapping their links below. When Scripture calls for us to be wise, what do the writers have in mind? For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Proverbs 1.20-33; Psalm 19; Saint James 3.1-12; Saint Mark 8.27-38.

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

Today I want us to explore some of the often neglected treasure of biblical wisdom. What is it and why should we care about it? In answering some of these questions, we will have the chance to assess our humility quotient because ultimately our acceptance or rejection of biblical Wisdom is directly related to how humble or proud we really are.

In our OT lesson we are introduced to Lady Wisdom, the very personification of God’s Wisdom. In our passage, we see that Wisdom is not simply a set of passive principles we have the option of accepting or rejecting. No, Wisdom is seen as a teacher who is very active. She is one who cries out in the streets, peddling her wares. Like a good teacher, she is willing to do almost anything to attract and maintain her students’ attention because there is much at stake here. But sadly, the implication is that while she is actively pursuing students to learn from her, there are not many takers to be found. Hmmm. Are we one of those people?

Specifically, Lady Wisdom addresses three types of folks: the simple, the scoffer, and the fool. The simple are those who are either young or naive. They haven’t really had a chance to learn wisdom and by implication are ripe for the picking. The scoffer, on the other hand, not only rejects Lady Wisdom’s teachings, but is actively opposed to them by ridiculing the wisdom found in her teachings. We all get how this works. How often do we hear Christians being ridiculed or mocked when espousing biblical Wisdom to a world that is increasingly hostile to it? Take this proverb, for example. “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15.1). How ridiculous, the scoffer snorts! Everyone knows that he who shouts the loudest or carries the biggest stick gets the prize! Who cares how many feathers get ruffled in the process? Following this advice would give the appearance of weakness and any who do follow it are fools! Or how often have we been silenced out of fear that we will be scoffed at for holding a biblical perspective on any of the current hot topics in the public forum? Then there is the fool, those people who are said to “hate knowledge.” Indeed, to love folly is to hate Wisdom and vice versa. There is no middle ground to be had here and that makes many of us who prefer to measure our colors in shades of gray rather than black and white uncomfortable. 

In our lesson we are not told specifically what constitutes Wisdom, only that the beginning of wisdom is to choose to fear the Lord. To fear the Lord means we have a healthy and reverential respect for the all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present God who is incomparably greater than us. It does not mean cowering from an unpredictable bully. And while Lady Wisdom does not tell us what Wisdom looks like in our lesson, the psalmist does. He tells us that Wisdom consists in following God’s good will and purposes for us. Do this, say both the psalmist and Lady Wisdom, and you will prosper. Don’t do this, and disaster will surely strike. It’s not so much a matter of God rewarding us for good behavior or punishing us for bad behavior as it is reaping what we sow. There really are consequences that accompany our thoughts and behaviors! Be wise, says Lady Wisdom. Don’t play the fool!

All this ought to make sense to us at some level. If God really is our Creator, who knows better how to make us happy than God? And so God has given us his Laws to follow (think, e.g., the Ten Commandments) because acting in these ways will surely result in harmonious, peaceable living. If we are loving and treating others as we want them to love and treat us (part of the Great Commandment Jesus gave us), we reduce exponentially the chances of strife and conflict and all the other nastiness we experience as the result of our own folly. And behaving in these ways also helps prevent evil from working its poison in our lives. 

To be sure, this doesn’t mean that wise people never suffer or that fools don’t prosper. They do at times, but this is an exception to the rule, not the rule itself, and in this life there are always exceptions to the rule. These exceptions, however, do not invalidate the rule! Choose to act wisely, Lady Wisdom exhorts us, and you will prosper. Choose to act foolishly (e.g., by acting selfishly or recklessly or following the ways of the world that are opposed to God) and you will bring disaster on yourself. There is not a person in this room who has not experienced the truth Lady Wisdom teaches here. And to top it off, she tells us she will scoff at us when we have failed to follow her advice and wreaked havoc on ourselves by our folly. Pretty harsh, Lady Wisdom. Yes it is, she replies, but the stakes are high and I want you to enjoy life as you were meant to live it. Sometimes harsh talk is needed to wake you up out of your stupor. Learn to live as God created you to live and wants you to live, and you will find out what it means to be truly happy. Do you believe this? If you do not, you might want to look at the pride in you that causes you to think you know better than God and leads you to reject his good purposes for you.

So what does biblical Wisdom, the willingness and ability to follow God’s good will for us as his human creatures, look like? Saint James has an answer for us in our epistle lesson. Consider our inability to control our tongue. How can we use our mouth to praise God in worship one minute and then use it to speak badly about others the next, he asks? This is sobering stuff because the evil that comes out of our mouth every time we use angry and abusive language or gossip about others has its very origins in hell itself. That’s why James calls the tongue a rest-less evil full of deadly poison. An uncontrolled tongue is responsible for spreading evil, Saint James warns us. It stains the whole body. In other words it works to corrupt our entire being. How? Spread gossip and people won’t trust you. Insult people and use bitter sarcasm, and they will not follow you. Who wants to be around a mean, spiteful person who never has anything good to say about anything or anyone? So much for our desire to have real relationships with others!

But it gets worse. A wicked tongue not only corrupts us, it destroys the course of our life, precisely because we eventually become what we speak. Use vulgar and crude language and you will become a vulgar and crude person. Use hateful language and eventually you will begin to act hatefully toward others. Use cruel language and you will become a cruel person. Don’t believe Saint James? Then consider this advertisement from 1964.  

Anyone see sexual innuendo in it? Any of you blush or giggle or get embarrassed or uncomfortable as I read it? How could an advertising agency publish something like this? Well, 51 years ago, our culture was not nearly as sexualized as it is today. We didn’t hear crude jokes and a steady stream of sexual innuendo and explicit sexual language in the media like we do today. That’s why if you look at any of the old TV shows from the late 50s to mid 60s, they almost seem naive in their innocence, just like this ad. And because we have been bombarded with sexualized language at every turn, it changes us ever so gradually and insidiously until voila! We see sexual innuendo in places it was never intended. Likewise with the language we use and how it changes the course of our life, for better or worse. We are not so much what we eat but what we speak. In this utterly devastating denunciation of an uncontrolled tongue, Saint James lays out a steady progression of evil, from self-corruption that extends to the whole course of our life, climaxing in exposing the tongue’s source of evil to hell itself. 

How can this be, asks Saint James? How can we Christians (notice James includes himself) who were bought at the price of Jesus’ own blood and who have the very Spirit of the living God living in us, use our tongue to speak evilly? If we have been made clean by Jesus and given his Spirit to dwell in us, we should bear commensurate fruit (cf. Matthew 12.33-37). But we don’t bear good fruit consistently because we cannot control our mouth. When we speak abusively to others and/or gossip about them, we are heaping contempt on God’s own greatness because human beings, even our enemies, are made in his image. Speak evilly about someone and we in effect speak evilly about the One who created that person. Given the great and terrible cost the Father endured to rescue us through Jesus, how can we as Christians even consider using impure and unchecked language? Where is the biblical sense of shock and outrage about this? After all, the implication is that a true Christian will not make a practice of using unchristian speech and anyone who does, gives evidence that (s)he is not a Christian and therefore in danger of hell. And yet here we are, speaking badly about those who anger us or with whom we disagree, friends included! Saint James is warning each of us that we had better be practicing self-discipline to purify our speech or we expose our faith as a sham and us as imposters, therefore making us liable to judgment after all. We might be able to fool some of the people some of the time by how we act, but God is not mocked. He knows our heart and hears our uncharitable speech. I bought you with my own dear Son’s blood, he tells us. I didn’t rescue you from your sin so you could continue to be the fallen person you were before I touched your life. I rescued you so that my image could be fully restored in you so that you would start acting in ways that are truly human. Start speaking and acting the part before it’s too late!

These are sobering words and more than a bit worrisome because our language can land us in hell. Yet how many of us tend to discount these kinds of warnings or try to rationalize them away? Saint James does not warn us about these things because he is some overbearing prude who is trying to get all judgmental on us. No, like Lady Wisdom, he warns us because he loves us and wants the best for us. How can a loving person want to see someone cast into hell? And Saint James wants us to remember Whose we are and what it has cost God to redeem us from sin and death so that we will learn to have a thankful heart, and speak and act accordingly. That’s his point about the quality of water. We’ve been healed and we need to start acting and speak-ing like we have. This is the function of biblical Wisdom and sometimes it is hard for us to hear.

But hard things don’t stop us from protesting about all this. Not fair, we cry! If we can’t control our tongue as Saint James argues, how can God punish us for something beyond our control? God really must be an angry bully after all! Not so, Saint James replies. That is your hard heart speaking! Sure, controlling our tongue is very difficult and none of us is able to do it completely. After all, I’ve just told you that anyone who can control his/her tongue completely is perfect. Yet none of us is perfect! But don’t you know you have God’s very Spirit living in you, making Jesus’ healing love available to you? Don’t you know that God the Father has an egregiously generous heart and loves to lavish his children (you know, those who follow Jesus) with good gifts (James 1.5, 17)? But you don’t ask for good gifts or don’t believe God will grant them to you and so you don’t receive them (James 1.6-8). So if you really want to obey the Father’s commands and align yourself with his good and wholesome wisdom, ask him to help you control your tongue so that you can begin the hard work of repentance and self-discipline that forming new speech patterns requires. Remember we are talking patterns of speech and those patterns should reflect the healing love of Christ that is working on us as well as the Spirit who lives in us. So don’t lose heart or hope over what I’ve said or my warnings to you about the danger of unchecked speech because you have been rescued from your slavery to sin and death and freed to live your new life in Christ wisely, a life whose patterns of speech and behavior reflect the One who died for you on a cross to save you. Remember we still live in a fallen world where the glory of God is only partially revealed. Likewise with our transformation. While it has begun, our transformation will not be completed until Jesus returns again to usher in the new creation. But return he will and when he does, our speech and praise of him will be pure and unending. In the interim, let us resolve to work diligently to rid ourselves of all unchristian and unhealthy language with the Spirit’s help. Let us do so, confident that God’s healing love will continue to transform our speech patterns so that they will conform to the glory and wisdom of God while simultaneously giving witness to the world that we do this because we really do believe we 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 September 13, 2020. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts for today before reading the sermon by clicking on or tapping their links below. We hear a lot today about the no-nos of being “judgmental.” But what does that mean? Does God expect us to suspend all moral judgment in matters great and small? Hardly. Read on to see what Scripture really has to say. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Exodus 14.19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14.1-12; Matthew 18.21-35.

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

This morning we conclude our preaching series on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Hang on to your hats and keep up with me because there is a LOT for us to cover. Before we look at what the apostle has to say today, I want to take a moment to review some of the highlights we have looked at over the summer. In the first 12 chapters of Romans, St. Paul has reminded us of the awful predicament we humans find ourselves in. We are all slaves to that outside and hostile power that Scripture calls Sin and it both corrupts and kills us. No one is immune to its power and no one can free themselves from its grip without the help of someone more powerful than Sin’s power. That someone of course is God and St. Paul has proclaimed the Good News of Jesus Christ to us: That at just the right time, while we were still helpless and enemies of God, God moved on our behalf to free us from our slavery to Sin and Death by becoming human and dying for us. Only by the blood of the Lamb shed for us can we hope to be spared from God’s just judgment on our sins and rebellion. For those who believe God has acted on our behalf in Christ by taking on his own judgment himself, there is now no condemnation for our sins despite the fact that the power of Sin still weighs us down in this mortal life. This is all a free gift given us out of the Father’s great love and tender mercy for us. As St. Paul tells us in chapter 11, “God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone” (v.32). Simply remarkable. But the apostle also makes clear that we are to respond to God’s great love and mercy by imitating our Lord in the living of our days instead of following our own selfish ways, relying on the powerof God to help us do so. In biblical parlance this is called repentance, turning back toward God in the power of the Spirit. As we have said repeatedly, the Christian faith is not another form of self-help. If that were the case it would have no Good News to offer and we would remain dead in our sins. 

Now in today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul continues to exhort us to holy living and reminds us in yet another context to rely on the power of God to do so. Here he addresses how we should treat each other as fellow Christians, both within our parish family and beyond. Before we look at what St. Paul says, we must keep in mind two very important points. First, underlying all his teaching here was St. Paul’s deep faith in the love and mercy of God made known in Jesus Christ. As we have seen, we were bought with the price of Christ’s own precious blood and are united with him by faith and through baptism. We are saved from our sins by God’s grace, not by what we do or don’t do. St. Paul summarized this nicely when he said, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10.9). It is faith in Christ that matters, a faith that heals hearts and minds and transforms life, however imperfectly and messy that looks. And because of that faith, we no longer belong to ourselves, but to Christ. 

Second, it is critical for us to understand that here St. Paul was not talking about issues that define the Christian faith, e.g., Christian teaching that Jesus is the Son of God, fully human and fully divine, or his saving death and bodily resurrection from the dead that signaled the defeat of death and the inauguration of God’s new creation. These doctrines and others were clearly taught in the NT and over the years the Church developed a consensus that reflected its one mind about these issues, various heresies and false teachings that regularly spring up notwithstanding. For issues of first importance, issues that affect our salvation and standing with God, St. Paul and the early Church held a much different view than he teaches in today’s lesson. We can see this in his rebuke of the church at Corinth for allowing a stepson to sleep with his stepmother, all in the name of “grace.” Any kind of sex outside the context of marriage is a sin and Scripture clearly teaches this throughout, despite many in today’s world who try to persuade us otherwise. How can you let this kind of sexual immortality go on? St. Paul roared. Not even the pagans allow this kind of depravity!

You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame. And you should remove this man from your fellowship. …I have already passed judgment on this man in the name of the Lord Jesus. You must call a meeting of the church…Then you must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns (1 Corinthians 5.1-2, 5).

Or consider his response to the Judaizers who had infiltrated and corrupted the church in Galatia by teaching that Christians had to be physically circumcised to be saved, violating St. Paul’s clear teaching on justification by faith and denying the power and efficacy of Christ’s death and resurrection. As far as St. Paul was concerned, those false teachers were wolves in sheep’s clothing. And what should you do with wolves who infiltrate Christ’s flock to corrupt and destroy it by teaching falsely? You shoot the wolves to protect the flock. Accordingly he told the Galatians, “I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.” (Gal 5.12-13a).

Contrast this to what St. Paul teaches in today’s epistle lesson about issues of secondary importance, issues for which Scripture fails to provide a clear answer and/or which have never been settled in the history of the Church. In the church at Rome in St. Paul’s day those issues included dietary restrictions and the observance of holy days. In our day, the issue of the role of women in the Church or charismatic issues would be examples of these kind of secondary importance issues. Here St. Paul addresses the weak and the strong in faith. By “weak” St. Paul did not have in mind that these folks lacked faith in Christ but rather they didn’t understand that their faith in Christ meant that they were free from all previous legalistic requirements such as dietary laws or observing certain religious festivals. These requirements were not a basis for their Christian faith but rather part of their observance of it, i.e, they believed they had to follow these practices in order to walk with Christ properly. The weak in this context were most likely Jewish converts who struggled to cast off the old or at least blend them with the new teachings of the faith. 

For St. Paul, it wasn’t the fact that these Christians observed dietary regulations/religious festivals. If doing these things helped them grow in their relationship with Christ, he would have been all for it. What the apostle is concerned about here is that by doing these things the weak would not perceive themselves as weak but rather saw themselves as upholding high religious standards and principles, all the while looking down their noses at those who didn’t uphold these practices (the “strong”) because the strong didn’t see them as important for growing in their relationship with Christ. For them, Christ’s death and resurrection had set them free from their slavery to Sin and Death so that they didn’t have to observe such religious regulations. To use an example from our day, tomorrow is the Feast of the Holy Cross. There are devout Christians who will observe this feast as part of their devotional/discipleship practices and St. Paul would approve. However, if those who observe Holy Cross Day believe that those who don’t are somehow inferior Christians or that their rescue from Sin and Death depends on them observing it and other Feast Days of the Church, rather than trusting in the efficacy of Christ’s death and resurrection to save them, then St. Paul would likely take issue with these “weak” Christians of our day. Who are you to judge a fellow Christian for whom Christ died? We have a word for this and it’s called judgmentalism.

The problem of judgmentalism wasn’t just with “weak” Christians. “Strong” Christians also looked down their noses at those who did follow such practices. To despise a fellow believer in Christ suggests that the “strong” held their “weaker” family members in contempt out of some sense of superiority. Why are you weak guys observing dietary laws or religious holidays? You don’t need any of them to have a relationship with Christ. Christ has truly set us free from Sin’s power. Make sure you stay free. Stop engaging in things that aren’t necessary. Loser. 

Again, keeping in mind that St. Paul is talking about secondary issues here, the apostle warns both sides not to judge the each other. We need to be careful about terms here, my beloved. When the NT warns us not to judge, it is not telling us to suspend moral judgment on behavior and thinking. There is far too much perversity in this world and to be living sacrifices to God requires us to make those kinds of judgments! What St. Paul is talking about here is the sin of pride and presumption. Each side condemned practices (or lack of them) out of a sense of superiority and sadly we continue to do this all the time to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Just look at Father Maney! He eats and drinks too much and preaches lousy sermons. He can’t be a Christian in good standing! And why does Father Sang cross himself? That’s just weird. Or Dr. Falor. Why he hasn’t prayed the daily office since Moby Dick was a minnow! I pray the office everyday and I’m pretty sure that makes me a better Christian and more pleasing in Christ’s sight! And how about those wussies who didn’t come back to chapel today to worship like we have? Second rate Christians for sure! Real men don’t eat quiche and real Christians don’t stay away from church. You get the idea. Nowhere does St. Paul prohibit vigorous discussion and debate over issues of secondary importance, only our presumptive judgment on our opponents. Iron sharpens iron. Presumptive condescension produces rancor, ill will, and hopeless division. It separates rather than unites. This same argument would also apply to interdenominational conflicts within the Church regarding secondary issues. It’s one thing to prefer your own tradition. It’s quite another to condemn those who don’t see it your way.

Looking beyond our parish family and the Church catholic we see this kind of presumptive pride and sneering all the time, especially in politics today. It’s the way of the world and we are not to participate in it. Our sin is not that we disagree with those who do not share our political views. Our sin is in presuming our views make us more pleasing in God’s sight than our opponents. Still don’t believe me? When you heard St. Paul ask, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?” who did you think of first? The person who has passed judgment on you and your views/practices and got you all hot and bothered, or did you think about yourself? If you’re like me, you probably thought about instances where you have been wronged rather than the times you served as a stumbling block to another’s faith. That, my beloved, is a sure sign of pride and presumption and St. Paul has some stern words for us here: Be careful of your judgmentalism and the proud presumption behind it. We all have to stand before God’s judgment seat and give an account of our lives to God. This should be enough to strike fear in anyone who takes the judgment of God seriously.

So what’s going on here? Is this the same Paul who earlier proclaimed the Good News that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ? If no condemnation, how can St. Paul say something like this, both here and in 2 Cor 5.10? St. Paul is not talking out of both sides of his mouth. What he is reminding us is that only God knows our hearts and minds and only God has the power to judge. It simply won’t do to make God’s grace an idol. We can’t presume because we say the right words and do the right things that God owes it to us to not condemn us. When we presume God’s mercy and grace on us while at the same time we are unwilling to extend them to others, or when we see ourselves as being superior to others because of what we do (or don’t do) compared to them, we are setting ourselves up as de facto judges and claiming moral superiority over them. Remember, we have been bought with a price. We are saved only by the blood of the Lamb shed for us to free us from our slavery to the power of Sin, a free gift from the Father’s loving and generous heart. Without that, none of us has any real hope to be spared from the fires of hell because as St. Paul has already warned us in chapters 1-3, all have sinned and all will therefore be judged. 

This in no way negates what he has said earlier. God did bear his own judgment on our behalf when he took on our flesh and became human. At just the right time Christ did die for us, even while we were helpless and still God’s enemies. There is indeed nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God made known in Jesus Christ. But this is God’s gift to give out of his tender love and mercy for us, not ours to presume. And because it is God’s free gift to us, it is God’s prerogative to withhold them from us if by our lives and our tongues we demonstrate clearly that we see the cross as nothing more than a get-out-of-jail-free card for us so that we can continue behaving as badly as we did before we knew Christ. We cannot and dare not presume God will rescue us from his judgment just because we call ourselves Christian or we read snippets of the Bible, come to church regularly, and partake in the Eucharist while all the time running down and sneering at our opponents. Our life and death are God’s, not our own, and we dare not presume otherwise. To be sure, we can rely on God being good to his word and promises to us that he has indeed rescued us from Sin and Death and from his terrible judgment in and through Christ. But we dare not presume it and show our presumption in how we mistreat or judge others with haughty contempt. 

Christ tells us virtually the same thing in his parable in our gospel lesson this morning. The first servant had an impossible debt to pay, just like we cannot save ourselves from God’s just judgment on our rebellion and sin. The king took pity on the servant and forgave his impossible debt at great cost to the king. And what did the servant do? Did he realize the great grace and mercy offered him? Did he resolve to treat others similarly? Not a chance! He went after a fellow servant who owed him a manageable debt and refused to offer him the same grace he had begged the king to grant him. And our Lord’s punchline? If you want God to forgive you, you’d better do likewise. Don’t presume you have it automatically. Forgiveness is God’s prerogative and God owes us nothing other than judgment. So if you want God to forgive you, you’d better forgive others freely. We pray it every week in the Lord’s Prayer. Do you pay attention to it or dismiss it as inconvenient?

This warning not to presume God’s mercy and grace provides us with a healthy balance to help us live out our faith. We’ll surely get it wrong and no amount of do gooding will make God obligated to rescue us from his judgment. The knowledge that we all must stand in front of God’s judgment seat and give an account of our lives is the great equalizer and provides us with a much needed dose of daily humility. Yet we also dare to approach his throne with hope, trusting in God’s promise that there really is now no condemnation for those who put their hope and trust in Christ and live out their faith, however badly that might look at times. When we realize God owes us nothing but judgment but has moved instead to rescue us from that judgment, we can have confidence that the Holy Spirit will use that knowledge to heal and humble us and so be made ready to receive the eternal crown of glory in the new creation. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. 

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