Category: Sermons

“Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done”: Sermon on Mark 1:1-8

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

There is nothing better than good news. Wouldn’t you agree with me? Is there anyone here that would dare say: “eh, no…give me that good ol’ bad news…nothing like a good dose of bad news to make someone feel alive!” I doubt it. Good news invigorates us. Good news spreads a smile across our face and brightens our eyes. Good news results in various forms of physical celebratory habits like embracing, grasping, jumping up and down, and and a hearty #squee.

Good news can bring relief, especially if there was a possibility of bad news. Good news alleviates our fears: what could have been bad isn’t and won’t be. This type of good news is that which drops us—fast and hard—to our knees in gratitude with tears of joy, with a sincere, “Oh, thank God!” that whispers past our lips. Same, too, for the good news that springs itself upon us and breaks the long, dry season of silence and disappointment. The kind of good news that will radically recalibrate our world; good news can drag us out of the valley of despair and place us on the mountain top of joy, long suffering hope materialized.

And isn’t this what Advent is all about? Isn’t Advent about our waiting, longing, desiring, and hoping for good news? Our liturgical calendar thrusts us back into the story of the Israelites; we are caused to sit and listen and imagine and to bear that history as part of our own. We are asked to recall and remember the longing of the people of God. We are asked to recall and remember the hungry and the thirsty people of God who are waiting for their God to intervene on their behalf, who are longing for their God to hear their cries and liberate them from oppression, who are desiring to be resident with their God as his people in God’s Kingdom come, and who are hoping for alleviation of the toil, suffering, sorrow, and brokenness in the fulfillment of the one who is to come, the Messiah.

We are asked to feel the heavy weight of Isaiah’s words,

“A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken’” (Is. 40:3-5)

We are asked to let our desperate hearts, our burdened minds, and our exhausted bodies cry out, “so be it!” and let our voices join in the great chorus belonging to the people of God.

We are asked to hear (again) the proclamation of the advent of God in our world in the word incarnate, the savior, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and to be encountered (again) in the event of faith.

Thus, let us hear and turn our heads to the proclamation of Mark,

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1).

The gospel of Matthew begins with the who’s who of Christ’s genealogy; characters ranging from the very good to the very “colorful.” The author of Matthew begins the gospel in this way to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is of the line of David and is the long awaited messiah, Emmanuel, “God with us” (Mt 1:22ff).

The gospel of Luke begins with an account of the conception of both John the Baptist and Jesus as a pronouncement that the long awaited liberty and rescue for the captives has come, the long awaited son of God, the “savior for us” (Lk 1:69a), the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to his people, is here.

The gospel of John, being the most abstract and theologically dense of all four gospels of Christ, begins with the connection that the God who hovered over all of creation in the beginning is one and the same with the incarnate Word; the Word went forth and created as it went and the Word goes forth (now) creating as it goes, forcing away the darkness and illuminating the world (Jn 1:1-18).

Mark’s gospel starts off with the clear proclamation that there’s good news: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and with the advent of Christ in our time line so to the inauguration of the time of the reign of God with him. (The whole of the written book that is Mark’s gospel is a proclamation about Jesus Christ and his kingdom in the fullest sense of the word proclamation.)[1] Mark steps out into the streets ringing his bell and shouts: Hear, Ye! Hear, Ye! Hear ye the good news: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is come!

And be not mistaken, Mark is very much concerned with the advent of Christ and with the concurrent coming and inauguration of the kingdom of God.[2] Our author is being politically polemical in his introductory language. The Hellenistic religious use of the word ευαγγελιον («good news») had the «connection with the cult of the emperor, whose birthday, accession to power, and the like, even a forthcoming ‘royal visit’, were hailed as ευαγγελιον.»[3] The author of Mark isn’t pulling any punches. He coopts and uses intentionally political language to grab the attention of his audience. The audience being not only Christian disciples, but also roman authority.[4]

Again, place Mark and his announcement in the streets. The one who thinks he’s divine (the human emperor) isn’t; Jesus Christ is. Mark points at the human ruler and says, essentially, «Not my emperor.» And he invites his audience—the people suffering under the harsh rule and demoralized under the oppression of the powers that be—to see the distinction between the human emperor and the Christ, the true emperor. He invites them to locate themselves in the coming of the kingdom of God and to see that this new location[5] demands a confrontation with the way the regime and reign of the human emperor operate because the hearer of the good news of Jesus Christ can see them for what it is: the current regime is sham, the human emperor is naked.

For Mark (and for anyone willing to listen) there’s a new emporer in town and this emporer is the emporer who is going to tear down the current regime and reign and usher in a completely new one. The new reign and regime that comes in with Christ’s advent will not be marked by oppressive systems and structures designed to keep the low low while granting unfettered power to the powerful. It wont bear the traits of despotic rule. It won’t use the coercion and subjugation and enslavement of human beings to reduce them to mere cogs in a machine or objects to be used, abused, and left for dead. In fact the kingdom of God cannot be marked by these things because these things are antithetical to the character of God and thus to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

With the immediate reference to the announcement of John the Baptist, Mark intentionally draws the audience into the realization that Jesus Christ is truly divine, thus ousting the human emperor from his self-proclaimed divine status,

«[John] proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit’” (Mk 1:7-8).[6]

This new emporer is truly divine (the true son of the true God) and thus the new reign and regime, the Kingdom of God, that Christ ushers in will have the characteristics fitting of a divine kingdom: divine restorative and transcending justice, peace that surpasses all understanding, reconciliatory mercy.[7]

With the Son of God on the throne, the kingdom of God is very much at hand and the Christian disciples are baptized into this new reign and regime, into this new emperor and his good kingdom. Thus, not only the kingdom bears these divine traits of justice, peace, and mercy, but so, too, the citizens of this new kingdom. The Disciples of Christ bear these traits by their baptism both of water and of the Holy Spirit and in their life in the world.

And if this is all true for those initial hearers of Mark’s gospel, so it is true for us who listen today. By our baptism with water and Spirit, we have been grafted into the history of Jesus Christ and thus if into His history then our present and our future is located therein where the promises of God are yes and amen and this is our present tense reality. We are reminded that the promises spoken by God that are fulfilled in and by Christ are ours by faith.[8] We are born anew by the spirit (all that was and is, is washed from us),[9] and we have been given the ears to hear the loving summons of our Savior that calls us to an encounter with God in the event of faith.

Also, if Mark’s proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is for us, thus, so too is his political polemic. In hearing this proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we have been given not only ears to hear the proclamation but also eyes to see that we are—in the event encounter—located squarely in the kingdom of God. And if located therein, then citizens: active, participatory citizens. Citizens who are not removed from society, but live a radical and different (and maybe even dangerous?)[10] existence in society. We are a voice for the voiceless and resist oppression; we create space for the alien and the refugee; we fight for freedom for all because if our neighbor isn’t free, then we aren’t free. Our neighbor’s pain is our pain, our neighbor’s plight our plight, our neighbor’s suffering our suffering. We are marked by the characteristics of our God: mercy, justice, and peace, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

We profess our faith in Christ, the Son of God and push forward the good rule of Christ into the entire world, this is the mission of the church, and this is church as event rejecting the status quo and defending and advocating for the defenseless.[11] We preach Christ crucified and risen. Jürgen Moltmann writes,

“Wherever Jesus is acknowledged as the Christ of God, Christian faith is to be found. Wherever this is doubted, obscured or denied, there is no longer Christian faith, and the riches of historic Christianity disappear with it. Christianity is alive as long as there are people who, as the disciples once did, profess their faith in him and, following him, spread his liberating rule in words, deeds and new fellowship.”[12]

We, today, are asked to remember the advent of the long awaited messiah of Israel, the fulfillment of all the promises of God. We are asked to hear (again) the proclamation of the advent of God in our world in the word incarnate, the savior, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and to be encountered (again) in the event of faith. And we, along with Mark’s audience, are asked to participate in the kingdom of God and to be a force in the world that must be reckoned with.[13] We are asked to step out into the streets with our verbal and physical proclamation of the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come, forgiveness and reconciliation are here, and so too God’s kingdom and “liberating rule.”

[1] R. T. France The Gospel of Mark TNIGTC. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002. “Mark’s book is intended, therefore to pass on the god news about Jesus. This news has been hithero the subject of primarily oral declaration (Mann therefore appropriately translates ευαγγελιον here as ‘Proclamation’), but Mark’s book is an attempt to communicate it in written form (though probably with a view to its being read orally in the congregation. Ευαγγελιον denotes the content rather than the form of the book» 52-3.

[2] Karl Barth CD IV.2.64.197-8, “Again, ‘the kingdom of coming with power’ of Mk. 9:1 could be calmly replaced by ‘the Son of man coming in his kingdom’ of the parallel Mt. 16:28. ‘The Gospel’ in the preaching of Philip in Ac. 8:12 is the kingdom of God, and (the και is surely to be understood epexegetically in all the passages) the name of Jesus Christ. According to the last verse of Acts (28:31), Paul preached ‘the kingdom of God,’ and taught ‘those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.’ According to the great voice from heaven in Rev. 12:10, the βασιλεια of God and εξουσια are given to His Christ. The references to the kingdom and to Christ are obviously to be understood in the light of each other in all these passages.”

[3] Ibid 52.

[4] Lauren Ellis. Final Paper on the Gospel of Mark, “There is a two sided approach to addressing who was reading (or who needed to read) Mark’s Gospel. The first audience to consider is Christians who were enduring suffering—they can read about suffering in context and see a meaning for their suffering. A second audience is the people in Authority in the empire. Christians are not what Tacitus and Nero thought they were; thus, if the Empire takes Christianity seriously, they will not only see the truth but also see that Christianity would help to make the world better. The modern reader can see the two fold apologetic aspect of the Gospel.”

[5] W. Travis McMaken Our God Loves Justice Minneapolis, MN: Fortress 2017. “As Ulrich Dannermann and Matthias Weissinger put it, ‘social analysis and social criticism are a theme of theology work. Theology can only adequately speak to the real world, to real people, when it tries to plot society…on the horizon of the coming kingdom of God’” 92-3.

[6] Karl Barth CD IV.4.56, “The different aspects of the event which according to this preaching is directly imminent are as follows. According to Mt. 3:2 what is at hand and at the doors, can take place any moment, is the βασιλεια των οθρανων, the establishment on earth of the divine dominion already set up in heaven. What breaks in is also God’s penetrating and divisive judgment. (…) Just as distinctively as the kingdom, no less majestically than the threatening judgment, there also comes in and with the judgment something very different, namely, remission, the legally effective taking away and setting aside of the sins of Israel, which are not overlooked or taken lightly, but which are brought under the grace of God (Mk. 1:4; Lk. 1:77; 3:8).”

[7] McMaken, Our God Loves Justice, 89-91.

[8] This particular portion of the sermon is me playing around with the insights and scholarship of W. Travis McMaken as found in “Definitive, Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth’s Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4” IJST vol 17.1 Jan. 2015.

[9] Karl Barth CD IV.2.563 “…in relation to everything that [I] previously was or otherwise [am] it is a new beginning newly posited by God.”

[10] McMaken Our God Loves Justice. 149-151. Specifically, referring to Gollwitzer, “Instead of leaving the church to its comfortable domestication, ‘the one thing that matters for the church is that she should be both a danger and a help to the world.’ Gollwitzer’s ecclesiology calls for a dangers church because a church that is not dangerous I no help at all” 150-1.

[11] McMaken Ibid, 16. “Just as God cannot legitimately be objectified, so also the church cannot legitimately by objectified. The true being of the church occurs as it responds in faithful obedience to its encounter with God’s though-objectivity, which necessarily includes renunciation of its privilege and political advocacy on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed.”

[12] Moltmann The Crucified God New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1974. 82.

[13] McMaken Our God Loves Justice “The kingdom of God is the ‘revolutionary, eschatological, and social determination of the present’; it is ‘the revolution of all revolutions, that is, the eschatological revolution’” 118.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Life as Descent: Homily on John 6:41-51

“‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’” (John 6:51).

I stood cloaked in white alb, wearing a red deacon’s stole. I held the plate of Eucharistic wafers, nervous. I had just been ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church, and this was my first time participating in the distribution of the Eucharistic elements. With some apprehension and a whole bunch of “Just don’t drop the plate, Lauren,” I approached the first person kneeling at the railing. “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” I said as I held up and then handed the wafer to the adult kneeling in front of me. And then I did it again, and again, and again.

By my fourth pass by my half of the rail, I’d grown quite composed and quite confident. I grew comfortable with the eye contact and the pastoral moment that was this brief encounter with the individual congregants at the Cathedral. “Huh…” I thought, kind of surprised. “This isn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be.”

The last group of individuals knelt at the rail, and I started the last distribution of the bread. “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven…The body of Christ the bread of heaven…” I rounded the corner of the rail and continued, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven…The body of Christ, the bread of heaven…”

And then my eyes landed square on the big blues of a small child; his chin just cleared the rail. I stood looking down at him; actually, I was looming over him—I rarely loom over anyone. I paused while I held his eager gaze and watched him grip the railing with his hands, pull himself forward, and open his mouth for me to place the wafer in it, as he had watched me do with his mother a few minutes before him.

I couldn’t reach him from my position looming over him. I took the plate in one hand, grabbed my alb with the other, and brought my self all the way down to eye level with him; my right knee had to rest on the floor. I held up the wafer and made eye contact with him again, his big blues locked on me. “The body of Christ…” I said looking at him, holding his gaze, “…the bread of heaven.” And fed him.

“‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’” (John 6:51).

The Word of God, the word made flesh, the living bread of life, Jesus Christ, descends to us. The manna Jesus refers to in our passage (6:49) is mentioned in Exodus 16. This “manna”—a fine, flaky, white-like-dew substance that appeared on the ground for Israelite consumption—was the bread of heaven that God promised to send in Exodus 16:4[1] to satiate the starving people. They were in the throws of sever hunger pangs and cried out. And God heard; God acted. His word descended and fed the people; in this event, the Israelites were to encounter the power of God and see, hear, and to have faith. Jesus is clearly referring back to that part of Israel’s history with God, pointing the Israelites to recall God’s divine activity for them. Make no mistake about it; in correlating himself to the manna descended from heaven, Jesus intentionally proclaims that that historical event is happening at that very moment, in him, with him, and by him.

In Deuteronomy 30:11-14 it is written,

“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”

Christ—who is the bread of heaven—descends to us so that we do not have to ascend to heaven to search for it. It is Christ who comes walking across the sea to us so that we do not have to cross over the sea to get it. Jesus is the word made flesh and is the bread of life, the true bread of heaven that has come down into the world so (the word is near) so that we hear (deeply, inwardly digest the word) and have faith in him. In Christ we see that God has heard and that God acts.

Christ, who is God of very God, not only descended in casting off his own divine royalty, humbling himself in being born in human likeness and form (Phil. 2:6-8),[2] but he descended to us and for us. The divine activity in Christ is the event encounter of God and humanity. The word made flesh descends low to be the lamb of God to redeem the world (John 1:29), descends low to demonstrate his glory in making the mundane (water) grace filled (wine) (John 2:1-12), descends low to be the event of love of God for the whole world to bring life abundant (John 3:16ff), descends low to recline against a well to encounter an ostracized Samaritan woman (John 4), descends low to heal those who are seemingly incurable, defies the existing authority structures, and is the apocalyptic event of God’s power in the world (John 5).

This proclamation of the gospel in the gospel of John (John 6:41-51) is the recounting and retelling of the descent Christ—the bread from heaven and the word made flesh—who is the divine once-and-for-all, established-forever divine activity of God for God’s people and the world. And in this recounting and retelling of Christ’s descent from heaven and the corresponding event encounter between God and the world, we—we—are pulled into the story and become the object in the encounter of that event—just as we are the objects of the gift of Grace by faith in Christ apart from works by the power of the holy spirit, so, too, are we the object of the divine revelation of God in Christ.[3] We, by hearing the proclamation of Christ, are pointed to Christ, to God, and, thus, we are encountered by God who has descended to us.[4] Jesus is the bread of life descended from heaven not only for his immediate disciples or his historic community. But in that he is such for them and that the proclamation of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension has moved from generation to generation for the past 2000 + years means he is also for us, for all, for the world. [5]

Christ came to you to give you life abundant. And this life that is given to you is life that is marked not by ascent upward out of the earthly realm or fleeing the brokenness of the world by crossing the sea, but by descent. As we have seen Christ do and as we’ve experienced in event encounter with God in Christ by faith, our lives are marked by the same deep descent by transcending society’s boundaries[6] to those who are oppressed, to those who are burdened, to those who are seeking refuge, to the voiceless. As we have been nourished, so we nourish. As we have been provided for, we provide. As we have been clothed, we clothe. As we have been encountered, we encounter. We are commissioned by Christ to be the preachers sent into the world to descend low, bringing our knees to the ground to give the bread of life to the least of us scattered all through out our society and the world (Matt 25:31ff). [7]

[1] “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.’”

[2] “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

[3] Dr. W. Travis McMaken, Our God Loves Justice, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017): “Dialectical theology’s enduring contribution, then, is affirming that Protestant theological epistemology must be decisively shaped by protestant soteriology so that just as Christians can in no way merit saving grace, theologians can in no way merit revelation by finding it already embedded in the structures of human intellect or creation as a whole…Just as saving grace is an alien grace that comes to sinners from outside of themselves, knowledge of God is likewise an alien knowledge that comes to sinners from outside of themselves. Salvation and revelation thereby become two sides of the same event of God’s gracious activity” 55. To purchase this book, which I highly recommend you do, click here. To follow Dr. McMaken on Twitter: @WTravisMcMaken.

[4] Ibid, 72n61: McMaken quoting Helmut Gollwitzer, “‘there is no way to the event, to the act of God which is called Jesus, that circumvents the word of proclamation with its corresponding answer of faith.’ The kerygma ‘points beyond itself to the living God who encounters us in the proclamation but is more than a title for the word-event itself’…”

[5] Karl Barth, “What Jesus is ‘for us’ or ‘for you’ in the narrower circle of the disciples and the community He is obviously, through the ministry of this narrower circle, ‘for all’ or ‘for the world’ in the wider or widest circle. And in the majority of the relevant passages this action of Jesus for others (His disciples, His community, the many, all, the world) is His death and passion.” CD III.2.45.213-15.

[6] McMaken, Our God Loves Justice, 77: Explaining how Gollwitzer develops the concepts of “Brotherhood” (and “Sonship) found in the New Testament, McMaken writes, “Brotherhood designates a new Spirit-empowered sociality that ‘transcend[s] race and class.’ And this transcending cannot be limited to the realm of personal feeling, for that only serves to insulate the powers that be from the transformative power of the gospel Rather, ‘brotherhood transcending race and class in the New Testament means: actual life together in actual equality, that is, in a new classless society. A system of injustice legitimated as a system of justice is being abolished.’”

[7] “‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”

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Playing our Part as Witness: Homily on John 3:22-30

John 3:22-30 Jesus and John the Baptist

“27 John answered, ‘No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. 28 You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.” 29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.’”

The Gospel of John spends the better portion of its introductory scenes in chapters 1-3 distinguishing between the Christ and not the Christ. Like a well-written play, the characters are clearly and quickly identified. There is the Christ and there is Not the Christ. Consider John 1:6-9

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

And John 1:15,

“(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”’)”

And John 1:19-20,

“This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah’”

Chapter 2 demonstrates the divine power of Christ in both the miracle of the water turned into wine and the cleansing of the temple. The miracle at the wedding of Cana is the manifestation of Christ’s glory. The overturning of the tables in the temple and clearing out the temple of establishes Christ’s authority as prophet, priest, and king. “This,” writes the gospeler, “is the Christ, and I am not him.”

Chapter 3 continues the witness as to who the Christ is in Christ’s encounter with Nicodemus in the dark of night (the son of man that has descended from heaven and the one who will be raised and lifted up John 3: 13-15) and the establishment that this son of man, the Christ, is the one sent from God because God so loved the world (John 3:16).

Why is there so much upfront work establishing a relationship of Christ and not the Christ in the first few chapter of the Gospel of John? A good knee jerk response would be: to establish witness. In order for John to be a good witness to the Christ, a distinction must be made (and made firmly) about who John is and who the Christ is. John is the rejoicing friend to the bridegroom and not the bridegroom (John 3:29). John is not the Messiah but the one sent ahead of Messiah (John 3:28). John’s entire ministry is about pointing and witnessing to the one who comes after him, the one whose sandals he is not worthy to untie (John 1:27b).

John is not the Christ and should not be confused with the Christ because John is the one witnessing to the Christ. To confuse the two, to confuse the proclamation with the one proclaiming is to conflate the message with the one witnessing and this means the message is lost. If John doesn’t draw a thick line in the sand between him and the Christ, the good news we just heard yesterday, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16) is lost, completely lost. And surely, this is not the news you want to lose.

In perfect dramatic sequence, John speaks one of his last lines for this portion of the drama that is unfolding for the audience. “‘He must increase, but I must decrease’” (John 3:30). And very literally, John decreases from center stage. He steps stage left and out of view, picking up the role of witnessing narrator to the works and deeds of Jesus Christ, the son of man, the son of God, the messiah come to save the world.

In a very real way, we are invited into this moment as fellow witnesses with John. I don’t want to take away from our very real and very good desire to be more like Christ in our own lives and in our lives toward others. But in this moment, let us step in to the place left for us: the witnesses of Christ. Let us follow John’s lead.

In our real life and our virtual worlds, there is a huge pull and desire to build our own platforms and personal image, to draw attention to ourselves. And this isn’t merely a “you students” thing, but is an “all of us” thing. It is very hard to resist the urge and the pull to promote ourselves, to be overly concerned with our reputations and images. We want to increase; decreasing isn’t an option for us in a world that demands we prove our value, our worth, and ourselves. And this is surely an exhausting rat race to be in, with no trophy, no end, no rest because the world is never satisfied, “More!” it cries, “Give us more!”

But here, in our passage with John pointing to the Christ and witnessing to Him, we are invited to witness and to be witnessed to. Hear John’s words for you and rest in those words: for God so loved the world, so loved us, that God broke into our timeline and created such an impact that the ripples of that event are felt in every sector of existence then, now, and tomorrow. The first are last, the last are first; hierarchies overturned; oppressors condemned and the oppressed set free.

But don’t stop there; find the activity from that rest in understanding that this is all about Christ. We exist as the body of Christ corporate to point others to him and what he has done for the world. And we point to Christ not just with proclamation with words of the gospel (those words are very important) but also with our actions of walking in mercy, humility, kindness, and justness (Micah 6:8).[1]

And I want to be clear, Christ’s increase and our decrease isn’t about being so overpowered by the divine encounter that we lose ourselves so completely as to cease being and having ourselves. For in God, in union with God, we are more fully ourselves in all of our quirks, eccentricities, and uniqueness. We receive ourselves back in an active and living and witnessing way.

The fun part about this active witnessing is that as we stand pointing to him, directing others toward him we are freed up in a radical way to enjoy our lives in their multifaceted brilliance and with a deep abiding, completely free joy: in the classroom, in our myriad performances, in our various athletic commitments, at home with our family or out and about with our friends.

Let our voices and lives come together with John and let us play our parts as witnesses: Come! Come and meet the Messiah, the Christ who came into the world to save it because he loves us.

 

 

 

[1] “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

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Rain, Rain Everywhere: Homily on John 3:1-15

“Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’” (John 3:5-8)

There is something absolutely marvelous about a standard downpour of rain. When the skies open up and release every single droplet of water from a supersaturated atmosphere, there is a magnificence that must be reckoned with.

You might not agree with me; but then again, unless you’ve spent nearly three years in the desert, you might not have the awe I have when rain falls. When you live in Western Colorado, in the high-dessert, you can get the clouds that look like they’ll release heavenly water, but they don’t. The clouds move on, blown by the dry winds and the grass and plants and other sensitive foliage turns browner. Or, you may casually watch a storm front dissipate before your very eyes as you watch it travel east to west, burned and dried out by the dry, dry, dry heat of the sun and air.

I love the rain. And we get some really great rain here. And last night, when the rains fell for a second time, and dinner was almost but not quite ready, I opened the front door and stepped outside. Large water droplets fell all around me, hitting the ground–liquid staccato allegro. Large water droplets broke into smaller droplets as they hit the ground, covering my feet with rain. I stretched out my arm and let the rain hit my hand, and in that moment I was struck by the renewing and cleansing and refreshing that this rain was. The earth was being watered: renewed, cleansed, and refreshed.

And I was reminded of my own renewing and cleansing and refreshing that is daily manifested in my own life as I remember that I am baptized. And not only baptized with water but also of the Spirit; by this baptism I have been grafted into the history of Jesus Christ and thus if into His history then my future is located therein where the promises of God are yes and amen and this is my present tense reality. Each raindrop seemed to carry with it sweet whispers of reminder that while I was born of the flesh at one point in time, I am born anew by the spirit and have been given eyes to see the kingdom of God and enter it, and the ears to hear the loving summons of my Savior that calls me outward toward you. Each drop, a soothing reminder that the promises spoken by God that are fulfilled in and by Christ are mine by faith. Each drop, a refreshing reminder, a new beginning that all that was and is washes from me.[1] As it is written in the second letter to the Corinthians: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…” (2 Cor 5:17-18b).[2]

While everything around us looks hopeless, while hatred and evil stomp and tromp around leaving what feels like an infinite number of victims in its wake, while our own lives and minds are plagued by turmoil, anxiety, stress, sadness, doubt, and maybe even disbelief that God actually loves and cares for us, we have been given a tangible reminder of God’s love for us. That Jesus Christ’s free and obedient giving of himself on the cross, his being lifted up on the cross is that event to which we turn our heads.[3] As John writes, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

And every time we recall our baptism of water and spirit, we are brought to this event of Christ being lifted up to die for our sins and to be raised for our justification (Romans 4:25). We are brought to the fulfillment of God’s promises that are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. We are brought to the heart of God’s love for us, you are brought to the heart of God’s love for you, for each and every one of you.

Rain, rain everywhere, and in every drop a thirst quenching drink: “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16).

 

[1] Karl Barth CD IV/2 p. 563 “…in relation to everything that [I] previously was or otherwise [am] it is a new beginning newly posited by God.”

[2] This particular portion of the sermon is me playing around with the insights and scholarship of W. Travis McMaken as found in “Definitive, Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth’s Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4” IJST vol 17.1 Jan. 2015. pp. 102-114.

[3] Karl Barth CD IV/1 p. 166

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The Parable as the World Right-Side-Out: Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16

“‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat’“ (Mt 20:12)

Do you know what this verse is the equivalent of in our vernacular?

“It’s not fair!” “Hey! That’s not fair!” These workers essentially whined and complained in an ancient language (now very dead) that is equivalent to my 3-year-old’s tantrum about nothing (absolutely nothing!) being “fair!” As a parent of three kids, I know all about the deep-seated human desire for fairness. Any parent here knows exactly what I’m talking about on a very visceral level. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard the cry, “It’s not fair!!”, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be on a beach…that I owned. I’d be a wealthy, wealthy woman.

In the world of children, everything must be fair. But according to whom? “To me.” Each of my children is the arbiter of their own fairness. If they themselves are lacking, things aren’t fair. If Jack had the toy that Quinn wanted, and I took that toy from Jack and gave it to Quinn, you’d not here Quinn clamoring that things aren’t fair. He’d be just fine and content because he has what he wants and deemed to be rightfully his. The cry that things aren’t fair bursts forth from self-oriented hearts.

Good thing this is something we all outgrow, right?

If that were true, we’d not have this very passage in the gospel of Matthew (20:1-16). If the demand for retributive fairness weren’t a deep-seated human problem, this parable wouldn’t exist. But God knows humanity better than humanity knows its self. Even as mature, rational, intellectual adults we want what’s fair for us; we want to keep what we’ve rightly earned. We want what’s ours. And everything about that natural human disposition should be disturbed and rattled to the very core by this parable.

So let’s take a few minutes to look at it.

“‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.” (Mt 20:1-4)

Any time Jesus begins a story with, “The kingdom of heaven is like….” Sit down. Sit down because everything you know to be true is about to be radically and completely altered. Everything you hold in your heart and mind as true is about to be turned on its head. Following these introductory words by Jesus about what the kingdom of heaven is like, you can guarantee that whatever you knew to be true, that everything that you think should be, isn’t. In Matthew, when Jesus utters these words, everything is about to get real; and that realness isn’t what you, the hearer, are expecting or wanting.

In the utterance, is an intentional confrontation. The utterance, the parable itself (which it is), is an intentional confrontation with you because it’s a “speech event.” And as an event, it does not happen in a vacuum, but occurs in time and space and incorporates people. And unlike the event of a command that demands an answer, the parable is plea.[1]

A plea, in the form of this parable, is released into the air by the one who spoke the world into existence, the one who is the incarnated Word of God. The plea goes forth creating exactly what it intends to create: hearers seized by the word itself and brought to its right conclusion, those who have heard and have now believed, and those who have responded; the faithful.

In the parable as plea, as speech event, God’s word, Jesus’s word, renders to dust that which belongs to the dust—the things we’ve made, the things we hold true, the things we believe apart from an external reorienting event. And in the midst of the dust, the word recreates from nothing that which is pleasing to it: a new creation, a new people, a new way to life. The parable, and including this parable that we’re looking at, is the penetrative word that pierces our existence and our timeline (parting space and time) and brings forth by lexical labor and delivery the kingdom of God that it is speaking of.

The parable isn’t merely a story about a better place and a better time; it is that better place and time now. And we, who have ears to hear, are the recreated participants in this new place and new time, that better place and that better time.

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mt 20:8-16).

As we go about our life thinking that we are living a life and living in a world that is right-side-out, the word event, the parable spoken by Jesus, grabs our lives and our life and our world and exposes it as actually wrong-side-out. In this parable, in this Word event there is an exposure; the parable exposes. And not only does it expose, but it alters, changes, and corrects; it is in the word event, in the parable, that the world is now right-side-out, now we are right-side-out.

And what’s this parable in Matthew 20 exposing and righting? Inequality. In the kingdom of God there is no hierarchy of persons. There is no claim on our own to our rights, to what’s ours. Just as we do not incur any punishments for our misdeeds and we are all equalized, so, too, in the reception of grace without merit or the promise of reward. According to Jesus, no person is better than another no matter what the earning potential.[2]

This parable offends us and utterly and completely reduces us to dust—we cannot comprehend it. The Judge, whom we encounter in this parable and whom is Jesus Christ[3] the vineyard owner, exposes our retributive default and posture toward fairness and “according to me” equality. When we come up against the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, we have no recourse to our rewards and merits. The Word of God levels us all. We bring nothing to the table. “We are [all],” to quote Martin Luther, “beggars.”

There is no boasting, no room for any boasting of our ourselves in Christ, in the realm of the vertical. And if there’s no room there for boasting in the vertical, then there’s no room for boasting in the kingdom of God, in the horizontal. As we are freed from the tiresome toil of earning, of seeking our merit and reward with God, we gain freedom from the same tiresome toil of earning and seeking our own merit and reward in our actual lives. While he’s writing about Genesis 11, I believe what Helmut Gollwitzer says is very applicable here,

“…we cannot by our own power break our fetters, cannot get rid of our intoxication…we need another great help. The Creator, who made the good beginning, must make a new beginning. He must come with new gifts, in order that the old gifts of our abilities and our work do not continue to be a curse to us. A new spirit must set us free from the errors of our old spirit. The whole Bible is a cry for help of this new Spirit from the creator, and the whole Bible is at the same time the euangelion, the glad news, that God does not only…confront the evil will of [humanity] with his judgment, but that he has opened his heart to us, and made possible a new way of good life, of fellowship, of avoidance of destruction. Into this new way he desires to lead us all by his Spirit.”[4]

The Word of God doesn’t just convict us; it creates (recreates) us. In Christ, by faith alone we are recreated by the Word of God, by the ever-recreating Word of God. Even now, by the word of God, I am brought to death, into the death and judgment of Adam and am brought to life in Christ (1 Cor 15:22). I can, with St. Paul, say, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Phil 1:21). In this dying that is gain, and living that is Christ, I no longer have to be out to get mine; and, even more than that, I can be about the business of making sure you get what you need. I am now very much able to see to the needs of my brothers and sisters over getting what I’m owed. I am now very much moved not only to merely accept that the last will be first and the first will be last, but I, being of the first group, can actively promote the wellbeing and meet the needs of those fellow humans who are in last group. I am now given a new way to see fairness: not as what is fair to me but to you. I can (and must!) use my language (and my actions) in a new way, to advocate for you, to cry out on your behalf, “This isn’t fair!”

To close I want to creatively quote from the 2nd letter to the Corinthians and the letter to the Philippians,

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:16-18)…Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel (Phil 1:27)”

We have been recreated and ushered into the divine kingdom by the creative and apocalyptic word spoken by The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Let us and care for and love each other as we have been cared for and loved by God.

 

[1] Eberhard Jüngel. “The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification” Theological Essays. Translated by J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. “A plea makes a command without force. Unlike a command, it gives time. It accords freedom which the one to whom a plea has not been made never has. It leads to the differentiation of actuality by possibility. And so pleading ought to be the constitutive element of proclamation….In a plea, God’s love finds its most appropriate expression; and this love reconciles the world to God having made possible the possible and impossible the impossible, by reducing the latter to nothing and by creating the former anew from nothing.” 120.

[2] Rudolf Bultmann “Theology of the New Testament” vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner, 1951. “[Humanity] must become like a child, who, knowing no such thing as appeal to any rights or merits of his own, is willing simply to be given a gift (Mk. 10:15). (…) Jesus rejects all this counting up of merit and reward: The worker who went to work in the last hour of the day is rewarded just as much as the one who had worked all day long (Mt. 20:1-15). And Jesus also refuses to regard the misfortune that befalls individuals as punishment for the special sins, no man is better than another.” 14.

[3] Karl Barth CD III.1.40. p.37 “This is the right of the Creator with which we have to do when we encounter Jesus. It is by His right as Creator that according to the dominant conception of the New Testament God comes to be the Judge of men. He does not have to become or to make Himself the judge. He is it from the very outset. He is it as God the Creator, who as such can claim that the creature should be responsible to Him; who has the authority to decide whether it justifies its existence, i.e., whether it satisfies the right of the One to whom it owes its existence.”

[4] Helmut Gollwitzer “The Way to Life” p. 4 . He is speaking about Gen 11, but I believe the point holds here.

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Water into Wine: Homily on John 2:1-12

“‘Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’”

 

In this moment, a moment that is comprised of a series of statements, I hear a question. Now, anyone in my theology classes won’t be surprised to hear that or be surprised to hear this: sometimes, deeply imbedded in statements is a yet still yet deeper question. Here, at the wedding of Cana, is not merely a story about water being turned into wine in order to prevent shame falling on the bridegroom’s family, or is it merely a list of historical facts about an event, it’s about a deep seated human question: does God care? Does God care even about this small thing?

 

And the resounding answer according to this text is: yes.

 

Everything about the wedding at Cana is ordinary. Very, very ordinary. We’ve made a big deal of it because it’s Jesus’s first performed miracle. But it’s not that extra-ordinary. The miracle here is merely the transition/the transubstantiation of water into wine. Water, by the word of Christ, becomes wine. That is what happens here. Nothing more; nothing less. For the man Jesus who is the Christ, who is God, this is nothing. Yet it’s here in this very basic act of turning water into wine (basic for God) where Jesus demonstrates his glory. God’s love for God’s people manifests even here.

 

This event reminds me of the prayer that we pray every chapel service: the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray according to the scriptures. Specifically from “The Lord’s Prayer”: “Give us this day our daily bread.” God cares deeply about our days-in and our days-out. We are exhorted by Christ to pray for our daily bread; and it’s not merely “spiritual” bread, but the very substance that nourishes our fleshy bodies. The concept of bread in this prayer is all about that very food you eat every day. And God cares about that. The nitty-gritty of our lives is God’s own concern.

 

Every minute, every moment, goes noticed. Every moment crosses God’s screen. Imagine that. Imagine for a moment that God of very God thought it worth God’s time to change water into wine. Take that moment. Think about that fact. Think about that very minuscule act for us. Water into wine.

 

Think also about the fact that ”joy” took over. It’s water into wine at a party, a celebration. Jesus didn’t say, “all right folks, wrap it up, wine’s gone; take your party else where.” Instead, Jesus intervened, albeit in the smallest way, and made the celebration and the joy continue. Whether or not joy was the divine goal in this event, the celebration and joy of the attendees of this wedding banquet played a part in it. Isn’t that amazing?

 

God cares. 100%. God cares about you and your daily ins and outs. The God that threw the universe into order has deigned to turn water into wine. And that God did this is because God cares very much about you. God cares so much that God will throw God’s self aside in the advent and crucifixion and resurrection of God’s son, the Christ for the world.

 

When you think all else has failed, it is Christ who hasn’t. All of our desires and our failures can plague us. But it’s the small things, the daily bread and the water into wine that keep us moving from day to day. These small things are important. Because the more we have these small things the more we have evidence of Christ for us, we have the hope that this is not all…that there’s more.

 

In the very small acts we meet God face to face. And we meet a God who cares. We meet a God who loves us to the core–down to the deepest core of our being. We meet a God who loves us and cares about us to such an extent that even the smallest needs of ours are God’s, too.

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The Lamb of God

The following is the edited manuscript for a homily delivered yesterday to high-school students. It is nothing but a thing; however, hubris leads me to share 🙂

Also: yesterday, while I was tweaking and putting final touches on the homily prior to delivery, I was poking around one of my favorite blogs and read a recent (as in just posted) book review by my friend Juan C. Torres on David W. Congdon’s The God Who Saves. But why am I bringing this up? Well, I smiled as I read Torres’s book review because there was a pleasant (albeit slight) overlap in what he was emphasizing from Congdon’s book with a portion of the conclusion to the homily I had written the night before.   Considering Congdon (as well as Torres) says it better and with greater perspicuity than I ever could, I figured it would be beneficial to post the book review here and you can read it for yourself.* Enjoy 🙂

 

“The next day [John] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” (John 1:29)

Jesus, he is the Lamb of God, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. (A direct reference to the first Passover lamb whose blood was shed and whose blood was used to cover the door frames of the faithful.) According to the John, Jesus is the one who actually takes away the sins of the world.

But What does that mean? What does that even mean in light of the very real fact that we sin, that we fall way short of the mark in our own lives and in relation to our neighbor, that in any direction we look we see the real-time effects of broken human beings impacting all the different aspects of creation? What does that mean when in the 2000 plus years since Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, there seems to be very little evidence that the “sin of the world” has been taken away. As you and I live and breath, we wonder this.

But yet John proclaims with confidence: Jesus takes away the sin of the world. So, what does it mean that Jesus takes away the sin of the world? The “takes away” is more like: “over comes.” There isn’t an erasure of the activity of sin, for we still sin. But, in “overcoming” there’s evidence of struggle and victory; there’s an outcome and a victor. In overcoming there is victory. “Overcoming” provides hope because “overcoming” says that even in this ever present darkness of our broken reality, the final word (the victory) doesn’t belong to that darkness, it doesn’t even belong to us (initially). It belongs (first) to God.

And John has already told us what that word is, what that promise (fulfilled) is: God has overcome the world and sin. And how? The “how” is answered in that Jesus is who he is: because Jesus entered this world to change it, to overcome sin like light piercing and extinguishing darkness (John 1:5).

“Here is the place for the doubtful concept that in the passion of Jesus Christ, in the giving up of His Son to death God has done that which is ‘satisfactory’ or sufficient in the victorious fighting of sin to make this victory radical and total” (cd IV.1.254)

Whatever havoc sin and brokenness and darkness wreak in our actual timelines and in our lives, Christ is bigger and so is the possibility he creates because Christ is the victor and his victory is both “radical and total.”

Christ is the Lamb of God who overcomes the sins of the world. And the entirety of the life of Christ is oriented toward this victory, this overcoming not merely for himself but for us. His victory is our victory and we stand (by faith) on the substantial promise that “all things are possible with God” (Mt 19:26) and “What was meant for evil God will use for good” (Gen 50:20) and “Nothing can separate you from the Love of God” (Rom 8:38-39). We, by the very active and persistent love of God expressed in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, are no longer held captive to sin and the world; the captives have been set free.

In this moment in John 1, John the Baptist saw and proclaimed that not only would Messiah come but that the Messiah had come. And in the wake of the arrival of the Messiah—who is Jesus—the world began to undergo upheaval—not only would wrongs be righted but firsts would be last, and those who were held captive would be set free. In light of this, we are freed not merely unto ourselves but for the benefit of others. We are set free to upright that which has been for too long upside down. Because of the victory of Christ in overcoming sin and the world and that victory being ours, we ourselves become a missional community standing on the promises of God and pointing to the Christ, the messiah, the one who has come to be the lamb of God to seek and rescue the lost.

 

 

*On Twitter you can follow: Herr Juan C. Torres (@postmoltmannian), Herr Dr. David W. Congdon (@dwcongdon), and the mastermind behind DET, Herr Prof. Dr. Travis McMaken (@WTravisMcMaken). I follow all three and am better for it 🙂

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Frankenstein’s Requiem: A Sermon on Romans 6:1-11

Introduction

I’d like to open with a quote from one of my favorite theologians, Eberhard Jüngle,

“That Jesus Christ was made sin for us by God means that the destruere et in nihilum redigere [to destroy/demolish/tear down and to reduce/drive back/render into nothing/ness] which is enacted in and with our sin is revealed in Jesus Christ, as he and he alone dies the accursed death which we live. Jesus’ death on the cross is grace, since it reveals that in the midst of life we are in death. He makes manifest the nothingness which the sinner celebrates under the illusory appearance of being. Or at least Jesus’ death on the cross reveals this when we allow it to speak for itself (that is, according to the law).” Eberhard Jüngel[1]

The best way for me to explain what Jüngel is saying is: apart from Christ we are the walking dead. I think Paul in Romans 6:1-11 is saying something similar (and lucky you, that’s the passage we’ll be looking at this morning). St. Paul writes, “Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, in this manner we also might walk in newness of life” (v.4; translation mine). If we are in Christ as the living, walking in the newness of life, then apart from Christ we are the dead, but yet we move and exist in this state, thus, we’re the walking dead. Yes, we’re essentially zombies apart from Christ.

Let me quote Jüngel once more here,

“For part of human actuality is our striving to realize ourselves and thus to determine our own being through our own achievements. Expressed in biblical terms, the whole of our life-context is qualified by the reality of sin, which does not just simply make the human person bad—that would be the moralistic understanding of sin!—but rather which exposes human persons to the illusion that they can make themselves good.”[2]

While I think the image of zombies is a good one, I have to confess: I think our state apart from Christ, apart from the event of justification is actually far worse than merely a zombie existence. It’s a sham existence. Let’s be clear, in no way shape or form are zombies giving any thought about making themselves good, and they are certainly not trying to strive to realize themselves through their own achievements. They are the dead, the barely animated, they just act from a primal, base, neurological response from the bottom of the brain-stem.

We, on the other hand, are worse off because we are actively trying to self-realize (striving to do so), to make ourselves good. A better image maybe be: we’re hack humans, random parts thrown and sewn together, products of the scientist Frankenstein gone mad who is locked in our minds, who is each of us. Apart from Christ and on our own, we stumble about, alone, turned inward, bent on our own justification.

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

Paul begins chapter 6 in the book of Romans by asking a question, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” (v.1b). In other words, should we desire to do evil in a way that causes grace to abound? And before anyone gets the chance to reply, Paul answers his own question, “By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (v.2). Very literally, the Greek here means: hell no; absolutely, positively not; in no way shape or form is this a plausible thought; never, ever, ever think this.

Paul has such a strong response to the question, because, as Martin Luther writes, “…this idea [desiring to do evil to make grace abound] is absolutely contrary to the work of grace”.[3] God’s grace given to us by the power of the Holy Spirit by faith (also a gift) doesn’t manifest itself in our lives as that which desires to do evil; rather its presence brings about the opposite. For Paul, that which participates in the realm of death has no business meddling in the realm of life.[4] And if we’re taking the Easter story seriously, which I believe we should, then those of us who are Christ’s own by faith and who have received God’s grace are the resurrected thus the living and the living aren’t dead.

It’s simple logic, but let it sit in.

Not only does Paul give a fixed “Ah, hell no!” to his question, he furthers the intensity of his response with a “how”, a “how” that is a densely packed argument that illuminates that the train of thought—that we should continue in desiring to do evil in order for grace to abound—doesn’t have an engine. Paul’s argument: that thing that you’ve died to and have been resurrected from you can never go back to because your resurrection in Christ has defeated it, returning is an impossibility.

Also, nothing we do makes grace abound; we weren’t the ones who caused it or brought it in the first place. Grace, divine grace, is strictly divine territory. When it comes to making grace abound, He got this.

But before I move on, I want to add that Paul isn’t arguing that now as Christians we are never sinning or are without sin, that would be a lie (1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”). “We,” according to St. Augustine, “…are in sin until the end of our life…‘Until our body is raised to life and death is swallowed up in victory, our evil desires will afflict us’.”[5] There is always the war that wages between that which we desire to do (the good) and that which we do do (the evil). The brilliant aspect of the divine deposit of faith and the Holy Spirit lies in the shift in our desires; in Christ, we now desire to do the good although we still do evil. Paul will drive this point home (in a number of places) but specifically in the very next chapter in the book of Romans, chapter 7, when he writes,

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. retched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vv.15, 21-24).

Jesus himself says, “‘…the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak’” (Mt 26:41b; also, Mk 14:38b). The desire to do good should not be brushed off, counted as nothing, for here in this desire of the spirit to do good by the Spirit is where good works are born.

And we can have assurance of this spiritual deposit because, as Paul says vv.3-4, returning to our text in Romans 6,

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Luther writes, “…the threefold dipping of Baptism signifies the three-day death period and the burial of Christ, into Christ Jesus, that is, by faith in Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death, that is through the merit and power of his death”.[6] This is why baptism is tantamount for Luther, this is why throughout his life he returns to his baptism (recalls it) in times of trial because in this simple act, what seems like a simple act, is the outward sign of an inward reality: we have died with Christ and in dying with Christ we are raised with Him; as He dies we die, and as he lives we live. In baptism, in this death,

“is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated from sin and the body is separated form corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God.…For to this kind of death alone belong in an absolute and perfect way the conditions of death, and in this death alone whatever dies perishes totally and into eternal nothingness, and nothing will ever return from this death because it truly dies an eternal death. This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity, as the apostle says here, ‘Christ will never die again’”[7]

This is Luther’s way of explaining the “destruere et in nihilum redigere” mentioned by Jüngle at the beginning of the sermon. What occurs in our baptism, what occurs by faith, what occurs by Christ’s advent and death and resurrection is the destruction, the demolishing, the tearing down and the reducing and driving back and rendering to nothing/nothingness all that belongs to the realm of death. All of our suffering, grief, sorrow, pain, fear, sin, condemnation, and death itself receives the divine verdict: no, no more. And over that verdict, in a louder voice do we receive our divine verdict: yes. In this yes to us and no to death we lose our (old) lives and thus receive our (new) lives, we find our lives in Christ by faith “‘…and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:38-39).

So, Paul Continues…

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. (Romans 6:5-8)

Through what Christ has done for us, by his advent and death and resurrection (and ascension) and our encounter with the living God, by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we escape death, and, to quote Luther again, this “…means to enter into a life which is without death.”[8] Though our body dies, for now, we live as those who walk in the newness of life because that which has been sentenced to death–not us–is dead (for good) because it has not been raised–like we are. We have been “spiritually” planted “with Him who was planted bodily” by a death like his which is signified by baptism.[9]

We’ve not been sentenced to death in Christ, but to life: we’ve been given life, and life abundant not only in the future, but, more importantly, in the here and now.[10] Because, our old selves have been “crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (v. 6); thus, we are no longer slaves to sin in that our old selves and the sinful nature no longer have dominion over us.

By the grace of God, we are free, in the truest sense of the word: free, liberated, loosed from that which has bound us, healed (albeit imperfectly now) of the “extremely deep infection of this inherited weakness and original poison, by which a man seeks his own advantage even in God Himself.”[11] By the grace of God, we are united together with Christ in his death and thus in his resurrection and life, and we are free from sin and its accompanying threats and condemnation. (vv.7-8).

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:9-11).

Now that death has no dominion over Christ (he will never die again), death ought not and does not have dominion over us.[12] According to Luther, “[Christ] is our life, and through faith He flows into us and remains in us by the rays of His grace. Therefore, just as Christ is eternal, so also the grace which flows out of Him is from His eternal nature.”[13] And this is what it means to be justified by faith apart from works: our eternal reception of God’s eternal grace.[14] The event of justification, that word of absolution heard (perpetually) by the hearer, parts space (like God did through Moses parting the sea) and stills time (like Jesus did the tumultuous stormy waves with one word) and the hearer is reborn (created out of nothing) into the present by the word of promise and sustained therein by the words of promise.

The past can no longer condemn you and your future is secured, rooted in the one that defeated future’s condemnation which is death. And this gift of the present, new life, and the word of promise by faith in Christ is given to you every day; this is what is actually given to you daily and, once for all (v.10); it will never be taken away from you (cf. Lk 10:38-42). “Answer me, O Lord, for your love is kind; in your great compassion, turn to me” writes the Psalmist (Psalm 69:18). And God has answered us; God in Christ has answered us once and for all.

Having the entirety of what Christ offers to us by his life, death, and resurrection by faith alone, we walk in the newness of life. And this newness of life is not particularly simply and merely for us ourselves alone. Justification unifies with others, with our neighbor—my justification doesn’t occur in a vacuum, isolated from other people. This unifying event of justification with our neighbor means that not only are we united to Christ but we are also no longer on our own, stumbling about, alone, turned inward, bent on our own justification. Justification is a social event, the tie that binds me and you to each other in an intimate way. Make no mistake, this is the vital and manifested aspect of walking in the newness of life.

Correspondingly, just as Jesus suffered as His people were being persecuted by Saul (Acts 9), so to do we suffer when our neighbor suffers. In that we are bound to our neighbor in the event of justification, their pain is our pain, their oppression our oppression, their injustice our injustice. “From now on…regard no one according to the flesh…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:16-17).  Not only is our relationship with God under a new heading, reconciled, so is our relationship with others. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not merely just for me, but for you and thus for me and for us and between us.

Being a new creation—remade by the work of God alone by faith alone—and walking in the newness of life means not only that which is of death has been sentenced to death and that which is of life shall live, but also that we have been given new eyes, new ears, a new heart, and new words to speak. In other words, to be a new creation walking in this gift of the newness of life is to have a radical and altered perspective that is rooted in the spirit and not in the flesh. There is (now) a radical discontinuity between who we were outside of Christ and who we are in Christ. When we used to see/think of only ourselves, we now see/think of/act and fight on behalf of others.

We are now no longer monstrous creations of the scientist Frankenstein. We are not thrown and sewn together, brought to life by the happenstance of nature’s electrical current. We are beautifully and wondrously remade by the intentional and consistent and life-giving word of God in Christ Jesus. We are, in every sense of the words, new creatures. Because, in light of being reconciled to God and our neighbor through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in light of the things of death (our old selves) being sentenced to death we have received our lives, our very new selves marked not by condemnation and slavery to sin but by divine grace and freedom and union with Christ and our neighbor.

And with this reality our voices can join with Jeremiah’s, “Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of the evildoers” (20:13).

[1] “The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification” Theological Essays. Translated by J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. (108)

[2] “On Becoming Truly Human: The Significance of the Reformation Distinction Between Person and Works for the Self-Understanding of Modern Humanity.” Theological Essays II. Translated by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast and J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995. (231)

[3] Luther’s Works: Lectures on Romans, vol 25 Hilton C. Oswald ed. St. Louis: Concordia, 1972. 50.

[4] Ibid, 50.

[5] Ibid, Augustine qtd in Luther 308-9.

[6] Ibid 50.

[7] Ibid 310

[8] Ibid 311

[9] Ibid 51

[10] Luther “…that is, in resemblance of His death, because we have been buried into a mystical death” thus, “we shall certainly be raised, to a spiritual resemblance with Him, in a resurrection like His, that is, we shall become like it” (51)

[11] Ibid 313

[12] Ibid 52

[13] Ibid 315

[14] Ibid “…this expression ‘once for all’ (semel) does not determine the number of acts of repentance, but rather it is a commendation of the eternal nature of grace, and it denies the possibility of some other kind of righteousness, so that the meaning is that whoever has been baptized o has repented has already so escaped sin and acquired righteousness that never again for eternity is it necessary to escape sin or to acquire another righteousness. But this single and only righteousness is sufficient forever” (315-6).

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Hope When in Doubt

The following is a sermon I preached at Southside Anglican Church almost a year ago. The text ran as a post on Mockingbird (click here for the post).  Instead of just retweeting/re-posting a link to the Mockingbird post, I wanted to put the full text here (with proper acknowledgment that it ran on Mockingbird first, of course!).

I also wanted to explain why I’m posting it.  As I pursue answers to theological questions in my academic pursuits and interactions, I’m bound to run up against (and should run up against) answers that challenge some of my beliefs. This encounter with conflict is good and I accept it and even promote it; from the conflict I grow. I know this because I experienced growth out of intense conflict as I worked through my stm and my stm thesis with an advisor that disagreed with many of the concepts I brought to the table. The conflict(s!) forced me to go back to my drawing table and reformulate answers (to argue better), to re-examine what I held to be true, to acknowledge the weakness of my position and to admit the critique, not to mention to be formed and molded as a better scholar. Had my advisor not challenged me in conflict, I’d be a weaker thinker. But hindsight is 20/20 (as the saying goes); I know now that the conflict was good, but during the conflict there was plenty of doubt bordering on despair: have I been believing a lie? Not an easy question for a theologian to ask herself.

Over the past week, I found myself in a similar conflict. Some concepts that I’ve held closely have come under fire, but the fire hit too close to the source of my hope; I was working and fighting and resisting the black-hole of despair that was eager to devour me as I felt my hope crumbling to the ground. (Despair being a state of hopelessness.) To be honest, being tired of fighting so hard I wanted to give in and let my whole being be consumed. The original conflict and challenge lead to an uncontrollable flow of questions and subsequent doubts and more questions and more doubts; I was losing the ability to keep my head above the water. But I have a friend, Sarah, and she refuses to preach anything but the Gospel. She heard all my questions, my doubts, and my looming despair. But she doesn’t just tell me that Jesus loves me (though this is very true), she quotes from Galatians. It’s what I needed to hear because I was something she said made me remember what it was that plucked me out of my trajectory leading to certain death and placed me on the path to life: Jesus Christ who died for our sins and was raised for our justification (Romans 4:25). Her words also reminded of a sermon I wrote nearly a year ago on Gal 1:1-12. While the sermon is about our fickle hearts, I think the gist applies to our deep and sincere moments of doubt and despair; I was reminded of where my hope resides: in Christ, in his word, in the Gospel (the doctrine of the justification of the sinner (Jüngel)). So, I thought I’d share.

*******

We’re fickle. Human beings are fickle. You and I both know it and we’re free to confess it. Our hearts and minds easily change orientation and preferences by the mere shifting of the wind, our hearts and minds have a difficulty staying the course, being constant in our loyalty and affections.

I do want to be clear that I don’t think all moments of changing our mind are bad; sometimes our propensity toward changing our mind isn’t necessarily a bad thing; there are times receiving new information and incorporating it into our database of knowledge is good, in fact it’s an aspect of being wise. For instance, learning that the earth is not square but round, that it’s okay and quite acceptable to overly love, snuggle, hug and kiss your baby, and that all human beings should be treated with dignity (etc.) are wonderful pieces of information to know and to have. So, our ability to change our minds, our views, and our opinions by the influence of new information isn’t always bad. In fact, it’s quite laudable.

However, we’re not always changing our mind because of the presentment of new and good information. As I said just a moment ago, we’re fickle. Our hearts and minds do not have the metal constitution we would like to think they do. A soft breeze can easily challenge our deepest held conviction. I wish I could tell you that I am NOT fickle; I wish I could say that I’m the epitome of mental, emotional, and spiritual constancy and loyalty. There are times that I can appear content with how things are in and out of the house and then my husband, upon returning home, will ask, “Honey, why is the wall to wall carpet on the sidewalk?” or, “Where’d those bushes go?” Or He’ll ask, “Why is your hair a different color?….again…” While these moments where I’ve given in to my fickleness are comical to most, I have to be honest and say that my fickleness runs a bit deeper than carpet, evergreen bushes, and hair color. It runs painfully deep in my mind and heart and soul. The serpent of old slithers his way to me, and asks, once again, that deadly question: “Did God really say…?” (Gen 3:1). Did God really say that you are saved only by faith in Christ? Did God actually say He loves you? Did God truly say _you’re_ saved, Lauren? Did God really say…?

And no matter how many academic accolades I have hanging from weak nails on my walls, no matter how many volumes of theological works I have on flimsy wooden bookshelves, it is nearly impossible for me to refute those doubts once they’re planted. In these moments, I’m powerless and voiceless to argue back.

“How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes

I struggle to find any truth in your lies

And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know

My weakness I feel I must finally show” (Mumford and Sons “Awake My Soul”).

And I’m not alone; I know you’ve heard the same questions and have had the same doubts, too.

“Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—and all the brothers who are with me” (Gal 1:1-2).

Enter Paul and the Galatians. It doesn’t take more than the first two words of the opening line of the epistle for Paul to begin to deal with the fickleness of the Galatian Christians and contends with the false teachers directly. Pau/loj avpo,stoloj (Paul (an) Apostle). It’s two small words but these two words pack a significant punch: Paul is an apostle and those other teachers, those other guys, aren’t. Paul was an apostle he was not sent by the apostles. And to back up that title (Paul, an apostle) he adds this: “not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father,” Paul pokes holes in the claim to authority the false teachers had (they were sent by humans, Paul was not), and affirms his apostolic status by declaring he was called and sent by Christ Himself (Acts 9:15ff).

And with the added clarifying addend modifying God the Father, “who raised him from the dead,” Paul affirms the original message he brought to them, the message they heard first from Paul: righteousness comes by faith and not by works of the law. And any teacher who is proclaiming another message from the message of Paul is not only against Paul, but against the Father and the Son. Luther writes in Galatians,

“Thus at the very outset Paul explodes with the entire issue he intends to set forth in this epistle. He refers to the resurrection of Christ, who rose against for our justification (Rom. 4:25). His victory is a victory over the Law, sin, our flesh, the world, the devil, death, hell, and all evils; and this victory of His He has given to us” (21-2).

And then,

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (Gal 1:3-5)

As if the first verse wasn’t enough to establish the Gospel tenor of the entire letter, Paul, using his standard greeting (yet a greeting un-standard in the world in which Paul is writing), takes another moment to proclaim the foundations of the Gospel message.  Paul proclaims Grace and Peace, both words that contain within them the power to calm the troubled conscience, troubled mind and soul; Grace forgives sins and Peace quiets the mind and the two are inextricably linked: no peace without grace because grace silences the Law by forgiving sins. And the peace we have as a result of grace’s effectiveness in forgiving sin/s is the peace that Jesus gives, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

How is this grace and peace (from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ) given to us? Jesus, God of very God/of the same substance of the Father, who was crucified for our sins and was raised for our justification, and by His word and breath (by the power of the Holy Spirit/triune affair) He gives us HIS peace. Luther refers to these words of Paul in v. 4, “These words are a veritable thunderbolt from heaven against every kind of righteousness, as is the statement (John 1:29): ‘Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” (32). Grace and peace are ours by faith in Christ because Christ himself laid down his life to forever dethrone and overthrow the tyrant named sin and set all the captives free from its slavish yolk by his resurrection; we, like Adam before us, are helpless to remedy our problem, we are “dead in our trespasses” (Eph 2:5 and Col 2:13) and God intervened on our behalf to do what it is that we couldn’t do like he did all those many years back in the Garden (Gen 2:18ff).

Far from being a restatement of the law or another Moses, Jesus is the new word, the word that grants grace to forgive sins and gives us peace even in this “evil age” (from which we are delivered). Therefore, to quote Luther,

“…grasp the true definition of Him, namely, that Christ, the Son of God and of the Virgin, is not One who terrifies, troubles, condemns us sinners or calls us to account for our evil past but One who has taken away the sins of the whole world, nailing them to the cross (Co. 2:14) and driving them all the way out by Himself” (37-8).

By faith in Christ we are justified and in being justified we are Christ’s own in union with Him, and in this unity with Christ have been ushered to the Father. Any message that does not carry with it the proclamation of this grace and this peace is not a faithful message of the gospel. And that’s pretty much what Paul is setting up here in the first few introductory remarks to the Galatians. And I could stop here, but I won’t because Paul doesn’t and it just gets better…

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:6-12)

Someone in Galatia used their quiet time to painstakingly write and painstakingly mail a letter to Paul: Something is happening, Paul…these new teachers are saying x, y, and z, and the people are falling for it. Help! For all intents and purposes, Paul’s response is: “Dearest Children what are you doing, to whom are you listening, and to for what message are you falling? If it’s anything but Jesus Christ died for your sins and was raised for your justification, it’s an errant message and those are errant teachers. Run.”

And here we move from being on the side-line looking in at the Galatians, to being addressed. We like the Galatians are fickle and with fickleness comes troubled minds, hearts, and souls. We are flesh and we are easily ensnared by lies, we, like the Galatians before us, are prone to fall for the lies of the “evil present age,” for the lies that drip from the lips of those who would rather bring glory to themselves than to God (ref. Gal 1:5 glory goes to God alone), we are prone to doubt when that age old question presents itself to us in the thick of night, “Did God really say….” It’s not that we seek or even want to be misled, but that we are easily mislead. Just as it takes one minuscule tick left or right from true north to cause directional mayhem in a walk in the wilderness, so it takes one morsel of doubt to undo sound teaching.[1]

Listen to what Paul declares in these verses:

  • You have been misled
  • You have strayed from He who has called you
  • You have wondered to another message
  • You are now troubled by this other (distorted) message/Gospel
  • There is only one Gospel message
  • Accursed is anyone—anyone—who proclaims to you another Gospel
  • The message you received from me is to be believed
  • I am not sent by nor am I seeking the approval of men but God.
  • I did not receive this message from man but from revelation from Jesus/Christ God

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 8,

“For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (vv. 5-6).

There is one God and there is one Gospel proclamation; Paul was sent and commissioned by the One God and given the One Gospel; any other message that contradicts this faithful servant and this faithful message is no Gospel and is an attempt to extinguish the one Gospel message. There is only the one word of the Gospel which brings grace and peace to the fickle heart and troubled mind of human beings; any other word added to this One word or any other word in place of this One Word and our fickleness looms and a troubled mind ensues.

We are wounded and doubting creatures and need to be told things repeatedly: This God, this very God, the creator of heaven and Earth, loves you so much. But not only that, but also this: He will never leave you, nor forsake you no matter how dirty your past and how wounded or skeptical you are of Him. Thus the importance of the preacher proclaiming this very message every Sunday; to do otherwise is to starve the congregation, the hearers (both old and new) of this word of life. Luther writes,

“For if we lose the doctrine of justification, we lose simply everything. Hence the most necessary and important thing is that we teach and repeat this doctrine daily…For it cannot be grasped or held enough or too much. In fact, though we may urge and inculcate it vigorously, no one grasps it perfectly or believes it with all his heart. So frail is our flesh and so disobedient to the spirit” (26)

So, we need to constantly hear, over and over and over again, the single word of the Gospel. We need to hear, over and over and over again that Christ Jesus, this man who is my God, willingly climbed up on the sturdy, old rugged cross, and with strong nails in his hands and feet died for our sins, and was raised for our justification.

We are so prone to disbelieve the activity of God toward us in Christ, in the Cross, that we need to be perpetually told that God truly, and unconditionally loves us–that we are truly justified by faith apart from works.

Did God say…?

Yes, and always yes He did in fact say and THIS is what He said…Hear and be comforted:

“Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” (Matt 11:28)

“So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

Hear also what Saint Paul saith.

“This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” (1 Tim. 1:15)

Hear also what Saint John saith.

“If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the Propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 2: 1, 2)

[1] “This is what happened to Paul, the chosen instrument of Christ (Acts 9:15). With great toil and trouble he had gained the churches of Galatia; but in a short time after his departure the false apostle overthrew them, as this and all his other epistles testify. So weak and miserable is this present life, and so beset are we by the snares of Satan, that one fanatic can often destroy and completely undo in a short time what it took faithful ministers the hard labor of many years day and night to build up” (Luther Galatians 45).

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A Sermon for a Wedding

The following is a sermon I preached at a friend’s wedding this Saturday past.  I’ve changed the names to protect the innocent…or guilty…whichever fits 😉  I’ll say here that it was an honor to be asked to preach at this particular wedding and I was humbled by that honor. So, without further to do….A Sermon for a Wedding:

 

Today is a great day! Look around you. There is beauty, and joy and excitement; all things that make for a great day. Still, I’m lead to ask: Why are we here? No, I don’t mean existentially speaking, but practically speaking.  Why are we here today, gathered as we are?

 

Some of us are here because we’re family; some of us are here because either Renee or Joseph (or both) is a dear friend; some of us are here because, well, we’re just the “+1”.  But no matter what brought you here or how (or why), there’s one bond tying us all together here today: we were asked to be witnesses to this wonderful and beautiful union between Joseph and Renee. And we desired to be those witnesses, to watch and listen as these two profess and confess their love for each other, because deep down, we’re all true-love addicts…and we might as well face it.

 

Some part of us gets swept up in the alluring words of King Solomon read this morning, “My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold the winter is past; the rain is over and gone’” (Song 2:10-11). Our hearts twinge with a deep abiding hope that there is a love that “many waters cannot quench…neither can floods drown it” (Song 8:7a). We want true love to be real, concrete, visible and physical; and so we come, because there’s no better place than at a wedding to receive a reminder and to rekindle the flame of hope that true love is actual and not merely conceptual.

 

This desire is so deeply ingrained in us that those of us who are otherwise rather rational and logical spontaneously [like me] shed tears as Renee processed, arm and arm with her father or as Joseph saw his beautiful bride for the first time today; there’s no other explanation for that type of abreaction than a desire for real, true-love embedded in the subterranean recesses of our being.

 

So we’re here, wrapped up in remembrance and enraptured by the hope of real true-love. And we’ll witness shortly as Joseph and Renee exchange vows comprised of heavy words: they will make true-love promises to each other: I will love you through sickness and health, through richness and poorness, through the bad and the good, until death. But it’s not only the words they will proclaim to each other that play on our heart strings, reinvigorating that desire for true love, but the words they don’t say.

 

Embedded in the vows is the subtext of an unspoken question and an answer. Will you forgive me? And the corresponding answer is always: Yes. Yes, I will forgive you.  And this, this forgiveness defined and shaped love is the true-love we are all looking for; to be unconditionally loved at our worst, in our mess and brokenness right now, as is, where our nakedness is exposed yet there is no shame. To receive the love, to quote Mumford and Sons, that “will not betray you/Dismay or enslave you, [the love that] will set you free/Be more like the man you were made to be” (Sigh No More).

 

Yet, though we desire this level of love, and came here to be reminded of it, it seems impossible, this unconditional, one-way love manifested in unrelenting forgiveness. And if you look at it purely from a human, horizontal, level, it is impossible; humans in and of themselves are incapable of this type of love.

 

So, how is it that Renee and Joseph can make such big promises to each other, to confess this depth of unconditional love? St. Paul gives us a clue in the reading from Colossians, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Col 3:12-13).  Joseph and Renee can stand and look each other in the eye and promise to unconditionally love and forgive each other because they’ve been unconditionally loved and forgiven by Christ; this is the beginning of true-love, of loving and forgiving each other in real time, over and over again, day after day.

 

So, this wedding serves another purpose than just the public proclamation of love and forgiveness between two people; it’s about a greater love story that is the foundation of Renee and Joseph’s love story and that which embraces it. And so, by coming here and attending this wedding you were thrust on to center stage, not merely a witness or supporting actor, but as a primary actor in this greater love story.  And this greater love story is played out over and over and over again at wedding after wedding after wedding; it is this love story that has echoed through the halls time to the present day and into the future.

 

For this wedding is about Christ and His bride, His people, us, whom He loves so much that He will hand His body over for her (John 3:16). This wedding is the acting our of the great and profound mystery referred by the priest just moments ago. This wedding is about how much God so loves us; about how He enters into our mess and brokenness and proclaims to us (repeatedly) love and forgiveness.  To our unspoken question: Am I forgiven? His answer to us is always a resounding: Yes! You are forgiven and I love you!

 

His vows to us are fulfilled (always); His promises never fall to the ground.  No matter how bad things get, He never abandons, the union is never put asunder; “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt 10:9). St. Paul proclaims and reaffirms in the book of Romans,

 

 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:31-35, 37-39).

 

God, through Christ, has joined, has wedded himself to us in such a way that is forever and never ceasing even when we walk away or turn our backs. This is true love! True love has given Himself to us by no merit of our own; we are truly and fully loved by, in, and through Christ completely. And nothing, absolutely nothing can or will ever separate us from that love.

 

Today is truly a great day.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0