St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Third Sunday After Pentecost (June 1, 2008)
Liturgical Color: Green
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
A Mid-Year Reminder
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
In my work as a pastor, I find myself quoting this passage from Romans as much as any other word of scripture.
For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (3:22b-24)
This passage begins with what sounds like bad news—all have sinned and fall short. It's a judging word that extends to everyone.
So, why, as a pastor supposedly entrusted with the message of the gospel, am I quoting this so much? Because I regularly run into situations in which someone or several people consider themselves either better than or worse than others. They simply need to be reminded that no one has special status in God's eyes. We are all sinners. None of us deserves more than any other. And God bears no preference for one over another, since all fall short of God's glory.
This is a reminder that we all need to hear regularly. Some of you may be regular church-attenders long enough now to know that this text—at least a portion of it—appears every year. But it comes most predictably not in June, but in October—on Reformation Sunday. This is, of course, the fundamental expression of the gospel that was rediscovered by Martin Luther in a time when it had seemed forgotten. He brought this profound reminder to the world of Christianity of the sixteenth century.
And today, we see that the liturgical calendar of readings recognizes our continuing need to be reminded that in God's eyes we are all the same—sinners in need of redemption, and that we are all made right with God solely by the gift of grace. Today we get this mid-year reminder.
Justification by grace for sinners is a perennial theme because we forget about it again and again. As religious people, we often build buildings for the glory of God that dazzle us with pride, not in God, but in ourselves and what we've achieved. "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." (Psalm 127:1). We develop administrative structures to channel grace into the world and are surprised when they become ingrown and self-serving bureaucracies (How it is that I am actually looking forward to the Indiana-Kentucky Synod assembly this week?). We generate ritual and tradition that become ends in themselves, vehicles of our status and insecurity, constructs that distract us from the grace still moving among us. The church we build to convert the world becomes mired in sinfulness. Then we remember that the church is always in need of reform. All alike have sinned, Paul wrote, and all are justified by God's free grace alone. We know this but we forget it, and we forget it often.
The theme is relevant to the repeated scandals that plague those in public life, whether it be priests, pastors, politicians, or prominent entrepreneurs. Every corner of life experiences something of this sort of violation of trust. The values at stake affect all of us. Because values such as the well-being of children, truth-telling, and morality are always at risk, the community as a whole has a stake in them. We are all in this together.
Paul speaks to us today in our circumstance of sinfulness. Where we have set church leaders or anyone else apart from the rest of humanity and projected onto them the moral rectitude we wish somebody would embody, we set ourselves up for a crisis of trust. But such trust is never realistic to begin with because all have sinned and fall short—everyone is morally and spiritually frail.
Once again, we see the wisdom of this part of Paul's gospel, as if we were hearing it for the first time: All alike—all of us—are sinners who are justified by God's free grace alone.
These insights come from St. Paul, who should know. We are all familiar with the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. It is one of the dramatic and memorable stories of the New Testament. This formally-educated but arrogant man is struck down in a blinding flash of insight. Certain of his righteousness, he did terrible harm to others in the name of God. Paradoxically, when he thought he was most righteous, he was most wrong. Left to his own thinking and instincts, and imbued with years of study of religion that failed to free his heart, he was a destructive man. Only his encounter with Christ brought him out of his closed world and liberated him.
Paul's experience, which must have caused him profound shame as his conversion convinced him of how evil his deeds had been, is the perfect witness to the truth of what he writes in this superb letter to the Romans. "Beware." he cries out to us. "Beware that you do not think too highly of yourself-as I did. Beware that you become self-righteous, for you will find that, despite yourself, sinfulness has an eternal hold on you. You fall woefully short. You need God and grace and forgiveness. Believe me; I know."
If we could only take this set of truths to heart! How often I seek to justify my actions. When I mess up, I want to blame someone else. I want to direct the guilt away from myself. Anything or anyone will do. Even growing age and "senior moments" might be candidates for taking the heat. But not me! Of course not!
What a bunch of hypocritical hooey!
If I and we learn to incorporate this basic biblical and Reformation truth—that we are sinners with nothing innate within us to recommend ourselves to God—then being aware of and being forthright about our errors, mistakes, and sins might become second nature. Why try to cover up what everyone knows already? Why try to lay the blame when we are all already guilty of falling entirely short of being innocent?
When I feel compelled to quote this passage—in truth—it is not because it is bad news. In many ways, that is not bad news. It is good news. It is the radical equalizer of the Christian faith. We all sit in the same place with respect to God. No one has an advantage. No one is at a disadvantage either.
And the good news becomes entirely clear with the remainder of this great passage from Romans: "they are now justified by God's grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." and "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law." (3:31).
The great good news is that there is nothing we can do on our own account to earn the love of God—that is, grace. Self-justification in whatever context is just so much silliness. And this good news stirs within us such gratitude! Our conversion might not be so dramatic as was Paul's, nor might our sins have been so horrid in our own eyes. But when we are held eternally in a loving embrace that we manifestly do not deserve, something within us collapses into a heap of humble thanks. "I'm not worthy! How can this be! Thank you, Lord, for your acceptance—for your merciful and manifold grace."
When we stand in that place, the second aspect of this grace dawns. It is what today's readings all point to—When gripped by grace we desire devotion to God. we want to behave in such a way that this grace is honored. We, to put it simply, uphold the laws of God which show us how God wants us to live our lives.
Hear this from Deuteronomy:
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known. (11:26-28)
Mind you, the curse spoken of here is not the curse of God upon us, but the curse we bring upon ourselves when we behave ungratefully. Living in ways that defy God's love and deter us from God's ways always leads to destruction, because we were made for only one way.
We have already heard Paul's call to faithfulness in Romans. And so, listen to this word from Matthew:
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock." (7:24-25)
Wendell Berry's novel Jayber Crow illustrates these words of Jesus. The narrator tells the story of his life as a barber living in the mid-20th century in a tiny Kentucky town called Port William. For 30 years the men of the town come to sit in his chair, talk to him and visit with neighbors who are waiting. Because the mothers bring in their children, he comes to know them too.
In time, Jayber Crow becomes something like a confessor or a parson. He knows the characters and values of Port William people well. He goes to church and contemplates the truths of the Gospels, which he's read all the way through, and he does his best to live them out.
He is faithful and honorable in love. He is honest in his dealings, loves his friends and, with considerable struggle, learns to love his few enemies. Jayber Crow is a consoling reminder of that faithful pragmatist in Jesus' sermon who builds his house on the rock so that it can withstand the storm and the flood. He is among the meek who inherit the earth.
Berry's hero leads us back to reconsider readings that speak to the church with tender and true words. All are sinners—how did we forget this? And all are made right with God and others only by grace. It is not what we build or what we make of ourselves that matters in the end. It is not the offices we occupy or the structures of power that govern our common life that save us. It is God who saves, and God will save. God in Christ invites us to live our faith—to walk our talk—by doing the will of God. (Maureen Dallison Kemeza, "Repeat Offenders," The Christian Century, May 8-15, 2002, p. 21).
This is our mid-year reminder of the kernel of our faith. Grace alone establishes our loving relationship with God. Grace alone provides the motivation to live as we were created and intended to live. May this word dwell in us richly every day of every year. Amen.
And may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord unto eternal life. Amen.
