Sunday, October 30, 2011

Reformation Sunday

Grace, and peace to you from God our heavenly Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Martin was at a loss. You see, Martin was the kind of person that we’d all like to be: a perfect student since kindergarten, he’d received numerous accolades for his academic work: a Rutherford scholarship and several other highly competitive scholarships funded his undergraduate education. He majored in business, because he understood that he had what it took to succeed in such a competitive field.

And succeed he did. Again, he received rewards and awards for his performance. Promotion followed promotion; he was invited to be guest speaker at his firm’s annual general meeting. He was everything that everybody was told they wanted to be.

More than that, he knew he was. After all, he had the yardstick against which he could measure everybody else. He’d always had one. When he was getting his education, he knew that if he worked hard enough and got good marks, he was better than those around him. When he began working, if he worked hard enough he got the promotions and the glory. It was the way the world worked: you could achieve anything, as long as you worked hard enough for it.

Do you know Martin? Of course, you can’t know the Martin in the story, since he doesn’t really exist. But I’d be willing to be that you know someone like him. Or maybe, you ARE Martin. It’s not a bad thing to be like Martin. The world likes people like Martin: they’re the most successful, in our eyes.

Yet sometimes being like Martin is problematic. You see, Martin had a secret. He had a secret so dark, so deep, that he knew that if it ever got out, it would destroy him and everything he’d worked so hard to achieve.

Martin suffered from depression. A depression sometimes so dark, so debilitating, that some mornings he could not get out of bed. His company offered psychological support and a good benefits package; but Martin chose to pay for a therapist and anti-depressive medication out of his own pocket, because the risk of what he would lose if anyone found out was too great.

He couldn’t understand why he was depressed; he had everything he’d been told was important. But he was also puzzled by the first question his counsellor asked him each day: how do you feel? Martin couldn’t actually answer that. He didn’t have anyone he could compare his feelings to – everyone around him looked just as happy and high-functioning as he was.

In a very real way, our lives are governed by the law that Paul speaks about today, that kept Martin trapped. They are controlled by it; it gauges our actions, lays out our motivations, and judges our worth. It’s a system that we are raised in – we judge ourselves and others by performance, dedication, and adherence to a set of rules. We hold those rules pretty highly; when we know what they are, it seems that we can figure out the secret of life and get on with business.

You know the expression, “wake up and smell the coffee?” it means that we’re supposed to be able to open our sees, and see the reality of how the world works around us. When we ‘wake up,’ life is supposed to be better.

Jesus and those who believe in him stand talking. They know the law; they want to ‘wake up and smell the coffee’. Jesus has been talking about love, justice, and God’s idea of fairness, which isn’t the same kind of fairness that the religious leaders of the day want to see. So they’re puzzled, especially when Jesus says, “if you continue in my word…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Because in their minds, they’ve never been slaves to anyone. At least, not where it counts. There’s the slavery of the Egyptian kind that they remember at Passover, but that’s so far ago in the past that it might as well be an empty story. They believe that they are in control of their lives and destinies, what does Jesus mean that they “can be free?”

So Jesus lays it on the line: “anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household, the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

The people to whom Jesus speaks have received the word; they bear the word to others. But in a way the lack the ability to really know the word, in the way Jeremiah talks about. Jeremiah tells the story of a new covenant, when people will no longer say to each other “know the Lord” (in the same tone my mother used to say “wake up and smell the coffee!”), because they will all know God. Because God will place God’s word directly into their hearts; it will stop being a yardstick to measure themselves against others.

Today is Reformation Sunday, the only Sunday of the church year that is set aside to commemorate a historical event, that began with the nailing of 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. The first of those little discussion points should stand out for us: “when our Lord Jesus Christ called us to repent, he called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”

Those of us today who believe in Jesus Christ and his saving word are often confronted with the same sense of ‘huh?’ as those early believers. That’s because God’s word and work does not work the same as the culture we grow up in.

How many people here today would agree with the statement “I don’t know the bible very well, so I don’t know if I’m a good Christian – but I do my best to live a good life, so I think that God is happy with me”? You live a good life?

Welcome to the law. Because if it’s up to you, you will never live a life good enough to earn your salvation. You are slaves to an idea that is not your own.

But take confidence in this: you are loved by God because of who you are. Not because of what you’ve done. You are loved because of who you are. That was the original idea of Reformation that set fire to the world. That you do not work for your own salvation.

In our culture, ‘repentance’ is too often poorly understood as a one-shot deal. If that were true, then we should abandon all hope right now – or aim for the ‘deathbed confession’ system of belief. But we are called to live lives of repentance: lives that are marked by the word dwelling within us.

The theme of today is “knowing the word” – and you know the word when you are set free. When someone comes to you with the word ‘if’, then the word they bear is the law. If you just do _____; then _______ will happen.” Have you ever read a self-help book? That’s a refrain in that kind of literature. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, and make your own way in the world. Then, look behind you at the unfortunate souls who have fallen behind, and grace them with your knowledge.

But you can know the word of God when it comes to you as a statement that sets you free: “because you are loved by God, therefore you live a life that is testimony to your freedom.” For God, there is no ‘if’. There is God speaking, and God acting, not out of sovereignty but out of mercy.

Do you ever feel like you’re on a journey, and you don’t have a map? Have you ever wondered if you can actually make it to your destination? That’s a very real fear, one that is deeply rooted in our culture, one that makes the gospel of Christ into a competition. Yet you shouldn’t worry.

The freedom that comes from knowing the word of God is the freedom to know that the end of the journey is assured; Christ will see you home.

But it also means knowing that, in fact, you may be on the wrong road. It means knowing that all roads may not, in fact, lead to Christ.

It means that there is no road, no trail, no rut, you will travel in this life that Christ will not walk down, to find you.

And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

Let the people of God say ‘amen’.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Sunday October 02

“Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Every wonder just how closely we listen when God speaks? Or even, if God still speaks at all? It seems like almost every day I find someone who will lament to me the loss of public prayer in schools, or the perception of a ‘liberal’ agenda that wants to – and I use their word – eliminate Christianity from the public sphere. But really, is public prayer and using the government to push a socially conservative agenda really what “listening to God” looks and sounds like?

It should be easy to hear God speaking, right? I mean, most of you have seen the movie The 10 Commandments with Charleton Heston: I always remember this one line: guns don’t kill people; apes with guns kill people!

Sorry, wrong movie.

Yet one thing we can generally agree on as Christians: when God speaks, we should be listening. And I mean, actively listening.

You have to wonder, though…what are all the words that God speaks? How can we know?

Probably, a good rule of thumb is that we know God’s word by anticipating the exact opposite of what we are thinking.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…

The 10 Commandments are, without a doubt, an integral part of the religious life of at least three of the world’s great religions. Certainly, they are central to our lives as Christians, and as they form the first part of Luther’s Small Catechism, they are foundational to our Lutheran theological tradition. Sometimes they’re written in stone, - as they were on the tablets that Moses received – and maybe sometimes they’re written on the rock of our hearts.

And even though God reminded the Israelites that God brought them OUT of the land of slavery, we can turn a perceived obedience to the 10 commandments into just another kind of slavery.

Like clockwork someone can be counted on to refer to the 10 Commandments as justifying grounds for their own judgement of an issue: the 10 Commandments say…I remember once struggling to speak with someone who insisted that the 10 commandments included rules that forbade women pastors and said that homosexuals should be put to death.

On their surface, the 10 commandments are negative imperatives: you shall not…but in reality the ‘don’t’ part is only a little piece of what they mean. Taken as a whole, the 10 commandments are good, they’re comforting, and for the Israelites they form an identity, a purpose, and even a sense of security.

For Christians in the Lutheran tradition, our understanding of the 10 commandments is – or should be, rather – irreversibly tied to a juxtaposition: “we are to fear and love God so that we do not…but instead…” Fundamentally, the 10 commandments become about commitment to God and compassion for our neighbour. Rather than tying us down, they free us to be in relationship with each other and affirm God’s relationship to us.

To a people wandering in the wilderness when God speaks, God gives an identity, a rule, and words of comfort, life, and hope.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt

God speaks often, even continuously. At the beginning of Genesis, it’s written that God spoke, and the world came into being. God is always speaking, and we try – try – to listen.

But what do we hear?

Most often, we hear the message that our sinful and self-centred hearts want us to hear: that the privilege of being spoken to is our right; rather than the responsibility of listening to the call to form a community.

In the gospel lesson today, Jesus is still answering the Pharisee’s question from last week: “by what authority do you do the things you do?” Having used the example of the two sons, Jesus today turns to a metaphor that his listeners would know: a vineyard. In particular, Jesus relates this vineyard to a song that the prophet Isaiah sings of another vineyard, one that bore bitter fruit.

The Pharisees know the story that Jesus refers to, but in his telling there’s something not-quite-right about it. Both parties in the story seem equally ludicrous – the folly of the owner, who twice sends slaves and once, his son. Having his slaves beaten, killed, and stoned, the owner reasons that the tenants will respect his son. The tenants themselves are right out of a comic opera: having beaten the servants, they believe that if they kill the son they will gain his inheritance. To the tenants, the vineyard has become their privilege rather than their responsibility.

When Jesus asks, “what will the owner do when he returns?” the Pharisees respond in a way that shows they understand themselves to be the owners of the vineyard: “he will put those wretches to a miserable death and put in responsible tenants!” Their response is to cry out for the death of the first tenants, and to give the vineyard to others.

Like us, they hear what they want to: what is going to give us power, or self-righteousness. The power of judgement, they believe, is theirs.

In the 10 commandments, we can’t ever really get past the first one: you shall have no other gods before me. We always know what’s best, or better, for everyone else. They just need to listen to us, right? We like to be the judge in God’s place.

But how does Jesus respond to his own question?

Then God spoke all these words…

Instead of answering his own question, Jesus turns instead to talking about architecture. It’s a bit of a tangent; but at other places Jesus refers to himself as the Temple, and reminds his listeners that the temple will be destroyed; but that it will be rebuilt in three days. To this end, Jesus refers to himself as “the cornerstone” of the temple, but not just any cornerstone: this cornerstone is so hard that any other rock that falls upon it will shatter, and any stone upon which it falls will be crushed.

The cornerstone – the incarnate Word of God – is far harder than the rock of our hearts. The Pharisees response (and ours) to the story of the tenants of the vineyard reveals their own hardness of heart. The Pharisees are aghast at the mercy of the landowner; so are we.

Because, beloved, the tenants are right: they will kill the Son, and collect his inheritance.

God will break our hearts until we see God’s own stubborn insistence on being merciful to us; because if the landowner condemns the tenants and puts them to death – after previously showing mercy – then the landowner becomes no different than the tenants, and their way of interacting with the world wins.

We are the tenants of the vineyard; we have received the inheritance of the son. We believe that we can keep the fruits of our lives and God’s gifts to ourselves. We reject those who may come to us in God’s name and ask us to share a portion of the vineyard’s harvest – to open our hearts. When the Son comes, we reject him, too.

We are dying for forgiveness. We are ready to kill others – to kill with words, with our actions in our communities, and even with weapons of war – we are ready to kill to show God how ready we are for forgiveness, for righteousness. What we miss is that forgiveness and life are offered freely, the whole time we are trying to gain it for ourselves.

And what does God say?

Then God spoke all these words:

“This is my body, given for you. This is my life, poured out for you.”

God’s word reveals God’s own stubborn insistence to show mercy to God’s chosen people. The word is not always good; too often it reveals what we thought to be right and good as wrong, and evil. It cracks and breaks the rock of our hearts, crushes our self-righteousness and self-centredness, stands in the midst of our brokenness as a model of what is whole – and holy.

The 10 commandments are some of the most enduring words given to us by God – but they also are a means of mercy to guide and direct us to a life centred on a radical commitment to God and lived out in compassion for those around us.

In the beginning, God spoke. And God still speaks, and the creative power of God’s word will bring about the new creation in our hearts and all around us. In our midst, God speaks to us, calls us to live lives that are centred around God’s healing and renewing mercy that breaks the rock of our hearts – but gives us life, and salvation.

Let the people of God say amen.