When We Are Faithless, He Is Faithful...

Good morning!  

The gospel lesson we heard today, from Luke, about the ten lepers being cleansed, is one that many of us heard growing up in Sunday School.  And I suspect that most of heard it told something like this: 

“Jesus was walking along the road between Samaria and Galilee, and there were ten lepers who called out to him and said, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’ So Jesus healed them, and sent them off, and only one came back to say ‘thank you’.  Jesus praised that man, but wanted to know how come the other 9 didn’t come say ‘thank you.’  Boys and girls, we should all learn to say ‘thank you’ to Jesus!”

Am I right?

This is a story, which, like so many other stories, we are really, really good at turning into a lesson on “rules for how to be a good Christian.”  As though Jesus hands out healing to lepers the way we hand snacks to preschoolers – “here’s a cookie, now, what do you say?” “Thank you, Mommy.”  “Ok, you’re healed, now what do you say?” “Thank you, Jesus!” 

Of course, there’s an element of trying to encourage gratitude in this story, and the “rules,” if you want to call them that, absolutely would tell us the same thing.  Throughout the Bible, God’s people are constantly expressing their gratitude to God for all of the mighty acts he has done.  In the communion liturgy each week, also called the Eucharistic liturgy, Eucharist meaning “thanksgiving,”, we pray, “It is indeed right and salutary – meaning “correct” – that we should at all times and in all places offer thanks and praise to you, O Lord…” 

And it’s true – if you stop and think just at this very moment, what are the things that we can be grateful to God for?  Well, you’re alive, for starters.  Your lungs are breathing and your heart is beating and the neurons in your brain are firing and your fingers work well enough to fiddle with the bulletin or the candy in your purse, and you have ears to hear what’s being said and a voice to echo your Amen to all of the prayers.  You have clothes and shoes to wear.  You made it to church this morning – whether your healthy legs walked you here in the crisp fall air, or you have been blessed with a car that functions and the ability to pass a drivers exam and get a license and drive here, or whether someone else was kind enough to provide the transportation so that you could come to worship.  In just a few minutes you’ll hold Jesus in your hand and eat the actual Body, and drink the Blood, of your Lord.  And after that, there will be hot coffee and snacks out in the fellowship hall, and who’s not grateful for coffee?  J  So right there, there’s a whole list of things that we can be grateful to God for. 

And that doesn’t even get into, say, salvation, and the fact that your sins are forgiven, that death has been destroyed, and that the power of the devil has been conquered by the Blood of Jesus – on your behalf, and for your benefit.  More things to be grateful for, which are – technically – more important than coffee. 

And really, how many of us remember to actually express our thanks and praise to God for all of these gifts, and for the many, many, many more that we have been given?  It is indeed right and salutary that we should at all times, and in all places, offer thanks and praise to you, O Lord.  But we don’t.  More often than not, we fall into the category of the nine, rather than the one. 

And yes, we could argue, trying to justify the nine, and ourselves, that Jesus tells them all to go show themselves to the priests – because having been lepers, and excluded from the community, there’s a whole religious ritual of being reintegrated into society that starts with the Jewish priests verifying that you, are, in fact, healed of the disease.  So we could say, well, they were just doing what Jesus told them to do.  They were obeying the instructions.  And, well, yes. 

But at the heart of all religious ritual and observance, at the heart of the liturgy, and the order of worship, and the Sacraments, and the rites and rituals, the core of all of that is Jesus.  It is Christ himself, crucified and risen for you.  And so the nine healed lepers, while they certainly weren’t wrong to go do as they were told, to follow the religious process they had been given, well, in forgetting to say thank you to Jesus, in forgetting the One who actually had healed them, it seems like they maybe kind of missed the point. 

And we can be in danger of doing the same thing.  We can come to church and sing the songs and pray the prayers and listen politely and sit down and stand up and so on and so forth, we can serve coffee and help usher and share the peace nicely with the people sitting next to us, and we can do that every single week – heck, we could do it every single day – but if we trust in those rituals, instead of trusting in the person that all the rituals point to, the Christ who is the object, the target of our worship, the one who instituted the Sacraments and brings us life and healing and salvation through them; if we miss Him, then we miss the point. 

“Church”, at the end of the day, is not about church for the sake of church.  It is not, primarily, about “hospitality”, or about how often you come or how much money you put in the offering plate.  It is not about who sees you here, and it is not about coffee and treats.  Church is not about the building, or about how popular any given congregation is in town, or about being nice, or whatever else.  Church – this particular congregation called Our Savior’s, and the Church that is composed all the believers, across all time and space, church, is fundamentally, primarily, always and only, at its core, about Jesus. 

Hymns and songs, prayers and processionals, confession and Communion – all point to Jesus.  Hospitality and welcome and fellowship – all derive from, and point to, the hospitality and welcome and fellowship that Jesus offers to us.  Service projects – inside and outside the church building – come from, and point to, the Jesus who loves us, and serves us.  Religion is good.  “Go and show yourselves to the priest,” Jesus says.  Jesus doesn’t come to destroy religion.  He comes to make it known that He is the one who undergirds, who is both the foundation of, and the object of religion.  The Church’s One Foundation…is Jesus Christ her Lord…  If we miss that, we miss the point, and we become part of the nine. 

So by now, it may look like all is lost, and returning to memories of Sunday School, if you grew up in Sunday School, here comes the rest of the lecture about “being more grateful.” 

But what about this? What about, instead of a lecture on being thankful and “counting your blessings”, what if we turn to the second reading, from Paul’s second letter to Timothy?  And let’s look at one line in particular.  Paul is in the middle of quoting some sort of hymn or something about Jesus, and comes to, “when we are faithless, he is faithful.”  When we are faithless, he is faithful.  Even when we are faithless, he remains faithful.  

Look, the remaining nine lepers, say what you want about them – they weren’t appropriately grateful, they got so caught up in the machinations of religion that they missed the One who sent them to the priests in the first place, whatever else you can think of – but they weren’t unhealed because of it.  Yes, Jesus asks where they are, but he doesn’t chase them down the street and make them be lepers again.  God’s love and God’s grace and God’s power and God’s forgiveness – all of God’s gifts – are not dependent on us, and on our gratitude, or our ability to get everything right.  And thank goodness.  Because if they were, we’d be in real trouble.  But when we are faithless – when we don’t trust God, when we don’t offer him the thanks and praise he deserves, when we’re good at following religion but not so good at following Jesus, when we doubt that all the promises to keep us and love us and protect us might not really be real because they certainly don’t feel real in this moment of being diagnosed with a terrible illness or abandoned by the people I love or not knowing how I’m going to put food on the table this week or being overwhelmed with grief after someone’s death or swallowed whole by guilt and shame about what I’ve done or not done…when we are faithless, God is still faithful.  His promises and gifts and blessings still stand.  You can’t make everything fall apart because of your faithlessness – God simply won’t let you.  He doesn’t unheal us or take away what He’s already given.  He doesn’t stop showing up at your side each morning, or quit watching over you every night.  He doesn’t take away forgiveness or hand you over to the powers of evil.  When we are faithless, he is faithful. 

This is a tough life.  None of us – not a single one – have it easy.  It’s hard to be faithful in a world that doesn’t value faith.  It’s hard to trust Christ when everything around you says the only person you can trust is yourself.  It’s tough to remember to say thank you when there are just so many other things to do.  It’s difficult to keep our eyes fixed on Christ when the Sunday School rooms aren’t as full as they used to be.  And it’s easy to be wracked with guilt when we contemplate our own faithlessness. 

But when we are faithless, He is faithful.  God’s promises to forgive – to offer grace and healing and salvation and new life – they are not contingent on you.  You do not earn those promises in the moments when you are faithful, and you cannot stop them when you are faithless.  When we are faithless, He is faithful.  Your sins are forgiven, and you have been healed.  Go and show yourselves to the priest, and may God be praised!

Amen.

The Righteous Will Live By Faith

Good morning!  It’s monsoon season, apparently, so I’m glad to see all of you here, and see that none of you have drowned!  You know, I absolutely love these Bible texts we have to work with today because they are just so full of God’s grace and goodness!  I want to start by highlighting the very beginning of the second reading, of Paul’s letter to Timothy.  Pau writes, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.”

This, folks, is what Vibrant Faith is all about.  The Vibrant Faith system, if you could call it that, the Vibrant Faith way of looking at church, is one that takes these verses seriously.  Timothy and Paul were coworkers for the Gospel, but Paul was the…supervisor…mentor…trainer?  He brought Timothy up, taught him how to be a pastor and an evangelist, and sent him out – these 2 letters we have are some of Paul’s instructions and encouragement to his young protégé.  And so what Paul is saying to Timothy here, that we get to listen in on, is “I know that the faith you have was passed on to you from your mother and your grandmother, and that very sincere faith lives in you just as did in them.” 

What Vibrant Faith says is, “Faith is caught, not taught.  Yes, “church” and pastors and youth groups and Sunday School and confirmation and all of those other things are good and helpful and important.  But the number-one predictor of whether a child will grow up to be an actively faithful Christian is parental involvement, normalizing the life of faith, integrating it into the entire workings of the family, rather than just, “Oh, and we also go to church and do some stuff there.”"  As it says in the Habakkuk reading today, and St. Paul reiterates in his letter to the Romans, “The righteous person will live by his faith.”

This is why we put the Taking Faith Home sheets in the bulletin each week.  This is why there are suggestions for ways to engage the Four Keys (Caring Conversation, Ritual and Tradition, Service, and Devotion) going out to you in the newsletter.  It’s why we practice them at Council Meetings and Confirmation class and send ideas home after confirmation.  Because we’re giving you as many tools as possible to integrate faith into your home – whether there are kids living at your house or not.   We all need this – not just kids.  Adults and young adults.  Babies and the elderly.  Those who are healthy as a horse and those who are dying.  Those of us who just can’t seem to get our lives together, and those of us who are only pretending like we do.  We all, every one of us, need faith.  And not just “faith” in some vague, ethereal sense that has a sort of…generic justice of the universe as its object.  But faith that holds Jesus Christ, and his promises, as its object.  The righteous will live by faith. 

    

And it’s true, this faith comes from the Holy Spirit.  You or I or anyone else cannot create faith in someone – but we can do our darndest to pass it on.  And when we engage the rituals and traditions of the faith, when we start having more and more conversations about God, when we read the Bible and, yes, actually sing along at worship (I know, crazy!) and receive Holy Communion, when we love and serve other people after the pattern of Jesus, those are all footholds for the Holy Spirit to grab on to, to build and deepen our faith, they are ways of fanning into flames, as Paul says, the gift of God, the gift which is our faith.  And when our faith is fanned into flames – mustard seed-sized or anything else – it bleeds out onto the people around us, it gets passed around to family and friends, neighbors and coworkers.  Yes, the righteous will live by faith.  

Now I know, that there are a goodly number of you, who in your heart of hearts would prefer to believe that “the righteous will live by working hard and leading a moral life.”  I mean, YAY American Protestant Work Ethic!  Thank you, Mayflower Pilgrims and/or Scandinavian immigrants, for gifting us with this rich heritage, yes?  Deep down, a good many of us suspect that if we just work hard enough, and lead a reasonably moral life (you know, like don’t kill anybody or do anything else too terrible), and if we help usher or serve communion once in a while, well, we’re serving the Lord, and God will look with kindness on that, and then, everything will be fine.  God will love us, and smile upon us, and bless us, because of how nice and sweet and Midwesternly-charming we’ve been.  God helps those who help themselves, and others, right?  That’s totally in the Bible!  Except for, wait, it’s not.  But what is in the Bible, is Hebrews 11, verse 6: “without faith it is impossible to please God.”  The righteous person will live by faith.  

And it’s a darn good thing, too.  Because look at Jesus’ words about those who are servants.  There never seems to be a break, and there isn’t even really a reward for a job well done.  You’re only an unworthy servant, who has done your duty.  Look, you’re welcome to try to work for your reward, to be a good servant in hopes of some sort of divine pat on the head, but Jesus is pretty clear that at the end of the day, what you’ll hear is, “You want me to thank you for…doing…the job you were supposed to do in the first place?” Annnnnnd let’s be honest – how many of us can truly say, “I’m an unworthy servant who has only done what I should have”?  It’s really more like, “I’m an unworthy servant who hasn’t even done my assigned duties.”  Welcome to sin.  Even the righteous can’t claim to live by their service.  The righteous will live by faith.  

I know this is hard to hear, and hard to absorb, but it's true - good works won’t really get you anywhere.  They are what you are supposed to do, as a follower of Jesus, and other people need you do them (your kids need you to be a good parent, your wife needs you to show that you love her, your customers need you to charge fair prices – and that’s just in your own immediate circle, that’s not even counting strangers).  Yes, good works are important.  But they are important in this world only.  When it comes to righteousness, when it comes to salvation, when it comes to our relationship with God, they don’t amount to a hill of beans…or mustard seeds.  The righteous will live by faith.  

And when we live by faith, when we cling to the promises of Christ, which include eternal life, victory over the devil, and the forgiveness of sin.  So that when we are forced to say, at the end of each day, “I am only an unworthy servant who didn’t do what was asked,” we can count on Jesus to say, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Not overlooked, or excused, or brushed off with “oh, it’s okay.”  Forgiven.  Done, over, ended.  Washed clean.  Taken as far away as the east is from the west.  Forgiven.  Jesus has already done the hardest work of all – dying and rising again, for us, and for our salvation.  What’s left for us, the unworthy servants to do, is to believe – to have faith – that this is true.  The righteous will live by faith.  

How much faith?  Well, as much as you’ve got.  Maybe a mustard seed.  Maybe a tiny little orchid seed or a big old avocado seed.  You can’t judge the dimensions of your faith, and you sure can’t judge the dimensions of somebody else’s.  Anybody who tells you to “believe more” or “have more faith” doesn’t know what they’re talking about, because they have no idea how much faith you have.  And anyway, it’s a gift from God, given out by the Holy Spirit, so it’s not like you can control what size your seed of faith is.  The righteous will live by faith – however much they’ve been given.  

So be righteous, then.  Live by your God-given faith.  Fan it into flames by engaging it, through worship and fellowship and service and prayer, and then pass it along, not as some sort of accessory to your life, but as something that is integral, and woven into, everything that you do.  We are all unworthy servants, who sometimes have, but usually have not – done what we were told to do.  But our sins are forgiven, we are under the power of the Holy Spirit, not the devil, and we have been promised eternal life.  Yes, the righteous shall live.  They shall live by faith.  Blessed be the Lord.

Amen. 

On the Christian Life

Sermon from last week, 9/1/13.

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Good morning! Today is a great day – today is a really, super-special day for so many reasons – first of all is that we are here to worship God, to be part of a community who recognizes that God, and the gifts that he gives us are so important, so critical, that they rearrange our lives, and our schedules.  When we could be at the Fair, or trying to stay cool at home, or sleeping in, or whatever – why, even the very ability we have to recognize that worship is important is a gift from God, a truth that the Holy Spirit has placed in our hearts.  And second, is because while we are here, we actually receive the very concrete gifts that God promises. 

Each week, when we come to the altar and receive Holy Communion, you hold Jesus Christ in your hands – the same God who created the universe, who died on the Cross and rose again on Easter morning, who literally makes us to be like him because of his real, physical presence inside of us.  This is the essence of Holy Communion – that we are brought into union with Christ.  And right alongside Communion, before Communion, actually, is Holy Baptism.  In baptism, we become members of the Church – the capital-C, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.  Our sins are forgiven by Jesus Christ himself, the Word of God.  When we are baptized, as little Danilo will be here shortly, we are ontologically different – we become literally joined to Christ – we are baptized into his death, and also into his resurrection. 

There is no more “you’re on your own in this world”, there’s no more “you need to look out for yourself, because no one else will.”  These things that we’re tempted to believe, these lessons the world tries to teach us, that the world will try to teach Danilo as he grows up, are shown to be absolute lies in the face of what we have as Christians – union with Christ, and his promises.  This is what the writer of Hebrews is getting at when he reminds us not to worry about money or anything else – it’s not just that we should be content, but that we can be content – because God has already said, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” 

That is the promise he makes to us in our baptism, and the promise he makes to us over, and over, and over again – the promise that will never be broken, that never can be broken, because God cannot, and does not, break his promises. 

It is not an overstatement to say that nothing else – literally, nothing – matters, so long as you possess Christ.  And we do.  We who are baptized Christians, who avail ourselves of the real, true, physical presence of Jesus in Holy Communion, we possess Christ – we belong to him, and he belongs to us.  And that is all that matters. 

And yet Jesus, in the gospel reading today, seems to suggest that there’s more to it – there’s instructions – sit here, not there – invite these people, not those.  Even the writer of Hebrews, while reminding us that nothing can harm us because of God’s promises, gives instructions – be loving and show hospitality, remember those who are in prison, do not commit adultery, do good, share with others. 

If the only thing that really matters is Christ, then why the instructions?  Why does it matter what we do? 

Because baptism, being joined to Christ, being part of the Church, is a call to discipleship.  When we are united with Jesus in his death and his resurrection, we become people are joined to Christ’s life – a life of love and hospitality, of remembering the poor and imprisoned, of fidelity in relationships, of caring for the poor and homeless.  When Jesus tells us to live our lives in this way, when the writer of Hebrews encourages us in upright living – it isn’t because those things are conditions of our salvation.  It is because those are the things that characterize a life lived in Christ.  It isn’t a call to be better people than we currently are, it’s a call to be precisely the people that Jesus has already made us to be. 

Now of course, if we’re being honest, we know that this is a difficult call to follow.  To be kind and loving and hospitable towards people who are not kind and loving and hospitable back.  To love, and to share what we have with people we don’t even know.  To remember prisoners, when we’d rather forget them, because they’re bad people who deserve to be punished.  To eat with the poor and homeless, who might be awkward and have bad manners or smell weird and who certainly aren’t about to invite us over in return.  To be faithful in marriage and chaste otherwise, in a culture that tells us it’s boring or unenlightened or repressed.  To not worry about money in a society that staunchly insists that we must.  To be humble in a world of “selfies”.  To offer praise and prayer to God when school and sports and travel and work and whatever else seem to conspire to prevent it.

The devil’s arrows are sharp, and well-aimed.  It’s true.  And it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one, like you’re out there all on your own, struggling to live this Christian life you’ve been grafted into.  But two things to remember: first, how well you live the call to discipleship is not – is NOT – what determines your salvation.  Your sins are forgiven and you belong to Christ, and THAT is what determines your salvation.  And second, this is why the new life in Christ that is given to each of us at our baptism is paired with entry into the Church – because we are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses – the saints who have gone ahead of us into glory, and the very concrete local congregation right here, to support us, encourage us, cheer us on, help us, and to remind us that it still – never – is about us, it’s about Jesus and what he has done for us.

So welcome to the Church, and to the faith, Danilo.  This little one is being baptized into the faith that we share, the faith in Jesus Christ that is given to each one of us.  The faith that looks at everything in the world that is set up against us and says, it doesn’t matter, because God has said, “never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”  The faith that clings to that promise, and can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid, because the Jesus who baptized me, the Jesus who died on the cross and rose from the grave, the Jesus who comes to us in this Holy Supper – that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”    

You belong to him, and that is all that matters.

Amen.