Sermon originally preached on Sunday, July 7, 2013. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their respective links. The matter of God’s power, God’s ability to specifically heal and make himself generally known to us is critically important for our faith. After all, who wants to give ultimate loyalty to an absentee God, if indeed that is what God is (helpful hint: he’s not). For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 2 Kings 5.1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6.1-16; St. Luke 10.1-11, 16-20.

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

In our texts this morning we are given glimpses about what it is like to live (and not live) under God’s power and authority, and I want us to look at what those glimpses can teach us as Christians who strive to live under the authority of the Lord Jesus and in the power of the Spirit. I want to do this by using our OT/gospel lessons as case studies and then drawing on what St. St. Paul and the psalmist have to say.

As we look at whose power and authority are being utilized in our OT lesson, we have a study of contrasts as evidenced by the behavior of the various characters involved. On the one hand we see Naaman, the Syrian commander, who has all the trappings of success by worldly standards and who is the epitome of worldly power, walking away in a rage after being told by Elisha to go dip himself in the Jordan River seven times so that Naaman’s leprosy will be healed. How dare this upstart little prophet refuse to heal him in some spectacular fashion! What an insult to a man of Naaman’s power and authority! Doesn’t Elisha know that Naaman has the power to crush him like a bug? What is Elisha thinking? Welcome to the world of trying to live under your own power and authority. Sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to, no matter how powerful and important you are, because, well, we are only human and cannot control everything that goes on in our lives, much as we try. Naaman would eventually be healed, but on God’s terms, not his.

Likewise, we see Joram, the unnamed king of Israel, who demonstrates, at least in this instance, that he too does not know what it is like to live under God’s authority and power. He sees the Syrian king’s overtures to him as a pretext for war and because Joram’s armies don’t match up with Ben-Hadad’s (the Syrian king), Joram gets more than a little nervous. After all, when you are trying to live under your own power and authority, whether you are a king or a commoner, all that really matters is who has the biggest stick because it is every person for him/herself and in this instance it wasn’t Joram who carried the biggest stick. 

 We can relate to the anger seen here—and the underlying anxiety that often accompanies it—because we too know what it it is like to be faced with no-win situations or have our earnest and heartfelt prayers apparently go unanswered. When either happen, especially with unanswered prayer, we wonder where God is in it all and whether he really cares about us. This tempts us to want to take matters into our own hands, but like Joram discovered, we quickly find out how futile that strategy is because our own power and authority are vastly limited and overstated. As Jesus reminded his followers, who among us can add a single hour to our life by worry (St. Matthew 6.27ff)? But we sure do try!

On the other hand we see how both the unnamed slave girl who was taken captive by the Syrians and the prophet Elisha behave, and we quickly see a stark contrast because they demonstrate that they are living under a very different power and authority—God’s power and authority. We notice how unperturbed they are about the whole thing. The slave girl simply tells her mistress that there is a prophet in Samaria (Israel) who can cure Naaman of his leprosy. No big deal. Just go do it. We notice the same peace about Elisha. Unlike his king, Elisha doesn’t get all hot and bothered by Naaman’s visit or the potentially volatile geopolitical ramifications involved. In fact, Elisha doesn’t even bother to meet this Syrian big shot face-to-face! He simply tells Naaman via a messenger to go, um, dip himself in the Jordan River seven times. 

So what’s the difference? Why did Naaman and Joram get all whacked out over the chain of events as they unfolded while Elisha and the slave girl who suggested that Naaman visit “a prophet in Samaria” did not? The answer, of course, is that the latter two lived under the power and authority of God. They knew the living God, the God of Israel, and they knew God’s track record. In Elisha’s case, he had seen God act through his mentor Elijah and had witnessed many acts of power. There was no doubt in their mind that God is a God who is actively involved in his good but fallen world and who has the power and willingness to work for the good of his people. Do you believe this about God? 

It is important for us to note that this faith in God’s power and authority did not make either Elisha or the slave girl immune from hurts and heartaches that are part and parcel of living in a fallen world. After all, the girl was a slave, captured as a result of warfare, and Elisha knew his fair share of problems as well (see, e.g., 2 Kings 6.24-32). But what was different about these two is that they both believed that God was greater than the evil that sometimes afflicted them and they acted accordingly because they really did know that in the end, the Good Guy wins and in the interim is actively involved for the benefit of his people.

We see this same dynamic of trust and faith in our gospel lesson this morning. There are several points of interest in this story that we could talk about, including the sense of urgency in which Jesus sent out the 70 disciples and the life and death stakes apparently involved in proclaiming God’s kingdom to people. But for our purposes, we note that Jesus told his disciples to expect both good and evil as they proclaimed the kingdom and above all to depend on God to provide for and protect them. After all, wolves eat lambs and if there is not a power greater than their own, it would be absolutely foolish for the 70 to embark on this missionary work. 

The disciples apparently were obedient to Jesus’ commands because St. Luke reports that when they returned they were overjoyed at their unexpected success. But it is important for us to note that they attributed their success to Jesus’ power and authority, not their own, and anyone who has acted on behalf of Jesus and under his authority will know exactly how they felt. Again, this is not to suggest that the disciples did not encounter difficulties and opposition. It is to suggest that they were able to tap into a power far greater than their own to protect them as they proclaimed the Good News of the coming of the kingdom in Jesus’ name. 

But Jesus did not want his newly enthused disciples to focus on power. Yes, he said, they (and we) have power and authority—his power and authority—to defeat the forces of creation arrayed against them (the snakes and scorpions and the forces they represent) as well as the very powers and principalities themselves that are opposed to Jesus and the coming of God’s kingdom. But what is even more important for the 70 and those of us who follow him is to know that God knows us and that nothing can ever really harm us (cf. Romans 8.31-39), i.e., their names (and ours) are written in God’s book of life contained in heaven. Persecution may come, suffering will surely come, and certainly death will come, whether by persecution or otherwise. But none of that matters when we give our life to Jesus and act in the power of the Spirit to proclaim that the kingdom of God is near. Doing so is evidence that we have a life-giving relationship with the Lord of this universe, or what the NT frequently refers to as “eternal life,” and of course that life is available to us right now because we are called to have a living relationship with God through Christ right now (cf. St. John 17.3).

All this points to the secret for living a relatively anxiety-free life as Christians, even as we live in an increasingly hostile culture. The extent to which we can put our trust in and live our life under Jesus’ power and authority rather than our own is the extent to which we will be able to enjoy the peace and confidence that Elisha, the slave girl, and Jesus’ returning disciples did, not to mention countless others across time and culture. As St. St. Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson, the reason for this peace is that we believe that in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has both taken care of the intractable problem of human sin and the alienation and death it causes, and defeated the powers of evil decisively, although that victory has not yet been fully consummated. And as we see in our gospel lesson, when we act as if Jesus is Lord, he will use us to bring his healing love to his broken and hurting world and its people, and in doing so we have the power and authority to overcome even the forces of evil and their boss. That’s what Jesus was talking about when he reported seeing Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. Think about that for a minute. Real forgiveness for our sins and power over evil and all that corrupts. This is power we cannot have on our own and it is literally a game-changer. This doesn’t mean things will automatically go swimmingly well for us or that we will not face great opposition or have to endure terrible suffering for Jesus’ sake. A quick look at St. St. Paul’s life will remind us otherwise. What it does mean is that we have the power of Jesus to help us overcome and transcend the world and the evil in it and that in doing so, we will enjoy God’s love and protection from all that can truly hurt us.

So what does that look like on the ground? Our lessons suggest that telling folks about Jesus and the kingdom is critically important for their sake as well as ours. But I want to focus on what St. St. Paul says to the Galatians, about how we treat each other as part of Jesus’ body, the Church, when the other sins and what kind of attitude we have toward others. If we truly love each other enough to confront each other when we see the other going down a dark path, if we truly love each other enough to bear one another’s burdens instead of devouring or destroying each other, this will catch people’s attention, usually in a good way, and we will be announcing that the kingdom has come. My point is that we can witness very powerfully to the world without ever saying a word (at least initially) by how we treat each other in the power of the Spirit. Every time we resist being haughty or refrain from backbiting and gossiping and other destructive forms of interpersonal behavior, we are sending a powerful message to the world and the dark powers behind them that Jesus is Lord and they are not. 

But the problem, of course, is that we aren’t built that way instinctively or emotionally to bear each others burdens. We are naturally proud and self-centered creatures. As the psalmist reminds us, when things are going well for us, we tend to become delusional and attribute our success to us and our abilities. Of course that is not the case and as the psalmist further reminds us, it often takes an awful turn of events in life to bring us back to reality. That is why humility is always the order of the day for anyone who calls themselves a Christian because like Naaman and Joram, we must learn and acknowledge that we do not have the power or authority to cope with all that is wrong in God’s world, including our own sin and brokenness. We must instead rely on the God of grace and life who calls into existence things that are not, who gives life to the dead, who heals and restores us, and who lives in and among us in the person of the Holy Spirit. When we do, of course, God gives us the power to develop the needed humility to change how we see ourselves and how we treat others who, like us, are made in God’s image and who are therefore worthy of our love and respect. In other words, God gives us the power to develop the needed humility to act in Jesus’ power and under his authority. 

Are you living that kind of Spirit-filled life and the peace that usually accompanies it? Are you helping others here to bear their burdens? Do you care enough about others that you are willing to confront them lovingly when you see them sin? Do you have the humility to allow others to do likewise to you? If you are enjoying these gifts, then give thanks to God for them and by all means keep using them! If you are not, ask the Lord of life to give you these gifts and the needed sweat equity to implement them, and then expect your prayers to be answered. After all, the kingdom is at stake and we are called to be builders of it for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the world!

In closing, here’s a quick test to help you determine whose power and authority you are living under. When things go south, at the end of the day do you say Jesus is Lord? I’m not talking about uttering a trite cliche. I’m talking about making a statement based on a real relationship with the living Lord and the firm knowledge that God has the ability and willingness to act on our behalf for the good of his world and coming kingdom. This knowledge isn’t wishful thinking but rather is based on God’s track record as revealed in Scripture, in your own life, and in the lives of God’s people. If you cannot say that Jesus is Lord when things look hopeless, it suggests that you have decided (knowingly or not) to limp through life on your own power and authority and without much hope. But if you can say Jesus is Lord and really mean it, you will surely know that you have Good News, now and for all eternity. 

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

Sermon originally preached on Sunday, June 27, 2021. 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 touches on an important topic for Christians because when we find ourselves in dark valleys, our trials can rob us of our faith, especially if we perceive God to be absent or uncaring. So we must be careful to seek the Lord’s grace and power in those dark times and remember the Father promises to use our suffering as a means to make us more like Christ. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel 1.1, 17-27; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 8.7-15; St. Mark 5.21-43.

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

We hold our quarterly healing service today. Most of you will come forward for us to anoint you with healing oil, lay our hands on you, and pray for you according to your needs/requests. Some of you will find immediate healing and relief. Others of you will not. What are we to make of that? Are the ones who have prayers answered like the woman of great faith in our gospel story today? Do those whose prayers remain ostensibly unanswered lack sufficient faith? These are vexing questions and deserve our attention. This is what I want us to look at this morning.

Out of the depths, O Lord, I cry to you! If you have lived long enough you can relate to the opening line of the psalmist from our psalm lesson this morning. Life can weigh us down to the point where we feel like we are drowning. Some of our parish family are struggling with chronic illness and devastating loss, this despite their fervent prayers for healing/recovery. It’s heartbreaking to watch. We all know others who cry out for God’s healing power or relief from a host of evil maladies that weigh them down terribly and yet apparently find no relief. On the other hand, the Lord recently granted what was effectively a healing miracle to a woman for whom our intercessors have been praying. Her doctors were convinced she had pancreatic cancer, a death sentence as we all know. But there were fervent prayers asking for healing and when the tests came back, it was discovered she had lymphoma, which while still cancer is highly treatable with a fairly good prognosis. The doctors were stunned. Welcome to the challenge of living in a good world cursed by God over human sin and rebellion. We experience incredible beauty of all kinds living alongside incredible ugliness of all kinds, and it can make us crazy. Out of the depths, O Lord, I cry to you! Indeed.

And this dynamic, along with the questions it raises, is not new or unique to our day. We see it in our gospel lesson this morning. St. Mark sandwiches two stories of healing, faith, and fear together for our edification. What is he trying to tell us? Surely the woman with the chronic bleeding problem had prayed to God for healing and help. She had suffered under many doctors and found no relief or healing. We all know or have heard of folks who struggle likewise today despite our spectacular medical advancements and knowledge that often produce phenomenal results. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think this poor woman had prayed Psalm 130 regularly as part of her entreaties to the Lord. Not only was her bleeding a medical problem, it was also a social problem because it rendered her unclean and she was not supposed to even be there in the crowd with the others. Yet there she was, trembling in fear over the possibility that Jesus and/or the crowds would turn on her because of her unclean condition. 

Then there was the leader of a local synagogue whose daughter was desperately ill to the point of death. Jairus risked scorn and humiliation reaching out to this itinerant teacher who had on more than one occasion come into conflict with Jairus’ counterparts over matters of faith and practice. Yet here he was, desperate for our Lord to come and save his daughter. He too had likely prayed Psalm 130 in desperation before reaching out to Christ for help. 

So what is St. Mark trying to tell us in these gripping stories of faith, fear, and healing? We start with the woman. Here we see a person of great faith. She was convinced that if she could just touch Jesus’ clothing, she would be healed. Indeed, our Lord confirmed that her great faith had healed her once she did touch his clothes. So is St. Mark telling us that healing depends on faith? After all, we’ve all heard a version of this claim before. Doesn’t this scene prove that it’s true? Not so fast my jumping-to-wrong-conclusions friends! While Christ did tell the woman that her faith had healed her, it was clearly his power that had caused the healing. Notice the remarkable statement Jesus made before he told her that her faith had made her well. As soon as she touched him, Christ felt power go out from him and he said so. It was his healing power, aided but not dependent on the woman’s great faith, that had caused her to be healed. Furthermore, the woman’s faith wasn’t perfect. After all she approached Jesus from behind because she was afraid. But she was also desperate and her faith overcame her fear. Sound familiar? So let none of us hold the mistaken idea that we are healed (or not healed) based on the amount of faith we have. That’s bad theology, my beloved, because it puts the focus on us and our powerlessness, instead of the Lord and his power. Also in this poignant scene of healing, faith, and fear, St. Mark surely wants us to see that even with all of life’s pressures, even when it feels like we are about to drown in the sea of life with all of its brokenness, sickness, suffering, and sorrow, we can approach Jesus and he will make room for us because of his great love for us. Christ reflects his Father’s huge heart for his wayward children.

But what if healing doesn’t come, at least in the manner we ask or according to our timetable and expectations? Does that mean Christ rejects us? Hardly, as the story of Jairus’ daughter attests. As with the bleeding woman, St. Mark paints a picture of fear and faith. As we have seen, Jairus was desperate in approaching Jesus. And then the awful news came: your 12 year old daughter is dead. Don’t trouble the teacher anymore. But Jesus isn’t just any teacher. He is the Son of God, God become human, who entered our world to heal it and us from the ravages of our sin and rebellion and the Evil unleashed by it. And so our Lord told Jairus not to be afraid, just as he had told the woman. Then with intimate details that surely indicate an eye-witness recounting, our Lord raised the dead girl back to life, pointing us to Christ’s resurrection and our own one day. As St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, those who are baptized into Christ share in his death and resurrection (Rom 6.3-5). In this story, we see a foretaste of that reality. 

So what are we to take from all this? How do these stories help us grapple with the reality that sometimes God does not answer our prayers for healing in the manner we ask or expect? Let us start by acknowledging that more often than not, God does answer our prayers for healing. Think about the times in your life God has healed you from illnesses of all kinds. If you are hard pressed to come up with personal examples, ask any of our intercessors—Jeanne, Julie, Lisa, Tucker, myself—and we will give you lots of examples of God’s healing in answer to fervent prayers. Or ask Archbishop Ben Kwashi of Nigeria, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and now is free of it as a result of many fervent prayers. We dare not deny this reality and focus on what God apparently doesn’t  do for us. 

But let us also acknowledge there is a mystery and an enigma to healing (or lack thereof) because we all know of instances where our heartfelt prayers have apparently gone unanswered. Because we are not God with God’s eternal perspective and omniscient knowledge, we must be very reticent about offering “answers” to our “why” questions. Let us have the humility to acknowledge that we will never know all the reasons this side of the grave, if ever. We live in a fallen world ravaged by human sin and the evil it unleashes. As the psalmist acknowledges in today’s lesson, there is a relationship between illness and sin. If God held us accountable for all our sins, who could survive? The answer, of course, is no one! Part of what we therefore must understand is that God shows his great love and mercy in healing any of us to begin with because none of us deserve that.

We know this is true because we have seen the cross of Jesus Christ and we believe that Christ died for our sins so that we could finally be healed or saved, i.e., we know the Father’s great love for us. Did you know that the Greek NT word for healing and salvation, soz?, is the same word? There’s a reason for that because unless Christ saves us by his precious blood, we have no hope of ever being ultimately healed. So let us acknowledge as God’s beloved children that there is a mystery to unanswered prayer. When we are confronted with that, let us turn in faith and remember God’s mighty acts of power in our lives and the lives of his people. For Christians, the first thing we should always ponder is Christ’s death and resurrection because they testify about God’s great love, mercy, and grace toward us. They literally witness to our future. As St. Mark has shown us, faith is an important conduit through which God’s power works for our benefit. Remembering God’s mighty acts of healing and rescue remind us that God has the power to heal us and loves us enough to have acted decisively on our behalf when he became human to die and be raised again. When the floodwaters of life and/or illness surround us we must be intentional in our remembering and turn to each other to be reminded of this truth. God will surely use our efforts to sustain us. 

And let’s also be clear about the nature of healing so that we can keep things in their proper perspective. What happened to the bleeding woman and Jairus’ daughter after Christ healed them? What happened to Lazarus after Christ raised him from the dead? What will happen to us if Christ chooses to answer our prayers and heal us completely? They died and so will we barring Christ’s return before our mortal death. My point is that all physical healing this side of the grave is temporary at best. As the story of Jairus’ daughter reminds us, our full and complete healing will not occur until Christ returns to raise us from the dead and bring in God’s new creation in full. Until then, all healing is only temporary. This is not to suggest that we shouldn’t desire to be healed or mourn when our prayers for healing apparently go unanswered. What I am suggesting is that we need to keep healing in its eternal perspective and remember that we will not be healed in full until we have our new resurrection bodies. In the meantime, we must be strong in our faith and learn to trust Christ in any and every circumstance because only Christ has the power of life and true healing. 

So how do we keep our faith strong? As we’ve seen, we need to remember God’s love and mighty works on behalf of his people, on your behalf and mine. We do this best when we learn the story of God’s rescue plan for us and God’s creation. That means we read our Bible regularly and we talk about those stories regularly. Second, we worship together regularly and come to the Lord’s table each week to feed on his precious body and blood. When we do so, we unite ourselves with the risen Christ in a most powerful way and he can more effectively minister to us. Ideally we should feed on our Lord everyday. When that isn’t possible, we feed on him through reading and study of the Scriptures and through prayer, and we do this individually and together because we are the family of God and families take care of each other. Doing these things also remind us of the nature of God’s character. Many of us have a faulty notion that God hates us and is out to get us. Refusing to answer our prayers for healing is one way for God to punish us. But there is no way we can read today’s gospel lesson and hold that mistaken notion. God loves us so much that he became human to die for us to deal with our sin that separates us from him. In other words, God became human to heal us. An abusive Father would not do that, my beloved, and any such thinking frankly comes from our darkened minds and/or the Evil One himself. So let us praise God when our prayers for healing are answered, always having a grateful and humble heart. And let us join together to mourn for and support each other as David did for Saul and Jonathon in our OT lesson when our prayers apparently go unanswered. God will honor our efforts to persevere in faith together because our faith opens us up to his healing and saving Presence. This in turn helps us trust in God, even in the face of unanswered prayer. We worship and love a God who has rescued us from the ultimate illness of Death. Let us learn to trust his love, goodness, and power completely, even when we don’t understand it or observe it in action in ways we can comprehend. He will never let us down or abandon us. How do I know this? How can you know this? Because Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. 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 June 12, 2016. 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. Forgiveness is hard, and in my experience accepting Christ’s forgiveness can ofttimes be even harder. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 1 Kings 21.1-21a; Psalm 5.1-8; Galatians 2.15-21; St. Luke 7.36-8.3.

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

In our epistle lesson this morning, St. Paul talks about Christians being justified by our faith in Christ. In other words, we are put right with God and declared to be not guilty for the sins we have committed. But I suspect for many of us, this means little to nothing. After all, justification is a legal term and a rather clinical one at that. Moreover, we tend to talk about being justified by faith in Christ in the abstract. It just doesn’t hit home for a lot of us. So what does justification look like on the ground and why should we care? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

In his letter to the Roman churches, St. Paul wrote that we should, “consider the kindness and sternness of God” (Romans 11.22). It is important that we keep the two attributes in balance because if we ignore the former we have a God who is a raging tyrant, angry and vindictive, waiting to strike us down for the slightest mistake. We see the sternness of God in our OT lesson. Ahab, the king of Israel, resorts to deceit and murder to get what he wants, namely Naboth’s plot of land. The result? God sends his prophet Elijah to condemn Ahab to death for his sin. 

We also hear the psalmist in our lesson this morning talk about a God who takes no pleasure in wickedness and who can countenance no evil, a God who abhors the deceitful and bloodthirsty, and who hates all who work wickedness. If we let these attributes stand alone, it is not a pretty picture of God we have. It is a terrifying one, and we should rightly be terrified at the prospect of meeting this God. Sadly, many folks have grown up knowing this false, one-dimensional god who is all anger and has no love for his image-bearing creatures. 

But neither should we just consider God’s kindness without also considering God’s sternness because then we get a doting old grandpa who really doesn’t care about what the kiddies do with their lives or God’s creation. As we just saw, sin and evil do matter to God because they corrupt God’s good world and dehumanize his image-bearing creatures whom God created to run his beautiful world. So the point is, we have to keep both the kindness and sternness of God in mind if we want to know God’s true character.

But here’s the rub. I suspect many if not most of us focus more on the sternness of God than on God’s kindness. Like David in Psalm 51, we know our transgressions all too well and our sin is ever before us, i.e., we find it hard to forgive ourselves, try as we might. And if we can’t forgive ourselves, how can God? This, combined with the fact that many of us were taught that God is more stern than kind, and fundamentally hostile to us, can produce no small amount of personal anxiety. We walk around waiting for God to drop the hammer on us because we are such rotten people and are terrified about what awaits us when we die. The writer of Hebrews sums it up nicely for us: It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10.31). If you are such a person, then listen carefully and ask the Holy Spirit to give you ears to hear and a heart to believe as I continue because I’ve got some really Good News for you.

To be sure, evil and sin are offensive to God. As we have seen, God created this world and its creatures good, and God created humans to run his world on God’s behalf. When we do that well, things cannot go better for us. We can only find real and lasting happiness when we live our lives according to God’s creative purposes for us. Sadly, however, most of us didn’t get that memo and we seek to create our own happiness, which often conflicts with God’s creative purposes and intentions, and God finds that offensive. Not because God is an ogre and hates us, but precisely because God loves us and wants the best for us. God knows that when our relationship with him gets disrupted and we find ourselves alienated from him, that sickness, madness, anxiety, and ultimately death enter into the picture and that’s not why God created us!

So what to do? Humans have a rich history of trying to play God and create our own failed solutions to the problems we have created and the alienation we experience with God our Father. So God took the initiative to end our alienation and reverse sin and evil in the world. God did that, of course, by becoming human and dying on a cross for us so that God could rightly condemn our sins without having to condemn us. Not only that, but as the NT writers affirm, God conquered evil and death, replacing both with light and life in Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is the faith St. Paul talks about in our epistle lesson, a faith that causes us to be put right in God’s eyes right here and now, a faith that allows us to know that we will not be condemned at the great final judgment at history’s end. That’s the logic of justification.

But as we have seen, this is all rather clinical and abstract. It really doesn’t get at why God did all this for us. But if you paid attention to our epistle lesson, St. Paul tells us. In what is probably our earliest statement about the doctrine of atonement, in which we are reconciled to God through the blood of Christ, St. Paul writes these breathtaking words: The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me (and you and you and you). These words speak of the cross as an act of love, and not simply a cold legal transaction. They speak of arms outstretched in love, and a heart bursting for love. They speak of the self-giving love offered to the undeserving beloved, you and me, so that we might rediscover (or perhaps discover for the first time) the true heart of the Father. If you want to know the kindness of God, look no further than the cross. On it, the sternness of God was satisfied and we were saved from evil, sin, and death because of it. It is the only way we can escape and find new life, new hope, and new and fresh forgiveness.

Yet even God’s kindness revealed to us on the cross, wondrous and comforting as it is, still is rather abstract. What does the Father’s love and forgiveness look like on the ground? Can we find it in the living of our days? If so, how? To find answers to these questions we look at a couple of examples from our readings this morning. First we see that even wicked old King Ahab found God’s kindness. Hear the rest of the story:

(Indeed, there was no one like Ahab, who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord, urged on by his wife Jezebel. He acted most abominably in going after idols, as the Amorites had done, whom the Lord drove out before the Israelites.)

When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes and put sackcloth over his bare flesh; he fasted, lay in the sackcloth, and went about dejectedly. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite: “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster in his days; but in his son’s days I will bring the disaster on his house” (1 Kings 21.25-29)

Apparently even the worst of the worst kings, the very man who, because he was a king, should have embodied the love of God for his people but didn’t, could find God’s kindness when he humbled himself before the sternness of God. That speaks volumes about the heart of God!

 Next we turn to our gospel lesson this morning. Remember who Jesus is as we look at this story. Let the scene rise on your mind. Jesus is invited to dine with a Pharisee. St. Luke doesn’t tell us explicitly that things were a bit tense from the beginning, but as the story unfolds it is clear that Jesus didn’t have a lot of fans dining with him. Perhaps Simon the Pharisee had heard Jesus previously and was skeptical about all this love and grace stuff that he taught and demonstrated. After all, if you wanted to remain pure, you had to stay away from sinners and treat them like the losers they are. So here was this wandering preacher from Galilee, rocking people’s boats and moving their cheese with all this talk about God’s healing love and forgiveness. We know Simon wasn’t completely warm to Jesus because he didn’t offer Jesus water to wash his feet or oil to anoint his head, both common courtesies of the day for invited guests. Neither was there a kiss of peace, which was also extended to invited guests. 

As they are eating, a woman enters Simon’s house and crashes the party. Apparently it was the custom of that day to allow access to a meal in honor of a major teaching figure like Jesus. And this is where the fun and scandal began. St. Luke doesn’t tell us anything about the woman, only that she was a notorious sinner. St. Luke doesn’t even name her sin, only that it was well-known about town and her reputation preceded her. We get that because we have peeps with similar reps in our little congregation like Carl, Dr. SAC Collins, and Ruby Sue. We know what we’re dealing with here!

Now the scandal wasn’t necessarily the woman’s presence, although that would have made good folks like Simon uncomfortable. No, the scandal was that the woman apparently came to anoint Jesus. But she starts to cry because she apparently had experienced the real love and forgiveness that emanated from Jesus. We aren’t told how this came about. Perhaps she heard our Lord preach. Or perhaps she had a private encounter with him that went unrecorded. It really doesn’t matter because the fact is, we are looking at a notorious sinner who had found the love of God pulsing through Jesus and it affected her in a massive way. 

Tears of joy and gratitude are now washing Jesus’ feet and to the horror of the guests, she lets down her hair, something that decent women would never do in public, to dry her tears. After all this, she finally gets around to anointing Jesus’ feet with oil, itself a costly and extravagant act. If the oil was nard, it would have cost a year’s wages for one pound. This was no small gift she was giving Jesus! As any good self-righteous person would, Simon takes offense at the scene. Any thought that Jesus was a prophet was immediately dismissed. This dude’s no prophet. He doesn’t know the kind of woman he’s dealing with. He’s letting a whore touch him!

Not so fast, Simon, Jesus replies. I came to your house and you offered me none of the usual courtesies. In failing to do so, you showed me your heart, and is it ever hard! This woman has done for me what you should have done, but for very different reasons. She has come to me in humility and love, and look at the extravagance of her love! Because she has found forgiveness, it has changed her and turned her into a real lover. Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven and you are seeing the results of that forgiveness. How can you possibly embody the love of God for all people, irrespective of who they are or what they have done, if you shun them and condemn them outright? Jesus could have also told Simon to watch as Jesus went to the cross to die for men just like him. This is how God’s love must be embodied.

And then turning to the woman, Jesus tells her: Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace. Your faith has saved you. It is crucial we hear these words because underlying them is a massive authority—the authority of God himself. Think about it. Here we are, seeing God himself in the person of Jesus, offering forgiveness and love to apparently one of the worst of the worst in that town and in that day. This is what amazing grace and love look like on the ground, my beloved.

There are three things I want us to think about in closing. First, notice that Jesus didn’t condone the woman’s sins. He simply forgave her. By all worldly standards, she was unworthy to approach him and unworthy to be forgiven, but she was forgiven anyway. And because she knew her sins had been forgiven in a real and substantial way, her heart was bursting with love and gratitude and humility. This always happens when we really experience God’s love and forgiveness in Christ. The sternness was there in that Jesus did not mollycoddle her. But at the end of the day, there was forgiveness offered first rather than condemnation, thanks be to God!

Second, in this story we find instruction on how to both treat others and ourselves. How do you treat folks who are known sinners? Do you shun them and judge them and look down on them like Simon did? Or do you welcome them into your world so that you can embody the love of God for them like Jesus did? And while we are at it, do you allow the love of God made known in Jesus to work on you so that you can experience and really know God’s healing forgiveness? The woman’s story was no fluke. When we dare have the faith and trust in Christ to let him into our deepest, darkest closets and ask him to forgive us and love us, despite who we sometimes are and what we sometimes do, the woman’s story and the testimony of countless others all speak to the reality and power of Jesus’ healing and forgiving love for us. The only hearts that Jesus opposes are the ones like Simon’s that are self-righteous, haughty and proud, and judgmental. That kind of heart doesn’t even think it needs to be forgiven and our Lord obliges reluctantly. Simon the self-righteous found himself outside looking in on a scene that we all desperately hope to be part of. But even he could be forgiven with a dose of humility!

This leads us to my final point. Stop for a moment and put yourself in the woman’s place. I’m going to pause and give you some time to do that. Approach Jesus with your wounds and hurts and fears. What in your life desperately needs to feel the healing touch of our Lord’s forgiving love? Lay it out before Jesus and don’t be afraid. Let his healing love wash over you like refreshing waters. Hear him tell you the same thing he told the woman. Your sins are forgiven because I love you and gave myself for you so that you could find new life and hope and peace. Go in that peace. I love you. I want you to be with me where I am. Let my love and forgiveness heal you and transform you so that you can do for others what I am doing for you. Will you trust me? Will you dare love yourself enough to believe I can and want to love and forgive you? [Silence] When you experience Jesus’ healing love, you will surely know that 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 written for Trinity 2C, Sunday, June 26, 2022, but never preached. Nevertheless it focuses on a topic critical to our Christian Faith. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below (hopefully Logos will update its plugin soon—are you listening, Logos???) before reading the sermon.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 2 Kings 2.1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77; Galatians 5.1, 13-25; St. Luke 9.51-62.

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

This morning I want to focus on our psalm lesson. What can we learn from it? How can it help us in our faith journey? Before we answer these questions, I want to read the first part of the psalm again from a different translation as I think it brings added clarity to the psalmist’s complaint:

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. You don’t let me sleep. I am too distressed even to pray! I think of the good old days, long since ended, when my nights were filled with joyful songs. I search my soul and ponder the difference now. Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will he never again be kind to me? Is his unfailing love gone forever? Have his promises permanently failed? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he slammed the door on his compassion? And I said, “This is my fate; the Most High has turned his hand against me” (Psalm 77.1-10, NLT).

So have you ever cried out to Lord in despair? If you are old enough you surely have. Some of us cry out to the Lord in despair over the state of our nation and the strident voices and lawlessness that are becoming increasingly prevalent. Some of us cry out to the Lord in despair over the “joys” of aging or over a catastrophic illness or over the desperate situation in which we might find ourselves or our loved ones. Whatever the reason for our cries, like the psalmist we who have a relationship with God search for him in hopes that God will comfort us or heal us or relieve our despair. After all, God is all-powerful, right? He raises the dead and creates things out of nothing. Nothing is too hard for him! And indeed, oftentimes God answers our prayers and we then proceed to go about our business acting like we don’t need God at all. But sometimes like the psalmist experiences, God seems to be strangely or even terrifyingly absent. We search for healing or peace or comfort or a sense of God’s presence and find none. If God’s perceived absence lasts too long our doubts and fears can grow like the psalmist’s did. We can’t sleep. We are overwhelmed with longing, desperately wanting God to answer our prayers. And then we ask the awful questions. Has God abandoned us forever? Has God rejected us forever? And more personally, has God stopped loving me because I am so rotten? In the past God has answered my prayers for help and has comforted me. But now? Where is God? Why doesn’t he hear my desperate prayers? Why will God not show me any compassion? All these questions can lead the psalmist and us to this terrible conclusion (not to mention a crisis of faith): God has turned his hand against me, i.e., God finally sees me as I really am, a sinner undeserving of his love and grace, and refuses to help me. Anyone here ever gotten to this point in your relationship with God? I did 22 years ago and I almost took my life as a result. This is very serious stuff about which we are talking and if you are in that boat right now, I encourage you to reach out to your priest, your family, and/or your friends, especially if they are Christians, because God can and does use human agency to heal and comfort us.

St. Paul understood how this all works. In our epistle lesson he reminds us in no uncertain terms that our sin-sickness causes alienation between God and his image-bearers and that alienation can produce the kind of emotional and spiritually dark state the psalmist experienced and we experience, whatever the issue was and is. So what to do? The psalmist along with the rest of Scripture tell us. We are to remember. We are to remember God’s promises to his image-bearing creatures in general and his people Israel in particular, promises to act on our behalf, to free us from our slavery to the power of Sin and our own fallen nature with its corrupted desires. St. Paul catalogues a sample of the fruit of our sinful nature in our epistle lesson: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and all the other fruit of our alienation from God and each other that our slavery to Sin produces. But the psalmist remembers God’s power to act on our behalf, to free us from all kinds of slavery. He remembers especially God’s mighty act of deliverance for his people Israel when he brought them out of their slavery in Egypt and through the dark and terrible waters of the Red Sea to eventual freedom. God did this. God acted in Israel’s history because God loves his people and is gracious to them, even though they are unworthy of his great gifts. Likewise with us as God’s people in Christ, the reconstituted Israel.

Why else would the psalmist in his desperation seek to remember God’s mighty acts in the past? Why must we do likewise? Because they are proof positive that God does not abandon his people; rather, God acts on our behalf, undeserving as we are, because God loves us and is gracious toward us. Israel did not deserve its liberation. The people demonstrated that when they started grumbling about wanting to return to their slavery almost immediately after God liberated them! You can read that sad and compelling story in Exodus and Numbers. Nevertheless, God acted to free them, even though God knew beforehand what they were going to do. 

For Christians, of course, we are to remember God’s mighty acts of love and power demonstrated enigmatically on Calvary but definitively when God raised Christ from the dead. In Christ’s Death and Resurrection, God did a much greater thing than he did for Israel at the Exodus, jaw-dropping as the latter was. In Christ’s Death and Resurrection God freed us from our slavery to Sin’s power, the stuff St. Paul spoke about above, and defeated the darkest, most evil power of all—Death. But God the Father did not stop there. As Christ told his disciples at the Last Supper, after he had Ascended, he would not leave them (or us) as orphans and without hope or God’s power in this mortal life. No, we have the unseen Risen and Ascended Christ interceding for us at God’s right hand, NT language that proclaims Jesus is Lord over all, as well as the Holy Spirit who makes Christ available to us and intercedes on our behalf, even when we can only groan in desperation, not knowing what to pray for or how to ask for something. All of these gifts from God are real and they demonstrate God’s love for us and his willingness to act on our behalf. 

As a result we are no longer slaves to our fallen, sinful selves. To be sure our fallen nature rears its ugly head from time to time. After all, the very act of doubting God’s love for us is a product of our alienation between God and each other! But as St. Paul tells us in our epistle lesson, God does not leave us to our own devices. No, we are set free from our slavery to Sin and ruled by the Holy Spirit who empowers us and helps us to live and be as God created us to live and be, surely the mightiest of all God’s acts. The proof is in the pudding of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Whenever these fruit manifest themselves in our lives, we have proof that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in us, i.e., God is present and active in our lives, even when we consciously experience his absence. So like the psalmist, we as God’s people in Christ need to remember how God has acted on our behalf and how God continues to manifest his power in our lives, unlikely as that power appears to the unbelieving world. This is why the psalmist and the rest of Scripture tell us to remember. Why God seems to be strangely absent in our lives at times nobody knows. Why God doesn’t answer our prayers as we ask or seems to ignore our desperate situations nobody knows. What Scripture does tell us is that in all the ambiguities and mysteries and unanswered questions, God’s absence isn’t necessarily a sign God has abandoned us or is punishing us, although the latter is sometimes true, especially when we go off the rails for extended periods of time. But God never rejects a humble and contrite heart. Ever. God never rejects our sincere penance. Ever. God never ultimately rejects us unless we ultimately reject God. Christ’s Death on the cross is proof of that, thanks be to God!

So what do we do when we are in desperate times, wondering if God has abandoned us? Well, many of us try to tough it out on our own. Instead of remembering that God is faithful to his people, we seek human solutions to alleviate our desperation. How’s that working out for you? I know it never has worked for me. No, as we have seen, we are called to remember, both collectively and individually, and then to rely on each other to remind ourselves that God never leaves us alone. In other words, we are to love each other and be there for each other when we sense God’s absence, just the way all healthy families help each other in good times and bad. Never underestimate the power of godly friends to help lighten your load as they walk with you through the dark valleys of life. The very act of remembering and relying on each other help us focus on God instead of ourselves. It reminds us to be patient and to trust God to act on our behalf in God’s good time and ways. That’s not easy for us god-wannabes but it is the only real option we have if we are not to totally lose heart and hope. When we remember, we are reminded that God is not some inconsistent ogre who delights in torturing us or who behaves erratically toward us as we do toward God and each other. God loved us enough to become human and die for us to free us from his just condemnation and an eternity apart from him, even while we were still sinners and his enemies. If God loves us that much, why would God abandon us now in our darkest hours? St. Paul comes to this exact conclusion in his letter to the Romans: 

If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since [God] did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? [Therefore] I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8.31-32, 38-39, NLT).

In this mortal life there are always going to be desperate times. When those desperate times occur in our lives Scripture tells us to double down in our efforts to focus on God and put our trust in him, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how dark the valley. We do this in part because God has enigmatically ordained that godly suffering, not suffering that results from our sin and folly, is a sure path to our redemption! God may not rescue us as we expect or hope, but we all have the assurance that God has indeed rescued us from the gravest danger of all: Death and eternal separation from him. God has broken the power of Sin and Death and promises us an eternity with him in his new world, a world without Evil or Sin or Death, a world that is full of perfect life and health forever. Don’t let your fears and weaknesses rob you of the spectacular hope contained in this promise, my beloved; keep your eyes on the prize won for you! Remember instead God’s willingness and ability to act on our behalf and for our benefit. 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, June 21, 2020. It remains as relevant today as it did then, perhaps more so. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links (hopefully Logos will get RefTagger fixed soon—are you listening Logos???) before you read the sermon.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 21.8-21; Psalm 86.1-10, 16-17; Romans 6.1b-11; Matthew 10.24-39.

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

Today we continue our preaching series on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, focusing on our epistle lesson today. You recall that last week we looked at St. Paul’s astonishing teaching about God’s great love for us made known in Christ. There he told us that while we were still God’s enemies, hostile toward God and hopelessly alienated from him because of our slavery to the power of Sin, God moved decisively on our behalf to end our hostility toward him by becoming human (or in the words of St. Paul, by sending his Son) to die for us, thereby freeing us from our slavery to Sin’s power and its ultimate and inevitable outcome—death. We are now reconciled to God and called, in part, to be ministers of reconciliation, reflecting God’s great justice, love, mercy, and grace to the world that desperately needs to hear it even while it is vehemently opposed to God and his gospel. Today we look at what St. Paul has to say about the process by which sin is defeated in the life of believers. Before we do that, however, we must look at the passage leading up to our epistle lesson today which the lectionary (bless its pointy little head) has left out like it did last week because it provides the immediate context for St. Paul’s teaching in chapter 6. Hear now the rest of Romans 5:

When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come. But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ. And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.

Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone. Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.

God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5.12-21).

In this passage, quickly, St. Paul speaks of two Adams. The first Adam, our first human ancestor, rebelled against God and that resulted in humans getting thrown out of paradise and losing their intimate and life-giving relationship with God so that instead of being God’s children and faithful image-bearers who ran God’s world on God’s behalf, we now were hostile and alienated from God. As St. Paul reminded us sin leads to death and eternal separation from God, something God found intolerable as he demonstrated when he sent his Son, the second Adam, to die for us to rescue us from that fate. The law magnified our slavery to the power of Sin (or sin’s rule) more and more but in Christ, God’s grace, or undeserved mercy, reigned even more because only God is greater than the power of Sin and so only God can free us from our slavery to its power. That raised the logical question. Should Christians sin more and more so that grace can abound more and more? The 18^th century German poet, Heinrich Heine famously (or infamously depending on your perspective) put it another way when on his deathbed he was asked by a priest if he thought God would forgive his sins. Heine replied, “Of course God will forgive me; that’s his job.” Right.

Now in our epistle lesson, St. Paul anticipates this rejoinder to his teaching about sin and grace and gives us his answer (this clearly wasn’t St. Paul’s first rodeo). He asks rhetorically if we should “keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace?” Of course not, he roars in reply! We’ve died to sin. How can we keep on living in it?? Now if you are like me, you read this passage and are tempted to scratch your head in puzzlement. You want to say to him, “St. Paul, are you crazy? I still sin. I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. You even address this phenomenon in chapter 7 of Romans. How can you say I’ve died to sin?” To which St. Paul would reply, “It’s not about you stupid, it’s about the power of God at work in you” (well, he probably wouldn’t have called you stupid, but this gave me an opportunity to do so, which always makes me feel better about myself so I’m good with it).

St. Paul knew very well that being united with Christ does not make one a sinless person. Like Father John Wesley, he would have said sin remains but it no longer reigns in our lives. But that is not what St. Paul is talking about. He is echoing what he wrote to the Colossians when he said that “[The Father] has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom [from the power of Sin] and forgave our sins” (Colossians 1.13-14). This is the power of God at work in us to rescue us from Sin and Death and bring us into the kingdom of his promised new creation that one day will come in full at Christ’s return. God did this for us out of his great love for us. We did nothing to deserve this gift nor can we earn it. In our own right we are utterly broken, unworthy and incapable of living as God’s true image-bearers. This is what the power of Sin has done to us. But God loves us too much to let us go the way of death and extinction and so God has acted decisively in Christ to break Sin’s power over us on the cross and transfer us into his new world via Christ’s resurrection. This is what grace looks like. We can’t earn it nor do we deserve a lick of it, but it is ours for the taking because of the power and love of God. What God wants, God gets and nothing, not even the power of Sin or the dark powers, can overcome God’s power made known and available to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen? It’s a done deal, even if it may not feel like that to us. And let’s be real. We are all about feelings these days, corrupted and disordered as those feelings might be. But Christ’s Death and Resurrection were not feelings. They were and are the objective reality. They made known supremely the power of God to intervene in our lives on our behalf to rescue us from ourselves, our foolishness, our folly, and our slavery to the power of Sin and Death. That is why St. Paul tells us to reckon ourselves dead to Sin. By this he meant for us to do the math, so to speak. When we do the math, we discover the sum of what is already there. For example, when we count the cash in the register, we learn what was there already. We don’t create a new reality; rather we affirm the existing reality. Christ has died for us and been raised from the dead to proclaim God’s victory over Sin and Death, and when we are united with Christ in a living relationship with him, St. Paul promises here that we too share in Christ’s reality, whether it feels like we do or not. Again, notice nothing is required of us except an informed (or reckoned) faith. We look at the reality and calculate it to be true so that we learn to trust the promise that has not yet been fulfilled is also true. 

How does this happen? St. Paul doesn’t tell us how, only that it does happen beginning with our baptism. When we are baptized we share in Christ’s Death and are buried with him so that Sin’s power over us is broken (not to be confused with living a sin-free life, something that is not mortally possible because as St. Paul reminds us in verses. 6-7, we are not totally free from sin until death). We have died to Sin and can no longer live in it because we have been transferred into a new reality, God’s new world that was inaugurated when God raised Christ from the dead. So in our baptism we begin our new life with Christ (cf. 2 Cor 5.17), flawed as that might look at times. What St. Paul is talking about here is a matter of will. In ch. 8, he will talk about the power and presence of the Spirit in our lives to help us live after the manner of our Lord. Here St. Paul simply tells us that we have been given a great gift in the Death and Resurrection of Christ and through our relational union with him. If we have been given such a great and life-saving gift, why would we not together want to live our lives in the manner Christ calls us to live them? Today is Fathers’ Day and most of us who were/are blessed with good fathers seek to live in ways that honor our fathers or their memories. If we do that for folks who cannot give us life or raise us from the dead, how much more should we want to live our lives in ways that bring honor to God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ? This is what dying to Sin looks like. It often looks messy on the ground, but because it is the power of God at work in us and for us, it is a done deal nevertheless. If this isn’t Good News, I don’t know what is.

So we have died with Christ and are raised with him. We’ve been delivered from the dark dominion of slavery to the dominion of freedom and life and light, the Father’s kingdom. Now what? Well, for starters it means we are no longer afraid. We have peace with God, real peace, a peace that was terribly costly to God, and we also have life that cannot be taken from us. Sure our mortal bodies will die, but that’s nothing more than a transition. We have no reason to fear death, even the worst of sinners who have genuinely given their life to Christ, because we believe him to be the Resurrection and the Life (John 11.25). It means we reject living our lives in the darkness of sin. It means we reject false realities and are willing to speak out boldly against them. It means we are willing to love even the most unloveable people (and believe me, we are seeing more and more of them every day), starting with ourselves. It means we are willing to speak out against injustices of all kinds. It means we have compassion for people, realizing they are without a Good Shepherd who will love and heal them just like he is loving and healing us. It means we recognize all human beings as being made in God’s image and therefore worthy of our highest respect and honor, even when they do nothing to earn it. 

Our Lord had something to say about this in our gospel lesson. There he tells us essentially the same thing St. Paul has told us in our epistle lesson. Preach the gospel boldly because it is the only way for real healing, goodness, justice, and forgiveness to happen. Be ready to challenge false gospels and narratives that are death-dealing and destructive. Know you will be called all kinds of vile names in an attempt to silence you, and some of you will be killed along the way. But don’t worry. Your effort to proclaim the Truth of the Good News will be revealed to all by God the Father come judgment day, even if your voice isn’t heard now. But don’t keep silent out of fear of reprisal. Even if they kill you, I have won back your life by going to the cross for you. It’s a done deal. So don’t be afraid. Proclaim the Good News of my Death and Resurrection, of God transferring folks (not systems—listen if you have ears) from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of life only through me. Just don’t keep silent in word or deed. If you do, I will disown you come judgment day because your silence proclaims you really didn’t believe in my promise to rescue you from Sin and Death. Your faithful living and bold proclamation will be terribly costly to you, but count it a blessing because if you are truly acting faithfully and proclaiming my Truth, the only Truth, you have my promise that nothing in all creation will harm you or separate you from me or my love (cf. Romans 8.31-39).

My beloved, as I watch dark forces trying to dismantle and wipe out this country’s history and ethos, I can no longer remain silent and I encourage you not to remain silent if you are as troubled as I am about the state of our nation. Besides regular and fervent prayer for our nation, I’m not sure exactly what that is going to look like for me, but I cannot stand by silently and watch a false narrative and divisive ideology that is decisively anti-Christian being foisted on this nation. I am not talking about being a super patriot or about political solutions because fearful and arrogant politicians are a massive part of the problem. I am talking about the people of God, you and me, finding and embracing our identity in Christ to speak the truth in love to forces who are preaching lies and attempting to intimidate and silence us through their false and divisive narrative. When you start pulling down statues, erasing chunks of history, and not allowing historical figures to be human, you are doing what tyrants have done throughout history. If you don’t believe me, check out how the Reign of Terror came about in France. History doesn’t repeat itself perfectly but you will find some very disturbing analogues there, starting with the radical Jacobins’ refusal to believe in the Christian faith or any religion other than their own secular one. They renamed streets and institutions and even developed a new calendar in an effort to repudiate their history. They attempted to create a whole new and false reality and took no prisoners in the process, only to have their own hate-filled narrative ultimately collapse on them. When folks try to create an “us-versus-them” mentality, when they attempt to pigeonhole the narrative of history into oppressors oppressing the oppressed, they are no longer dealing with the reality of history and ironically are wiping out chances for history to teach about the good and bad of this country. The very foundation of democracy depends on the ability of humans to act wisely and humanly, rather than myopically and selfishly, and if the forces in our country today prevail, we will see the end of democracy. While this country is far from perfect, it has offered the best hope for human flourishing in history, in part, because we have been so influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition that must flourish if democracy ultimately is to flourish. 

As God’s people in Christ, we must work hard in the coming months to find and embrace our identity in Christ first and foremost so that he can equip us to be his voice and embody his goodness, justice, mercy, and love to one and all in these tumultuous times. Whatever we do, it means we do it gently and without rancor and vitriol. It means we are gentle as doves and wise as serpents. We learn to do that through regular worship, Bible study, prayer, partaking in the eucharist and through sweet fellowship with each other to love and support each other, even in our disagreements, because we realize we are all in the same boat and reject the false and arbitrary classifications and identities that divide rather than unite us. We have been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of light and life in and through our crucified and risen Savior, in whom, and only in whom, we have redemption from our slavery to Sin and forgiveness for our ongoing sin and rebellion against God. We have died to sin and live now in union with Christ. Let us therefore embrace the only identity that truly heals, saves, and give life: Jesus Christ our Lord, and let that identity be the basis for our fearless and gentle witness as we proclaim boldly God’s love and Truth to a world hostile to the gospel but in desperate need of it. It is the only loving thing to do and as Christ himself reminds us, it will be a litmus test of our own faith when we stand before our Judge on the last day. 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 Trinity 1A, Sunday, June 14, 2020.

As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts before reading the sermon by clicking on or tapping their links below. At the time, the nation was in the grip of COVID and a wave of lawlessness. While we have largely put COVID behind us, lawlessness seems to continue to reign unabated, and while I am not a prophet or claim to speak with a prophet’s voice, I am certainly able to read the signs of the times. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 18.1-15, 21.1-7; Psalm 116.1, 10-17; Romans 5.1-8; Matthew 9.35-10.23.

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

The appointed readings from the lectionary this year (we are in the first year of a repeating three year cycle of readings) focus on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, a massively important document in the NT. Accordingly, I have asked our staff to preach on the assigned readings from Romans and I kick off our summer preaching series today with this sermon. I do so at an extraordinarily dark time for our nation. We are beset by a pandemic that has left us isolated and fearful, decimating our economy and further aggravating our fears and feelings of uncertainty. George Floyd’s recent death at the hands of a police officer has triggered massive protests and riots. Racism is the new cardinal sin and the BLM movement appears to be the new required dogma. Failure to get on board with its political agenda will cause you to be named and shamed publicly as being a racist. I do not want to be flippant about this or make this sermon about politics. The issues are so much bigger than that. Racial injustice is a serious problem that has plagued our nation from its inception and as Christians, we should be speaking out against it and doing what we can to end it. But lawlessness is an equally serious problem and calls to defund law enforcement agencies across the country and woke zones like the one that has been created in Seattle threaten to accelerate the lawlessness we have seen in the riots and undo not only our country but the democracy on which it is based. I cannot speak for you, but for me, the prospect of seeing our nation succumb to mob rule is as terrifying as the prospect of contracting COVID. In this kind of climate, what does St. Paul’s letter to the Romans have to offer us as Christians? Much, and the Church must be bold in our proclamation and willingness to speak to these issues because we have the only solution to the problems that confront us—Jesus Christ. This is what I want us to look at this morning.

The lectionary curiously and frustratingly cuts off our lesson from Romans at verse 8 instead of the more natural ending at verse 11. But if we are going to understand what St. Paul is getting at we need to hear what he said immediately before and after today’s pericope from Romans. So bear with me a moment while we prepare to look at today’s passage. In the first three chapters of Romans, St. Paul has laid out a devastating and grim picture of the human condition. There he spoke of our ongoing rebellion against God where we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge and obey God so that we are no longer his image-bearers who rule God’s world wisely on God’s behalf, resulting in God giving us up in judgment to our own disordered desires. This doesn’t afflict one race of people; it afflicts the entire human race. All have sinned, says St. Paul, and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23). Therefore we all can expect nothing but God’s terrible judgment and condemnation, not because God is an angry, intolerant God but because God in his moral perfection can countenance no evil or sin because both lead to our dehumanization and ultimately to death, and God loves us too much to let that happen. We are too thoroughly broken and infected by sin to fix ourselves and without outside help, we are slaves to the power of Sin and destined for eternal separation from God, the Source of all life and things good. BTW, only the converted, you and me, will entertain St. Paul’s teaching on this matter and realize we are sinners. The unconverted won’t have anything to do with the idea, itself a symptom of the human race’s sin-sickness.

But thankfully we have outside help from a Source more powerful than the power of Sin: God himself. St. Paul makes the astonishing claim that despite our rebellion against God, despite our outright hostility toward him and/or our resolute unbelief in God, God the Father has acted decisively on our behalf to free us from our slavery to the power of Sin and bring about our reconciliation with him and each other. God did this by sending his Son to die for us to reconcile us to him and free us from our death-dealing slavery to Sin. Listen to St. Paul as he leads up to our epistle lesson from this morning.

Abraham never wavered in believing God’s promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God. He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises. And because of Abraham’s faith, God counted him as righteous. And when God counted him as righteous, it wasn’t just for Abraham’s benefit. It was recorded for our benefit, too, assuring us that God will also count us as righteous if we believe in him, the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God (Romans 4.20-25).

Here St. Paul lays out the basis for the peace we enjoy in Jesus Christ. As we’ve seen, we are incapable of fixing ourselves and our relationship with God. No amount of trying harder is going to work and God knows that. So God sent his Son to die for us so that we could have a right relationship with God. In Christ’s death and resurrection, God offers us forgiveness and healing and this is a free gift to us if we take God at his word. Despite our ongoing hostility toward God, despite our slavery to the power of Sin and the chaos and alienation from God that results, God has offered us healing and reconciliation if only we will believe he has forgiven us through the death and resurrection of Christ. Where once we stood as condemned enemies of God, we are now reconciled to God and can expect healing and forgiveness because of what God has done for us in Christ. We can enjoy our changed status in the present as soon as we dare believe this Good News, and this is known as justification (or being made right with God) by faith. God promises this is true and by faith we believe the promise.

The result? “[S]ince we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory” (Romans 5.1-2). St. Paul drives home this point starting at verse 6:

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God (Romans 5.6-11).

Did you catch the breathtaking promise of the love and mercy of God in this passage? Notice carefully there are no preconditions for this saving gift from God. In fact, just the opposite. God did all this for us when we were utterly helpless to save ourselves or change our relationship with God. God’s act is not contingent on our repentance and remorse. That comes naturally after we realize what God has done for us and what fools we have been to reject and deny God. Here we see God practicing what he preached: To love our enemies and do good to them. When we believe the promise of God to heal and forgive us so that we can share in God’s promised new world as his image-bearers, it must change us and the way we live. We realize how great is the Father’s love for us and what a terrible price God paid to free us from our slavery to the power of Sin and restore us to himself, and it must change us so that we act for God, not ourselves. Trust in Jesus Christ is the only way we escape God’s just condemnation of our sins. Jesus Christ is the only way we are reconciled to God so that God can begin to heal our sin-sickness in this world. When we truly believe we are reconciled to God, undeserving as we are, we find real peace, the kind of peace our first ancestors enjoyed with God in the garden. And we learn over the course of our lives to live for God, not ourselves or the corrupt and evil powers of this world and its human-made systems. Our future glory awaits us but we have the promise right now and when we truly believe God is big enough to fulfill his promises, we find real peace, God’s peace, the only true peace there is. This is why St. Paul tells us to boast in our hope. It is boasting based on the love, mercy, and goodness of God, not ourselves, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with having this kind of pride in God. In fact, God encourages it!

So what does this have to say to us as Christians and the current Zeitgeist of our age? First, since we are reconciled to God, we are called to a ministry of reconciliation. First and foremost this means that we are to introduce folks to Christ in our speaking and doing and encourage them to find their identity in him and not some other death-dealing identity. Doing so will allow us to see humans, ourselves included, for what we are, and to proclaim God’s great love for us as well as his willingness to initiate forgiveness and reconciliation so that we are willing and able to forgive and repent of our evildoing that causes discord and rancor with the help of the Spirit. Hear what St. Paul writes about the effects of having peace with God in his second letter to the Corinthians:

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him [the ministry of reconciliation]. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5.17-19).

In other words, because we enjoy real peace through a new and reconciled relationship with God in and through Jesus Christ, we are commanded to live, proclaim, and offer that same healing love of God through Christ to others so that they too might be reconciled to God and find his great and precious peace. When that happens, the walls of racial divide come tumbling down.

To engage in a ministry of reconciliation, we must first be clear about the human condition and our slavery to the power of Sin without God’s help. It’s what makes reconciliation necessary in the first place and a realistic knowledge of our slavery to Sin’s power keeps us humble and helps remind us we are all in the same boat. For example, we see the chaos that sin produces (because at its essence all sin is lawless chaos in its opposition to God) in the actions of the police officer who callously murdered George Floyd. We also see the power of Sin at work in the rioters and the chaos it engenders. When we realize the truth of the human race’s enslavement to the power of Sin we no longer develop an “us versus them” mentality because we realize everyone of us is capable of good and evil, and left unchecked we are more likely to do evil than good. Why is this important to our ministry of reconciliation? Because we know that only by the grace of God are we spared from God’s wrath and how desperately the human race needs the healing and restorative power of God’s love for each of us. We acknowledge that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, ourselves included, and we are thankful that God loves us and has rescued us from his wrath and condemnation so that we enjoy peace with God. If we truly love others, wanting the best for them, even our enemies, how can we not engage in a ministry of reconciliation? This is the chief difference I see between the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s and BLM movement. The former was grounded in the Christian faith. Martin Luther King had a vision where one day no one would be judged by the color of their skin because all humans are created in the image of God. Dr. King resisted violence and rioting as means of getting justice because he knew that sin is chaos and ultimately will destroy us. Contrast this with some of the violent and oppressive ideology of the BLM movement that makes it all about fostering racial discord and insisting that history be seen only through the lens of racial oppression and injustice. By definition this kind of thinking can never lead to reconciliation. It leads only to division and rancor and as Christians we must oppose it even as we advocate for justice for all.  

In the context of the current debate about race and law enforcement, as ministers of reconciliation, this means we are ready to listen to all sides, not just one, and to acknowledge all sides have a role in contributing to the current tensions because we realize the real problem is human sin, not race. This means we listen to the pain expressed by many in the black community and acknowledge it is real, even if we do not fully understand the basis for that pain or makes us uncomfortable. It means we speak out against racial injustice when we see or experience it because the love of God demands that we do justice and love mercy as we walk humbly with him, submitting to his just and sovereign rule. This means we resist the strident voices who attempt to demonize all law enforcement officers and discredit their legitimate role and function in helping preserve the rule of law in our country. It means we try to put ourselves in their shoes, just as we try to put ourselves in the shoes of black communities so that we can better advocate for all people, not just some. It means we are willing to have an honest conversation about all causes for racial disparity, poverty, crime, and violence, not just racism, important as the latter is. It means we are not interested in winning debates about which side is right and which side is wrong. Reconciliation rarely, if ever, results from winning debates, but rather from having empathy and compassion and understanding for others, realizing we all desperately need to be healed and reconciled, first to God and then to each other. And as we engage in this ministry of reconciliation, we must take to heart Christ’s admonition to us to be innocent as doves and wise as serpents. This means, in part, that we must not be naive in our listening but also not cynical. It means we must be both thin-skinned enough to be empathetic and thick-skinned enough to withstand criticism, and it means we must be angry at injustice but gentle in overcoming it, just as our Lord Jesus did for us by dying for us to reconcile us to God.

Being ministers of reconciliation means that we talk to people about the love of Christ and how he has healed and changed us in the living of our days. It means we offer forgiveness and mercy to our enemies, not anger or vitriol or the desire for revenge, even when they act hatefully toward us and accuse us falsely, which they most certainly will. Instead, we are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and proclaim the love of Christ offered to one and all. These are signs of the in-breaking Kingdom of God in our midst. We may not raise anyone physically from the dead (although nothing is impossible for God working in and through us), but by the power of God’s love and Word made known in Christ and available to all in the power of the Spirit, we can bring new life to those who are dead from despair, apathy, grief, hedonism, or absence of meaning. And certainly we must confront and cast out the demons of violence, hatred, injustice, and division that currently terrify and corrupt us. We are to do all this because our Lord himself tells us to do so in our gospel lesson. And let us be clear-headed about this. Being ministers of reconciliation will bring about the world’s wrath and vitriol as our Lord himself warns us in our gospel lesson. Proclaiming the love of God made known in Jesus Christ will sadly be rejected by many, but even here St. Paul has good news for us. He tells us to rejoice in our sufferings because our sufferings produce solid Christian character through perseverance. We persevere because we have peace with God and a future hope, the sure and certain expectation of things to come. When we suffer the world’s wrath for Christ’s sake, we are equipped by the Holy Spirit to endure it and reminded that our future is life and total healing, not death and condemnation.  This, in turn, helps us offer that same healing love to others, even in the face of opposition and threats. There is much more to say about these things but I am out of time. I pray I have stimulated your own prayerful thinking about being ministers of reconciliation and that we will walk this journey together as God’s people, supporting one another in love. Remember, our little parish is a microcosm of the society that results from the ministry of reconciliation. We are equal brothers and sisters in Christ from many tribes, languages, and nations, all healed and restored to God and each other by the mercy and grace of God, God be praised!

But none of this will happen if we do not believe in the power of God to work in our lives and the lives of others. It is only in and through God’s power that we can ever hope to be ministers of reconciliation. Now is the time for the Church, for you and me, to find our voice and to be bold in our proclamation about the love of God made known in Jesus Christ. Now is the time to engage in the ministry of reconciliation with others in the context of our daily lives. We have the peace and power of God to make a difference in our world and if the Evil One tempts us to not believe in the efficacy of the gospel or our ability to live and proclaim it, I would point you to our OT lesson. Sarah and Abraham laughed because they struggled believing in the power of God to bring about his promises. But a child was born to them out of time and by the grace and power of God. It took a long time but God fulfilled his promise to Abraham to bless him with descendants as numerous as the stars. 

God loves us and has given himself for us in a great and costly act. In doing so, God calls us once again to be his image-bearers whom God will use to reflect his goodness, mercy, and justice to a sin-sick world, image-bearers who live in the power of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead, to reconcile us to God the Father so that we can be his image-bearers once again, patterning our lives after Jesus our Lord. We worship a God who creates things out of nothing and who raises the dead. Nothing is too hard for him, not even our own fears and foibles in these desperate times. Let us thank God that he loves us enough and honors our role as his image-bearers to call us to this ministry of reconciliation in Jesus Christ our Lord. 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 Trinity 1B, June 3, 2018 at our quarterly healing service. While I preached this 8 years ago, it is still as relevant today as it was then, perhaps even more so.

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. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: 1 Samuel 3.1-20; Psalm 139.1-6, 13-18; 2 Corinthians 4.5-12; Mark 2.23-3.6.

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

What are we to make of the strange and intriguing story found in our OT lesson today? What can it possibly have to do with us? More than you think, because underneath the intrigue and the terrible act of judgment pronounced on old Eli and his sons lies a message of hope; and in this day and age with all its uncertainty, we all can use a fresh infusion of real hope.

Before we look at the actual story, some context is needed to help us interpret it correctly. This story is set in the time of the judges in Israel. Israel’s great leaders, Moses and Joshua, the men whom God chose to lead God’s people out of their slavery in Egypt and to conquer the land God promised to their forefather Abraham, were dead and Israel had no one to lead them. Given our corrupted human nature, the results were predictable. The Israelites did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord instead of being his faithful image-bearing people to bring God’s healing and goodness to the land, and God punished his people for their evildoing, with the aim of bringing about their repentance, by bringing new conquerors to oppress and enslave them. The people in turn would cry out to the Lord, who in his great love and graciousness raised up leaders in Israel called judges, to lead God’s people and free them from their oppressors. Interestingly, some of the judges whom God raised up were themselves deeply flawed individuals, Samson being the poster boy, but God used them anyway to bring freedom and relief to his persistently rebellious people. This in itself should give us hope that God can use even us, deeply flawed as we are, to help achieve God’s purposes. The writer of the book of Judges sums up the period this way: “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes” (Judges 21.25). 

We would have to live with our heads buried in the sand not to understand what the writer was saying about the darkness the enfolded Israel without a godly leader who would encourage God’s people to live truly as people of God because we too live in a land where people do increasingly what seems right in their own eyes. When we do what is right in our own eyes, darkness and chaos inevitably follow because we are hopelessly corrupted and sin-sick. So, for example, we have jihadists who murder innocents to achieve some sense of perverted justice in their own eyes. We have young people who shoot up schools, in part to achieve a sense of justice for being left out and/or ignored or bullied. We are asked increasingly to endorse sexual relationships and gender confusion in the name of tolerance and love, all the while ignoring the fact that these things run contrary to God’s created order and will surely not turn out well overall. We have folks who take to social media to say racist, sexist, and hateful things about those they do not like. We don’t argue ideas anymore. We try to shame and discredit those with whom we disagree because doing so seems right in our own eyes. We turn a blind eye to all kinds of injustice and evil in the world and come up with all kinds of rationalizations to justify our own questionable moral and ethical behavior. And Christians are not exempt from any of this. Look no further than the fiasco that has engulfed some of the old-guard leadership in the SBC over their treatment of women who have been abused or raped because these men were doing what seemed right in their own eyes. This isn’t a white man’s problem. It is a human race problem because as St. Paul reminds us grimly, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God in whose Image we are created (Romans 3.25). In addition to the hopeless condition of our sin-sickness that prevents us from pulling ourselves up by our own moral bootstraps, we are a nation increasingly susceptible to this phenomenon of doing what seems right in our own eyes because for years now we’ve been told to think for ourselves. We’ve been urged to reject the wisdom and teaching of our various traditions and look what it has brought us. Not all is bad, of course, and some traditions need to be challenged, especially when they have become distorted by folks doing what seems right in their own eyes. That’s one of the points of our gospel lesson after all. But in the areas of moral and ethical behavior, we are essentially no different from the people of ancient Israel. We are more interested in doing what seems right in our own eyes than seeking to obey the word and wisdom of God as revealed in Scripture. No wonder the word of the Lord was (and is) scarce and visions far and few between.

This was the historical context for our OT story today. If that weren’t bad enough, old Eli had two sons who had apparently turned the Tabernacle of the Lord, the very place where God chose to live with his people, into a brothel (with stuff like this, who needs reality TV?). As the writer explains earlier, “Eli was very old, but he was aware of what his sons were doing to the people of Israel. He knew, for instance, that his sons were [having sex with] the young women who assisted at the entrance of the Tabernacle” (1 Samuel 2.22). Eli rebuked his sons, but not in a way that got them to change their behavior, and he apparently did nothing further to stop this serious problem from occurring. It seems that even the priestly family was doing what seemed right in their own eyes. With all this in mind, is it surprising that the word of the Lord, i.e., God’s guiding Presence, was rare in those days? We see the same thing happening in our country as people increasingly refuse to submit to the life-giving power of the word of the Lord and do what seems right in their own eyes.

Hey Father Maney! I hear some of you saying. You told us this was supposed to be a sermon about hope. If this is your idea of preaching hope, please stop and let us slit our wrists. That kinda seems to be what is right in our own eyes at this point, to which I reply, patience, grasshoppers. If we are not willing to take a hard look at our own reality, we will hardly be in a position to see hope when it presents itself. Despite the darkness that enveloped God’s people, despite the fact that the word of the Lord was scarce in those days (and ours), the writer reminds us that God had not totally abandoned God’s people in judgment because that is not who God is. God did not create us for destruction. God created us for relationship and life. And so we are told that the Lord’s lamp, a symbol of the very presence of God, had not gone completely out. God spoke to the young boy Samuel, who despite being dedicated to the Lord by his mother Hannah (1 Samuel 1.19-28), did not initially recognize the Lord was speaking to him, precisely because the word of the Lord was scarce. It was so scarce that it took a groggy Eli three times to recognize that it was God who was speaking to the boy. Once Samuel responded to God, however, I’m pretty sure he wished he hadn’t because the first word Samuel heard was an oracle of judgment against his beloved mentor, Eli, and his family. What a predicament for the youngster! God was ready to bring about the hope of a new beginning but first a terrible ending had to take place. God will not be mocked. We must realize that doing whatever seems right in our sin-sick eyes will not lead to our healing and restoration. The world, including parts of Christ’s Church, is in the mess it’s in precisely because we are not willing to submit to God’s wise leadership over us contained in God’s word. We are too busy trying to cling to equality with God and have been from the start!

But God does not abandon us because God is faithful to his created order (us included) and because God loves us, despite our rebellion and the judgment it brings. We must remember that stories like this fall under the overarching story in Scripture of how God is going about rescuing us from our death-producing sin and the evil it unleashes in the world. Even when the darkness of our sin and rebellion threatens to totally consume us and we wonder why God has abandoned us or how God could possibly love us in the first place, stories like this remind us that God is still in charge of God’s created order and is actively seeking us out to have a life-saving relationship with him. As the psalmist reminds us in our psalm lesson this morning, God is actively and intimately involved with us, even while we are being formed in our mother’s womb (listen if you have ears)! 

As God’s people in Christ, we are reminded of God’s love and care for us in the death and resurrection of his Son, who died for us while we were still God’s enemies (Romans 5.6-11). Saint Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson that the light and love of God always shines in our hearts, despite the darkness that dwells in us and the world that seeks to snuff out God’s light and life-giving love for us. As the apostle also reminds us, we have life only by dying to ourselves, only by actively putting to death all that is in us that is actively opposed and hostile to God. We can’t do this on our own, of course. We do it in the power of the Spirit who lives in us and who makes our risen Lord available to us every day. The folks of Samuel’s day did not have this privilege. God only poured out his Spirit on a select few, mainly the prophets. But at Pentecost that all changed and now all believers have an Advocate, God himself, to defend us against the Accuser and his minions (and ourselves). This lifelong, difficult, and often messy process of putting to death our desire to be God’s equals so that we can do what seems right to us allows us to share in Christ’s life-saving death on the cross. And when we share in Christ’s death, we also get to share in Christ’s resurrected life, as Saint Paul reminds us in today’s lesson, Romans 6.3-5, and elsewhere. We are not saved by our works, by our status or our money or our power. We bring nothing to the table that gives us hope for life with God, either in this world or the next. We have this hope only in the death and resurrection of the Son of God, whose story is contained in Holy Scripture and whose presence is available to us in the power of the Spirit. Without this hope we still live in darkness. Without this hope, frankly healing services like today’s are nothing but a farce.

So here are two of many things to reflect on this week from this story of Eli and Samuel. First, God never imposes God’s will on us. God created us for relationship with God and each other and invites us to accept his invitation. If we choose to enter that relationship we must also be willing to submit to God’s authority contained in Scripture and revealed supremely in Jesus Christ. It’s never a good thing for us to think for ourselves when it comes to matters of God and God’s word. We must call on the Spirit and the collective wisdom of Christ’s Church to help us know God. Second, there are times in our lives and in our culture (like today) where it seems that God has abandoned us. The word of the Lord is scarce and visions are few, i.e. it appears that God is far away and doesn’t care about us or our plight. The story of Samuel and Eli suggests otherwise. God is always present and acts in sometimes very surprising and unexpected ways. After all, who expected the Creator of the universe to become human and die a terrible and shameful death on a cross to rescue us from our sin and its resulting death? Of course, the enemies of the cross seek to silence us and we can expect to be harassed and even persecuted for proclaiming the word of the Lord, and that can make us afraid. And in the context of our healing service, we become afraid when we come to the Lord for healing and nothing apparently happens. When we become afraid, we must ask the Spirit to reveal Jesus’ Presence to us and to open our minds and hearts to God’s word, which is critical for our faith. After all, the last book of the Bible (Revelation) was written by a man exiled by the Roman authorities for his faith in Jesus. There he wrote about the eventual victory of God and his Christ over the powers of Evil and Death. God will judge all that is wrong with God’s world and that includes us. But we aren’t afraid because we are people who believe in the power of the cross and God’s love poured out for us there. That faith, that hope, and that love unite us with our resurrected Lord and remind us light and life are our destiny and present reality, not darkness and death. And that story is contained in God’s word. So hang on to that hope, my beloved. Encourage each other as you proclaim it to the world because you know you are proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. 

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

Sermon originally delivered on Trinity Sunday C, June 16, 2019.

Play the video before you read the sermon and as always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts by clicking on or tapping their links below before you begin (currently awaiting a plugin update to allow you to do this) ??. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5.1-5; John 16.12-15.

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

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity, the day when we focus on the triune nature of God, i.e., God in three persons. But as our video pointed out, this is no easy task for mere mortals, especially for someone with a peabrain like mine, and I will leave it to the Great Thinkers, the Church Fathers and Doctors, to explain the nature of the Trinity. For Small Thinkers like me, I have found it helpful to understand our triune God by looking at how God has chosen to reveal himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As we look at each, we must always remember that while we are talking about three different persons, we are also talking about One indivisible God. Clear as mud? Wonderful. We’re off to a good start.

Before we look at how God has chosen to reveal himself to us, let us keep in mind that while there is no formal doctrine of the Trinity articulated in the NT, a formal doctrine would eventually have to be formulated by the Church based on the writings of St. Paul and others. Take, for instance, these introductory verses found in his first letter to the Thessalonians:

This letter is from Paul, Silas, and Timothy. We are writing to the church in Thessalonica, to you who belong to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May God give you grace and peace. We always thank God for all of you and pray for you constantly. As we pray to our God and Father about you, we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know, dear brothers and sisters, that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own people. For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true (1 Thessalonians 1.1-5a, NLT).

Notice carefully how St. Paul describes the nature and work of God in three persons. He speaks of the Father’s great love for us made known in and through the work of the Son, mediated by the work and power of the Holy Spirit. So let us not fall for the baloney that the doctrine of the Trinity was some unnecessary and overly-complicated human invention. It’s not. It comes directly from God, who chooses to reveal himself to us as such.

Especially appropriate for Father’s Day we begin with God the Father, the ultimate Progenitor, Creator of all that is and Source of all life. As Genesis 1-2 tell us, God created the heavens and earth, himself existing from all eternity (try wrapping your mind around that little nugget!). Genesis tells us that God created this vast cosmos out of nothing, giving us a glimpse of God’s awesome power. As St. Paul would tell the Romans, we worship a God who creates new things out of nothing and who raises the dead (Romans 4.17). So we can have confidence in God to accomplish his purposes. Because God is good, God created all things good and then enigmatically created humans in his image to bring God’s goodness and wisdom to bear to run God’s creation on God’s behalf (Gen 1.26-28; Ps 8). As Genesis 1-2 also tell us, before our first ancestors rebelled against God, they lived in perfect communion with God the Father, obeying his creative intentions (bearing his image faithfully) and enjoying the perfect health, peace, and happiness that accompanies perfect communion with the Father. This poignant picture of the Father communing with his human image-bearers reminds us that God created us to share in his glory and to enjoy perfect happiness, health, and freedom, the kind that comes only in obeying God’s good and creative intentions for us. If you are interested at all in obeying the general will of God the Father, pay attention to the creation narratives.

But if we are going to have any kind of relationship with God the Father, we have to know more about him than his creative work. We have to have some idea of the Father’s nature as well. Is God really lovable? Is he worthy of our first loyalty and ultimate obedience? Before the Fall, our first human ancestors instinctively and consciously knew the answers to these questions because they enjoyed perfect communion with their Father, and God chose to reveal himself to them in ways they could comprehend. After the Fall, this knowledge was lost (Gen 3.8-10) and as a result, the power of Evil and Sin ushered in madness, Death, alienation, and chaos into God’s good world, corrupting it and causing God to curse it and us. Why the curse? Was it because God just doesn’t know how to have a good time? Is it because the Father is a divine child abuser as some have arrogantly charged (a charge so ludicrous that it illustrates unhappily how our sin-caused alienation from God has caused us to no longer know God our Father)? Certainly not! God cursed his good creation and creatures because God can tolerate no evil or injustice in his world, and that is ultimately for our good. As we shall see, if we hope to spend an eternity in the Father’s direct presence, who wants to be bedeviled by the Evil, folly, chaos, madness, and alienation we experience in our fallen state?

But if we only look at God’s justice, we miss huge parts of God’s nature. For despite our attempts to usurp God’s power and our ongoing hostility and rebellion against God, the heart of the Father beats love for his wayward children. Hear what Scripture has to say about the love of God: Saint John tells us that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3.16), and that anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love (1 John 4.8). The psalmist characterizes the Father as “merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all his creation” (Ps. 145.7-8). Jesus tells us likewise when he tells us to imitate the Father by loving our enemies as well as our friends (Matthew 5.43-48). Elsewhere, the psalmist declares how precious the Father’s love for us is because God saves both humans and animals, providing us with much-needed shelter from the storms of life (Ps 36.6b-7). 

Scripture also declares God’s patient, steadfast love for us, despite our ongoing rebellion. As you listen to these gracious words, imagine your heavenly Father speaking them to you and take heart.

But now, O Jacob, listen to the Lord who created you. O Israel, the one who formed you says, “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I gave Egypt as a ransom for your freedom; I gave Ethiopia and Seba in your place. Others were given in exchange for you. I traded their lives for yours because you are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you. “Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will gather you and your children from east and west. I will say to the north and south, ‘Bring my sons and daughters back to Israel from the distant corners of the earth. Bring all who claim me as their God, for I have made them for my glory. It was I who created them’” (Isaiah 43.1-7, NLT)

My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all. How can I give you up? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like [my enemies]? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy [Israel]; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath (Hosea 11.7-9).

Do you hear the tenderness and compassion in these verses? Israel had indeed been intent on running away from their God, but the Father’s faithful and generous heart would not give up on his wayward children. This is the love and compassion and mercy and tenderness we give up when we thumb our noses at God and refuse his gracious overtures. This is what causes us to live in darkness and chaos, feeling alone and afraid. This is the cost of human sin and rebellion against God the Father.

But as these OT passages attest, God is not put off so easily because God the Father is good and faithful, even in the face of our unfaithfulness as St. Paul wrote to Timothy (2 Tim 2.13). And so at just the right time, God the Father took on our human flesh (or in NT parlance, the Father sent the Son) to free us from our slavery to Sin and Death and to establish the basis for restoring God’s good creation gone bad. St. Paul summarizes it best in his letter to the Galatians. Pay careful attention to the trinitarian nature of this passage and the role of each:

But when the right time came, God sent his Son [God became human], born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir (Galatians 4.4-7, NLT).

Why did the Father do this? Because he desires life and goodness and health for us, not death and destruction and chaos. And so the Father’s love for us was and is made known supremely in Jesus, the Son of God. The coeternal Son who existed with God from all eternity (Jn 1.1-5) took on our flesh to destroy Sin’s power over us and to bear the Father’s just wrath on our sins to spare us and make us fit to stand in God’s direct presence forever (Rom 5.6-11, 8.1-4; Rev 7.9-17). All who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to be a sacrifice for our sins, and who was raised by God from the dead, are washed clean by his blood shed for us on the cross. As St. Paul tells us in our epistle lesson this morning, this was an act of pure grace on the Father’s part. None of us deserve this mercy because before Christ’s Incarnation, we were still God’s enemies. But those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and only those who believe Jesus is the Son of God, are no longer God’s enemies. Instead, we are God’s children (Jn 1.12) and therefore we have a future hope and inheritance: God’s new world, the new heavens and earth. In Christ, we see the very heart and face of the Father healing the sick, casting out the demonic, and defeating Evil and the powers behind it. And because of the resurrection, those of us who are united to Christ by faith are promised a share in God’s new world. As St. Paul reminds us in Rom 6.3-5, those who have a relationship with Christ, i.e., who are in Christ, share in both Christ’s death and resurrection (and if we love God and others as he loves us we definitely are “in Christ”). I don’t have time to develop this today. Suffice it to say that St. Paul proclaims to us that eternal life, bodily life in God’s new world where we live directly in God’s presence, unlike we do right now, is our destiny (1 Cor 15), i.e., we are resurrection peeps. Christ’s resurrection also validates the unlikely claim by the NT writers that on the cross God defeated the dark powers (Col. 2.13-15) who have invaded his world and corrupted it, wreaking havoc and pain and misery and suffering on anyone and everyone. If you do not see the Father’s love for you made known in the Son’s work and love, you are truly to be most pitied.

God the Father makes all this known in and through the power of his Holy Spirit, who reveals God’s truth to us, makes Christ known and present to us, and equips us to live like the truly human image-bearers God created and wants us to be. In other words, he makes us living stones in God’s new Temple built on Christ (1 Peter 2.1-6). Without the Spirit, we cannot possibly know God or Christ. We cannot possibly know the Truth. We cannot possibly love or forgive or be gracious or merciful or kind or compassionate. In other words, we cannot possibly become holy as God is Holy, and if God does not make us holy in the power of the Spirit, we cannot possibly hope to ever live in God’s holy Presence, either now in this mortal life or in eternity. As our Creed proclaims, he is the Lord, the giver of life. The Creed proclaims this because God gives us his Spirit to make us holy like he is Holy. Even when you hear lousy sermons on the Trinity like this one, the Holy Spirit will overcome and make God in three persons known to you. He makes your prayers efficacious and gives you power to serve and be humble, to be genuine people of God. There’s much more, but I’m out of time.

So why should knowing our triune God (God in three persons) matter to us? Just this. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have overcome our sin and rebellion, restoring us as truly human image-bearers of our Father. If you want to live life with meaning, purpose, and power, the only way you can do that is to know and worship our triune God because this is the real God, not some false or incomplete imitation of the Real Deal. This one God wants to heal us and equip us to be real children who bring to bear God’s love and goodness to his broken and hurting creation. How can we do that if we don’t know the Father’s love made known supremely through the Son and imparted to us in and through the Spirit? If you seek wholeness and healing and blessing in the midst of a chaotic world, if you seek to love as you have been loved, if you seek real comfort for your grief, if you are aware of the Father’s great love for you despite your sins and rebellion, you are already in his loving grasp. We cannot imitate him who we do not know and we come to know our triune God through prayer, Scripture, the Eucharist, tradition, and fellowship, all in and through the power of the Spirit. Most of all, we know we worship the real God if we are resurrection peeps who claim for our own the promise of Christ’s resurrection because only in his resurrection will we know completely the love, mercy, kindness, and justice of God to heal us and make us entirely whole again. Of course we’ll schlep along in this mortal life and get it wrong at times. Many of us will get it wrong more than we’ll get it right. But despite this, we don’t lose hope. Because we know God our Father, we dare believe in his great promises to heal, redeem, and restore us, promises validated in the Son of God’s death and resurrection. We know it because we are God’s people who have the Holy Spirit living in us. Let us therefore live as people with power and hope and love, with charity and great grace, daring to allow the Father to make himself known in and through us by faithfully imitating Jesus the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. I cannot think of a better way to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity, not only today but every day, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory for ever and ever.

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

Sermon originally delivered on Ascension Sunday, May 13, 2018. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned lectionary texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 1.1-11; Psalm 93; Ephesians 1.15-23; Luke 24.44-53.

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

Today we celebrate our Lord’s ascension into heaven. But what’s that all about? Is St. Luke trying to tell us that Jesus was the first astronaut, zooming up into space? Not at all, and if we understand our Lord Jesus’  ascension in this literalist and linear way, we miss the point and are robbed of the vital power we need to live as Christians in a broken world. What does it mean for us to participate in God’s power play? This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

If we are ever to understand by the grace of God what it means to be God’s people in Jesus, i.e., people with power, we must first understand what St. Luke is telling us about the Ascension in our NT and gospel lessons. He is not trying to suggest that Jesus was the first astronaut who gives his disciples one last glimpse of him by allowing them to see the soles of his feet. No, for St. Luke and the rest of the NT writers, Jesus’ ascension into heaven (God’s space) meant that Jesus was going to assume his rightful place as ruler of the cosmos. When St. Paul tells us in our epistle lesson that God seated our ascended Lord at his right hand, he is telling us that Jesus is now Lord over both the visible and invisible powers, i.e., over all creation. Jesus is Lord precisely because on the cross, God defeated the forces of Evil and transferred us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of our sins, thanks be to God. This is the wisdom and power of God: the suffering and self-giving love that rescued us from utter destruction and our slavery to the dark powers that hate us and want to see us destroyed. But none of us would ever have known the power of crucified love had it not been for God raising Jesus from the dead that first Easter Sunday. As we have seen during this Eastertide, the cross needs the resurrection and the resurrection needs the cross. Without the resurrection, the cross would have meant that Jesus was just another failed Messiah wannabe. Without the cross, the resurrection would have been nothing more than a spectacular act of power on God’s part because we would remain in our sins and unreconciled with God so that death would be our destiny, not eternal life

Based on God’s power in and through Jesus’ death and resurrection, St. Luke and St. Paul both remind us that now Jesus has returned to God’s space (heaven) to assume his rightful role as Lord of all creation and to rule until all God’s enemies have been defeated, death being the last and greatest of these enemies (cf. 1 Corinthians 15.26, 51-55). Can any of us think of a greater power than being able to destroy the power of death forever when the dead are finally raised to life? And who among us has the power to be reconciled to God given the desperately sick hearts with which we are all burdened (Jeremiah 17.9)? The answer, of course, is that none of us has this power, only God does. 

So in Jesus’ death and resurrection we see the penultimate chapter in the story of God’s plan to rescue his good creation and its creatures gone bad, corrupted by human sin and rebellion and the evil it unleashed in the world. Now that the forces of evil had been defeated on the cross and Jesus validated as the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Son returned to the Father to assume his rightful role as Lord of all and to build on the work he had accomplished in his death and resurrection. In other words, Jesus’ ascension signaled to his followers and the world that God is in control of things in a new and definitive way. For those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts and minds to believe, God is again demonstrating his power to save and reminding us that the good guys are in charge, not the bad ones.

But the Ascension also meant that Jesus would no longer be available to his followers in the way he had been during his mortal life. He had to return to heaven to continue the work he started on his Father’s behalf. So why does St. Luke report that after Jesus’ Ascension his disciples were filled with joy? If we knew our loved one was going to be absent from us for a period of time, wouldn’t we be filled with sadness and anxiety? So why weren’t the disciples? The answer, of course, is that Jesus promised them the power of his Presence with them in the coming of the Holy Spirit. While Jesus would be strangely absent from his followers, he would also be strangely present because he was going to send the Holy Spirit to mediate his presence with us. Father Bowser will presumably take up this theme next week. Or not. 

And now we are getting ready to understand what it means for us as Jesus’ followers to be part of God’s power play and what that might look like. Being part of God’s power play means we are people who have been forgiven our sins and equipped with the power to reorient our lives away from ourselves, which would mean death, to God, which means life. Don’t misunderstand. This process is not automatic or neat and clean. We are a profoundly broken people, but God’s healing power and love for us is far greater. To be part of God’s power play means we have the power and person of Jesus always available to us, even in our darkest moments of anxiety and fear, healing us, loving us, and equipping us to lead the cross-shaped lives he calls us to lead. He gives us this power because he calls us to continue his kingdom work by announcing repentance and the forgiveness of sins and bringing Christ’s love and presence to his sin-sick world. We are tempted to shake our heads about all this, of course. If Jesus is Lord, he is doing a really lousy job of it. Look at the mess this world is in! But this misses the point of the Ascension. The first Christians knew the world was in bad shape. St. Paul, after all, wrote about the dark powers being defeated while he was in prison! He certainly knew the reality of evil, but because he knew the risen Christ present to him both on the road to Damascus and in the power of the Spirit, he also knew that evil had been ultimately defeated. 

What the Ascension means for us in terms of power is that we are given the tremendous privilege of being real human beings again and doing the work that God always intended and called us to do. We are to rule the world by reflecting God’s love and goodness into it. That God did not put the world to rights with the wave of God’s hand is a testimony to the worth God assigns us as his image-bearers. In and through Christ, God did what was impossible for us to do: rescue us from ourselves and our slavery to Sin and Evil. Now God calls us to continue the work of bringing in God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. That’s a mighty tall order and it is impossible for us to do this on our own. We simply don’t have the power to get the job done. 

But we are not called to bring in the Kingdom on our own nor are we given the task of bringing in the Kingdom in full so that all the darkness in our lives and God’s world are totally vanquished. Only God can do that when Jesus returns to consummate his saving work started in his earthly ministry. No, the kind of power we wield is the kind of power Jesus wielded and if we get this right, it will help us better understand how the power of God works and why quest-ions about the ability of Jesus to rule as Lord of all creation miss the point of the Ascension. The kingdom will come on earth as in heaven as the Church—you, me, and all other Christians—engage the world as Christ did. It means we go out as vulnerable, suffering, praying, praising, misunderstood, misjudged, and even hated people. But we are people of power, God’s power, and that means we go out into the world as forgiven and beloved people, and therefore as people with real hope. Consequently we are always celebrating despite our setbacks and failures because we know how the story ends. As God’s people, then, we are given power to forgive where no forgiveness is warranted. We are given power to bless when cursed. We are given power to love instead of hate and to offer the same crucified love to others that Christ offered to us. We are given power to have a tender and compassionate heart, especially to those who least deserve it. We are given power to be patient and kind and gentle, even when we know this makes us vulnerable to exploitation. We are given power to resist temptation and to refuse to make and worship our own idols like the world does. It means we have power to heal all kinds of disorders and to celebrate even when confronted by death because we know we bear in us both the scars and the life of our crucified, risen, and ascended Savior. And when by God’s grace we know that we share both in Christ’s death and risen life because we are forgiven and redeemed, we have power over anxiety that the world simply cannot possess or understand because the world neither recognizes or acknowledges this kind of power.

None of this is easy or straightforward. We don’t get to waltz through life without hassles, heartaches, and defeats. It just doesn’t work that way. Therefore we have to read and study the Scriptures, and learn how to pray, worship, and engage in real fellowship with each other, all the while trusting God’s grace to produce in us the needed faith and knowledge about these things we cannot understand on our own. And when we finally start to grapple with the realization we are people who possess God’s power to love, forgive, bless, and redeem, it can make all the difference in the world for us. We should therefore never be timid about sharing with all and sundry the Good News of which the Ascension is a part, precisely because we know God’s power to heal and restore in our own lives, however imperfectly that might look. After all, God is a God who calls into existence things that do not exist and raises the dead to life. So nothing in our life is too hard for God, even if it is too hard for us when we rely on our own power. The Ascension reminds us of this reality. Despite our doubts and fears, despite the messiness of our lives and the world in which we live, we are reminded of the dignity and nobility of being human in the eyes of God and God’s promise to rescue us and all creation from all that is evil and opposed to God’s good will and purposes for us. Because we are people of power who enjoy Christ’s love and Presence with us in the power of the Spirit, we can learn to find real joy in the people and events and opportunities that the Spirit puts in our path. Because Jesus is Lord we know that nothing in our lives is ever coincidental or serendipitous. We are all connected and therefore have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate the love and power of God. And because Jesus is Lord and we are not, we never have to despair when our best efforts and intentions apparently do not bear any results: We pray and our prayers are not answered in the manner we hoped. We offer forgiveness but it is not reciprocated. We are bedeviled by besetting sins. We offer Truth and receive shame and derision in return. Without the power of the Lord Jesus who is with us in the presence of the Spirit, we would surely be overcome with despair. But we are crucified and resurrected people who share the King’s power, and who enjoy his real Presence in the power of the Spirit given to us. And because we have this power, we are not overcome because we know even the gates of hell cannot overcome the Risen and Ascended Lord of all creation, thanks be to God! Alleluia! Christos Anesti! Christ is risen and ascended! The Lord is risen and ascended indeed! Alleluia! 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 Ascension Sunday, Easter 7B, May 17, 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. In this sermon, I touch on why it is critical for Christians today and always to believe in and understand what the Ascension is all about in our increasingly complex and unhinged world. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 1.15-26; Psalm 1.1-6; 1 John 5.9-13; John 17.6-19.

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

Today is Ascension Sunday, the Sunday after Ascension Day when we celebrate our Lord’s return to heaven or God’s dimension. Hear Saint Luke describe it now in his gospel account:

Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God. —Saint Luke 24.44-51

So what is the Ascension all about? Why would the eleven surviving apostles return to Jerusalem rejoicing and praising God in the Temple every day? After all, this event signaled to them that Jesus’ appearances were going to stop permanently. Why wouldn’t they be sad over this? And why should we who live almost two thousand years later care if Jesus ascended into heaven? It is these questions that I want us to look at this morning.

In our gospel lesson, we see Jesus expressing concern for his disciples’ future and welfare. This passage is part of his so-called high priestly prayer in which Jesus acknowledged that his disciples would need his continuing help once he left them. They had work to do, just like we as Jesus’ disciples today have work to do, and given that the world was fundamentally opposed to the gospel message Jesus commanded them and us to proclaim, Jesus knew this work could be dangerous. Like the Good Shepherd that Jesus proclaimed himself to be (St. John 10.1-18), or like a good parent who watches over his children as they grow up, Jesus knew they were going to need his help and protection, even in his absence, if they were to get the job done. 

Jesus also knew that his impending death would be devastating to his disciples. Just like we feel lost when we lose a loved one to death, so Jesus understood that his disciples would likewise feel lost and despondent, something to which all the gospel accounts bear witness. Of course, Jesus’ resurrection would turn their sorrow into joy, just as it has the power to turn our sorrow into joy, but what about afterwards? What would happen after Jesus’ resurrection appearances stopped?

If we think this through carefully, we realize how high the stakes were (and are). Without the right care and support, without the Lord really being present to his disciples, like us, they were in danger of losing all hope and faith. Sure, Jesus’ resurrection had convinced them he had not only survived death but was now alive and forever. But Jesus also made it clear to them that his resurrection appearances were temporary. That is why he spent so much time teaching them about himself after he appeared to them and that is why he prayed his prayer for them and us on the night before he was crucified. He wanted his disciples, both then and now, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was alive and that he would be with them always (cf. St. Matthew 28.20b), but in a fundamentally different way. And so Jesus prayed that his followers would not be taken out of the world, but rather that God would protect us from the evil one. When Jesus talks about the world in this context, he is not talking about the created order. After all, he had come to rescue the created order (including us) from the ravages of Evil, Sin, and Death. Instead, the world Jesus was referring to is the realm of the dark powers and principalities who have usurped God’s rightful rule over his created order and who remain violently opposed to Jesus’ rule and the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. If the disciples were convinced that Jesus was good to his prayer, if they were convinced that he would be with them even after his resurrection appearances stopped, they would have the needed power to do their work and their joy would be complete as they did so on his behalf.

Why? Because as St. John reminds us in our epistle lesson, Jesus is the key to having eternal life as well as to the creation being reclaimed and restored. This is what makes our work as Christians so vitally important. Contrary to the popular belief today that all religions are basically alike and that there are many paths to God, our epistle lesson, along with the rest of the New Testament, is adamant that eternal life and access to God the Father is available to us only in and through Jesus. We don’t have just the testimony of the Apostles that this is true. We have the testimony of God himself. As Jesus said at the beginning of his high priestly prayer: 

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (St. John 17.1-3).

Again, if we think about it, this should make sense to us. When human sin entered the world it brought about God’s curse and death (Genesis 3.1-19). And as the history of the OT makes clear, sinful mortals (you and me) cannot come into the presence of the holy and perfect God and expect to live (see, e.g., Exodus 19.21, 33.20). That is why God gave Moses the sacrificial system that would allow God to dwell with his sinful people Israel as God led them out of Egypt to the promised land. You can read more about this in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. 

And of course Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (St. John 1.29) by his blood shed for us on the cross. Whereas the OT sacrifices were temporary and had to be repeated because those who offered them were sinful just like the people on whose behalf they were offered, Jesus was sinless and so his sacrifice was perfect and once for all (Hebrews 9.12-15, 10.10-14). Jesus’ death on our behalf thus made it possible for us to enter into God’s presence and live. This is why Jesus is the only way to the Father. And as we have seen, when God raised Jesus from the dead, God ushered in the birth of his promised new world, the new heavens and earth, giving us a foretaste of the day when we too will be raised from the dead and given the privilege to live in God’s direct presence when heaven and earth are fused together in a new creation, all because of Jesus’ blood shed for us on the cross. This is the Good News of Easter that we have been celebrating these past seven weeks, and this is why only in Jesus do we have eternal life. We can stake our very lives and future on it because we have God’s word that it is true. This is why Jesus needed to open his disciples’ minds to the Scriptures. If they were going to proclaim the gospel, they had to understand that the whole OT had been pointing to the reality of his saving death and resurrection. Without that knowledge there could be no real gospel, no real hope, no real joy, because as we all know, we live in a world that is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, marred by human sin and the power of evil. 

All this, of course, applies to us who live as Jesus’ disciples two thousand years later. If we claim to love God at all, we must love all God’s human creatures and want them to share in the gift of eternal life that is ours by God’s love and grace in and through Jesus. This gift should never puff us up and make us want to think we are somehow more deserving or morally better than those who do not know or believe in Jesus. That is pride, the very antithesis of love, and if that is our reaction we must repent of this wickedness and ask God to both forgive and humble us, even as we ask him to set our hearts on fire for others so that we dare love them enough to proclaim the gospel to them, risking scorn and opposition or worse. And like the first disciples, if we are not convinced that Jesus is alive and available to us, if we are not convinced Jesus has the power to finish the job he started with his death and resurrection, we will have no hope, no joy, and no power.

All this brings us back to the Ascension. The Ascension promises us that the fully human Jesus is in the very presence of God the Father in heaven, foreshadowing the day when we too will get the privilege of living in God’s direct presence. Humanity has been exalted and restored and we dare have the audacious hope that where our Lord is, so will we be (cf. Philippians 1.23). But the Ascension is more than this because as the New Testament writers all proclaimed, when Jesus ascended into heaven or God’s space, he sat down at God’s right hand, New Testament code that proclaims God has made Jesus Lord over all creation to rule until the victory over evil that God won on the cross is consummated and all God’s enemies have been fully vanquished (Romans 8.34; Ephesians 1.20; Colossians 3.1; Hebrews 1.3, 8.1, 10.12, 12.2; 1 Peter 3.22). That, BTW, is what the punchline of the book of Revelation is all about.

This is a tall order for us to believe at times because we see so many things go desperately wrong in our world. Loved ones die, sickness interrupts and sometimes destroys our lives, wars are incessant, injustice seems to rule the day rather than justice, and suffering goes on, apparently unabated; more and more people are becoming increasingly unhinged, detached  from reality in their thinking, and this frightens us. We see this and wonder where God is in it all and what kind of Lord Jesus really is. When we get to this point—and all of us will—we must pay attention to our New Testament lesson where St. Luke tells us how the eleven chose Judas’ replacement. Think about it. Jesus’ disciples had come to believe that he really was God’s promised anointed one, the Messiah, who would rescue Israel and the world from all that bedevils it. They believed this based on the mighty acts of power Jesus demonstrated during his earthly ministry as well as his teaching. But then it all came crashing down. Not only was Jesus executed as a criminal by the hated Romans, the very people Jesus was supposed to vanquish, but now there were no longer twelve Apostles to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, a theme I do not have time to develop. Long story short: God’s will had apparently been thwarted. 

But the operative word is apparently. Based on their limited power of discernment and incomplete human knowledge, the disciples initially thought that they were wrong about Jesus and that Evil had won the day. Not so, says the story of Acts, because after Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples and his instructions for them to stay in the city while they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples realized that things aren’t always as they appear to be. Yes, Judas had betrayed Jesus and had subsequently committed suicide. But not even his treachery nor the power of the corrupt religious establishment in Jerusalem nor the power of the Romans could sidetrack God’s plan to redeem and heal his world through Jesus his Messiah. God had used Jesus’ crucifixion to defeat the dark powers and atone for the sins of Israel and the world, thus laying the foundation for the coming of God’s promised new world. In fact, part of Jesus’ teaching about himself in the Scriptures was meant to show the disciples that this was precisely how God’s redemption and the defeat of evil was supposed to happen, unexpected and shocking as that was for his disciples (and remains for many of us today). 

This is why we are to take hope, even in Jesus’ apparent absence, because God knows the hearts of everyone and has the power to use even our brokenness to accomplish his will. What appears to be hopeless situations or the triumph of evil is not what it appears because Jesus is Lord and the dark powers are not. God knows how to use even the evil we commit, intentionally or otherwise, to bring about his kingdom on earth as in heaven. And astonishing as it may seem, God calls those of us who follow the risen and ascended Jesus, i.e., his Church, to be an integral part of proclaiming God’s love and rescue of the world in and through Jesus, both in word and by how we live our lives, lives that are patterned after our Lord Jesus. Even when we get it wrong or it looks like we have failed, even when it looks like the Christian faith is in full retreat and we are defeated, we must never lose heart or hope because God knows the hearts of all people and transcends even our mistakes and failures, as well as the evil of his enemies, to bring about the kingdom. Judas had betrayed his Lord, but God already knew who the disciples should pick as his replacement. Peter had denied his Lord on the night of his arrest and acted like a coward. But God knew Peter’s heart and so Jesus reinstated Peter and Peter did not disappoint. Likewise with us. Whatever it is in your life right now that brings you disappointment, grief, hurt, or sorrow, remember this lesson from Acts. And remember that Jesus is Lord.

But why did Jesus have to ascend to the Father to do all this? Why couldn’t he just remain with us in his resurrected state? After all, that would be much more comforting to us. The Bible does not give us the answer to these questions but there are a couple of reasonable explanations. First, if Jesus remained in this world in his resurrected body, he could not be with all of his people everywhere at the same time in the way he can be with us in the power of the Spirit whom he promised to send. Just like we ascend into heaven each week in sacramental time and space to be with Jesus at the Eucharist, so Jesus must be with all his people as we live out our lives, and he can only do that in the power of the Spirit as long as heaven and earth remain essentially separate dimensions. To be sure, Jesus remains powerfully present with us in the Eucharist, but the fact is we cannot partake of the eucharist 24/7. For Jesus to be with his entire body always to the end of the age, he must be present with us in the power of the Spirit.

Second, Jesus had to ascend into heaven so that we could learn to grow up. As we have seen, Jesus calls us to be his kingdom workers and if we are to do that to the best of our ability, we must learn to grow up in Christ (cf. Ephesians 4.9-16). Any good parent knows that the job of raising children is to make them independent, and as parents we cannot help our kids learn to be independent and make good decisions if we hover over them all the time and make their decisions for them. We have to teach them when they are young and then gradually give them the freedom to make their own choices, even when we disagree with what they choose. Otherwise, our kids will never learn to grow up and we will never know if they truly have learned the core values we taught them while they were young. Is this messy? You bet it is. But love must allow the beloved the freedom necessary to make their own choices and to love freely in return. To do otherwise takes away the very basis that makes love possible in the first place.

Just so with God and us as Christians. God in his wisdom wants us to grow up so that we can learn to truly love him. God wants us to grow up so that we can use our minds to learn how to search the Scriptures diligently and become mature Christians so that God can use us  even more effectively as his faithful kingdom workers. Is this messy and hard? Yes it is. Will we make mistakes? Yes we will. But nothing worthwhile in this life ever comes easy, our faith and Christian maturity included. But because God knows our hearts and we know that God loves us and wants the best for us because of what he has done for us in and through Jesus, we can have the confidence that despite the messiness in learning to grow up as Christians, we can proclaim the Good News of his Son Jesus Christ in word and deed to a world that desperately needs to hear it, all the while trusting that God’s will be done, sometimes in spite of us. 

To be sure, there will be uncertainty and ambiguity as we live out our lives for Christ. But uncertainty and ambiguity should never translate into powerlessness and joylessness. To the contrary. We have the power of our Lord Jesus available to us at all times in and through the presence of the Holy Spirit. That is why we are never abandoned. So let us never lose heart or hope or wring our hands in despair as Christians because we know that Jesus is our risen and ascended Lord who has defeated the dark powers, even the power of death, and who now rules over the cosmos. And during those times when Jesus’ Lordship is not obvious to us, let us remember that it is obvious to God the Father who knows our hearts and who by his love has retaken his world in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Son. We have God’s very testimony that this is true, which means that we really do have Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen and ascended! The Lord is risen and ascended indeed! Alleluia! 

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

Sermon originally preached on Easter 6A, Sunday, May 17, 2020, when the COVID pandemic was in full swing and fear was high. 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. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand. Never be ashamed of the gospel. It is the Father’s most precious gift to us.

Lectionary texts: Acts 17.22-31; Psalm 66.8-20; 1 Peter 3.13-22; St. John 14.15-21.

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

As we continue to deal with the effects of this pandemic, our readings remind us that we have a wonderful opportunity to proclaim our resurrection hope to folks who are afraid or who wonder where God is in it all. This is what I want us to look at this morning. 

A word of clarification before I begin. When I talk about proclaiming Christ, I don’t have in mind you all jumping up in your respective pulpits and preaching a sermon. I have in mind the many opportunities we have in the circumstances of our various lives. There is great fear out there, my beloved, and we have the only real antidote to that fear. So in our conversations and interactions with others, when opportunities arise, let us take advantage of them, thanking God for giving us those opportunities to proclaim our Easter faith to others.

In our New Testament lesson, we see St. Paul proclaiming his resurrection faith to a society that was essentially ignorant of the one true and living God, the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. While we don’t live in first-century Greece, we do live in a society that increasingly does not know the God we worship, and like St. Paul as he observed the various idols the Athenians worshiped, God will give us opportunities in this pandemic to connect with those who do not know Christ and witness to our Easter hope of resurrection and new creation.

How might we do that? Well, for starters we are to meet people where they are, just like St. Paul met his audience where they were. Many want to know if this pandemic is from God. While we must be very circumspect in answering this question because frankly none of us knows the entire answer to the issues it raises, we can say with certainty that God has allowed this pandemic to take place, even if God’s reasons for doing so are less clear. So the better question to ask, perhaps, is what spiritual resources do Christians have available to help us cope with this plague and sustain us with real hope? This we can readily share with those who are perhaps now more ready to listen to our message than they were before this pandemic struck.

Like St. Paul did with the Athenians, a good place to start is to challenge society’s false gods. The Epicurean gods of St. Paul’s day made a roaring comeback with the 18^th century Enlightenment movement. The false, largely monotheistic god of the Enlightenment is an absentee and fickle god who is hard to please and who doesn’t seem to care about the affairs of this world. This deist god of human invention is made popular by increasing biblical ignorance and capitulation to the Enlightenment movement that is essentially hostile to God. This false god gladly allows pandemics and other nasty things to ravage our world and its people because he is essentially a cruel and angry god, who cares little about creation; hence, he doesn’t get involved in human affairs. 

But if we spend any amount of time in the Bible and learn its overarching story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—you do know what I refer to, right?—we quickly realize this distant, cruel god who gladly inflicts suffering and unhappiness on people is a false god and not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Christians we know how important creation and we are to God. After all, we humans bear his image and God created us to run his world on his behalf. While we have gotten that part terribly wrong, that isn’t about the nature of God; it’s about us and our sin and folly. But as both the Old & New Testaments proclaim, God loves his world and us and has promised to heal and redeem us, along with God’s beloved creation. The resurrection of Jesus Christ stands as living testimony to this truth. Our God cares deeply about us and the affairs of his world, and from the very beginning has actively sought us out to heal and restore us. We see God’s love made known supremely to us in Jesus Christ, crucified for our sake to restore us to God as St. Peter proclaims in our epistle lesson, and raised from the dead to announce death’s ultimate destruction with the coming new world. So first of all we are people with Good News, the Good News of God’s rescue of us, despite our hostility toward him and our ongoing rebellion against him. This is the God who promises to be with us always as our Lord himself declares in our gospel lesson. Here we have it. Jesus, God become human, promising to be with us always through the Spirit’s presence until he returns to finish his healing and saving work. Scripture is the story of our God who loves us and seeks us out to heal and restore us to himself. This God is actively involved in his world in the power of the Spirit and through his people, and this God flatly contradicts false narratives about an absent and uncaring god who actively seeks to punish us with pandemics and other catastrophes because he hates us. The world desperately needs to hear about this God, my beloved.

A second place to start witnessing our resurrection faith is to be willing to talk truthfully about the reality of death. As we saw two weeks ago, we Americans have lived in La-La Land when it comes to death. We deny it as best we can and prior to this pandemic we foolishly believed we are masters of our own destiny. If nothing else, this pandemic has shown us emphatically that we are not masters of our destiny and death is a constant reality. As Christians, we can bring to bear something that no one else can: the love, power, and promise of God to defeat and abolish death in and through Jesus Christ. We believe that on the cross, God made peace with us and dealt with our ongoing sin, folly, and rebellion once and for all. Much of that remains a mystery to us because we look around and see sin, folly, and rebellion everywhere we turn. But it is the New Testament’s proclamation that God has indeed dealt with all that separates us from him and makes us sick as a result, the ultimate sickness being death itself. We know this is true because God raised Christ from the dead to usher in God’s promised new creation and with it the abolition of death and everything evil. Because God does care about creation and us, God has acted decisively on our behalf to heal and restore us. Christ raised from the dead means that death will ultimately be abolished forever and the hope and promise of our baptism proclaims that because we belong to Christ we will share in his resurrection, learning as we do how to live as the truly human beings God created us to be, beings who reflect the love, goodness, mercy, and justice of God. We can’t do this on our own, of course, because we are too profoundly broken. But we don’t have to do it on our own because we are promised and have been given the very Spirit of Christ himself who helps heal us and shape us into his own likeness, and promises us that we will be his forever. No other religion proclaims the new creation and the resurrection of the dead and when we truly believe that this is our destiny, a destiny made possible by the love of God made known to us supremely in Jesus Christ, we no longer have to be afraid of death or of dying. Again, Christ himself promises to be with us, even in the valley of the shadow of death, so that even if the virus strikes us down, we are not separated from him. Hear St. Paul beautifully describe this unbreakable bond made possible by Christ’s death on the cross for us:

If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?  …No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow [nor Covid-19]—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8.31b-39, NLT).

Here is great hope and power to help people deal with their fears during this pandemic. When we give our lives to Christ, we become resurrection people, whose destiny is life, not death. Mortal death comes to all humans because all have sinned and death results from sin. But God in his great love and mercy has conquered death for us through his Son and we no longer have to fear death or dying. None of us deserves this great love and grace of God, but it is available to anyone who is willing to enter into a relationship with our Lord Jesus. If this is not an appropriate conversation during this pandemic, I don’t know what is. Eternal life in a world devoid of any kind of evil or sorrow is a great antidote to the despair of pandemic. For the love of Christ, how can we remain silent?

Of course there are other ways to talk about our faith to non-believers and sadly not everyone will be interested or willing to hear us. But these are two good ways to start and the love of God demands that we try. When we do, we are assured that Christ himself is with us to strengthen us and use us to advance his good purposes in the world, despite its opposition to God and us. 

But before we can proclaim our faith to others, we have to know our own story well enough to proclaim it. That comes through regular Bible study together, prayer, fellowship, and worship. The Christian Faith is essentially relational and as with every relationship, our relationship with Christ requires us to do our part. While we have a God who loves us passionately and pursues us relentlessly, we will never know him or his love for us if we continue to run away from him or refuse to listen to his voice contained in Scripture, in the lives of our parish family and other faithful Christians, and in the Eucharist. When Christ tells us he will be with us in the power of the Holy Spirit, we have to learn what that looks and sounds like in the living of our days so that we can recognize his spiritual presence and voice. We learn this and receive guidance from Scripture, from the lives of his saints, in the Eucharist, and in studying his word. Just like married couples come to know each other more intimately with every passing year, so we too can expect to grow in our knowledge of Christ and appropriate his promises to us as time goes by. When we do, we discover that we actually are supremely loved by our Great Shepherd despite our unloveliness and learn to imitate his love to others. Whenever we forgive when no forgiveness is warranted, whenever we are generous to others where no generosity is deserved, whenever we learn to bless our enemies instead of cursing them, we are given power to grow in our knowledge of Christ, and when that knowledge grows, so too does our faith in his promise to us that we really are resurrection people whose destiny is the new heavens and earth where we will live in God’s direct presence and protection forever.

So proclaim the Good News we must, especially if we claim to love God and others. But first we must come to know and believe our Story and make it our own by faith. As our psalm reminds us, we will not have all our questions and concerns answered in this mortal life because we must live and walk by faith, and faith requires an abiding trust in the power of God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead and creates things out of nothing. But we can walk by faith, confident that God the Father in his great love for us gives us the resources we need to grow in our love and faith and so imitate his dearly beloved Son so that God’s will may be done on earth as in heaven. We believe this is true because we believe that God really did raise Christ from the dead, thereby demonstrating that all his promises are trustworthy and true. It is a spectacular promise and one the world desperately needs to hear, whether it knows it or not. Let us give thanks to God that he loves us enough and deems us worthy enough by virtue of the blood of the Lamb shed for us to call us to this great and sacred task. Let us resolve with all our might to be obedient to his call and proclaim boldly the Good News of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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

Sermon originally preached on Easter 6A, Sunday, May 25, 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. My prayer is that Christ rid his Church of those teachers, leaders (especially bishops), and preachers who are ashamed of the gospel; they do immense harm to the people of God. May God help them repent of this wickedness. Christians, after all, have the greatest treasure of all—the hope and promise of Resurrection life in God’s new world. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 17.22-31; Psalm 66.8-20; 1 Peter 3.13-22; John 14.15-21.

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

As Christians, at our very core we are resurrection people. As we have emphasized throughout this Easter season, when God raised Jesus from the dead, he not only destroyed the last enemy, death itself, so that those of us who are in Christ know that our destiny is resurrection and life, God also ushered in his promised new creation in which he will ultimately put all that is wrong and hurtful to rights and banish evil forever in his righteous judgment. In other words, God’s good creation matters to God. We matter to God as his image-bearing creatures and this is both Good News and our hope. This should be a game-changer for us! As we have also seen, if God didn’t really raise Jesus from the dead, we have nothing and are without a hope and a future (cf. Jeremiah 29.11), and all our work in Jesus’ name is in vain. 

But there must be more to our resurrection hope than making it all about us and our needs. The Good News that is in the death and resurrection of Jesus is available to all people, even those who are our enemies, and as God’s people in Jesus we are called to speak the truth of God’s righteous salvation and judgment to a world that is fundamentally hostile to God’s truth but which paradoxically wants desperately to hear it. How else are we to explain the plethora of false, manmade gods? This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning—specifically, how and why our resurrection hope must lead us to be bearers of God’s Good News in Jesus. 

Before we look at this more closely, let us acknowledge that proclaiming the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection is going to be an increasingly difficult thing for us to do because our society is increasingly rejecting the gospel and God’s authority over our lives. Like St. Paul in Athens, we are confronted with voices who oppose the Good News of Jesus in favor of their own gods or version of religion. We are told, for example, that there are many paths to God, that all religions are essentially equal. We live in an age where folks increasingly reject the idea that there is one standard of truth. Instead, we are told that truth is in the eye of the beholder and it is up to us to establish our own truths. Furthermore, we are told that if there really is a God, he is more like a distant landlord who only occasionally peeks in on his tenants, and then only to harass them for their behavior. Do you hear the echoes of this in Paul’s speech in Athens? Increasingly, we as Christians can expect to have our worldview marginalized in favor of some-thing else that is fundamentally hostile to God and his truth contained in Scripture. And if current trends remain unchecked, we can expect to be actively persecuted for our beliefs because many are increasingly unwilling to tolerate hearing God’s truth. They only want to hear their own and we need to engage in this work with eyes wide open to the very real dangers that exist. 

Despite all this, however, we are called to proclaim God’s great love for his stubborn and rebellious human creatures and as both Ss.Peter and Paul remind us in their own ways, we should always be prepared to give a defense for the basis of our hope. But we are to do it gently and graciously, and we have a magnificent example of this kind of defense in Paul’s sermon to the Athenians, which we will look at shortly.

Our hope, of course, is in the cross. There God dealt decisively with our sin and the dark powers of evil. As St. Peter puts it, Jesus suffered for sins once and for all so that he might bring us to God, i.e., so that we might be reconciled to God and finally begin to enjoy real life in ways God originally intended for us. Peter also reminds us that because Jesus is now raised from the dead and ascended into heaven (God’s dimension) as Lord and ruler of the cosmos, the powers and current rulers have been made subject to him (cf. Col. 2.15). In this dense little passage, St. Peter reminds us that if the resurrection did not happen, nothing has changed. Jesus is just another failed Messiah and we are lost, alienated, and separated from God forever, cut off from our very Source of life because only in God can there be life. But because the resurrection did happen, we are assured that God’s goodness and life-changing love for us have won the war. The bad guys, while winning some battles, have won only a temporary victory and are ultimately defeated. And our archenemy, death, has finally been conquered forever, thanks be to God!

But there is more. Because Jesus has ascended into heaven and is no longer available to us in his bodily presence, he has promised that even this will not separate his followers from him because he has promised to be with us in the power and person of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us individually and collectively as Jesus’ body, the Church. And because we have been given the gift of the Spirit, we never have to fear being left alone or abandoned by Jesus. Ever. This latter point is massively important to help us speak the truth in love to a hostile world because we need to be convinced that the Spirit will give us wisdom and insight when speaking to the enemies of the cross and to help bolster our faith when we (and it) come under attack. 

In sum, we believe that God the Father has come to us as God the Son to suffer and die for us so that we could be healed and reconciled to God and to finally defeat the powers of evil that plague us, especially death. We further believe Jesus is always available to us in the per-son of God the Spirit and that God does this because of his great love for his creation and his desire to rescue us from evil, sin, and death. It’s all about God’s faithfulness to his creation and this emphasis on the game-changing impact of Jesus’ resurrection is woven throughout the NT. 

And we must be very clear on this point. If we do not believe our own story, the story of God’s rescue plan for his fallen and disordered creation through Abraham and his family Israel (Genesis 12.1-3) and ultimately through Jesus the Messiah, there is no way we can be faithful witnesses to Jesus. If we have bought the enemy’s line that Jesus is really no different from other religious leaders or that he is somehow just a great teacher and nothing else, we might as well stay at home on Sundays because that is the surest indication that we really are not resurrection people, i.e., we really don’t believe the hope and promise of resurrection as it is manifested in Jesus. This kind of thinking is also decidedly unbiblical. Notice, e.g., how St. Peter assumes we have a resurrection hope in us for which we must always be ready to give an account!

But if we really are resurrection people and we really do take God’s command to us seriously that we are to love God with our whole being and others as ourselves, why would we want to keep quiet about the Good News that is ours in Jesus? If Jesus really is the only way to the Father and the way, the truth, and the life, how could we possibly keep quiet and claim to love others? Does not compute. But we have let our enemies cow-tow us into silence. Why?

So how do we proclaim the Good News in the midst of a hostile society? Here we can take our cue from St. Paul in today’s New Testament lesson. Notice that St. Paul did not come to Athens and immediately start to denounce it. While he certainly would have been justified in doing so, he didn’t because he surely knew that people do not generally respond well to denunciation when that is the first thing out of our mouth. And besides, how can we as Christians proclaim God’s love for people if we immediately tell them they are evil, wicked, mean, and nasty, and going to hell if they don’t get with the program? Of course there will be time for us to talk honestly with people about God’s righteous and holy judgment on his sinful and rebellious creatures. But that time is not when we are first trying to get people to hear us about God’s great love for them and his plan to rescue them in and through Jesus the Messiah. So when we begin to talk to others about God’s love for the world as manifested in Jesus, we must be prepared to meet folks where they are, just like St. Paul did with the Athenians.

So, for example, if we hear folks advancing the idea that all religions are equal, we should be prepared to challenge that notion by reminding them that no other religion makes the claims the Christian faith makes, that God is indeed the creator of the world and has revealed his plan to rescue it and us from Evil, Sin, and Death by raising Jesus from the dead. We should be prepared to tell others why Jesus’ resurrection is the first-fruits of God’s promised new heavens and earth and why that is the basis for our hope as individuals. No other religion comes close to making such a claim and if the resurrection is an historical fact (here we can be prepared to offer reasons why we think it is), it is decisive proof that our claim to truth is complete and valid.

Or we might hear folks expressing a deist view of God, in which they talk about a distant or uncaring God. We can point out to them, gently of course, that this is not the God of the Bible and we do not worship that god either because that god is a false god of human making! We should be prepared to talk about God’s intimate involvement in the lives of his people, e.g., Ruth, David, Abraham, Noah, Esther, et al., including our own, and about how we know Jesus’ promise to send us the Holy Spirit is true because we see the fruit of the Spirit and signs and wonders in our lives. Think, for example, of the many times you have had prayers answered or how God’s people have helped you when your prayers seemingly went answered. Tell folks about how God has helped and been with you as you have walked through the darkest valley or how you have walked with others in theirs. Remind the person that God usually works in and through his people (and occasionally even through those who are his enemies). This is no deist god and it is certainly not the God of the Bible. This is exactly what Paul told the Athenians!

There are literally hundreds of examples I could cite, but I hope you get the idea. Notice that in these examples, we are meeting folks where they are and we are not beating them down (or up) over their beliefs. We are trying to share the truth, God’s truth, with them and we should always understand there is real power in sharing the gospel with others. We are Spirit-filled people, remember? So that when we share God’s word and truth with others we can expect God to produce some positive results. Our New Testament lesson ended before we heard the outcome of St. Paul’s preaching in Athens. Luke reports that when they heard St. Paul talk about the resurrection, some of the Athenians scoffed. It was too incredible for them to believe. But some wanted to hear more and some decided to become believers like St. Paul. At that point, Luke tells us, St. Paul moved on. His work was done. There were more people to reach. The point here is that St. Paul understood about witnessing for Jesus. It is not our job to get people to believe. That is God’s job. Our job is to invite them into a life-giving and saving relationship with Jesus and if it is going to be any kind of real relationship, people must enter into it freely and without coercion. 

And what about those who scoff at us, who try to make us feel like we are out-of-touch, or lunatics, or hate-mongers, etc.? What do we do with those folks and their attempts to demonize us (and sadly we will encounter more of them than we might care to)? We leave them with a blessing. We might politely tell them that we are saddened at their attempts to demonize us and the hardheartedness and closed-mindedness that is always reflected in such attempts. We might say that we were simply offering real life and real truth so that they too could benefit from a relationship with the living Lord as we have and that is our heart’s desire, not to impose our will or some arbitrary rules on them. This response may further infuriate some and if it does, we need to move on and ask God to bless them and open their mind to his great love for them as manifested in Jesus. This is probably best done silently, but the point is this. Christ came to offer everyone life and healing and forgiveness, not just those who treat us nicely. As St. Peter reminds us, Christ the righteous died for us the unrighteous. As his baptized image-bearers, we are called to take up our cross and proclaim our Lord, rejoicing in our suffering because we know that like him, God will also vindicate us in our suffering for the Name. Of course we cannot do any of this on our own power. We do it in the power of the Spirit and we do this work together so that we can support and encourage each other when we encounter opposition. When we are able to act thusly toward our enemies, we have further proof that the Lord’s promises are true.

And of course the effectiveness of our witness to Jesus will be ultimately influenced by our lifestyle. If others see us preaching one thing and practicing another, we are telling them in a very powerful way that we don’t really believe our story, that like the world, we are simply trying to fabricate a god of our own making to justify our chosen lifestyle and that we are still hostile to the Spirit who dwells in us to heal and transform us. We don’t try to obey God’s ethical commands to get our ticket punched because it already has been punched in the cross of Christ. We choose to live like Christ because we know that only in him can there be real life as well as a real hope and a future. We believe this because we believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection marked the turning point of history, and for our good. And that of course means 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.