Fools For Christ

Sermon for Lent IIIB Preached at St. John’s 11 March 2012

Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19

I Corinthians 1:18-25

John2: 13-22

It made perfect sense- selling sacrificial animals in the Temple courts. People came from all over the world to sacrifice, and they could not be expected to bring their animals with them. And was it really so bad if the people providing the service made an honest living? After all, the Scriptures say that “the laborer is worthy of his hire.” The problem was that people got so caught up in the day to day administration of the program that it seems they forgot what the program of sacrifice was all about. The people on the spot demonstrated this lack of understanding when they failed to understand what Jesus was saying about his upcoming resurrection as he discussed the “allegory of the temple’s destruction and rebuilding.” This preacher from Galilee just didn’t make sense.

In the same way, the commandments of God from the first lesson don’t make a lot of sense in a modern and cosmopolitan world. Surely we all want to respect God and our neighbors, but can you really believe this Moses. He says that you have to do it his way, and that if you don’t, God will judge you, your children, your grand-children, and your great-grand-children. Is it really so bad if someone swears by using God’s Name? And I only get off two days a week. What is the big thing about giving one of them exclusively to God? I suppose the rest of the rules make some sense, about honoring parents and murder and stealing and the like. But all of this puritanical pre-occupation with sex and absolute honesty is not very realistic at all. And how can I ever make a living for my family unless I am willing to drive my competition into the ground and increase my own market share? Moses just isn’t willing to understand that it is dog eat dog out there in the business world today.

As usual, Paul was right. In our second lesson for today, he points out that “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” And goes on to say “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” We are so enamored with ourselves. At least we are until things really fall apart. We trust in our own schemes and live our lives according to our own choices. We create false gods who will justify our own thoughts, actions, and desires, and do what makes sense to us at the time. And then comes the horrible time of divorce, violation of our safety and self-worth, death of a loved one, loss of a career, or our mobility, or our health, or our financial security. We realize that all of our imaginations were just that. And we cry out to God. And in his mercy and love he comes to us. When everything else lets us down ‘the message of the cross is to us who are being saved the power of God.’

It makes no sense whatsoever that God the Father would send his only begotten Son, the second person of the blessed Trinity, to bear the punishment I deserve and give me another chance. It makes no sense that The Blessed Holy Spirit, the third person of that same Trinity, would come to comfort and strengthen me in my hour of trial. In fact, it makes no sense that God would care about me at all. There are millions upon millions of people who have lived throughout history. There seem to be a nearly infinite number of star systems. History seems to roll on and on and I do so little to impact or control it. And yet God himself knows my name and has called me to be among that number of people who are being saved.

Today I stand before you as a Staryets, a fool for Christ, to encourage you to accept this radical and irrational message that by this bizarre and unbelievable methodology, God has chosen to show his love for you. He reveals to you and to me a model of how we might so live that we will find peace and consolation in this world, and life everlasting in the world to come. It is too simple to be real. Believe today that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Tell him that you are sorry for the bad things you have done, and that you will do your best with his help to amend your ways. I assure you today that he will keep his promise to you and to us all, and we shall be known as the people of God.

In just a few moments, we will stand and say together “I Believe.” We will confess that Jesus is the Christ. Then, after we bring our needs and concerns to God in the prayers of the people, we will repent and ask for his forgiveness for our sins. Then he will forgive us and invite us all to come to his holy table, which is an extension of his heavenly banquet table. Those of us who have been baptized he invites to receive the Holy Communion of the body and blood of Jesus. Those who have not been baptized he invites to come for a blessing and to begin preparation for baptism. In this act of faith, he will pour upon us the assurance of his love and strength for the challenges of this coming week. I urge you to join me as a Staryets, a fool for Christ. Set aside your own wisdom and embrace that true wisdom of God today. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

To Believe The Bible Or Not?

I was recently with a group of my fellow clerics and the discussion turned to the lesson from Numbers 21:4-9 which is assigned for the Fourth Sunday in Lent.  As the lesson opens, the children of Israel are participating in their favorite outdoor sport- murmuring. 

Then the Lord sent poisonous serpants among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.  The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take the serpents from us."  So Moses prayed for the people.  And the Lord said to Moses, "Make a poisionous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live."  So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it on a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

The usual discussion ensued about whether or not God sends judgement upon people.  Recent tornadoes in our part of the world were discussed, along with health issues and a number of other possible candidates for divine judgement.  Most everyone agreed that usually we bring judgement upon ourselves thus saving God the trouble, but there was still that nagging question about when God comes after us for our rebellion.  I tend to be a bit more literal than many about such passages, but I am always very careful not to attribute every bad thing that happens to judgement.  Such theology seems to be mean spirited and generally gets out of control pretty quickly.

But the thing about the discussion which troubled me at the time, and even more as the day wore on, was the statement from one present, and the agreement of several others with it that this account from Numbers was just a Jewish "fairy tale."  I protested at the time, not because God needs my protection or defense, but because such an approach to the Bible is so common in Protestant Christianity.  So many in the Mainline Protestant academic community seem to discount so many parts of the Bible that do not fit their experience, expectations, or concept of who God is (or ought to be.)   Pity the parish whose priest or pastor does not believe the Bible to be an authentic eye-witness account of the works of God in history.  Ultimately, such an outlook as the one expressed that day leads to denial of major doctrines of the faith, often even to the denial of articles of the Creeds.  In short, if one denies the veracity of Scripture, departure from the faith received is often soon to follow.  From classroom to pulpit to pew, good or bad theology so often flows with significant results for good or ill.

All of this leads me back to the concept of God's judgement on his people when they rebel against him.  Could it be that the current malaise of mainline protestantism in the west is God's judgement because the denominations involved have failed to believe the Bible (or have re-interpreted it so significantly that its meaning is changed)?   We have lost scores, even hundreds of thousands of members in the last forty or fifty years in the Episcopal Church alone.  Many of our parishes and seminaries have closed or are threatened with closure.  Our "market share" of the American and European population has contracted dramatically.  Certainly parallel occurrance does not necessarily demonstrate causation or correlation, but I cannot help but wonder.

Honor Virtutis Praemium ( Honour is the reward of virtue)

John Harris and I served together as Lieutenants on staff at the Ohio Military Academy about three lives ago.  Later. we worked together on the staff of a Divisional Cavalry Squadron.  Finally, he was my Commander in the Second Squadron 107th Cavalry.  He is, in the words of Terence (Adelphi III.iii.88), "homo antiqua virtute et fide," "a man of old-fashoned virtue and loyalty."  John is a man of prayer and deep personal faith.  He is a devoted husband and father, and a faithful follower of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He loves this Republic as did his father (a retired Cavalry Scout) before him.  He cares deeply for the soldiers entrusted to his leadership and insists that virtue and the right always trump pragmatism and triumphalism in the accomplishment of his mission.  The soldiers and people of Ohio are blessed to have a man like John Harris as our newest Assistant Adjutant General for Army.  May God bless you, General Harris, and may your watch be characterized by honor, duty, and a love for that which is right.

Do You Believe God's Promise?

Sermon for II Lent, Year B Revised Common Lectionary

Romans 4:9-25

Preached at St. John’s Lancaster 4 March 2012

Circumcision was very important in the Jewish community in the time of Jesus and Paul. It was, like Baptism for us, the mark of entry into the community of faith. It physically identified every Jewish boy eight days old or older as a member of Israel, the people of God. I suppose that many Jews of that day, like many Christians today, came to rely on the rite of the sacrament, instead of that which it represented and accomplished and fulfilled, as the primary indicator of their relationship with God. As long as the ceremony was done in a proper manner, they were of Israel and In God. When St. Paul, missionary Archbishop to the Gentiles, wrote to the believers in Rome in the first century, he did not seek to downplay or minimize the importance of the ceremonies of the people of God, but he worked hard and logically to demonstrate that the importance of any ceremony, might we say any sacrament, is in the true reality it proclaims rather than the outward forms of the ceremony.

Paul’s legal mind was well suited to make such an argument. God’s promises to Abraham took place before he was circumcised, indeed before he even knew what the law was. It could not have been that Abraham’s participation in the ceremony, or even his righteousness in keeping the law, were the causes of God’s promise and blessing to him, because at the time of the promise, the rite of Circumcision had not been introduced and the law had not been revealed in its fullness. Abraham was blessed by God because when God looked at his heart, he saw that Abraham was “fully convinced that God Was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:21).

None of this is to say that the sacrament (circumcision) or the law (obedience to God) are unimportant. They are means of instruction and grace that God has ordained. But it is to say that God looks upon our hearts in his dealings with us. He looks for people who are on the adventure of growing into that state of heart, mind, and life whereby our reality can include a willingness to see beyond the realities and limitations of this life and embrace what the writer to the Hebrews called “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). That is precisely what Abraham did when he believed the promise that he, an old man with a wife well past menopause, would be the father of many nations. He was willing to see beyond scientific probabilities and human expectations to believe that “what God had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:21)

Because of this belief, Paul continues, God “reckoned this faith unto him as righteousness” (Romans 4:22). An older translation says “imputed to him for righteousness.” You see, God proclaimed Abraham righteous not because of ceremonies and obedience, as important as those things are. He proclaimed him righteous, because of the attitude of his heart and the nature of his expectations. As F.F. Bruce from the University of Manchester wrote, “Abraham’s justification and attendant blessings were based on his faith in God; they were not earned by effort or merit on his part…but conferred on him by God’s grace” (TNTC Romans 109).

In its simplest form, to be righteous means to fulfill the claims of right. Thus when Penelope mourns for Ulysses, Homer says that she fulfills the sacred obligations of a wife. When Antigone buries her brother and incurs the wrath of the state, she embodies that higher unwritten law against barbarism. The translators of the Septuagint, the Jewish translation of the Old Testament into Greek, often translated the word “Righteousness” as “Mercy,” or “Kindness.” As Professor Vincent of Union Theological Seminary and so many other scholars have pointed out over the years, “Righteousness is union with God in character” (Vincent’s Word Studies in the NT iii12).

And all of this takes us back to circumcision. Blessed Paul was writing to Romans, Gentiles who had not been circumcised. He wrote with the good news that their ability to participate in the blessings of God, their ability to be “unified with God in character,” was based not on their participation in the rites and ceremonies of Judaism, or in the moral uprightness of their past life, but in their decision to “believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:24-25).

Have you made that decision today? Are you willing to consider those things, or that thing in your own life which seems insurmountable? Are you willing to believe that God will help you to forgive that ex-spouse or that parent who hurt you so badly so many years ago? Are you willing to believe that God will give you strength , presence of mind, and persistence to take something as persistent as clinical depression or alcoholism to God on a daily basis and work a program of recovery and healing? Are you willing to believe that God will help you to push away from the buffet table or the internet console which has been the source of so many failures and so much sin in your life. Are you willing believe that God will give you the strength to walk away from a relationship or lifestyle choice which the Bible says is contrary to God’s will for his sons and daughters?  Are you willing to believe that God will give you the perseverence and strength to make restitution to that person you have wronged, and to fulfill those responsibilities you have failed to live up to?   Are you willing to believe that God is able to do what he has promised?

If you are willing to take that step today, God will meet you just as he met Abraham. He will impute to you union with his own character and give you a strength beyond what you have ever known. It will be a struggle, a war in fact. Satan will marshal all of the forces of hell to block your success. But our God is greater than Satan. And he has sent the Blessed Holy Spirit to accomplish in our lives that victory which Christ Jesus accomplished for us on the cross.

If you have been living your life in a sort of low grade discouragement which seeks to serve Christ but seems to fail with disturbing regularity, I invite you to come to him in faith today. If you have been relying on the ceremony of baptism or communion, or on church attendance or being a good person to get you into heaven, but have never been quite sure that you will make it, I invite you to come to him in faith today. The Bible says with absolute clarity that if you believe on him who raised up Jesus from the dead, if you are willing to commit yourself to the life changing conviction that God is able and willing to do what he has promised, the very character of God will be imputed to you and your life will be changed forever.

Now Father, in this holy season of Lent, help us to believe as Abraham believed, that you are able to keep your promises to transform us and give us strength to fight the temptations we face every day. Make us victorious Lord. Assure us of your presence with us every day. And help us to know in our hearts that we will live with you forever. Through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever. AMEN.