Sermon originally preached on August 11, 2019. As always, it will be helpful to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. Here I explore what Christian Faith is and is not. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 1.1, 10-20; Psalm 50.1-8, 22-23; Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16; Luke 12.32-40.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon originally preached on August 5, 2018. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon.

This sermon deals with the always favorite topic of human sin and its consequences. The Good News cannot be truly good news for us until we accept the uncomfortable reality that we all sin and are destined to die an eternal death without the gracious intervention of God our Father who is revealed supremely in and through his Son Jesus Christ and the ongoing Presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives to help save us from ourselves. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel 11.26-12.13a; Psalm 51.1-13; Ephesians 4.1-16; John 6.24-35.

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

What are we to make of our OT lesson with its story of God’s judgment on David’s sins? How did God “put away” David’s sins? Why would God’s anointed king resort to committing the twin evils of adultery and murder after being so richly blessed by God? What are we as Christians with our own impressive baggage of sins to learn from this sad episode? And where’s the Good News to be found? If God pronounced this kind of judgment on David, “the man after [God’s] own heart” (Acts 13.22), what hope do we poor schleps have when we stand before God’s judgment seat? These are some of the things I want us to look at this morning.

If ever there were a compelling reason for us to believe the old proverb that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9.10), our OT lesson provides it. After hearing God pronounce judgment on King David through the prophet Nathan, we almost instinctively wonder how we will escape God’s judgment on our sins, and it makes us afraid. The story itself raises as many questions as it answers. Yes, there is God’s judgment on David’s sins of adultery and murder. But God also tells David through Nathan that God has put away David’s sins after he confessed them. But how? And why didn’t God remove David as king the way God did with David’s predecessor, Saul? Adultery and murder are about as serious as you can get, yet David remained God’s chosen king. What’s that all about? Like all sin and God’s reaction to it, it’s complicated and there are surely some questions that will remain unanswered this side of the grave. But that should never stop us from learning what we can from God’s word.

We start with David. Why would this man, so blessed by God, resort to committing two evils? Had Father Gatwood preached one of his tepid sermons on the OT lesson from last Sunday, the ostensible answer would have been that David wasn’t where he should have been—leading his men in battle against Israel’s enemies. But this is only a superficial answer. One of the things the writer surely wants us to see is that this episode is another tragic example of how the human heart—the biblical term for the core of our very being—is desperately wicked and beyond our understanding as the Lord himself reminded his prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 17.9). In other words, we humans are terminally sin-sick, even the best of us, even the man after God’s own heart. Even though David wasn’t where he was supposed to be, he could have looked away and resisted his lustful urge to take the beautiful Bathsheba. But he didn’t. He chose to commit adultery and then tried to cover his sin by ultimately having her husband murdered. We can relate to this, even if we have never committed adultery or murder. How many times have we refused to take the high road and indulged our sinful desires instead? More than most of us care to admit. If our hearts are that thoroughly corrupted, who among us can hope to escape God’s judgment on the chaos our sins produce? We are truly the man in Nathan’s story. 

To make matters worse, as Nathan pointed out to David, David’s sins were like spitting in God’s face. David knew they were wrong but chose to sin anyway, despite the fact that God had been so graciously generous to David, blessing him by making him king, but also granting David success at every turn up until David chose to transgress against the Lord. We understand this dynamic as well. How often do we tend to turn our back on God when things are going swimmingly well for us? How often do we give ourselves credit for our successes and want to blame God when things go south for us? In other words, how often does success and God’s blessing actually harden our hearts toward God as it did David’s? We are the man! 

Last, but certainly not least, as God pointed out to David, his sins gave the enemies of God even more reason not to put their loyalty and trust in God. If God’s chosen one acted this way, what kind of God was he actually be worshiping? In this age of instantaneous communication, the consequences of our sin are even more vital for us to consider. As people watch how we behave and treat others in our lives, what are we proclaiming about the character of our Lord Jesus whom we profess to worship and follow? Are we accurately portraying the character of Jesus or are we projecting the image of the false idols we worship, thus causing harm to the Name? None of us likes to have our name or character besmirched by others. How much more for the perfect and holy triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? As we look at how many times we have failed our Lord publicly, we are forced to acknowledge once again that we are the man.

But God’s reaction in this tragic story is just as breathtakingly mysterious. By Law, David’s offenses were clearly punishable by death. So why did God spare him? Is this part of what Nathan meant when he told David God had put away his sins? We aren’t told. And why did not God remove David from office the way God removed Saul? David’s sins were as bad if not worse than Saul’s, but God did not remove David. Why? Again, we aren’t told, but I am persuaded that we see a glimpse of God’s love and grace here that might help explain why David remained king after sinning so grievously against God. You recall that two weeks ago we read the Lord’s promise to David. David had wanted to build God a house in which to dwell (the Temple), but God refused. Instead, God promised to build David a house (a dynasty) that would one day include God’s anointed one, the Messiah (2 Samuel 7.1-17). It is here that we see the love, grace, and faithfulness of God shine through the darkness of human sin. God would punish his wayward king but God could never abandon him by reneging on his promise to David. As St. Paul reminded Timothy right before Paul’s death, God remains faithful even when we are unfaithful (2 Timothy 2.13). God cannot be untrue to himself or revoke his promises, even in the face of our flagrant sins. Here then is surely the main reason God did not remove David as king. God had to remain faithful to his promise to David that there would always be an ancestor sitting on his throne. That would be hard to do if God removed David as king! So even in the midst of judgment, we find God’s faithful love and grace piercing the darkness of our sin.

What then are we to make of God’s judgment on David? Didn’t God put away David’s sins after he confessed them to God? Well yes God did, even if we are not told exactly what that entailed. What we do know is this. God’s judgment on David matched David’s sins. David had flagrantly dishonored the marriage bed and took another man’s wife because he could. In return, God’s judgment matched the crime. David’s own wives would be taken by his own son, Absalom, and David would be publicly humiliated. David had committed murder to cover his adulterous tracks. God’s judgment also matched that crime. David’s sons would rise up in rebellion against David and two of them would die violent deaths. Violence and political intrigue would haunt David’s family until the day he died. Hard as it is for us to watch, especially considering the fact that we too are the man, we see God’s perfect justice being executed on his king.

All this makes us wonder how this represents God’s forgiveness. It is here we must remember that when God forgives our sins, this does not mean that God automatically removes the consequences of our sins. Sometimes, by God’s grace, we are spared many of the consequences of our sins, both those we anticipate and those we don’t. But God doesn’t always spare us from the folly of our sin. For reasons known only to God, we often must deal with consequences of sins long since repented of. It’s part and parcel of living in a sin-sick and evil infested world. This doesn’t mean God refuses to forgive us. After all, God spared David’s life when God’s own law demanded it be taken. Instead, God simply let God’s justice be done and we all get that. We look around at all the wrongs of our world and we know that something has to be done about it. Without justice there can be no mercy. If God is truly just and good, God must do something about the evil in God’s world and those who commit it. Unfortunately, because we are the man (and woman), we can all expect to come under God’s fierce judgment. 

Uh, Father Maney, I hear some of you muttering right now. We know you’ve haven’t been in the pulpit since like Moby Dick was a minnow, but aren’t you supposed to be a preacher of Good News? Helpful hint. Good News does not focus on beating us up and reminding us that we all fall short of the glory of God without hope of fixing all that is wrong with us, n-kay? We know all too well that we are the man!

Patience, my grumpy and judgmental ones. I have been laying out for you the basis of the Good News of Jesus Christ and it is never a bad thing for God’s people to consider regularly the consequences and destructive power of our sins, which we have just done. Doing so reminds us God is already at work on us. Yes, we are the man. Yes, our hearts are desperately sick and beyond our ability to repair them. Yes, there are often lasting consequences to our sin and folly. Yes, we all can expect to fall under God’s fierce and terrible judgment if left to our own devices. But here’s the thing, my beloved. We are not left to our own devices. Thankfully we worship and serve a God who hates evil and who has promised to rid his good creation of all traces of it. If God did not hate evil and promise to pronounce judgment on it, we would have no hope of ever living in a new creation that is devoid of all evil and brokenness and hurt. In our heart of hearts, we all know that justice is necessary to address the wrongs and transgressions we all commit, even if we don’t want God’s judgment on us. To not believe in justice means that we could not support any kind of criminal justice system, that it would be OK for us and our loved ones to suffer all kinds of injustices and crimes because none of it really mattered in the end. Nobody in his or her right mind believes that for a minute, broken as we are. We all know wrongs must be put to right and that is exactly what God promises to do. 

But God also knows we are the man (and the woman) who deserve God’s just wrath for our sins. God knows we are thoroughly infected by the power of Sin and incapable of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Self-help is a farce and a lie. And because God made us in his image and loves us more than we can comprehend, God has moved to save us from destruction. Despite the fact of our ongoing sin and rebellion against God, which will produce permanent alienation and death if left unchecked, God’s great love and faithfulness are made known to us in Jesus Christ. St. Paul reminds us that while we were still active enemies of God, God sent his Son to die a shameful and godforsaken death on our behalf so that we would not have to suffer God’s just condemnation of our sins and the evil that resides in us. Like David, we are spared from death by the mercy of God. To be sure, barring the Lord’s return in our lifetime, we will all suffer mortal death. But we will not die because of Jesus. St. Paul reminds us that when we are baptized, we share in a death like Jesus’. And because we share in his death, we also share in a resurrection like his because our baptism unites us with our crucified and risen Lord. God raised Jesus from the dead and in doing so destroyed death forever. So we too will be raised when the Lord returns to finish the work he started in his death and resurrection. As Jesus told Martha, those who believe in him will live, even though they die, and anyone who lives and believes in him will never die (John 11.25-26). So here is God’s response to our sin and the evil it unleashes. God promises to condemn evil and evildoers but sent his own dear Son to bear that condemnation himself so as to spare us from having to suffer it. God did this for us while we were still his enemies because God loves us and is faithful to his good creation. God wants us to live and God has overcome death in the resurrection of Christ, promising those of us who believe the same destiny, the promise of eternal life in God’s new world that is devoid of evil and sin of any kind. None of us deserve it because we are too broken to live as God’s people. But God gives us his Holy Spirit to heal and transform us, one inch at a time, backsliding and all, to free us from our disobedience and slavery to Sin. God can do this impossible thing because he is the God who calls things into existence that don’t exist and who raises the dead. The extent we are able to live faithful lives in accordance with God’s created order and revealed is the extent we will enjoy real peace and true happiness. Jesus promises as much in our gospel lesson today. He is the true manna, the bread of life, that we are to consume regularly on our journey to the new creation, the new promised land. That’s why we feed on him in our hearts with thanksgiving each week. We literally consume Jesus and are healed and reminded of God’s wondrous promise to heal and deliver us from our sin-sickness, thanks be to God!

If you are not overwhelmed by this Good News, then there’s a good chance that you either have not fully considered the seriousness of sin in God’s eyes and/or you don’t believe that God can be that good and loving. Believe it, my beloved. It’s true. Here is the nature of the heart of God whom we worship. God used our disobedience to imprison us so that God could show mercy on us! Amazing grace! God’s perfect justice has been executed in Christ but not yet fully implemented. One day it will be and we will be astonished at God’s love and mercy in ways we cannot now comprehend. Yes, we will all stand before God’s judgment throne. But because we belong to Christ, we will hear the verdict of “not guilty,” despite our mountain of sins.

And if you are overwhelmed by the Good News of God’s love made known to you in Christ, thank God, because it must change you. God did not die on a cross for you to continue to act like an ungrateful twit. God did not die for you so that you could keep on in your sinful and death-dealing ways. God is not a cosmic Enabler. God is the Supreme Lover. God gave himself for you and promises you eternal life so that you can start enjoying it right now in the power of the Spirit. None of us gets it right all the time, but if you want to know what being a new man (or woman) in Christ looks like, start by rereading our epistle lesson this morning. Christian unity will give you a good starting place to think about what Christlike living, real living, is all about. 

And so, my beloved, remember this. The bad news is that we are all prisoners to our sin and rebellion. The Good News is that God’s love and mercy are stronger than our sinful folly, and God has acted decisively on our behalf to give us life. Accept the gracious invitation and give your life to the One who is the source of your life. Then you will know that you are the beloved and that you have Good News, now and for all eternity, despite your sins and the times when you walk through the darkest valleys of life. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

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

Sermon originally preached on August 3, 2014. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon.

I deal with the often troubling questions that arise over the fact that God tests us. Whenever that happens, we usually find ourselves “wrestling” with God if we care at all about him and our relationship with him. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 32.22-31; Psalm 17.1-6, 16; Romans 9.1-5; Matthew 14.13-21.

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

In each of our lessons this morning, we see someone wrestling with God. Jacob is wrestling with God over God’s promises to his ancestors and him. The psalmist is wrestling with God over some apparent injustice that afflicts him. St. Paul is wrestling with God over the fate of his people, the Jews. Jesus is wrestling with the loss of his cousin and co-worker, John the Baptist. And of course, many of you are wrestling with serious problems and issues in your life. What are we to make of all this wrestling? This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

Two weeks ago we saw in our OT lesson that God came to Jacob and reaffirmed God’s promises to him even as Jacob was fleeing for his life. Despite Jacob’s scheming, conniving, and deceitful behavior toward his father and brother, behavior that led Esau to resolve to kill Jacob, God assured Jacob that his promises to him were still valid and in effect, incredible as that sounded. Now in today’s lesson, Jacob is returning home after an extended stay in his grandfather, Abraham’s, home country and he has to face Esau. We can imagine what was going on in Jacob’s mind. Did Esau still want to kill him? Would he harm Jacob’s family? Or would Jacob really inherit this land that God had promised his family so that through them God would bless the entire world? Jacob no doubt felt more than a wee bit of anxiety over all this. 

To protect his family from possible destruction, Jacob sent them on ahead of him and it was only when he was alone that the divine attacker struck and Jacob wrestled with him all night. What are we to make of this? Clearly God did not attack Jacob with the intent to kill him. Otherwise Jacob would not have wrestled for very long, let alone prevailed! Neither did God apparently attack Jacob to punish him because at the end of the night God blessed Jacob, but only after he persevered and this is where we need to pay attention. 

While we might not like the idea of wrestling or struggling with God over vexing issues or events in our life, this is something God apparently demands of us because Scripture is consistent in telling us that God tests us (Exodus 16.4, 20.20; Psalm 26.2, 88.1-18, 139.23; Jeremiah 17.10; 1 Corinthians 3.13; James 1.12; Revelation 3.10, etc.). Obviously God does not test us because he does not know what is in our hearts. God apparently tests us, in part, so that we will know what is in our hearts and to help form our character (cf. Romans 5.1-5). Only after we have “passed” the test will we know what we are made of and what our faith is made of. God also apparently tests us because he knows that we are inherently not trustworthy and that we test him constantly. More often than not, we are only willing to trust God and his promises when things are going swimmingly well for us. But when bad things happen to us, we are quick to accuse God of causing those bad things to happen. This is because we tend to look at God as one who dispenses rewards for us when we behave ourselves and punishes us when we do not. But this is not always the case and perhaps rarely is. The fact is that God is always gracious and trustworthy and only when we are tested and persevere can we really know this.

This need for testing is not unlike when we deal with someone in sales. The sales person makes all kinds of promises about his product but until we buy it and try it on a consistent basis, we will never know for sure if the product and the person selling it are trustworthy and true. Notice this is exactly what happened to Jacob in our story today. God had consistently affirmed the promises he made to Jacob’s ancestors and to him. But apparently Jacob didn’t fully believe that. Instead of turning to God for a blessing, Jacob relied on his own devices to get what he wanted and it had cost him dearly in terms of his relationships. Now he was returning home to the promised land and to an uncertain future. He would need more than his own resources to survive, let alone prosper. And so it is probably no coincidence that it was exactly at this moment God wrestled with him. In not giving up or running away, Jacob learned to receive his blessings from the only source of all real blessings: God. 

And we see the practical results of God’s wrestling with Jacob when he finally confronted his brother Esau. Before this, Jacob (the deceiver) had schemed to steal Esau’s birthright and blessing from him. Now when the newly-named Israel (one who struggles with God) met his brother again, he wanted to bestow a blessing on Esau (Genesis 33.10-11)! In struggling with God and learning to trust God’s promises and active involvement in his life, Jacob/Israel was equipped by God to be the blessing for others that God called him to be. Just so with us when we persevere in our struggles with God.

In St. Paul’s case, we see the apostle wrestling with God as he agonized over the fate of God’s people Israel. St. Paul had genuine concern for their eternal well-being, even offering himself up to God on behalf of his wayward and stubborn people who refused to recognize Jesus as their true Messiah and Lord. He feared that his people would be cut off permanently from Christ and was troubled that God would allow this to happen to the very people God called to be a blessing to the world. And so St. Paul did the only thing he had in his power to do. He prayed fervently for his people even as he preached Christ to them. We can empathize with St. Paul because we too are often confronted with huge and seemingly unsolvable problems. Just look at what is going on in the Middle East today with all the horrific images of innocent victims on both sides and the seemingly intractable problem of violence begetting more violence. How can God let this go on, we cry out? How can this cycle be broken? It is precisely then that we too must turn to God in fervent prayer on behalf of all people there and we will do that only if we really trust in God’s power to deliver and heal his sin-sick and hurting world and its people.

Turning now to our gospel lesson, we see Jesus wrestling with both God and humans. Jesus found himself in a lonely place because he had just learned that Herod had murdered his cousin, John the Baptist, and surely Jesus understood that his own life was also now in mortal danger. And like so many of us when we hear of a loved one’s death, Jesus wanted to withdraw to a solitary place to reflect, remember, grieve, and pray. But the crowds did not give our Lord any time or peace to do so because they flocked to him. And what did he do? Jesus had compassion on them and healed their sick! It seems that when we wrestle with God in our grief and heartache, that sometimes the thing for us to do is to get out of ourselves and our problems and embody the love of God to others so that we can find it ourselves.

But Jesus was not done wrestling yet because now his disciples confronted him with a new problem. What to do with all those hungry people? Notice that Jesus invited them to share in the solution by offering up their meager resources to him. And what did he do with them? He used what the disciples brought him, five loaves and two fishes, to feed over 5000 people! The lesson is unmistakable. When we bring what we have to Jesus, even our fear and brokenness, he will bless us abundantly and then work with us and use our resources to bless others, and in that gracious act we will find his comfort and peace (cf. John 16.33).

And of course we notice the eucharistic overtones in this story. Jesus took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to the disciples just the way he did at the Last Supper. Apparently Matthew wants us to understand how critical it is for us to come to the Lord’s Table in faith on a regular basis to find Christ’s nourishment and sustenance to help us in our wrestlings with God and others. We cannot be a blessing to others if we are not blessed ourselves first. 

And lest we think that this was the extent of our Lord’s wrestling with God and humans, we must finally turn our attention to the cross because it is there that we see Jesus engaged in the ultimate wrestling match. See him as he wrestles with his awful vocation in Gethsemane and asks the Father to take the cup of suffering he must endure for the sake of the whole world as he bears God’s condemnation of our sin in his body so that we can be healed and reconciled to God. See him as he hangs naked and bloodied on the cross, his hands and feet pierced with nails, and hear the terrible cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as the awful wrath of God fully descends on him. If we claim to love our Lord, we cannot remain unmoved by these images or think that God does not care about us or is uninvolved in our lives. 

And as we stand at the foot of the cross and think the night cannot get any darker, that our Savior really is dead and the kingdom is not coming after all, especially in our own lives, we witness the empty tomb with its foretaste of new creation, and we realize that in our Lord’s struggles and resurrection we have received God’s ultimate blessing and are witnessing the final unfolding of God’s promises to heal and redeem us and his broken world, agonizingly slow and uncertain as those promises seem at times. Like Jacob at the river, we realize we are utterly undeserving of this blessing, but that by the grace of God it is ours nevertheless through faith. Like the recipients of the loaves and fishes, we realize that in our struggles with God, when we bring to him what we have, broken and insufficient as that might be, and trust God with what we give him, we will be astonished at God’s generosity and faithfulness toward us. 

So what are you wrestling with God about? As you know, our church family is wrestling with many serious and troubling things right now: cancer and other serious illnesses, family problems and difficulties, and how best to bring the love of Christ to bear on those who are hurting or in pain to name just a few. Whatever it is you are wrestling with God, consider what our lessons teach us today. While our wrestling with God is hard and exhausting, fear not. Although we are armed with nothing more than prayer and a tenacious faith that refuses to let go even in the darkest valley, we are promised that if we persevere we will prevail, not necessarily as the world sees it but as God sees it and that is all that matters. We will prevail because of God’s great love for us and because God is always faithful to his promises to us. We know this because we believe that God has reconciled us to himself in the very struggles of our Lord Jesus Christ. And because we know this, we know we have Good News, even in our most arduous and challenging struggles, 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 July 31, 2016. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon.

This sermon deals with an important question: Are you worshiping the real God, the God of the Bible, or some other, lesser God? How you answer will ultimately make or break your faith. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Hosea 11.1-11; Psalm 107.1-9, 43; Colossians 3.1-11; Luke 12.13-21.

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

Who is the God you worship? By that, I am not asking if you worship the God of our Christian faith: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, three in one and one in three. I am talking instead about the character and nature of God. So, for example, do you worship the God of perpetual anger, one who is always snarky and on the lookout to punish you every time you slip up? Do you worship the God who is a perpetual grandfather, you know, a rather doting old fellow who takes a hands-off approach with us because, well, he’s really chilled out over the years and everything will turn out all right in the end anyway? Or do you worship a God somewhere in between? How we answer this question about the nature and character of God is more than just an intellectual exercise. It has serious and profound implications for how we relate to God and each other as well as what it means for us to be God’s image-bearing creatures. Our lessons this morning each have something to say about who God is and this is what I want us to look at.

We start with our OT lesson and the essential question it raises. What will be the final factor that determines the outcome of human history? Certainly, the biblical answer to this question is God, because God is Lord over all creation, history included. With that in mind, we can put the question another way. Is God going to right all the wrongs in his world so as to restore it to its original “very good” state (Genesis 1.31), or is God going to eventually destroy his sin-corrupted creation and creatures?

Here is where the God we worship comes into play. If we worship the God of fire and brimstone, the God who hates his creatures and creation, and who is very eager to consign most of us to hell, we are likely to answer that God is going to destroy this sin-corrupted world because it’s bad. We point to passages like the ones in our epistle lesson where St. Paul tells us to set our minds on things in heaven, not things on earth, because the wrath of God is coming. The implication, of course, is that as Christians we are heaven-bound so as to escape the final wrath of God that will consume this wicked world and all the evil-doers in it. But is this what our lessons this morning really teach? The short answer is no, and it points us to the dangers of pulling texts out of the broader contexts in which they were written to either form incorrect notions about God or bolster the preconceived (and often incorrect) ones we already have. If you are doing this, STOP IT!

Getting back to our question as to what God is going to do about the problem of his good creation gone bad, we hear a very clear answer in our OT lesson. Earlier in Hosea 1.2, God had commanded his prophet to marry a whore because his wife would symbolically represent God’s faithless people Israel. If the God we worship is an angry, unforgiving God, we would expect God to destroy his people because they had chased after the native gods of the original folks who lived in the promised land. After all, God hates all sinners and is a jealous God who cannot tolerate any competition from false and unreal gods for his people’s ultimate loyalty. Right?

But now in today’s lesson, we read something quite astonishing. Here is God telling his prophet how he, God, has been like a mother to his people. God has freed them from their slavery in Egypt and taught them how to be his people so they could be God’s light to the world. And God’s people’s response? They consistently thumbed their noses at God and walked away from him, rejecting his love and tender nurturing care so that there was no way they could possibly be God’s light to the world to heal the nations. 

Not unsurprisingly, God gave them up to their own desires and eventually sent his people into exile. In other words, God’s holy and just wrath fell on his stubborn and rebellious people, proving once again that God really is an angry God, bent on punishing his people when we screw up, right? Not so fast, my friends. Punishment there was. God’s people did go into exile for their rebellion, but this was not the last word. After God laments his people’s rebellion, God makes this astonishing declaration: 

How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath (Hosea 11.8-9).

Notice the repetition of the phrase, “I will not,” which underscores God’s refusal to surrender his people to everlasting destruction. Despite their sin and rebellion against him, God cannot ultimately give up his people because God loves them. God cannot ultimately destroy his people like God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, here represented by the cities of Admah and Zeboiim. Yes, God had to send his people into exile to wake them up to the fact that he is God and has called them to be his people so that they could be God’s light to the world. And sadly, Israel did not repent. But despite this, God could not destroy them because God is a God of holy and sovereign love who will not treat his people according to their wayward and stubborn rebellion (cf. 1 John 4.8,16; 2 Timothy 2.13). Here we see Hosea answering the cosmic questions of history that we asked earlier by showing us how God has chosen to deal with a particular people, his people Israel whom God called through the patriarch Abraham. We hear the astonishing news that no sinfulness, no apostasy, no stubborn refusal to repent, can finally overcome the love of God who wills to save his people and give them new life in the future. God’s loving grace rules the day. Punishment for sin in the form of exile there would be, but new life would be the ultimate rule of the day, thanks be to God! 

We see this same hope expressed in our psalm lesson this morning. The psalmist speaks of the love of God who rescues his people from their distress and who will ultimately restore us to be the kind of image-bearing creatures he created us to be in the first place. This is what it means for God to be sovereign. God is going to do what God is going to do, and whatever that looks like, it will ultimately be done in love, because God is holy and sovereign love. Are there consequences for sin? Of course, but God’s love and sovereignty will not allow for the ultimate destruction of God’s people and we can all breathe a sigh of relief because of it.

So what does that new life and new future look like? The NT answer is Jesus, and we see the answer playing itself out in our epistle lesson this morning. Last week, St. Paul talked about dying and rising with Christ in baptism. We share in a death like Jesus’ so that we can also share in a resurrection like his. In other words, St. Paul is reminding us about a central truth of our faith. We were once dead people walking who had no future because we were alienated and hostile to God. But on the cross, God took care of that alienation as well as the sin and evil behind it, so that we are transferred from the power of darkness (death, the ultimate exile) to the kingdom of his beloved Son (life). Just as God raised Jesus from the dead and so destroyed death, so God will do for us who put our hope and trust in Jesus. God has rescued us so that we can be God’s light to the world and thus bring God’s healing love to the nations, i.e., to those around us, thereby giving glory to God’s holy name. This is the hope and future for God’s people that Hosea pointed to, only now it didn’t apply just to Jews but to non-Jews as well. 

Now in today’s lesson, St. Paul reminds us of who we are—Jesus’ people, who are part of the reconstituted family of God that includes Jews and gentiles. Because we are going to share in Jesus’ resurrected future, we are to set our minds on becoming like Jesus, who is currently hidden from us in heaven, God’s space. And while Jesus may be out of sight, he certainly isn’t out of mind because as St. Paul reminds us, he is going to return one day to execute God’s wrath on those who simply refuse to be the fully human beings God created them to be. That day’s in the future, however, and what that looks like remains to be seen. In the meantime, Jesus remains with us in power of the Spirit, and because of our union with him, we are enabled to live our lives in ways that are pleasing to God. St. Paul isn’t talking about individualistic lifestyles (it’s all about God and me). He’s talking about living life together as members of Christ’s body, the Church. That’s why we are to put aways things that can destroy relationships like anger, wrath, malice, slander, and greed. St. Paul doesn’t intend for this to be a comprehensive list of things for us to avoid. In fact, compared with Jewish lists of rules, his lists are very circumspect. No, St. Paul is reminding us of the truth that is ours when we give ourselves to Jesus. He gives us the power to become like him so that our lives are aligned with our Creator’s original intentions. When that happens, we become Jesus’ light to the world and in the process find our own happiness. 

But we want to argue with St. Paul. You are crazy, Paul! It doesn’t feel like anything’s changed! We are still messy folks who get it wrong as much as we get it right. How can you say we have been raised with Jesus? St. Paul would surely answer that part of being a Christian is learning to believe what doesn’t feel true at the moment. We do that by grasping the truth that we have died and our lives are hidden with Christ, i.e., we are united with Christ in the power of the Spirit and that union helps us become the kind of people God calls us to be despite our messiness and serious flaws. This is what St. Paul means when he talks about the renewal of our mind. As a result, we are no longer our own, but Christ’s. And because Christ lives, so will we, even though our bodies will die. This is the God we worship, the God who became human to die for us so that we could ultimately live, despite who we can be. Is this the God you worship?

We see the same emphasis on us being God’s in our gospel lesson, only with a negative twist. Jesus was not railing against having plenty. That wasn’t the man’s sin. It was perfectly reasonable for him to build a barn for his bumper crop. His sin was that he never thought about giving any of his bounty away. To be sure, the man had worked his fields. But at the end of the day, his crops were the result of God’s gracious generosity to him, and God expects us as his image-bearers to be generous to a fault, i.e., to reflect God’s gracious generosity and love out into his world. But when we choose to live for ourselves, we cease to be God’s image-bearers, and that’s a problem. You want to find life, God asks us? Give yourself and your wealth away because only when you lose your life will you save it. The great lie of wealth is that it deceives us into thinking we can control our own destiny. But as the parable reminds us, we are not guaranteed another day, and our wealth can never change that fact. Our lives our God’s, not our own, and we had better not let ourselves worship a false idol like money and so give away our only certainty: God himself, who is also our only hope and life and future. 

So what do we do with all this? First, we use today’s lessons along with the rest of Scripture to remind us that the God we worship is a holy God, the God who is love. We must use passages like the ones we read today to put to death the false gods we construct and which are destructive. We must be clear in our thinking about who God is because living faithful lives is not for the faint of heart. We try to live faithfully and find that we are at war with forces within us that don’t want to die and a world that is fundamentally hostile to God and his ways, not to mention God’s people. As a result, we can find ourselves to be frustrated morally because we know what to do but are often unable or unwilling to do what is right, and when we do what is right we find ourselves mocked and despised. This is because our final triumph will only come with Christ’s return. But we mustn’t let that discourage us because we have died and our life is hidden with Christ who is in heaven, and who is immortal. The fact that we cannot currently see Jesus does not change the reality of our situation as his people. We belong to Jesus, who has overcome evil, sin, and death on the cross for us. And we are being transformed into his image because we are his, even with our desperate flaws, even when our transformation is not apparent to us. We must believe this, my beloved, not because we are called to whistle through the graveyard, but because it is true. It is the very promise of God to us. When we believe God’s promises, it gives us hope, not only for our future but for the here and now. So the next time you are confronted with moral failure, big or small, or opposition from those who hate you because you belong to Jesus, or just overwhelmed by life in general, remember these words from the sovereign Lord who has chosen to love you, and who died for you so that you can live.

How can I give you up, [Len and Sharon, Nadine, Monroe, Sarah, John, Dr. Falor, Pat, Deanna, Jeff]? How can I hand you over, O my people [who are at St. Augustine’s]? How can I destroy you? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not destroy [you]; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. Take heart and hope, [Ruby Sue, Jeanie and Allen, all of you], for you are mine (cf. Hosea 11.8-9; Isaiah 43.1). 

When by God’s grace this truth becomes a living part of you, you will surely know you have Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. 

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

Sermon originally preached July 30, 2017. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. As with the other sermons reposted this week, this sermon also grapples with the important topic of the enigmatic power of God at work in his sin-sick world. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105.1-11; Romans 8.26-39; Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52.

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

We have been working through the climax of this section (chapters 5-8) of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Two weeks ago we saw that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because of his saving death and resurrection. Last week we saw that to be in Christ requires our suffering for his sake because the powers, while broken, are not yet fully vanquished. Today, St. Paul offers us much-needed encouragement as we live in God’s fallen world as redeemed followers of our Lord, and this is what I want us to look at this morning.

“All things work together for good for those who love God.” That probably wasn’t the first thought that occurred to Jacob when he woke up the morning after his wedding. Jacob, the master deceiver, found himself deceived and forced to work another seven years to secure his beloved Rachel as his wife. Assuming Charlie Gard’s parents love God, I’m pretty sure they are struggling to believe this promise in the aftermath of their infant son’s illness and death (may God have mercy on the sin-sick souls of those who prevented them from bringing Charlie to the U.S. and then home to die). Likewise for the families of the young man killed and those who were critically injured at the state fair this past week. Likewise for +Grant L., one of my old professors at Trinity, and his wife, who must suspend their ministry in Africa because of life-threatening health issues confronting her, thus leaving a medical and spiritual void in the lives of those they have served so well. Likewise for many of you whose lives have been disrupted by all kinds of affliction, and who continue to struggle to make sense of it all. 

To add insult to injury, we hear the mocking voices of those who are hostile to the faith and who see our struggles and failures to live as Christians. Where is God in all this? Why doesn’t God act? You are a fool to believe such nonsense as St. Paul writes in Romans 8. If God were real, God would do something about all the suffering and injustice in the world. How is God possibly working for good in all things for you who profess to love God in Christ? Then there are the troubling voices from within, from time to time asking the same taunting questions.

And yet… And yet… These questions all presume to know how God can and should work in God’s world, bless our pointy little arrogant heads. They presume that because God is all-powerful, God will just wave God’s hand and destroy all the forces of evil in one fell swoop. Doing so, of course, would mean that God would have to destroy the entire creation and all of us because we are all hopelessly infected by the power of Sin and Evil. But we know Scripture consistently testifies that God in his faithfulness has promised to ultimately redeem his creation, rather than destroy it and every living creature in it. No, the long perspective of Genesis, not to mention the whole of Scripture, tells us quite a different story about how God is at work to bring about God’s promise to heal and restore God’s good creation gone wild. 

We see God working in the life of Jacob and his forebears Abraham and Isaac with all their duplicity and half-faith, to fulfill God’s promises to Abraham to make a family from his loins that would be so large it could not be counted (mustard seed, anyone?), and through that family God would heal, bless, and restore God’s world (Genesis 12.1-3; 17.1-7). This is our first clue as to how God chooses to work to heal and restore God’s good creation: through human beings and through ways that are both mundane and spectacular. And what was Abraham’s response? Twenty-five years went by and no promised offspring. So he and Sarah took matters into their, um, own hands and voila! A son was born to Abraham’s slave Hagar whose offspring would be at war with Abraham’s offspring to this day. Not only that, but twice Abraham lied about his relationship with his wife Sarah to save his own skin. These aren’t exactly paradigms of faithful and virtuous behavior, but God worked through them and Abraham’s line eventually produced Jesus the Messiah, the Savior of the world, just as God promised. But for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God’s hand wasn’t always readily apparent and so they sometimes (often?) resorted to taking matters into their own hands, especially Jacob the deceiver, just like you and I do today when God’s hand isn’t readily apparent in the midst of the chaos and suffering in our lives.

Notice that the writer of Genesis never tries to explain why God operates in this way. Neither does the psalmist in today’s psalm. Instead, he simply proclaims the faithfulness of God. So does St. Paul in our epistle lesson. As we saw last week, St. Paul assumes we will suffer on behalf of the Messiah because it was in suffering that Jesus broke the power of Sin over us and took on our just condemnation so that we would no longer stand condemned in God’s eyes. This is the essence of justification about which St. Paul speaks today. 

No, instead of trying to explain why God apparently doesn’t act in the ways we want or expect God to act, the apostle assures us that God is indeed active and involved in God’s world. How does St. Paul know this? First and foremost because he had met the risen Christ face-to-face and knew that the resurrection was an historical reality that made Christ’s death on the cross all that it was, at least as far as we can plumb the depths of its meaning. As St. Paul would write to the Colossians, on the cross the dark powers and principalities had been defeated, and in today’s lesson St. Paul makes the astonishing claim that we are more than conquerors through Jesus who loves us. If we assess the truth of St. Paul’s statement—not to mention the rest of the NT writers—based on evidence from this world, we are likely to conclude that they are delusional (and so are we who believe their claims of God’s victory over the powers of Sin, Evil, and Death). But St. Paul would tell us that his claims of Christ’s victory over the dark powers is not based on deductions from our daily experiences. After all, he wrote his letter to the Colossians while he was imprisoned for Christ’s sake and would soon be facing more imprisonments, persecution, and ultimately death because of Jesus. Rather, St. Paul would tell us that his claims are based on the faithfulness of God first revealed to the patriarchs and manifested supremely in the cross of God’s own dear Son, Jesus Christ. In other words, St. Paul’s claims were based on faith, a gift from God the Father himself, and available to all who want it. 

This is how it goes. We know that in all things God works for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, even when we cannot see it in the life of the world and in our own lives. In addition to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostle assures us we know this to be true because of three other reasons: 1) the groaning of all creation to be liberated; 2) our own groaning in our suffering as we await the redemption of our bodies, i.e., our resurrection; and 3) the inarticulate groaning of God’s Holy Spirit who lives in us. All these are signs that God’s promises to heal and redeem God’s creation and us are true. If we are old enough, everyone here has been in a situation where we have reached our wits’ end. We don’t know what to do or say, let alone pray. And so we groan in our misery. It is precisely at this moment that St. Paul tells us that God’s very Spirit is also groaning in us on our behalf and for our good. So in the desperate times of our lives we have God’s assurance that both the Son and the Spirit are interceding for us on our behalf, and they are doing so because it is the will of God the Father. And in doing so, somehow we find the strength to endure and to press on as we walk through life’s dark valleys. I suspect that if I were to ask you to give me an example of this from your life, every one of you here could give me at least one example of this phenomenon occurring. We find unexpected strength, or a friend or a stranger suddenly appears in our life to say and/or do just what we needed to hear or see at that moment. And the funny thing is, we didn’t even know we needed what we got till it happened. For Christians, in light of what St. Paul tells us here, there should be no such thing as coincidences or chance happenings. Nothing happens by chance. Nothing. We can have confidence that in the smallest things, the hand of God is at work on our behalf for our good. Amen? Be mindful of this and work to cultivate this mindset as you live out your days with their various trials. You’ll never regret it.

Our Lord Jesus says much the same thing in our gospel lesson. He too was besieged by the “why” questions. If you are Messiah, why aren’t you kicking butt and taking prisoners? Why have you assembled a ragtag group of followers and go about espousing peace and doing all kinds of healing? God’s people won’t get free by doing that stuff! To which our Lord offered, in part, the parables we read in our gospel lesson today. The kingdom of heaven (or God’s kingdom, not God’s space) is like a mustard seed or like yeast. You don’t see either actively at work in their normal operation. But at the end of the day, you see massive results. And so God is at work in me, God’s Son and Messiah, to bring in God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. And guess what? God is calling you to follow me and give yourselves to me utterly. Yes, you are losers and ragamuffins just like my original followers. Like them and like Jacob and the patriarchs, your faith will waiver and you will conform your lives to mine in very uneven ways. In fact, you’ll get things wrong as much as you get them right. But if you resolve to understand what the kingdom is about and how God works through me and what I must do for you, and then through you as you give your lives to me, you will know that the kingdom does come on earth as in heaven. Don’t waste time asking and trying to answer questions you aren’t capable of answering. Focus on me. Give your lives to me. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love and forgive your enemies. Don’t judge others in a self-righteous manner. Develop a generous heart because your Father has a generous heart and gives to you far beyond anything you deserve. Work for the good of others, even if it costs you a great deal. Suffer for my sake. Don’t lose heart or hope. Why? Because eternal life in God’s new world is worth more than anything else in all the world. Your worldly aspirations of power, security, and wealth cannot save you. Neither can any identity other than being in me save you. I know. It’s enigmatic and perplexing this side of the grave. But take heart and believe because I have overcome both the world and the grave, the latter which you will see when I raise you from the dead upon my return to finish the work I started. 

This is why we are more than conquerors, my beloved, the only reason why we are more than conquerors. We live in the power of God, a power nothing or no one can defeat, strange and inexplicable as that can be for us at times. We have given our lives to Jesus, the Son of God, who has conquered all by his saving love on the cross and who has been raised from the dead as a tangible sign of the fulfillment of God’s promise to heal and redeem us forever. We have God’s very Spirit who witnesses to us and who groans on our behalf when we are afflicted. Please. May none of us ever throw away this pearl of greatest price because it is the only pearl that really has any eternal value to it. It is the pearl of the Good News of Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Lord, 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 July 26, 2015. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. This sermon deals with an important topic: the power of God made known in his sin-sick world. Let’s be clear: the Christian Faith is emphatically not another self-help program. The Father gives us his Holy Spirit to help us fight the good fight and prevail, even though sometimes (oft times?) it feels otherwise to us. But feelings are notoriously fickle when it comes to assessing the spiritual life and we need to actually believe that God has the power to help us overcome and to bring about real justice and righteousness. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel 11.1-25; Psalm 14.1-7; Ephesians 3.14-21; John 6.1-21.

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

What are we to make of the apparent contrast of themes in our readings this morning? On the one hand the psalmist tells us that God looks down from heaven to see if there are any who seek him and finds no one because all are corrupt and their deeds reflect this stark and depressing reality. We get a real-life example of what this looks like in the sordid tale of David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba and its aftermath. On the other hand we read St. Paul’s soaring prayer with its emphasis on goodness and power that accompanies his astonishing claim made earlier that it is through the Church, through you and me, that God will make his wisdom known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3.10). Do you feel up to that task? So what are we to think and believe? Is St. Paul’s prayer to live a godly life simply naive and unrealistic in the face of the human condition? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

The sad tale of David and Bathsheba is pretty straightforward and doesn’t need much explanation. The writer makes it clear that David wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He should have been on the front fighting with his men. Instead, he was at home in Jerusalem taking it easy. We aren’t told why David wasn’t with his men, only that he wasn’t, and that got him into big trouble. Here we see the pragmatic wisdom behind St. James’ warning in action:

One is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. Do not be deceived, my beloved (James 1.14-16).

Now we might expect a man of lesser character to act as David did when he saw a beautiful naked woman. But this is David we are talking about, the man after God’s own heart, and as we watch David commit adultery and then ultimately resort to murder to cover his tracks, we are shocked. The first thing we want to ask is what kind of heart does God have if David does this? 

The answer to that question is not that God has an adulterous and murderous heart. David, despite his great sin in this sordid affair and his penchant for shedding blood as a warrior, was a man after God’s own heart because he never turned to other gods or worshiped them. Despite his many flaws, David remained faithful to his God, although certainly not perfectly. Instead, the writer invites us to focus on the human condition. As the psalmist observed in our lesson, no one is immune from sin, not even God’s anointed king, the man after God’s own heart, and we see that being played out in this story. We have already noted that David was not where he was supposed to be and at least for the moment had too much time on his hands, time that he used for sinful purposes. We also note that nowhere did David stop and ask God to help him resist that alluring temptation. Perhaps David had become proud or was deceiving himself, thinking that because he wasGod’s anointed, God would not find out or give him a free pass. But as we shall see next week, David could not have been more wrong. Sin always has its consequences. Hence, one of the things the writer surely wants us to see is that anytime we rely solely on our own strength or cleverness or devices, we are setting ourselves up for a fall. If this can happen to the Lord’s anointed, it can happen to anyone. This is why we are never to put our whole hope and trust in human leaders because all have gone astray (Romans 3.23).

And a moment’s thought about our own experience confirms the wisdom of all this. We may not be adulterers and murderers like David was, but every one of us has our own skeletons in the closet, the deep dark secrets we are terrified that others might find out about, which will expose our own serious flaws and less than perfect character. How often have we resolved to live a life pleasing to the Lord, only to end up confessing our failures, almost on a daily basis? For those of us who truly desire to have a deep and faithful relationship with God, this can become very distressing and discouraging. How can we ever hope to love God with all our being and our neighbors as ourselves when we get it wrong so often? And if that is the case, can God really love and forgive us? After all, isn’t the road to hell paved with good intentions and fatally flawed execution? The words of the psalmist continue to haunt us: there is no one who does good in God’s eyes, not even one. How can we possibly have a future and a hope?

St. Paul and the rest of the NT writers have the answer for us: the love of God made known supremely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There is no sin and no amount of sin that cannot be overcome and forgiven because of Jesus’ blood shed for us. If it weren’t for the love of God made known on the cross, none of us would ever dare to have any real hope about a present or future life with God because we are all dead in our sins and so thoroughly infected we cannot possibly hope to drag ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But we do have hope, precisely because of the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us. That is why St. Paul could boldly tell the church at Rome there is now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus because in Jesus, God has condemned our sin in the flesh and taken it on himself so that we no longer need to fear God’s righteous wrath or condemnation (Romans 8.1-4). 

This is more than just mere platitude, folks. If you do not really believe this, you will never have any hope of having St. Paul’s prayer for you come alive in your life because the whole prayer is predicated on us accepting God’s real love for us and his real forgiveness of our sins, irrespective of what they are. If we still worship an angry God whom we think is nothing more than a bean counter who gives us a bunch of rules we cannot possibly hope to follow on our own so that he can beat us up, we are not worshiping the God of the Bible and should therefore not be surprised when our prayers for help to this false god go unanswered. For us to live in the power of God, we must first understand that while we are sinners, we are forgiven sinners, bought with the price of the Son’s own dear blood and greatly loved by the Father.

This is a gift from God, freely offered to one and all, and by God’s grace we can know we are loved and forgiven. This is not our own doing. If we are to really know the breadth, length, height, and depth of God, that knowledge must come from God. It cannot be manufactured by us, any more than we can manufacture knowledge about our loved ones’ love for us without them making their love known to us. And once we truly believe we are forgiven and loved by God, we open ourselves to the power of God so that we do not have to be defeated in our living the way David was or the way we are when we try to live a faithful life by our own strength.

St. Paul tells us how to tap that power. First, we must truly desire to have the power of God working in our lives. God never forces himself on us. True love cannot do that to the beloved. But all too often we are like our own St. Augustine, who, desiring to leave behind his old life of sexual promiscuity, prayed to the Lord for chastity, but just not right then. Augustine wasn’t quite ready at that time to give up sexual lust for women to more fully love and serve his Lord and was at least honest enough to pray that. So while St. Paul’s prayer is all about the power of God in our lives, it is based on the presupposition that we desire to have God at work in our lives, i.e, we must be willing to put in our sweat equity.

Once we are willing to do that, St. Paul tells us that if we ever hope to fulfill the task of the Church to make known God’s wisdom to the powers and authorities, we must ask God to equip us for the task. To do that, we must be firmly united with Christ in and through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who lives in us and one can’t happen without the other. This is the Christ who meets us where we are and uses what we present to him to feed us and others, just like he used the bread and fishes to feed the five thousand. This happens most tangibly at communion when we come to the table to feed on our Lord’s body and blood and find renewed strength. This is the same Christ who walked on the stormy sea, the very symbol of evil and darkness, and overcame it. Without Christ in us, we have no chance or hope of ever being his people because we will not have the Holy Spirit in us. But as St. Paul’s prayer reminds us, to have Christ live in us, we simply have to ask and expect it to happen. I suspect many Christians who live in this country really don’t believe this. We’ve bought into the alternative story line that things like feeding the five thousand or walking on water or Jesus living in his people are just fairy tales and myth. They can’t possibly happen. So we might say the words St. Paul tells us to say—strengthen me with power by your Spirit by connecting me with the Lord Jesus—but we don’t really believe anything will happen. We are not used to seeing signs and wonders and so we secretly (and sometimes openly) scoff at such requests. And I can promise you, if this is the case, you will not be disappointed. You will get exactly what you have asked for—nothing. 

This is why so many churches limp along, powerless and rudderless. They don’t really believe in the power of God. They have never experienced it in their individual or collective lives the way many of us do here at St. Augustine’s. Just ask Dr. Falor sometime about the Spirit’s power, or think of the times in your life where you surprised yourself in the way you handled an extremely difficult thing. The same Jesus who overcame the stormy sea, who walks with us through the darkest valley, and conquered even death itself, is available to us right now as his body at St. Augustine’s. All we have to do is ask for his help and power and believe that he loves us enough and is powerful enough to grant us our requests that are according to his good will and purposes for us as a parish because he has commissioned us to bring his healing love to our neck of the woods, and it will be ours. Do you believe this? Really believe this?

Please don’t misunderstand. I do not suggest any of this is automatic, quick, or easy. We are profoundly broken people who are also subjected to the influence of the dark powers and principalities. But we are made stronger through adversity and Jesus’ death and resurrection stand as God’s eternal testimony that the power of God’s love made known to us in Jesus Christ is stronger than any adversity or foe we face. To be sure, none of us will be sin-free until we lose our mortal bodies (cf. Romans 6.7). But we are assured that we can be more than conquerors through him who loved us because neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8.37-39), thanks be to God! Simply put, if you want the power of God to live in you to make you a new creation to bear good fruit for the kingdom, you simply have to ask and expect God to do this for you because he loves you and wants you to be the fully human being he created you to be.

I close with a story I hope illustrates and summarizes what I have been talking about.

We sat down to table and the officer began his story: “I have served in the army ever since I was quite young. I knew my duties and was a favorite of my superiors as a conscientious officer. But I was young, as were also my friends, and unhappily I started drinking. It went from bad to worse until drinking became an illness. When I did not drink, I was a good officer, but when I would start drinking, then I would have to go to bed for six weeks. My superiors were patient with me for a long time, but finally, for rudeness to the commanding officer while I was drunk, they reduced my rank to private and transferred me to a garrison for three years. They threatened me with more severe punishment if I would not improve and give up drinking. In this unfortunate condition all my efforts at self-control were of no avail and I could not stay sober for any length of time. Then I heard that I was to be sent to the guardhouse and I was beside myself with anguish.

“One day I was sitting in the barracks deep in thought. A monk came in to beg alms for the church. Those who had money gave what they could. When he approached me he asked, ‘Why are you so downcast?’ We started talking and I told him the cause of my grief. The monk sympathized with my situation and said, ‘My brother was once in a similar position, and I will tell you how he was cured. His spiritual father gave him a copy of the Gospels and strongly urged him to read a chapter whenever he wanted to take a drink. If the desire for a drink did not leave him after he read one chapter he was encouraged to read another and if necessary still another. My brother followed this advice, and after some time he lost all desire for alcoholic beverages. It is now fifteen years since he has touched a drop of alcohol. Why don’t you do the same, and you will discover how beneficial the reading of the Gospels can be. I have a copy at home and will gladly bring it to you.’

“I wasn’t very open to this idea so I objected, ‘How can your Gospels help when neither my efforts at self-control nor medical aid could keep me sober?’ I spoke in this way because I never read the Gospels.

“‘Give it a chance,’ continued the monk reassuringly, ‘and you will find it very helpful.’

“The next day he brought me this copy of the Gospels. I opened it, browsed through it, and said, ‘I will not take it, for I cannot understand it; I am not accustomed to reading Church Slavonic.’

“The monk did not give up but continued to encourage me and explained that God’s special power is present in the Gospel through his words. He went on, ‘At the beginning be concerned only with reading it diligently; understanding will come later. One holy man says that “even when you don’t understand the word of God, the demons do, and they tremble”; and the passion for drink is without a doubt their work. And St. John Chrysostom in speaking about the power of the word of God says that the very room where the Gospel is kept has the power to ward off the spirits of darkness and thwart their intrigues.’

“I do not recall what I gave the monk when I took the copy of the Gospels from him, but I placed the book in my trunk with my other belongings and forgot about it. Some time later a strong desire to have a drink took hold of me and I opened the trunk to get some money and run to the tavern. But I saw the copy of the Gospels before I got to the money and I remembered clearly what the monk had told me. I opened the book and read the first chapter of Matthew without understanding anything. Again I remembered the monk’s words, ‘At the beginning be concerned only with reading it diligently; understanding will come later.’ So I read another chapter and found it a bit more comprehensible. Shortly after I began reading the third chapter, the curfew bell rang and it was no longer possible for me to leave the barracks.

“In the morning my first thought was to get a drink, but then I decided to read another chapter to see what would happen. I read it and did not go. Again I wanted a drink, but I started reading and I felt better. This gave me courage, and with every temptation for a drink I began reading a chapter from the Gospels. The more I read, the easier it became, and when I finally finished reading all four Gospels the compulsion for drink had disappeared completely; I was repelled by the very thought of it. It is now twenty years since I stopped drinking alcoholic beverages.

“Everyone was surprised at the change that took place in me, and after three years I was reinstated as an officer and then climbed up the ranks until I was made a commanding officer. Later I married a fine woman; we have saved some money, which we now share with the poor. Now I have a grown son who is a fine lad and he also is an officer in the army.”

—The Way of a Pilgrim

Notice first how Christ used human agency (the monk) to introduce the young soldier to his Gospel. Notice the monk’s persistence and the faith he had in the transformative power of the Gospel in people’s lives, a faith based, in part, on past experience.

Next, pay attention to how Christ used circumstance instead of understanding to stay the young soldier’s hand from drinking. He read the Gospel without understanding it, but was prevented from going on a drinking binge because he had lingered in his quarters to read it.

Finally, mark how understanding occurred—through persistent reading. Ask anyone who reads the Bible regularly and systematically and you will hear this same answer. God grants understanding to humble minds willing to submit to his word (as opposed to trying to make his word submit to their agendas) through our persistent reading of his word (i.e., though our sweat equity). There is nothing sexy or spectacular here, just the power of the Spirit at work changing lives. St. Paul tells us the same about the power and efficacy of prayer in his own prayer for us today. Ask. Persist. Believe it will be yours (cf. St. Matthew 7.7-11; St. Luke 18.1-8). St. Paul knew it was true because he practiced it and as a result knew first-hand the transformative power of Jesus in his life. That same power is available to us right now so that we too can be changed by God to make a difference for God, thus helping to fulfill St. Paul’s prayer and God’s will for Christ’s body the Church. And that, folks, is not only an awesome privilege, it is Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Amen.

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

Sermon originally preached on July 28, 2013. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. This sermon on forgiveness and the love of God made known to us in Christ, was preached for a baptism and is especially appropriate for that blessed sacrament as baptism brings us into the family of God and signals the beginning of our healing as Christians. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Hosea 1.2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2.6-19; Luke 11.1-13.

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

In our OT lesson today, we are confronted with some graphic and colorful language that is even more shocking when we remember that it comes from the Lord himself via his prophet Hosea. Let’s face it. We don’t really expect to hear God engaging in this kind of name calling! But more importantly we are also confronted with an apparent enigma about God. How can God condemn his people Israel in one breath and then turn around and call them his children in the next? It is this issue I want us to look at briefly this morning because it gets to the heart of the nature of God and our relationship with him.

The first thing that grabs our attention in our OT lesson is God’s call to his prophet Hosea. God calls him to act out symbolically God’s prophecy, much like God called Jeremiah and Ezekiel to do. Hosea is to marry a whore and have children by her. We don’t know for sure if Gomer was a prostitute when Hosea married her or whether she was unfaithful to him later on. But that really isn’t the point. The point is that God wants Hosea to live in a relationship that is symbolic of the relationship between God and his people. If we can get past our initial shock of hearing God calling his people Israel a whore and not focus on the graphic language, we realize that the text is pointing us to the real problem of unfaithfulness on Israel’s part and we can understand this very well. Just this past week, for example, a mayoral candidate who had gotten himself in trouble before for texting graphic pictures of himself to other women was at it again. And once again we see this man’s wife standing by him as he confesses his sins to the public, making us scratch our heads in bewilderment and disbelief, among other things. 

A similar dynamic is going on in our OT lesson. Hosea is to embody God’s faithfulness to Israel by remaining faithful to Gomer, despite her whoredom. Just as Gomer had (or would) dally with other men, thereby being unfaithful to her husband, so Israel had dallied (and would continue to dally) with false gods and idols, which had led them astray so that they were no longer being faithful to God or living as his called-out (holy) people to bring God’s healing love to the nations. As we think about the pain that Gomer’s unfaithfulness would have caused Hosea (and the pain Israel’s unfaithfulness clearly caused God), we are tempted to wonder why Hosea just doesn’t dump Gomer and move on. Why doesn’t Hosea just let her spend the rest of her life in the mess she’s created? After all, it would serve her right! But when we judge Gomer like this we bring judgment on ourselves because who among us has been entirely faithful to God? It would be just as easy for us to ask why God doesn’t just dump us and move on, leaving us to live with the messes we have created! 

That’s why it is so easy for us to understand the significance behind the naming of Hosea’s and Gomer’s children because we understand that when one party is unfaithful in a relationship, it has the power to damage or destroy the relationship and our relationship with God is no exception. No wonder there was judgment in the names of the three children born! God has had enough of his wife Israel’s unfaithfulness and now judgment is coming. And that’s the scary part because if we are really honest with ourselves we know that we too deserve the same condemnation for our unfaithfulness to God. But then at the end of the lesson we read the most amazing thing. After telling his people Israel that they are no longer his people and he is no longer their God, God speaks of a startling reversal. Not only will Israel enjoy unheard of prosperity, they will be known as children of God! What is going on here? Is this another example of God going all schizo on us again?

Of course not. There is almost always an element of God’s grace that accompanies his judgments in the OT because it is God’s nature to be gracious and merciful. But the fuller answer is found in our epistle and gospel lessons this morning. St. Paul talks about God taking the record of our sins—sins typically caused by our unfaithfulness to God when we chase after other, lesser gods, including our own disordered desires, all of which God’s law condemns—and nailing it to the cross of Jesus. What makes this promise even more remarkable is the startling fact that St. Paul proclaims God himself arranged the condition for our forgiveness and pardon by becoming the man Jesus of Nazareth and dying for us so that we would be spared his just judgment on our unfaithfulness. Not only that, St. Paul makes the equally incredible statement that on the cross, God has disarmed the dark powers behind our sinfulness and waywardness. 

All this is language that simply means that by becoming human in Jesus, God himself has broken sin’s power over us and the death that results from it, and instead has paved the way for us to have new life, free from the fear of God’s just condemnation (cf. Romans 8.1). There is no condemnation because when we are Jesus’ people, when God looks at us he sees Jesus’ faithfulness, not our unfaithfulness. This is why we don’t need to have our flesh cut away as a sign that we are God’s children. Instead, we are circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, i.e., by his death and resurrection, our Lord Jesus has cut away the power of sin over us so that we are able to live as God’s children, faithful and obedient to God, and this is the outward sign that we are God’s children through our relationship with Jesus. As we are healed by Jesus, we become jealous for God’s good name to be honored among all the nations, just as our Lord taught us to pray in his prayer. That’s what “hallowed (holy) be your name” is all about.

And how do we receive this gift? By believing it’s true and as a result, living our lives as if we really believe Jesus is Lord. This is what St. Paul calls being in Christ. We start this process of being in Christ at our baptism, which is the sacramental sign of our new and restored relationship with God in Jesus. St. Paul tells us that at our baptism we and all that keeps us hostile and alienated from God are buried with Christ so that we can also be raised with him to new life. This latter promise speaks to our current situation as well as our future living in the new creation. When we are baptized, we are initiated into God’s family and become his children through our faith in Jesus. Of course, like any relationship, our relationship with God requires our effort. There is nothing magical about baptism. Rather, it is an outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible reality that we are loved and rescued by God because of what God has done for us in Jesus’ death and resurrection. God has a history of rescuing his people and baptism is no different. What this means is that we no longer need to fear God or God’s just judgment because in Jesus we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.  

But, you protest, even if this is all true and God has forgiven us in and through Jesus, we are still broken and fallen people. We still miss the mark and we have a track record to prove it. I’m glad you voiced this concern because it will allow me to finish this sermon in a timely manner. I am not suggesting that our relationship with God will be easy or automatic as a result of what God has done for us in Jesus or at our baptism because, yes, we are still weighed down by our body of sin. But there is good news even in this area because part of what St. Paul and Jesus want us to see is that when we come into a real relationship with God through Jesus, we no longer have to live life alone or solely under our own power. We are promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to live in us to transform us over our lifetime into the very image of Jesus so that we can truly be the people God called and created us to be.

Yet even having the Spirit live in us won’t make us immune from hurt or failure. We live in a fallen world where things sometimes go wrong and as St. Paul reminds us in Romans 6.7, we are not totally free from sin until we die. But that should not discourage us because none of this negates what God has done for us in Jesus. When we truly believe that in Jesus, God has rescued us from sin and death and act like we believe it, we still don’t have to worry about facing condemnation, even when we are unfaithful on occasion, as long as we repent and return to faithful living. And when we have the Spirit living in us, we can be assured that we are given a power to live according to God that would simply be impossible without his healing and transforming presence. And as Jesus reminds us in our gospel lesson, all we have to do is ask for the Spirit to come and live in us. Are you praying this audaciously? 

So what do we do with this? In a few moments we are going to baptize baby James into God’s family of redeemed people in Jesus. We have been reminded what happens in baptism and the wonderful hope and promise it symbolizes. But as we have also seen, this is only the beginning. Like a physical birth, there is much growth that will occur thereafter, God willing. And there will be great opposition to James’ new birth and to his new life in Christ as he grows and matures. So what are we to do? Well, as Jesus reminds us, we start by praying for the entire Sang family, that God will equip them to raise James faithfully. They will do that in large part by sound teaching and embodying Jesus in their daily lives. But the Sangs are not an isolated unit. They are part of our family and we are given the task of helping them raise their sons, not only by sound teaching and how we live our lives, but by how we love and support this family as they live their lives.

This is where paying attention to the context of St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians can help us. St. Paul tells us not to be taken captive through philosophy and empty deceit. His arguments and word choice for captive suggest that the Colossians were being assailed by false teachers, most likely Judaizers who were trying to persuade them that Jesus wasn’t sufficient for healing, forgiveness, and redemption; neither was he sufficient for them to fully understand God. Instead, all of this would come only through their obedience to the law. Not many of us have to worry about coming under the influence of Judaizers but that does not mean we are out of danger because in our world today there are many forces that seek to pull us as Christians away from Jesus. We hear constantly that all religions are equal, that there are many paths to God. This message can lead us to think that we can add elements from other religions to our Christian faith to help us find deeper spiritual fulfillment, whether it be New Age, transcendental meditation, or whatever. But that is not what St. Paul and the first Christians proclaimed and our epistle lesson stands as a clear warning against any such dallying because it will surely lead us astray, make us lose our focus on Jesus, and result in us living unfaithfully, just as it did to God’s people Israel. James will face this temptation as he grows up just as we do now and this makes the necessity for prayer and our grace-filled fellowship even more urgent so that we do not give up the wondrous gift of God to us in Jesus. If we want to know the true God, his heart and character, we need look no further than Jesus because he is the very embodiment of God. 

So we must all be careful to always keep our focus on Jesus and not be distracted by other, lesser things or gods and be eventually consumed by them. I say this especially to those of you this morning who might be struggling with issues of forgiveness or with your relationship with God. God himself has called us out of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of light. In God’s sovereign grace and power, God has declared us not only fit in his sight, but also his children in Jesus—forgiven, healed, and greatly loved. He has given us tangible signs of his healing love in the sacrament of baptism and in the lives of his saints. Dare to believe this and take hope and comfort that no one is out of God’s reach. No one. This is the hope and promise that is baby James’ at his baptism and it is the hope and promise of all God’s people, broken as we are, because in the end, the gospel is not about us or our power. It is about the amazing love and healing and sovereign power of God as manifested in Jesus Christ. And when by God’s grace you really do embrace the promise, you will surely know what it means to have Good News, now and for all eternity. 

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

Sermon originally preached on Sunday, July 17, 2106. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before you read the sermon. The Christian hope of glory can sustain us in the darkest times of our lives. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Amos 8.1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1.15-28; Luke 10.38-42.

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

In our epistle lesson this morning, St. Paul tells us that he is working to make the word of God fully known to us so that we will be let in on a profound mystery. God’s mysteries for the apostle and the rest of the NT writers are things previously unknown but now revealed to us by God. And what is this thing St. Paul is talking about? It’s none other than Christ in us, the hope of glory. But what does St. Paul mean by that? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

Contrary to what many of us think, the mystery revealed to us in Christ isn’t about getting right with Jesus. It isn’t just about Jesus and my salvation, although that is certainly part of what St. Paul is talking about. No, St. Paul has in mind something much richer and more exciting. He is talking about how God has revealed to us his promise to redeem his good creation gone bad, us included. If we don’t understand this fundamental promise, that God has promised to heal and redeem his broken creation, both the physical and spiritual dimensions of it, Scripture won’t make a lot of sense to us because that’s exactly the story it has to tell.

Take our OT lesson for example, with its message of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel’s happiness, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,” says the Lord God; “the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!” (Amos 8.2b-3). Many of us hear judgment oracles like this and conclude that God surely must be the supreme tyrant and ogre who is always angry with us and just waiting to rain on our parade, preferably with fire and brimstone. This (false) god we conjure up in our minds is determined that we should not have a good time and unfortunately has the power to enforce his wishes. 

But to read these texts in this way does violence not only to the text but to God himself because we almost completely miss the point of what is going on in the story contained in them. We must always keep in mind that the OT is the story of God’s interaction with his called-out people Israel, the people whom God chose to help him heal and redeem his good but sin-corrupted world. You can and should read the background for this narrative in Genesis 1-11 and God’s call to Abraham starting in Genesis 12. God’s people were supposed to reflect the glory and love of the one true God to the nations around them who did not know God and who worshiped false and destructive idols, because we inevitably turn into the idols we worship. But instead of acting in the truly human ways as God created them for, and the people God called them to be, so that they could show others who did not know God a much better way, Israel astonishingly adopted the ways of the nations they were supposed to convert! Sound familiar?

Now in our OT lesson, we see the fruit Israel is bearing, and it ain’t real tasty. As was God’s habit, God sent a spokesman to speak to his people on God’s behalf, in this case Amos, and we learn that after repeated warnings Israel had rejected God’s call to turn from their false and dehumanizing ways of living that had resulted from God’s people worshiping false and dehumanizing idols. And here we get a glimpse of what was happening. Merchants had made profit their idol and this resulted in all kinds of shady economic practices and the poor being exploited. These greedy folks were so eager to line their pockets they cut short their God-mandated sabbath rest and the festivals that were to produce real and heartfelt worship of the one true God. We all know what endless work does to our body, mind, and spirit, and we all know what happens when we fail to worship God regularly. We get flat worn out and our hearts get hardened. These folks presumably pursued their wealth for the same reason we pursue wealth so hard: for power and control. Implicit in these behaviors was the notion that God could not be trusted to provide. No, these folks wanted to be in control instead of aligning their lives and work to mesh with God’s good creative purposes for human living and work. It’s not that God wants us to sit around waiting for him to drop good things into our laps. It’s about who is in charge of things, us or God? When we choose the former over the latter, all hell breaks loose.

So after repeated warnings, we see God announcing the end of his people’s happiness. Their celebrating would turn into mourning when God’s final judgment fell on them. It would be so terrible that even the creation would mourn for God’s people, and we are reminded once again that God created us to be wise stewards over God’s creation so that when we act selfishly and myopically, all creation suffers, not just humans (cf. Romans 8.22). If we understand the backdrop to this story, we see what’s going on. To be sure, God is not happy with sin because sin corrupts and dehumanizes, and causes chaos and evil to erupt. But there’s more to the story than this. We see God the Father angry at his children for not living up to their purpose as God’s people. Instead of reflecting the glory of God and the promise of his redemption outward to those who desperately needed it (whether they knew it or not), God’s people had turned inward and saw their status as God’s people as a privilege with no accompanying responsibility. To make matters worse, many of them had turned away from worshiping God and worshiped false gods or idols. As parents we all get this dynamic, especially if we have dealt with children who wanted nothing to do with being part of the family. It gets messy and complicated in a hurry and that is what is going on here, only on a cosmic level. God’s people had refused to live up to their calling to help bring God’s healing to the world and in the process they had adopted lifestyles that were destructive and dehumanizing. Real love never wishes that for the beloved. Never. 

And then we read a strange thing happening as part of God’s judgment on his people’s bad behavior. God would withhold his word from them and the effect would be devastating. As Genesis 1-2 make clear, without God’s word to bring order, there is only chaos, chaos in all creation and chaos in our personal lives. As Fr. Bowser continually reminds us (does that mean he is doing a lousy job of preaching if he has to keep reminding us of what he tells us?—asking for a friend), if we do not align our lives to God’s good creative purposes for us, we can expect our lives to be chaotic and we will personally experience all kinds of physical, spiritual, and mental chaos. Here in our OT lesson we see the same thing happening to God’s rebellious people Israel. Go figure. 

When God’s word is absent in our lives, we instinctively know it and it terrifies us because we know that without God’s word, we will not experience God’s order, God’s blessing, God’s fulfillment of his wonderful purposes, and God’s forgiveness. Here God is telling his people that he is withdrawing from them, giving them up in judgment to their own evil desires, and the people frantically search for that which they’ve lost. No wonder their happiness has turned to mourning! Remember, this is not about God raining on people’s parade and denying them a good time. God is condemning those behaviors that cause suffering and injustice (chaos) to break out on folks, especially on the poor, the weak, and the helpless. How can God’s love spread throughout his creation to heal it if God’s people will not cooperate? 

Before we look at what St. Paul has to say about this, we need to stop for a moment and reflect on what this means for us because we too are called to bring God’s healing love to the world. God’s judgment on Israel’s greed and love for injustice falls on our own practices. It reminds us we cannot be two different people, ones who worship God on Sunday and then go to our areas of work to worship the god of avarice and greed. It means we must look carefully at all sides of the burning social issues of our day so that we can best bring God’s healing to bear on them. It reminds us that we have to pursue justice, hard as that can be at times, so that the poorest and weakest of our day do not suffer at our hands. When we stop looking after the needs of others, darkness and chaos will surely descend on us as it did for God’s people Israel.

Thankfully for us, however, we are not entirely like Israel because as St. Paul reminds us, God has become human in the man Jesus to be the faithful Israel and so complete God’s plan to heal and redeem his good world hijacked by human sin and the evil it unleashes. St. Paul further reminds us that we belong to Jesus, who is the firstborn of all creation, and who rules over God’s current creation and will rule over God’s promised new creation. He tells us that on the cross, evil has been defeated and we have been reconciled to God. St. Paul doesn’t spell this out in any detail, only that this is what God has accomplished. Evil has been allowed to do its worst to Jesus and has failed to destroy him. Instead, God raised him from the dead and in doing so, ushered in God’s new creation, God’s newly healed and redeemed world in Christ. Not only that, but God has called us as Jesus’ people to be human agents of God’s new creation in the world. When we believe that God really has overcome evil and reconciled us to him in and through Jesus’ death on the cross, we know that we too will share Jesus’ ultimate fate of resurrection so that what happened to our Lord will also happen to us. We become a forgiven people in Christ and we have confidence that we can stand before God as Jesus’ people, despite our sins. 

And as Jesus’ people, we are called to work on deepening our relationship with him so that we do know without a doubt that the above promises are true and that we too are part of God’s promises to heal and redeem his good creation. This is the mystery St. Paul talks about in our lesson today. Jews are not the only ones who are called to be part of God’s new world. Gentiles are called to be part of it as well, specifically Gentiles who put their hope and trust in Jesus and who develop a living and active relationship with our living and active Lord. This is what it means to have Christ in us, our hope of glory. It means he is available to us at all times in the power of the Spirit to love us and heal us and help us live as people who have real hope, even in the midst of our present adversities, because we have faith that we too will share in his risen glory. What this means on a practical basis is this. As Jesus’ people, we know first and foremost that we are loved and forgiven by our Creator so that we know the real heart of God. This, in turn, means we are to live our lives patterned after Jesus for the sake of others. We look out for each other and care for each other. We are careful not to pursue our own self-interests at the expense of others. We are quick to forgive and slow to judge in self-righteous ways. We are tenderhearted toward each other and bear each other’s joys and burdens. Every time we do these things, the new creation becomes a fuller reality. And it all starts by engaging with Jesus, the Word of God. No wonder our Lord reminded Martha and the others that Mary was doing the needful thing by sitting at his feet and listening to him teach God’s truth and wisdom. It’s the very truth and wisdom that enables us to know we have Good News and to live it, 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 Sunday, July 23, 2017. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. The topic of suffering and redemption is critical for all Christians to grapple with and the Church seems to have stopped teaching that suffering is a real path for redemption. Unfortunate. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 28.10-19a; Psalm 139.1-12, 23-24; Romans 8.12-25; Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43.

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

This is the first time I have preached on my birthday. It doubtless will be an even more spectacular sermon than usual, precisely because it is my birthday and unlike the Beatles, I know you still need me now that I’m sixty-four. I know you still need me because of my brilliant sermons, rugged good looks, and award-winning personality™, not to mention my great humility. That and one other small thing. Like you, I no longer stand under God’s just and right condemnation because of the cross of Christ as we saw last week. Good News, that. Have you pondered it this week? I hope so. So what happens now? What should be our expectations as recipients of God’s astonishing love and mercy? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

St. Paul wastes no time in telling us in our epistle lesson. We are God’s children and are therefore heirs of God! Think about that for a moment. We are going to inherit God’s kingdom with all of its attendant good! We are heirs, of course, because of what God has done for us on the cross of Jesus. If we tried to lay claim to any of God’s kingdom on our own, we would find ourselves bereft and without a family, exiled to the streets as desperate beggars because as we also saw last week, left to our own devices we are all enslaved to the power of Sin and as the apostle warned us in Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death, and death certainly isn’t part of God’s kingdom. That’s why we must always recognize that our inheritance depends solely on Christ. We are joint heirs with him because in our baptism we know we have died with him and look forward to being raised with him. This is our glorious inheritance! Amen?

So if we are heirs of God, what can possibly go wrong? This no condemnation stuff is awesome, baby. Smooth sailing from now on, right? Not so fast, says St. Paul. As God’s heirs you can expect two things from your inheritance: suffering and redemption. Well, Paul, we like that redemption thingy. But suffering? What’s that all about? What the apostle is urging us to do is to think clearly about living in a world that has been corrupted by human sin and rebellion and the attendant evil so that it labors under God’s curse. More about that in a moment. Like other biblical writers, most notably the author of Job, St. Paul here assumes the presence of Evil in God’s world but does not try to explain it. Rather he tells us what we can expect as Christians who now no longer live under God’s condemnation as the rest of the world does. 

First, the apostle talks about our own fallen nature. If God has condemned our sin in the flesh by sending his own dear Son to bear our just condemnation, why would we want to go back to our old rebellious ways of living? Why would we choose to live life without God? That kind of living, where we pander to our own selfish and disordered desires, i.e., live according to the desires of our flesh as St. Paul puts it, leads only to death. There’s no future in it—literally—and its source is the Satan himself who hates us and wants to see us utterly destroyed. Who in their right mind would go back to a life of slavery when they could have real freedom instead?

But here’s the problem. As we saw last week, although Evil, Sin, and Death have been defeated on the cross, there’s still quite a fight in them, not to mention the dark powers behind them, so that we have to work each day to kill those disordered and death-producing desires in us. This is no small or easy task and we can expect to suffer as we work to kill off our hostility and rebellion toward God. Who wants to stop doing things that feel so good, even if they are so wrong? The good news is that we don’t engage in this struggle on our own as St. Paul reminds us. We do it with the help of the Spirit, who testifies to us through our doubts and fears and darkness that we are God’s beloved and adopted children, heirs to his eternal kingdom, in and through Christ, and that we can stop doing those things which keep us hostile toward God. 

Putting to death our fallen nature is not the same as self-help or pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We already are free from God’s just condemnation because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. There is nothing we can do bootstrap-wise to earn that pardon. God gives it to us because he loves us and wants us to live, not die. Yes, we struggle to kill off our disordered desires in the power of the Spirit and sometimes we fail because we are that infected by Sin’s power. But God’s power is greater than Sin’s and even in our failures, we no longer stand condemned because of what Christ has done for us. Moreover, we are to take heart because we know we do not struggle alone. We have our Lord Jesus present with us in the power of the Spirit to help us overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, and who will always forgive us when we miss the mark. As St. Paul will tell us next week, nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen?

However, there is another dimension of our suffering that St. Paul talks about. It is suffering that results from living in a sin-sick and evil-infested world, and we all know what that looks like: desperate poverty, cruelty, racism, addiction, alienation, war, injustice, all kinds of deviancy, greed, hatred, idolatrous self-worship, adultery, abuse, sickness of all kinds. The list goes on and on and it is enough to overwhelm us. When that happens, we need to return to this chapter in Romans to be refreshed and encouraged by it because it is precisely at this point that Paul makes the bold and audacious claim that God is going to heal his world from top to bottom. St. Paul tells us that the whole creation groans in eager anticipation for the redemption of our bodies, i.e., for the coming of our Lord Jesus and the resurrection/transformation of our bodies, so that we will once again be the wise and just stewards God created us to be. Our sin and the evil it unleashed has made a mess out of God’s good world. But St. Paul makes the astonishing claim that it is God’s intention to restore his good creation through the agency of his Church, through losers and ragamuffins like you and me, as we suffer on behalf of creation. Far from withdrawing from the world, God calls us to bear its pains (and our own) by taking on its wounds and scars and afflictions. We do this in and through prayer and humble, loving, and selfless service to others. We give our time, our effort, and our money to help alleviate suffering wherever we encounter it. We don’t turn our backs on the world’s worst and neediest. We embody the love of Christ to them in the power of the Spirit. And when we trust God enough to start doing this, guess what? We will suffer because we will be abused and exploited and scammed and mocked and everything in between. But the kingdom comes through our suffering.

Suffering is the way God redeemed the world. Think it through. Christ suffered for us and so we suffer for the world on his behalf because he has given us the precious gift of life. Impossible! we want to snort back at St. Paul. You are out of your mind. I’m not finished yet, says Paul. There’s more. As Christians you are going to be confronted with the additional challenge of dealing with your afflictions and the world’s, even when you can make no sense of those afflictions or see any hope of them being successfully resolved. We all know what that looks like. I’m thinking, e.g., of Len and Sharon, who are dealing with Len’s chronic and debilitating back pain. Despite several rounds of surgery, despite our persistent prayers, nothing seems to be getting better. I’m thinking of those of you who are under- or unemployed with little hope of sustainable income in the near future. Each one of us here bears the pain of unresolved and/or unjust pain and suffering. It’s enough to crush us and make us think we are godforsaken.

It is here that the apostle speaks of hope, the sure and certain expectation that comes from having an unshakable faith in the God of the Bible, despite our circumstances, because we know that God never reneges on God’s promises and God has promised to one day heal and redeem us so that our suffering ends forever. Listen again to St. Paul as he speaks of this hope.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

This is why St. Paul tells us that our current sufferings, terrible as they are, are not to be compared with what awaits us. God has promised to heal and restore us fully when God brings in his promised new world at our Lord’s return to complete the redemptive work he started in his death and resurrection. This God can be trusted because this God has overcome all that opposes him: the world, the flesh, and the devil, but in a most unexpected way—the way of the cross. And this is the path God expects us to take so that in our faithful suffering, God will use us to help bring about the world’s healing and ours. Creation knows this and eagerly anticipates it. Do you? 

Let us be clear about what Paul is saying here, my beloved. He is not telling us to minimize our suffering or discount it. Anyone who has really suffered knows what a bunch of pious caca that is. There are times when we have all felt Godforsaken in our suffering and where we can make no sense of it. It is precisely then that St. Paul tells us to remember our hope, to remember that we are God’s heirs. Think about this with me carefully for a minute. When we feel Godforsaken, we must head back to the foot of the cross and remember the supreme example of Godforsakenness. As our Lord Jesus was bearing the full brunt of God’s just condemnation of our collective sins and the full power of evil unleashed on him, he too experienced being abandoned in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend or imagine: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Cry out those desperate words with your Savior as he was being crushed and condemned for your sake and then remember that God used his suffering to bring about your redemption. Take comfort and hope in that. This is not a God who abandons you.

Or go and read great stories like our OT lesson today where we find Jacob, the deceiver, the one who lied, cheated, and connived to steal his inheritance, the one who took pride in depending on his own cleverness to get what he wanted, just like you and I do. And what was God’s response to him as he fled for his life in today’s story? Don’t be afraid. I am with you and I will fulfill the promises I made to your grandfather Abraham through you. I am close by. That’s why I allowed you to see my ladder so that you know heaven and earth are not far apart nor am I far from you, even in your smug and sinful foolishness and folly. I am God and am always good to my promise. The God who made that promise to Jacob makes that same promise to you in and through Jesus. He’s with you right now in the power of the Spirit and when things get so bad in your life that you can only cry out Abba Father! because you don’t know what else to say or do, remember that it is the Spirit himself, not you, crying out to God on your behalf, the God who knows you intimately and loves you thoroughly as our psalmist proclaims, the God who wants all to be saved and thus is patient in executing his final justice as Jesus reminds us in our gospel lesson today (cf. 2 Peter 3.3-9).

This is our hope as Christians, a hope not based on the chances and changes of life, but a hope based on the faithfulness and love of God the Father made known supremely to us in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot as yet see this hope. It has not been made fully known to us yet. That’s why we call it hope. But it’s a done deal and it frees us to act as God’s heirs, to be bold in our proclamation and good spirit. There is no place for moping and feeling sorry for ourselves as Christians. We are no longer under God’s condemnation and we have a real future and a hope! As we have just discussed, when we see our suffering for what it is and that God actually uses it to help bring about his kingdom, we will have hope even in the darkest night. This in no way diminishes the seriousness of our suffering or our struggles with it. It simply reminds us that suffering can be redemptive, even when we cannot see how. That takes great faith and a humble acknowledgement that there are some things in this life that are simply above our pay grade, even as we put our hope in God to fulfill his redemptive promises one day.

But if we really do not know this God about whom we have been talking—the God of the Bible, not the one of our imagination or the world’s—we will never have this hope in our suffer-ing and we will be defeated. To be agents of God’s redemptive plan for us and his creation, we must steep ourselves in Scripture to know this God and this God’s promises to us. We must be focused in our prayers, both for ourselves and for the world, and persist in them even when no answer is apparently forthcoming. We must come to table each week to feed on our Lord and be refreshed and reminded that he really is present with us in the power of the Spirit. And we must accept the gift of fellowship with which God has blessed us to strengthen and encourage each other in the midst of our trials and sufferings. This is our inheritance, my beloved. Suffering and redemption. When we know we are heirs to the best inheritance in the world, it frees us to endure our suffering and to act boldly in the present on Christ’s behalf because we know our future is secure. We know our future is secure because the Spirit testifies to us that we have been claimed by the suffering love of Jesus Christ our Lord and so we await our final glorious redemption at his Second Coming. And that, my beloved, is Good News, strange and vexing as it sometimes sounds to us, 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. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Amen. And until you do, equip us to fight the good fight on your behalf. Amen.

Sermon originally preached on Sunday, July 12, 2015. As always it will be helpful to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their respective links before reading the sermon. Becoming a disciple of Jesus has never been easy. Fightings from within and without are always there, the latter especially in today’s world where the strident voices against Christianity/Christians are becoming more strident and more common. If we are not willing to literally give our lives to and for Christ, he considers us to not be his disciples. That’s a problem because only in Christ do we have a chance for eternal life. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel 6.1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24.1-10; Ephesians 1.3-14; St. Mark 6.14-29.

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

Have you ever been confronted by an issue or event in your life that either caused you to walk away from your faith or seriously question it? Have you ever been afraid to speak about your faith to others or apply it to public affairs for fear of how others might react toward you? In our gospel lesson we see that biblical faithfulness can be terribly costly and this is what I want us to look at this morning. What can we learn from the sad story of John the Baptizer’s death?

St. Mark spends more time describing this event than any other gospel writer, and so we need to ask why that is. What does St. Mark want us to learn from this unseemly story? It has all the needed elements to grab our attention: royalty, sex, booze, and religion. St. Mark tells us that Herod Antipas had John arrested after he called Herod out about his extramarital affair with his brother’s wife, Herodias, whom Herod would ultimately marry. People who commit adultery often rationalize away their behavior and the inevitable consequences that result from it, and Herod doesn’t seem to be an exception. But even Herod’s toadies knew better than to call him on his behavior. Doing so would have probably landed them in prison or worse. But that didn’t stop John, the fiery preacher who called people to repentance and who had announced the coming of the promised Messiah. 

For Herod and Herodias, this was more than just a moral embarrassment. John’s denunciation of their illicit marriage had political ramifications as well. Herod, who had  aspirations to be Israel’s new king and deliverer, could not really have someone like the Baptizer calling him out on his adultery. After all, how could Israel’s promised Messiah be involved with illicit sex? That certainly wouldn’t play well with the general population and so Herod moved to silence his famous critic, and here we see St. Mark inviting us to compare Jesus with Herod. Which of the two had better credentials and cred with the people? In one corner we have Herod, who rules because he happened to be born into the right family and who had just married his own brother’s wife. Not much Messiah-like character there. In the other corner, St. Mark invites us to look at Jesus in this “sandwich” story of the Baptizer’s death. St. Mark has just reported mighty acts of power demonstrated by Jesus and his disciples. People were healed of all kinds of diseases, a dead girl was brought back to life, and evil spirits were cast out of folks. And immediately following today’s story, St. Mark will report Jesus feeding the five thousand, walking on water, and performing even more healings. All of these mighty acts of power were tangible signs that the kingdom of God was indeed powerfully present in Jesus and his followers, and this is why St. Mark reports on all these events. He wants us to see Jesus is the real deal while Herod is not.

But St. Mark wants us to see something else in this story, and it is precisely that biblical faithfulness can cost a person his or her life. John was probably aware of the political ramifications that accompanied his denunciation of Herod’s marriage to Herodias. But there was clearly a moral concern underlying John’s calling out Herod. We know this because John told Herod it was not lawful for him to marry his brother’s wife. The law to which John is referring is of course the Law of Moses, which derived part of its authority from the creation narratives (Genesis 1.27-28, 2.18-24; cf. St. Mark 10.2-12; St. Matthew 19.3-9). That’s why the Lord commanded us to honor our father and mother (male and female in an exclusive, life-long relationship) and to stay away from adultery (Exodus 20.12,14,17). John was being faithful to God’s original creative intention for men and women and St. Mark wants us to see that doing so can literally cost us our lives. Evil does not like to be confronted by God’s goodness. No wonder Jesus would tell his followers to stop and count the cost before deciding to follow him (St. Luke 14.25-33)!

Herod, like many of us, apparently had a love-hate relationship with the prophet and his God. In a wonderfully realistic story, St. Mark reports that while Herod imprisoned John, Herod liked to hear John speak, even though John perplexed him, and that Herod protected John, even when his wife wanted to see him dead. Was there something in John’s message of repentance that struck a chord with Herod? Did he know in his heart of hearts that John was right and that God should not be mocked nor should we try to deceive him? We aren’t told. What we are told is how Herod’s lack of character led to the Baptizer’s death. In a moment of apparent drunken titillation over the dancing of Herodias’ daughter, Herod promised the girl virtually anything she wanted, and at her mother’s prompting she told him she wanted John’s head. To save John’s life, Herod would have had to display moral character and courage that he simply did not possess. So Herod took the easy way out. He gave Herodias what she wanted. Like his cousin Jesus, who would also later die for his faithfulness, John met an unseemly end, all because he remained faithful to God’s word in the midst of a sin-sick world. But as we will see in a moment, it is to the glory of God that along with you and me, Jesus came to rescue even bad guys like Herod, Herodias, and Pilate, as well as all the bad guys who live in our world today.

Now before we look at some possible applications in our lives from this story, let us not get all uppity about Herod and pat ourselves smugly on the back, saying that we would never have acted like that. Because the fact is, we all act without integrity on occasion, even if a life isn’t literally at stake. Now is not the time for self-righteousness, but self-examination. And let us also resist the temptation to say that the bad guy wins again and gets away scot-free. Indeed, the bad guy won in this instance. John paid for his faithfulness with his life and his disciples showed remarkable courage and faithfulness in coming to take John’s body away for burial. They could have ended up just like their master! But there is more to this story than St. Mark reports. We know from extra-biblical sources that within a decade after this incident, Herod would find himself defeated militarily by his enemies and exiled to Gaul (France) by the Roman Emperor Claudius Caligula where he and Herodias would spend the rest of their lives as political outcasts. It seems that God will indeed not be mocked and we need to remember this the next time we hear about a bad guy apparently getting away with murder. 

So what can we learn from this sad story? Where’s the good news? As with the entire narrative of Scripture (and that’s why we must read the entire narrative!), we have to see the story in its proper context and look to see how the bigger story of God’s rescue of his sin-sick and unjust world plays itself out. Since we are still living out the story of God’s rescue plan in Jesus Christ, the first lesson we can learn is a hard one to hear. God’s call to us and his claim on our lives can be quite costly. While none of us is in immediate danger of being killed for our faith, we are living in an age where things can get quite uncomfortable for us. For example, if we want to remain faithful to the biblical teaching about marriage as opposed to the redefinition of marriage as a result of judicial fiat, we can expect to be looked at increasingly as freaks and there are folks out there who will be delighted to tell us that. I know. I experienced that kind of abuse when I was taking a class at Bexley Hall Seminary of all places, and I can tell you it is not much fun to be mocked and ridiculed in front of people. But if we hold to the biblical notion that marriage is the God-given vehicle by which our species is propagated, our society is ordered, and God’s good creation is ruled, as opposed to a human right, we had better be prepared to face our share of scorn and hatred. But why would any of us subject ourselves to this kind of abuse over the faith once delivered to the saints that we hold?

The answer comes from St. Paul in our epistle lesson. This passage is so rich in content that it should be one of our regular go-to passages whenever we are walking through the dark valleys of our lives. Are we tempted to believe in a deist god who basically functions as an absentee landlord who really doesn’t care all that much about his creation and us? No such thing, counters St. Paul! We worship a God who has called us from before the world was created and who is actively involved in our lives. About this time I suspect Fr. Bowser is starting to squirm nervously in his seat, wondering if I am going to get all Calvin on him and the rest of you. Relax Father. God’s election is for a different sermon. We’ve got bigger fish to fry here. 

The point St. Paul is making is all about God’s sovereignty over his world and involvement in our lives. It is God who initiates, who became a human to bear our sins and die for us so that we might live. It is God who loves us first and invites us to respond to his great love by turning from ourselves back to him so that he can heal and transform us bit by bit, inch by inch, day by day. It is God who has a plan to heal and transform his entire creation and who invites us to be an integral part of that work. This is what our passage today is all about and this truly is Good News. It reminds us that contrary to what the world wants us to think, God is not absent or uncaring. To be sure, God’s ways can be quite mysterious and vexing to us. But we are not to lose heart because he has given us himself in Jesus so that evil, sin, and death are overthrown if not yet fully vanquished, and new creation is launched. We are therefore invited to live as people who have that hope. Evil may win some battles, but it has lost the war. Jesus is alive and rules over his cosmos, and we are invited to his eternal party. This all happened because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we are given God’s very Spirit, the Holy Spirit, as a guarantee of this promise. The word St. Paul uses to describe this guarantee is a technical term equivalent to earnest money we put down when we decide to buy a property.

Why is this important? Because this is our guaranteed future and hope, and this hope is what sustains us when we walk through the dark valleys that test our faithfulness. It also informs us how we are to live in ways that are consistent with God’s will for us, and that will produce the greatest good and happiness for us and those around us. As resurrection people, we should never be without hope or fundamentally pessimistic. In Christ, God has overcome the world and all that is hostile to God, and we are invited to be part of that victory, starting right now. 

So how does that work? Returning to the issue of marriage, as Christians who believe Scripture is God’s true word to us as played out in the story of creation, fall, and redemption, what is our response to be to the recent SCOTUS ruling? First, while we can rightly lament the decision, we are not to lose hope or heart. As Herod and Herodias found out, God will not be mocked and since we believe God is intimately involved in his world and our lives, we should not fall into despair. When we are mocked and considered freaks and haters and [fill in your favorite insult], we are to remember we are Jesus’ people and so we are to return their curses with blessings and forgiveness, precisely because Jesus is Lord and the victory is won. 

Second, since we are called to be part of God’s eternal party in Jesus, we are to carefully examine our own lives to see where our faith serves as Christ’s beacon of light and where it falls short. We are to repent of the latter and continue to practice the former because as St. Paul reminds us today, this will result in the praise of God’s glory. This might not always be self-evident to us, but we need to relax because we are not God and God really is in charge as St. Paul proclaims. Accordingly, we are to take up our cross daily and follow our Lord faithfully, trusting in God’s faithfulness to us, even in death, as manifested most powerfully in Jesus. 

Third, and related to this last point, if we are married, we are to work hard at making our marriages a shining example for the world to see and celebrate. If we view marriage as basically a disposable commodity to be discarded when our needs are no longer being met, we are being as unfaithful to God’s intention for marriage as any SCOTUS justice, and the light of Christ shining through our marriage is extinguished. I speak sadly from experience about this. Being twice divorced, I am still dealing with the fallout and carnage of my own sinful behavior that essentially pushed God and his intentions for family aside to meet my own perceived needs. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t deal in some way with the consequences of my misguided thinking about marriage and divorce, and I suspect I am not the only one who suffers from this. To be sure, I am forgiven and God has blessed me with a wonderful wife with whom I am passionately in love, and who loves me likewise. But the consequences remain. One of the reasons I behaved as I did is because no one ever took the time to really impress on me the sanctity of marriage and the devastating consequences of trying to play by my own rules rather than God’s when it comes to marriage and family. I get it now. Back then, not so much. 

The good news for St. Augie’s is that I see a good and wholesome witness to the God-given blessing of faithful marriage. Think, for example, of the Bowsers and Falors who are approaching 50 years of marriage, or how Tim remained faithful to his wife during her long battle with Alzheimer’s, or how Monroe cares for Judy during this difficult time. Think too how we’ve rallied around these folks to let them know we love them and remind them that they are not walking through the valley alone. Here is the power of Christ’s light shining in the midst of darkness! Contrast those examples with spouses who abandon their spouse when the going gets tough or exploit them for their own selfish gain. Not much to celebrate there.

We can also celebrate the sanctity of God-given marriage by publicly renewing our vows during worship because Christian marriage is always lived out within the life of the Church. I know I want to do that with Dondra next year on our 15th anniversary (unless I’ve chipped her first, then maybe not). Simply tell us you would like to do this and we will roll out the red carpet for you and celebrate your love publicly and with joy for all the world to see. Never underestimate how God can and does use these small acts of faithfulness to help bring in the kingdom.

Last, behind every issue like marriage is a human being with real needs, fears, hopes, desires, and dreams. We must always remember to embody Christ’s love for all, even when we have to call some to repentance. Here we can learn from our gospel lesson. If you are like me, when we hear folks like John denouncing adultery, we sometimes think this means that John called Herod a miserable rotten sinner who was going straight to hell. But the text does not warrant that interpretation. St. Mark simply reports that John told Herod what he was doing was wrong. Like Jesus, John rarely made it personal, except to the egregiously self-righteous. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Herod still wanted to hear John after he arrested him. 

The point is this. The sexual revolution will continue to produce new casualties and we as Christians must be prepared to minister to them so they too have a safe haven. Most of us are not called to be prophets, although we all can speak prophetically at times. This means that we cannot and should not focus on denouncing things and people. Instead, we are to take our cue from Jesus, who called sinners to repentance by meeting them where they were and inviting them to follow him. We can’t fix folks and their problems. What we can do is to introduce them to the Guy who can, but that won’t likely happen if we are busy telling people they are dirty rotten people who are going to hell, etc. That’s simply not our job. Our job is to embody the love of Christ for all folks, to live our lives in a manner that will offer a compelling and positive reason why folks would want to get to know Jesus. Certainly, we cannot bless what God does not bless. But this does not give us license to reject folks out of hand. 

Yet despite the Bible’s clear-cut teaching about marriage and sex, being faithful to God’s word continues to perplex us in the current climate, in part because of our fuzzy thinking about what constitutes love. Jesus and John understood that real love always acts in the best interest of the beloved, even when their love was rejected, and they acted accordingly. When someone can tell us how supporting something that contradicts God’s original design for men and women is a loving thing to do for people instead of being harmful to them, we too should hop on the sexual revolution bandwagon. But of course that case cannot be made so we won’t.

Instead, if we love folks, we are called to share the Good News of Jesus Christ and show them God’s good intentions for his human creatures by the lives we live, muddled and sloppy as that can be at times, and then to walk with them if they are willing to commit them-selves to really knowing and loving Jesus in ways that are consistent with the historic under-standing and consensus of the Church. When the Church starts doing that, I promise the world will take notice. Some will consequently want to destroy us as Herodias wanted to destroy John when he called her on her sin, and this is where our faithfulness will be severely tested. But others will join us by God’s grace because they see a better way of living, and it is the latter group we must attend to and support, while standing firm against the former.

I do not pretend this is going to be easy work or even straightforward. It will be extremely hard and complex work that will tax us and our faith. But if we are going to be Jesus’ followers who deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him so that he can use us to help build on his foundational kingdom work, it is work we must be willing to do. If we can remember the great praise and promises of God contained in today’s epistle lesson so that we remember we are resurrection people whom God uses despite our warts to manifest his great love for his world, if we remember that God has invited us to be part of his great eternal party that consists of new life and new creation, if we remember God is present with us always, even when we are too blind to see, we can do this work and remain faithful to his word because we 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.