This was the message from our Christmas Eve service of lessons and carols. The sermon references many of the key lines from the lessons and how the carols reflect the teaching. I think it stands on its own, but you don’t get the candles and Silent Night.
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This is my attempt to read or make sense of what might be the hardest batch of text in the lectionary. The three texts for the Day were Amos 8:4-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-15 and Luke 16:1-15. It is days like today that a lectionary is actually built for and why you follow it. There is no way and sane preacher would choose these texts to preach from today. And in all truthfulness you would probably not even read two out of three from the lectern because just reading them raised blood pressure.
The sustained argument throughout this sermon is that what raises blood pressure (or just baffles) is not the texts themselves, but what we import into the texts in reading. The problem is that we have trouble reading the Bible. Not that we can’t read, but we have not developed the habits of mind and heart that go to understanding. The foremost of those habits is reading the word in submission to the word. That means a bunch of different things, but I primarily think about it on two lines. First, scripture interprets scripture; second, we give the word the benefit of the doubt. We assume that it is right and can be made clear if we are willing to understand. Part of making it clear is understanding the context of the writing, social context and the larger purpose of the book.
So, as I started with, this is my attempt to publicly read, or interpret for modern ears. To come at these hard texts with proper habits of mind and heart.
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Biblical Text: Galatians 3:23-4:7
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One admission, this probably moved too much from a sermon proclamation into a paper. That is probably a result of the second admission.
Second admission, as the word cloud probably tells you, it might be more about the law than the gospel. For a sermon on Galatians, that is saying something. The Law comes through a lecture; the gospel by proclamation.
Those admissions aside, thinking in Law & Gospel terms about the world around us, the biggest problem in the church today is not in regard to the Gospel side of the theology. The concept of the Gospel is grasped if not always the heart faith. (In my head what you see when that happens is cheap grace.) What is missing or out of kilter is a full appreciation of the law and its purposes.
Following Paul’s argument in the text there is one Gospel. The good news of the God-man Jesus, the Christ, who gave himself for us on the cross. He bore the law so that we could be the sons and heirs. He exchanged places.
There is one perfect law (the revealed law of God through Moses), but there are many “laws” which mimic and discern the elementary principles. The law was given, to all peoples in various forms, as a guardian. Some of those laws are better than others. A law built rigorously around Confucius would be a good one. It is still a law that we can’t keep. One of the things that is was designed to teach, but the law is still good and wise, and Confucius was both.
When pondering or working our way through a pluralistic world, keeping the Gospel pure meaning that it is only by faith through Jesus Christ is the first priority. It is deadly muddled headed thinking to import Buddha or any other figure into the gospel. But, the Christian can admit and admire nobility and wisdom in other cultures as a matter of the law. An alien culture or law might have captured something clearer or better than our own guardians. But they are all guardians. As a baptized Christian who has put on Christ, you are no longer under a guardian. The kingdom is yours. The only question is do you apply the lessons of the law with the grace of the mature heir, or so you squander the inheritance?
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Text: John 10:22-30
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The world is full of voices. In the past week we’ve heard from some of the more gruesome. What Jesus says in the text today is “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” He also says bluntly that those who don’t believe (because they haven’t accepted/heard the testimony) are not his sheep.
What the Gospel according to John sets up is the duality of voices. The voice of Christ is the call to life, and the call to life is the call to repentance and a life transformed by the Spirit. All the other voices, whatever their form, are voices of the world leading to death, voices breathing threats and murder. And there is no blending of these voices, just a division. Either we follow the voice of the shepherd, or we follow other voices. Either we believe, and nothing will snatch us out of the Father’s hand, or we join the voices contra Christ. There is no middle ground. And if this week has done anything it has shown the foolishness of dialog with those voices of the world. Voices not based in the life of Christ yield bad fruit.
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Text: Luke 15:1-3,11-32
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The text is the prodigal son. Actually the entire 15th Chapter of Luke should be taken together, but the assigned text was just the last of three parables. I struggled this week to find the clarity. Part of that I think was that pastors, especially those who are trying to be orthodox, feel something different from this parable.
The orthodox preacher teaches law and gospel. Both of them have their place. The church since the reformation has been about a specific viewpoint on the gospel. And that viewpoint is neatly captured by the prodigal or by the hymn amazing grace. I once was lost by now am found. The focal point is all on the individual and the God they are being reconciled to. Now what gets taken for granted in that reformation mentality is the whole. The prodigal is reconciled to the family of God. The prodigal is restored to the church. But let’s call it the reformation on steroids, TROS eventually loses the church. What we have is a whole lot of people in churches of one. They have achieved a state they think of as wholeness between them and their god. And then the church attempting to shepherd that person in holiness points out that the law is how God intended things to be. But in TROS the reply is “that’s not my God” or “God didn’t mean that” or some such answer. And the communicant in this church of one, if the true church persists, starts shouting things like Pharisee, or unloving older brother. You just need to accept me, because god has.
That is a completely different order than what the prodigal did. The prodigal may have thought he was returning but keeping his “freedom” – “make me a hired man”. That prodigal at the state wanted to enjoy the benefits of the family while still keeping his little shack just outside and rejecting those parts of the family he didn’t like. But by the time he has arose (a loaded term) and walked the path back and felt the compassion of the father in his embrace that demand or caveat on the repentance is gone. The prodigal submits himself completely to the household.
The question that both sons get asked is this: do you trust the Father’s judgment and ways? Older sons must accept the repentance of prodigals because God has. God works on repentance and absolution. Neither of those does away with the law. What they do is demonstrate that we have all fallen short. But prodigals, those being restored to the whole have to submit to that household. It is not Pharisaical for the church to point out that partial repentance is no repentance at all. In fact that is called Shepherding. (Ezek 33:8-11)
God is about restoring his people, restoring a whole. But we do not define that whole. All we can do is exclude ourselves from it. Do we accept the grace of the Father to be part of his family, or do we stand outside. We can stand outside in a far country. We can stand outside within the walls demanding our way. Both are forms of slavery to our sin. Only in submission and repentance do we find freedom. Do you truth the Father’s ways best revealed in Christ and the cross? The decision is life or death.
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Biblical Text: Luke 4:1-13
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The first Sunday in Lent brings the temptation of Jesus as the text. The text is usually turned into a moral lesson about knowing your bible. And there is some of that here. But as I worked through the text and the various inputs this week, that fit less and less easily. Especially given Luke’s text. The temptations come in a slightly different order here, and the Devil and Jesus flip-flop words. Jesus goes from “it is written” to “it is said” when the devil picks up quoting scripture. This is no sword drill bible quoting one-up-man-ship.
The postmodern world tells us that everything is interpretation. There are authoritative interpretations made so by power. There are deviant or subversive interpretations. But, there are no facts; there is no truth. In the first two temptations Jesus clearly refutes that as he both takes as true and binding the Word of God and refutes a power and authority’s ability to assert interpretation against fact. In the third temptation Jesus turns to the opposite problem. Instead of thinking that everything is interpretation, its opposite is often a too great a certainty. When the devil starts quoting scripture the temptation is to put a very precise interpretation on a poetic verse.
Applied to the modern church or would you have both the church that has abandoned the law because they hunger after the approval of the world, and you have the church that is uncomfortable with faith and hope and mystery. The narrow way lies between the two ditches. Letting the secret things be God’s, but claiming surely those things that have been revealed. Deuteronomy 29:29
This is an attempt to preach the text by connecting roots of post-modernism with how we see it playing out in events today. As such, as David Foster Wallace would once quip, I’m attempting to point out the water to the fish (what’s water?). It is preaching directly at a space that is probably never in questioned. As such it might have zoomed right past.
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Biblical Text: John 17:11-19
Full Text – note, I deviated more from this text than I typically do.
Here is the question you need to ask yourself – are we bound creatures needing freedom, or largely free creatures needing strict guidelines?
How you answer that question will determine how you hear (or don’t hear) the gospel.
The stories come from the papers and the world of finance. The bottom line, the fact that everything can be reduced to a number and measured, and the relentless pressure to turn in a specific number drive home the lessons of the law and how we are all bound to unobtainable expectations. Only in Christ by the power of the Spirit are we free to produce real fruit.
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Sermon Text: Mark 10:35-45
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We do it all the time. We weigh all kinds of stuff searching for the fair or the just. Think of Bird Girl nearby as a pretty artistic expression of the human striving after the moral calculus. Grace scrambles that. There is no fair with grace. The equation never balances when grace is in the picture. I think that is the core of what Jesus is saying is today’s text. This is not so among you – you are to be servants. Servants always get the short end of the stick. Why would Jesus say that? Because the economy of the Kingdom is grace. Most importantly the grace of the Father. And grace is an all or nothing proposition. Either Father, into you hands I commit my spirit, or its all crap.
There were a bunch of reasons I cut it short this morning, but I had a short coda/conclusion which is primarily Psalm 49. I don’t know how this psalm never jumped out at me, but it captures the either/or, at its deepest and more forlorn, grace comes in, and it doesn’t take much to unbalance the equation. If you want a little more poetic a take, read the last page of the full text.
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Biblical Text: JOhn 3:14-21
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Defeated by John again. A little honesty, I’m pretty sure this was a muddled mess. Why oh why when Ephesians 2:1-10 was sitting right there, ripe for the preaching…but no, I have to pick John. Lured in by the same trap of an idea that looked ripe. There is always an idea with John. The problem is the there is always more than one idea from John. And Saturday afternoon, while 15 seeds are beating 2 seeds, you are trying to edit things down and put some structure on the mess. And Sunday morning you are just in prayer – “God this one is a stupendous mess, I know it is all you anyway, but this one is going to have to be ex nihilo – cause I’ve got nothing.”
Anyway, what I was attempting to make real and meaningful was two points:
1) You can’t take John 3:16 without John 3:14-15. The ground of John 3:16 is the cross. Otherwise you end up with an anonymous loving god who looks somewhat sad or pathetic. {Akin to saying, God loves you you mutts, now earn it. An amazingly bad evangelism method and very bad theology.}
2) When you ground John 3:16 in the context, you have a strong proclamation of the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of election. That should make John 3:16 all the more meaningful for believers as it has nothing to do with our reaction. God’s love is on the basis of God. And God will make it so. The believer’s works are good because they are in God (John 3:21). If no one believed, He would still have taken the cross. In John the cross is not an atonement act but THE SIGN, the revelation and act of God.
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Sermon Text: Matthew 22:34-46
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The text is the last in a sequence of questions that the various leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem were quizzing Jesus with. In the Synoptics (Matt, Mark and Luke) Jesus is only in Jerusalem once, and the leaders are testing him. Finding out where he falls. The first of the questions is tricky and political. The second by the Sadducees was just the sniggering expression of a cynical elite. But this last one by a representative of the Pharisees is serious. What is the summary of the law?
And Jesus treats it seriously. He doesn’t cryptically answer it or just swat it away. He gives an answer. Love God; love your neighbor as yourself. We don’t always see it, but there are three loves in there: God, others and self. The core of the law is to love them all.
We all have more or less success with that, but the law only goes so far. In the middle of the puzzlement of how do I balance those, Jesus asks a question. What do you think about the Christ? The Pharisees answer – he’s the son of David. A King. A representative of the law. But Jesus pushes them. Why does David, the highest law – the great king – admit to another Lord? And he leaves the question hanging.
I try in this sermon to put that same hanging question on the hearer. What do you think about the Christ? Does he fulfill the law? What does it mean to call him Lord? The answers are yours. I think that is the difference between a theology from above and one from below. If you are working with a theology from above, you proclaim the majesty and Lordship. (And the hymns for the day did that proclamation for us.) If you are working with a theology from below, you invite, you portray, you ask people to observe and draw conclusions. Both can bring forth faith in the hands of the Spirit. The first invites the Amen! The second challenges to thought. Look deeper. Put aside the standard answers and come up with your own. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). The church needs both. The Christian needs both – the amen and the reflection.
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