Stones or Cross?

* This sermon is a revision of one I posted on my theology blog a few days ago.  In the wake of the tragedy in Aurora, CO I felt that the time was ripe for preaching this sermon. 

1 Samuel 17

First Presbyterian, Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian

July 22, 2012

Ordinary 17

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

He stood ten feet tall, this Philistine, this one called Goliath.  The breadth of his shoulders matched only by the sight of his armor.  The earth must have shook under his feet as he emerged from behind the lines of Philistine chariots perched atop the mountain.  They too would have been a site to behold; the smoke rising behind them from the encampment, the noise of armaments being prepared for battle, the sound of thousands of men shuffling around, finding their places in line and dressing ranks to face the enemy. 

Facing them across the valley on the opposite side were the Israelites.  Led by Saul, they gathered to face this long time nemesis.  The battle would not be a fair match.  It never was.  The Philistines always seemed to have more men, more arms, more…luck.  The Israelites, making due with what they had, managed to win a few battles, skirmishes really, but all in all the scales tipped on the Philistines side.

Surely the appearance of Goliath would signal yet another trouncing at the hands of the Philistines.  Taunting the Israelites, Goliath issues a challenge.   If the Israelites can find one man who will fight Goliath and defeat him, the Philistines will not only surrender their army, but they will surrender their very selves as servants to Israel. 

Certainly there is one.  There must be one man.

There must be one in the whole nation of Israel who can face down the giant and free the people from the threat of the Philistines.

Of course there was.  YHWH would choose one from among the whole of the people.  An unexpected choice to be certain, but YHWH’s choice nonetheless.  David.  The shepherd boy.  The son of Jesse. 

Met with derision and surprise, he snaked his way through the lines of soldiers.   After long machinations and negotiations, he is finally led to the field of battle to face Goliath. 

The shepherd boy and the Philistine giant face to face.

So, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

Facing Goliath would certainly have been frightening for young David but killing him was easy.  This was not a man it was a Philistine.

As a Philistine, Goliath was an outsider; a worthy target of David’s stone.  Philistines were unclean, undesirable, uncircumcised and, in short, unimportant.  They lived outside the covenant and were, therefore, completely expendable.  The represented everything the Israelites were charged by God not to be.

Killing Goliath was not merely a military act, it was an act of faith.  It was the killing of that which the nation of Israel saw as opposed God and God’s command.  Philistines were not, after all, real people.  They were caricatures.  They were the cartoons drawn to show the folly of all that was outside the nation. 

When David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine, he was striking a blow for purity.  He was striking down the other, the unclean, the great unwashed.   

It is certainly easy to stand there cheering David on to victory.  I know that I locate myself there in the story around verse 51 when young David stands over the body of the slain Goliath and raises the giant’s sword over his head.  I can feel the sun on my face, smell the dust in the air and see the sights of the battlefield.  Fists pumping in the air, I join my voice with the crowd I imagine starting to gather to cheer on the boy who slew the giant.  Chanting DAVID, DAVID, DAVID! 

And surely this is a moment worthy of praise! 

Lying there on the ground is the greatest Philistine, the greatest unbeliever, the greatest of the unclean, unworthy and unfaithful.  The representative of all that is reprehensible, lay dead on the ground and the people were finally free of this menace.   If I could find the way, I wouldn’t mind arriving on the scene a few verses earlier.  Somewhere around verse 48, when Goliath walks out on the battlefield, because then I could pick up a rock.  I could stand there with David and strike a blow for good over evil.   

Eye to eye with evil, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

The windswept winter landscape of Wyoming probably did not resemble much of that battlefield of ancient Israel.  There were no armies, no grand generals.  Yet, I imagine that somewhere in their minds Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney thought they were facing a Philistine giant.  Before them was their Philistine.  He was the embodiment of all that is wrong, even evil.  Before them was the face of that which needed to be destroyed.   This giant certainly did not strike the same physical presence as the giant of old.  This giant stood barely 5’7 and may have weighed 8 stone soaking wet.  Nonetheless, these two warriors for good reached into their bags, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.  In fact they struck this Philistine over and over and over again. 

Standing in victory like David, they looked down on the broken body of 20yo Matthew Shepherd and knew that they had done what was good, what was holy, what was right. 

They were heroes.

They were David.

Right?

After all, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

The sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church is the last place you would think to find a Philistine giant.  Yet there she was.  Standing at the microphone, recounting the tenants of her personal faith, with her every word the threat grew greater and greater.  We began to squirm in our seats, quietly caucusing in whispers to affirm that we were really hearing what we thought we were hearing.  Short notes passed from one to another until finally she finished and in that moment it was as if she had just emerged from the line of chariots to issue her challenge.  Two of the pastors sitting there in their discomfort, their bags of stones fastened around their waists, stepped to the microphone.  This Philistine, this conservative, was not going to enter their presbytery without a fight.  One by one they reached into their bags, took out a stone, threw it and struck the Philistine.  In fact the stones were thrown one after the other until finally this giant, rather than laying dead on the battlefield, stood defeated in the chancel.  A blow was struck by those pastors for theological purity.

We were heroes.

We were David.

Right?

After all, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

And if David is a hero for his victory so, certainly, are we heroes when we cast a stone in the name of good.  Right?

Standing there over the body of the giant with my fingers clinched around the stone I so want to throw, I begin to wonder.  Is this stone really the way past this giant?  Am I really throwing this stone to defeat an enemy of good or am I throwing this stone to defeat my enemy?

My quarrel is not with David.  Even I, with all the things I throw out to you, am not going to second guess the motivation of Israel’s great king.   I chose to believe at face value what scripture tells us here; that the Giant’s challenge was truly a threat that demanded response from the people. 

No, it is not David who is indicted here, it is we.   We who make up the cheering crowd gathered around the body of the fallen giant.  We, who, with our bags full of stones, looking for places to throw them, seeing in our own reflections the face of God’s anointed, too easily find Philistines behind every corner.  We who locate ourselves in solidarity with the hero king and place on our own shoulders the mantle of responsibility for freeing God’s church, God’s world, even God’s very people from the threat of the Philistines of our own age.

Standing around the fallen giant, seeing in the face of the young heroic shepherd boy David the reflection of our own faces, it is just so easy to appoint ourselves defenders of the right and purveyors of divine justice. 

And like David, we put our hands in our bags, take out a stone, throw it, and strike the Philistine. 

We set ourselves up as defenders and saviors forgetting that it is in truth we who are the defended and we are the saved.  And it is not by the casting of stones but the tragedy of the cross of Christ.

Christ’s victory was won not on the battlefield with heavy stones or weapons of any kind.  His victory, our victory is won in an empty tomb.  It is won over the true enemy- eternal death has been supplanted by eternal life not through great acts of war but a whispered act of obedience… “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

It is in Christ that we are saved.

In Christ, we are relieved of the burden of our bag of stones. 

In Christ, we are delivered from the prison of our fears and even the Philistine giant, the other, the outsider, the object of our deepest fears is made whole. 

David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine, but Christ stretched out his arms, submitted to the cross and once and for all brought the outsider into the fold.    

We, who reside on the near side of the resurrection, are called not to clutch our stones prepared to cast them at the enemy, but to free our hands so we may carry their crosses and our own.  

In light of the events in Aurora, CO and the bombings in eastern Europe and the Middle East, I have been reminded of how easily our fear can lead us to lay down the cross and take up stones.  Yes, yes our fear says it is all well and good that Christ lived, died and rose again to make us all one and to make us whole, but just in case we’d better throw a few stones at those undesirables just in case.  And if we look in David’s face and see our own looking back, then the face of the Philistine must be the face of the other; of them.  

To be sure, it is within us to overcome that fear and find forgiveness inside our souls.  You may recall a few years ago when a troubled man entered an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania and killed several children and adults.  In the wake of the slaughter of their families and neighbors, the first public act of that Amish community was not to condemn but to pray for the man who pulled the trigger and offer their full and public forgiveness.

But the Amish are the exception to so many rules.  For most of us, we are defined by the language of vengeance and retribution in our culture.  So we let loose with the stones.

And let’s face it; it is a hell of a lot easier to throw stones at something we don’t like than to accept that in Christ we are made one with them.  It is easier to reach into a bag and grab a stone than to reach out beyond our fears to the Philistine’s of our imagination and with them take up the cross of Jesus Christ.  It is easier to pick up a stone and hurl it at a man who brought terror to an average community at a family movie theatre than it is to seek him out in the prison of his soul and, in the name of Jesus Christ, visit him and extend the hand of forgiveness.

Whether, like those misguided men on a cold Wyoming night, we throw our stones at the object of our fear in the world or, like we misguided pastors judging one of our own, we throw them at the object of our fear in the church, we must put down the cross of Christ to take up the stones. 

David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it and struck the Philistine.

Christ spread wide his arms and submitted to the cross. 

By which example shall we live? 

In which is the Christian life truly found?

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

God Does Love the Pots

God Does Love the Pots

Romans 9:6-33

First Presbyterian Church Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian Church

July 5, 2012

Ordinary 15

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Of the many burdens God has laid on me in my life, being popular in high school was certainly not one.  In fact, I was about as far from popular as you could get.

            I worked on the literary magazine, not the school paper.

            I was captain of the debate team, not the football team.

            I actually liked Latin.

            I was, to put it simply, a nerd.  My friends were equally nerdy and we were just young enough not to realize that it is in fact the nerds that end up running the world!  Just ask Bill Gates.

            At the time, that would have been cold comfort.  Walking the halls of Central High for three years, I felt like I was wearing a sign that read, “I am a high school child of Esau.”  I was not in the club; I was not one of the chosen tribe; I was not predestined to the popular life of the Jacobs in our midst.

            If you ask people outside the church- hell, if you ask most people inside the church- what predestination means, you will likely get an answer that includes one of two things.  Either that predestination means that we have no free will OR that predestination determines who is going to heaven and who is going to hell.

            In truth, neither of these is an unfaithful reading of this passage from Paul.  They are faithful and orthodox readings.  Tucked into the words of this short passage is a lot of powerful and influential theological language.  In fact, these few words of Paul’s have caused a great deal of consternation in the church world.   It would be bordering on hyperbole to say that Calvin’s WHOLE understanding of predestination is based on his reading of Romans 9.  But it would not be wholly untrue to say it either.  Calvin’s reading or, as I am going to claim this morning his misreading, of Romans 9 is a text yearning for a new reading for a new era in the life of the church.

            How though do we go about reading anew without just forcing the text to say what we hope it will say?

            Fortunately for us Paul gives us some clues about how to read his writing.  As we have seen throughout this summer,  Paul can be a complicated enigmatic writer with hidden meanings and agendas around every corner in the text.  In reality though, Paul can be pretty straight forward when he wants to be.   And he is in at least part of our text today.

            The particular verses in question, 19-23, recall the imagery of Isaiah of a potter and a lump of clay.  The potter forms the clay in her hands and, according to Paul’s words here, who are we to argue with the potter if she wants to use some of the clay for a beautiful new vessel and some to toss on the trash heap.   Some pots are worth keeping, others get tossed on the trash heap.  It is a short trip from clay pots to heaven and hell when the text is viewed through Calvin’s interpretive lenses. 

            Like Augustine, Calvin often fell back on metaphor as a way to explain and interpret the narrative twists and turns in scripture.  So in his eyes, it made complete sense to equate pretty pots with the favored and ugly pots with disfavored.  It made complete sense to assume that just as the potter decides which are pretty and which are ugly- which are worth keeping and which ought to be thrown away…to hell…for eternity, the same would be true for God and the creation of God’s hands.  Just as God chose Jacob over Esau, God chooses some of us over others.  Forever.

            With theology like that, it is a wonder our pews are not more empty!

            Now I am pretty darn Reformed.  I tend to dwell pretty close to my brother Calvin on many things, but on this one I just can’t do it.  I just can’t reconcile a notion of God that requires the belief that God tosses God’s work on the eternal trash heap with the fullness of the witness of Jesus Christ.

            I question whether Calvin’s or even Luther’s reading of Romans is the only one.  Could there be a different perspective, a new way of approaching this old text that builds on both the perspectives and deep needs of the church today?

            What, I wonder, would a new perspective on Romans 9 look like? 

            The question posed in Romans 9 is a question of inclusion in God’s new community and the promised kingdom.  As we know from the book of Acts, many Jews joined the early Jesus movement that would become the Christian church.  Gentiles joined them and together they began to grow.   This new community begged the question; what happens now to that portion of the Jewish community that has not become part of the new Christian community?   Now that the covenant is fulfilled in Christ resurrected what happens to who is left outside the church?  And where does the God of history fit into the whole equation?

            It is in answer to these questions that Paul uses the metaphor of the pots and the potter that so distracted Calvin.  He poses his questions in a series of what-ifs.

            What if God makes some pots for special purposes and other pots for the garbage heap?

            What if God is patient with the pots made for the garbage heap, for wrath and destruction, so God would have a way “to show his wrath and to make his power known?”

            What if God did all of this to make his mercy and grace even clearer?

            In other words, what if God sacrificed a few so the rest that are made for special purpose might learn the lesson and get the message?

            What if….

            Paul pulls a pretty swift rhetorical trick on us here.  He asks all of these what-ifs but rather than do his usual rhetorical switch and offer an unexpected answer to his own questions, he leaves the answers to us!  At no point does Paul say, “Yes.  That is exactly what God does- some pots for keeping and some pots for heaping.”

            Paul let’s God’s word answer the question of inclusion and exclusion by quoting from the book of the prophet Hosea:

I will call “my people” those

Who are not my people,

And the one who isn’t well loved,

I will call loved.

By God’s own words, those who are chosen are not rejected but those who are rejected are in fact chosen.  God the potter will gather up all the broken pieces destined for the garbage heap and the sum of God’s wrath upon them will be to call them God’s own and call them loved.

            Hardly the picture of the harsh predestining deity we have become accustomed to laying at Paul’s feet.

            What I find to be the most elegant and persuasive part of this reading of Paul is that far from drawing boundary lines that include some and exclude others as though the kingdom of God were little more than a middle school playground with cool kids and uncool kids, this new reading uncovers an image of God that gathers up the broken and makes them whole.  An image that is, to be sure, far closer to that of the Good Shepherd who does not rest as long as one is missing from the flock.

            By taking off the lenses of preconception and letting Paul stand on his own theological legs, texts that have been held captive for generations are allowed to breathe again and inspire a new generation of the church.   And boy is it just in time.

            For more than a generation, American Christianity has been dominated by a mindset that there are good pots and garbage pots and though they may all be made by the hands of God, only the pretty pots, the popular pots, the unbroken pots will be spared the garbage heap of eternity.  Far too much of the public witness of the broader church today is focused on which pots God will cast out and condemn and damn.  It is the picture of a harsh, uncaring, unfeeling God and hardly worthy of the gentle potter who takes the time and care to make and mold each and every soul from scratch.

            Friends, not only is that an outdated reading of what Paul has to say to us, I believe it is in truth heresy.   Yes, I just declared something to be heresy.  I realize that I have absolutely no authority to draw lines between what is and is not orthodox and I do not wish to put myself in the place of the whole church, but still I say again…a theology that ignores God’s love in and through Jesus Christ for the weak, the broken, the outcast- in other words the broken pots- is heresy!

            From the words of Paul in this small part of his letter to Rome to the fullness of the biblical witness, a portrait is drawn of a God who yearns to make us whole- to mend our broken places and to say otherwise is, well, you heard me the first three times!  To say that God can so casually cast off the creation of God’s own hands is a witness inconsistent with the witness of scripture.

            I admit that part of my motivation here is to keep myself off the garbage heap.  Because, if I am remotely honest with myself, my God and you I have to admit that I am something of a cracked pot (yes that was cracked pot not crackpot!)  I believe that God has a purpose for my life that goes beyond making me an object lesson in what it means to be hated by God.  I may be broken and chipped around the edges, but Jesus Christ fills in the broken places and makes me whole just as he does for you, and for THEM and for every one of the unique creations of the creator’s hands.

            The late theologian Lewis Smedes, ironically himself a Calvinist, has perhaps the best perspective on a text like this.  Smedes wrote that we are all earthen vessels, wonderfully made to hold the Spirit of God poured out on us, and thankfully God has a market for cracked pots. 

            And it is a good thing, because friends, that is what we are.  We are the potter’s work, lovingly made, flaws, cracks, broken pieces and all.  And what does Paul say God will do about the broken pots…

             “I will call ‘my people’ those who are not my people, and the one who is not well loved, I will love.’” 

            Pulling back the curtain we see that this harsh and intimidating fear inducing image of God is little more than the sleight of hand of flawed human beings.  The real image, the one that emerges from the fullness of scripture is not of a scattering deity but of a gathering savior.  There are no more favored pots and trashed pots any more than there are favored Jacobs or rejected Esaus. 

            Stepping back and seeing this text from a new perspective, we see a creating God who loves and cherishes everything that comes from God’s molding and shaping hands.

            Now, if I can just get a new perspective on high school!

            Sola Deo Gloria!  To God alone be the glory!  Amen.

Freed to Be

“Freed to Be[i]”

Romans 6:1-14, 20-23

First Presbyterian Church Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian Church

July 8, 2012

Ordinary 14

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry 

            When I was in seminary, one of our assignments in first year worship class was to attend three worship services in Christian traditions not closely related to our own and one non-Christian service other than Jewish.  When the lesson began, I was most concerned about attending the non-Christian service.  I don’t have the patience to sit quietly for Buddhist meditation, the Hindu temple was an hour and a half away in San Antonio and that left the imposing structure that was, at the time, the only Mosque in Austin.  So with a few classmates alongside, we laid out our calendar for a week of unfamiliar worship; Sunday morning at the Orthodox church, Sunday evening mass at the cathedral and Wednesday bible study and worship at the Pentecostal church followed by Friday prayers at the Mosque.  I was a little nervous and did not know what to expect but at least one of the services was Protestant.

            In hindsight, my worries were misplaced.  The Orthodox service was filled with the beautiful music and imagery so central to that community, the evening mass was led by the youth group and a bright young priest whose sermon was a challenge to see beyond our religious boundaries to the whole of the human family, and the Imam’s sermon on Friday was about how a life of prayer and thanks to God cannot lead to anything but peace, hope and friendship with all humankind.  I did not agree with all of the theology offered in those services, but I had no trouble connecting with the different perspectives that were offered and letting them into my own internal theological conversations.

            In the end, it was the protestant church on Wednesday night that really stuck in my craw.  The bible study was entitled something like “Made in God’s Image” but it might as well have been called “Women Don’t Have Anything to Say Worth Hearing and God Doesn’t Want Them Talking Anyway.”  Peppering his talk with limited one and two verse readings from scripture, the preacher did his level best to teach the group that men are spiritually and functionally superior to women.

            Now as a first year seminarian I did not know my bible as well as I do now and I have never known it as well as that guy did, but as someone raised since the age of 9 by a single mother who worked hard every day for her children and two grandmothers who were the definition of steel magnolias, I knew in my heart of hearts that the bible this guy was quoting was not the same one I knew.  I thought about arguing with him, but I guess some form of the wisdom that you don’t fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel held me back.

            If nothing else, that encounter sharpened my own theology.  It gave me an opportunity to at least internally sharpen my response to such theology down the road.  That is how our theology really grows; by hearing and learning to respond to those theological arguments that just don’t jive with our understanding of the Gospel of Christ.

            By the time he writes to Rome, that is exactly what has happened to Paul.  Scholars agree that Romans represents a mature Pauline theology.  The themes he begins to articulate in Ch. 6 are ones that arise from his sermons preached in places like Ephesus, Corinth and Philippi.  He has been sharpening his arguments and learning to counter some of the more common objections to his theology. 

            Think about that bit at the end of Ch. 5 when Paul writes that, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”  You can just see the wheels turning in the minds of those old Corinthians until one finally asks, “so, Paul, if more sin brings more grace and we want all the grace we can get, wouldn’t the good thing be to sin more often?”  That would certainly make an interesting evangelism technique.  “Join our church, we sin more than anyone in town.”

            By the time he is writing to the Romans Paul has learned to expect this sort of argument and he stops it in its tracks.  He poses the question and before the wheels can start to turn with his audience, he answers that no, we do not need to sin more we need to understand that the relationship between sin and grace is not the same as the relationship between dirt and soap.  It is a bit more complicated than that.

            All of this sin and grace- freedom and redemption- comes not in discrete batches in individual lives but in the larger context of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In baptism, Paul says, we have been buried with Christ in death so that we may be raised with him in new life.  We are, in Christ, made free.

            We are set free.  Sounds good, right?  Sounds like a pretty simple thing…we are freed from sin.  Feels good, feels right.

            Let me ask you this…do you feel very free?

            For my part, I lean into the promise that in Christ Jesus we are freed from sin, but I have a difficult time thinking that it is not still an important part of the human condition; a big part of my life, your life and the life of the world.  I just feel in my gut, like I did at that awful bible study, that this is not the whole story; that here is something more to this whole discussion that just a bumper sticker saying “free at last free at last.”

            Sin is still in fact big; big for me, big for the church, big for those who HAVE, through baptism been buried with Jesus in a death like his.  I see too much evidence in my own life, too much evidence in the life of the church, that sin still has a strangle hold.

            Recall the words of 1 John, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”  Or the words of John Calvin who reminds us that we are all totally depraved.  Not partially depraved, not somewhat naughty, not a little bit sinful, but totally depraved.  We are saturated with sin; soaked in it from head to toe.  A friend referred to our freedom from sin as being a bit like being freed from fatty foods while working at Krispy Kreme donuts as the official taste tester!

            Sin is always a part of us.

            So what does Paul mean when he speaks of our freedom in Christ?  What is liberation from sin?

            When we step back, and look at the whole of the gospel that Paul so wants us to allow to define our world, we see that liberation from sin does not mean to be without sin;

            or that sin has no power over us;

            or that we are no longer human and subject to our human fallibilities and brokenness;

            or that we are somehow better than others

            or more loved than others

            or less likely to sin.

Rather, liberation from sin means that we have new vision in the world;

            that sin’s strongest eternal ties are broken

            that through grace we understand the consequences of our sin in the world

            that we have courage for the struggle against sin in the world

            that we recognize that though sin may have a hold on us, Christ holds us yet firmer and when the time comes for one of those holds to break, Christ will hold fast.

            Our freedom from sin does not mean that it has somehow been banished from the world and our sight forever, but that sin can no longer claim dominion over our lives.  That position has been taken by God in Christ.

            Shirley Guthrie, the late theologian and great Presbyterian churchman was fond of saying that our freedom in Christ is not merely freedom from it is freedom for.  We are freed from sin and for the world. We are freed from death and for life lived anew.  We are freed from despair and for hope.

            Liberation, Guthrie reminds us, comes with a cost.  Jesus Christ does not come into the world to free us from responsible living or to free us to a life of leisure.  He frees us not from but for the work of God in the world.  While once we were slaves to doubt, fear and hate we are now called to be servants of faith, hope and love.  And our living is called to be a reflection of those virtues right here and right now. 

            When we are freed from our slavery to sin, Paul tells us, we become slaves to righteousness. 

            We who live in a democratic society bristle at that language of slavery and servitude.  And for good reason, those words have great historical baggage in our culture.  However, when read in light of the gospel, being a slave to righteousness means, as Karl Barth puts it, that “through God” we are “free for God.[ii]”  We are freed from all other authority in this world and bound only to the authority of God; the authority of the author of grace and salvation.

            How is that authority shaping your life?  How is the authority of God reigning supreme in your life?  Those are important questions for we who, residing on this side of the empty tomb, have heard and have answered the call to live as servants of God.  And what shapes that life is no mystery.  Remember the words of the prophet:

For He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

            That is the righteousness to which we are bound and that is the life we are to lead. 

            So, friends, remembering that sin is yet with us, remember also this; that sin’s grip has been loosened and one day will fail.  That though we may time and again fall victim to its temptations, we are no longer bound as slaves to sin.  And until that day when sin is truly no more, may we each and every one bind ourselves to the righteousness of God that our lives may reflect the faith, hope and love that God commands from us and that our broken lives and broken world so desperately needs.

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

---

[i] As with others in this series of sermons on Romans, I am indebted to the insights of a member of my study group.  Dr. David Bender presented a sermon by the same title to our group in March 2012 and his insights and attention to this text were of great help in the preparation of this sermon.

[ii] CD I.2.271.

God Have Mercy on Me a Sinner

God Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner

Luke 18:9-14

First Presbyterian Church of Batesville

31 October, 2010 

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

Biblical translation is tricky.  It is difficult to get it just right.  Some translations are word for word, others are paraphrased.  One thing they all have in common is that the translation reflects, at least on some level, the preconceptions and experiences of the translator come into play.

We heard the New Revised Standard Version, a word for word translation.  Let’s hear the text one more time from a paraphrase.

Jesus told this parable to some who trusted that they were faithful and holy and thought that other’s faith did not quite measure up.  Two men went up to the temple to pray.  One was a tax collector who looked up to God and said, “Have mercy on me a sinner.”  He showed humility and faith and knew that before he could even think about the faith of another he had to examine his own.  The other man was you, Robert.

The end.

See. I told you.  The translator always comes into play!

This is one of those texts that will not let me go gently on with my day.   Whenever I find myself feeling like I have it figured out, this whole faith thing, the Holy Spirit helps me reorient myself to that central tenant of our Reformed tradition, that doctrine that occupied so much of John Calvin’s time and energy; total human depravity.

Those who were in our Calvin class earlier this fall learned an acronym for the five points of Calvinism: TULIP; total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints.  The T comes first not only because it is the first letter of the word but because before we can really understand much else, we have to understand our own depravity.

Now like most theological doctrines, it is easy to lapse into a lazy characterization of what total depravity means.  It is far more than a mere tendency to occasionally do what is wrong or ill-advised.  Total depravity is, as the name implies, total.  It is all consuming.  There is no part of us that is not depraved and sinful.

In his monumental Church Dogmatics in a section titled “The Sloth and Misery of Man,” Karl Barth articulates it this way.  With apologies for the gender exclusive language, “As the one who commits sin man is himself totally and radically compromised.  Man is corrupt even in his self-understanding, even in the knowledge of his corruption.”

When we begin to understand ourselves as less than totally compromised by our sins, Barth argues, we become the Pharisee standing alone in the temple admiring his own willingness to acknowledge his sins. 

Legend holds that Martin Luther became so consumed with this knowledge of his own corruption that he was nearly driven to total despair in the belief that he would never manage to unburden himself of his sins and therefore never receive the full measure of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ. 

I and I would wager to say you have stood in Luther’s shoes.  One of the most common human experiences is that overwhelming sense of falling short; short of our potential, short of the glory of God, short of, well, just about everything.

One of the inescapable phenomena of the last quarter century in American religion is the growth of the market driven church.  Trading much traditional theology of what it means to be the church for a more market-defined understanding, these congregations design their worship services to be more appealing.  Like the car maker works to find the right number of cup holders and just the right place to put the radio dial, market-defined churches alter and change the historic patterns of worship to meet the desires of their consumers.  One of the first things jettisoned from worship in these congregations is the confession of sin. 

A pastor I know and respect serves a church like this in Michigan.  During one of our many debates over a pint at a pub near campus, he worked to persuade me that confession of sin is too much of a downer for people.  Why do you want to come to church to be told how bad a person you are? 

A question you may be asking yourselves this morning!

That conversation and the justification for it have stuck with me and I still don’t buy it.

I don’t buy it because I think that we lose something important when we let go a sense of our own sinfulness and depravity.   

Part of looking in the mirror and taking stock of my own depravity, of beating my chest and crying out to God to have mercy on me a sinner, is seeing in the mirror my depravity reflected back to me in the form of the grace of Jesus Christ.

It is only when we truly recognize our own consumption by sin that we find a glimpse of God’s great work of compassion in Christ Jesus.  When I peer at my sinful face in the mirror, it is the merciful face of Christ that looks back upon me and that, my friends, is something I would not trade for anything in the world.

The beauty of this parable when viewed through the lens of our Reformed tradition is the realization that salvation is out of our hands and is instead in the loving hands of the God.[i]

To fully understand the implications of the grace of God recounted in this story, consider who the characters are. 

The Pharisee is a powerful religious figure.  What particular role they played in society is a matter of debate, but one thing is certain; they were an educated, politically powerful sect who represented one form of traditional religious life.  If you were to look in a crowd and point to the probable person of faith, it would likely be the Pharisee.

The tax collector is another story.  Tax collectors in first century Palestine were not benign pencil pushers like the caricature of the IRS agent.  Tax collectors were closer to mob enforcers than bureaucrats.  If you were to point into that same crowd to the least likely candidate for a complement from Jesus, your sights would likely land on him.

Luke, in a stroke of literary reversal, reveals that what we assume to be true about our own and others’ faithfulness is often misplaced.  That true faith is not about demonstrating how good we are but leaning fully on the mercy of God.  Sin is not reserved for “them.”  It is equal opportunity.

Over the last week, the truth and pain of human sin have come uncomfortably close to home in our community.  Far from engaging in a debate on ethics or morality, a member of the neighboring Midland school board stated in a very matter of fact manner that he would not mind if certain young people took their own lives.  In fact he welcomed it, according to his Facebook posts.  Gay and lesbian people, in his view, just deserve to die.

The furor that surrounded his comments was justified.  His language, his sentiment and his abuse of position were inexcusable and it is only right that he should be called to answer for his actions.

Two days after the furor began, he appeared on a CNN news show and gave his apology for the language he used and the hurt he caused.  In that moment, we as a community and a nation were given an opportunity to respond in one of two ways.  Would we respond in self-righteous anger or would we, acknowledging our own sinfulness, recognize in him a fellow broken soul in need of the grace and mercy of Christ? 

If I am wholly honest with myself and with you, I have to confess that my response is still somewhat mixed.  I want desperately to believe and trust his contrition yet part of me has doubts.  In the end, thankfully for both of us, forgiveness for him is not up to me.  The work of grace in his life and in yours and in mine depends not on any merit of ours but solely on the mercy of God.

An 18^th century English clergyman, acutely aware of the work of grace in his life, gave the church some of its most beloved hymns.  Hymns like “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” and “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.”  When he approached the end of his life, he penned his epitaph hoping to reflect his total dependence on the love and grace of God.  It reads, “Once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach the faith he so long labored to destroy.”

Most of us know him for other words he penned, however.  A hymn named “Faith’s Review and Expectation” but better known by its opening words, “Amazing Grace How Sweet the Sound.”

John Newton spent the better part of his last half century beating his chest and crying out “God have mercy on me a sinner” because far from being a mere tax collector, Newton had been a slave trader responsible for the enslavement and death of countless innocent Africans. 

When we find ourselves faced by our own sin, our own shortcomings, we do not point to the likes of Newton and say, well at least I am not like him!  Luke instead calls on us to join Newton in his prayer to God for forgiveness and wholeness.

At our session meeting a couple of weeks ago, Leslie reminded us that to truly know God’s shalom is not merely to be at peace but to be whole.  And it is not by any merit of our own but by the grace of God that we will ever be made whole. 

Whether we are Pharisees, tax collectors, misguided school board members, slave traders or preachers, we are each and every one dependent upon and supported by the mercy of God in Jesus Christ.   Because, as John Newton preached, we are great sinners, but Christ is a great savior.

In the name of God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

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[i] Robert Leach , Feasting on the Word Year C Vol. 4, p. 214.