Sermon Sunday July 6 2008
Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and Sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
On Friday, we as a nation, celebrated our independence. We celebrated the work of our fore-fathers who came before us and who sacrificed so much to free us from tyranny and oppression. We celebrate the independence that we are so fortunate to enjoy everyday. And I will admit, I like the 4th of July. I like the fireworks, I like the picnics and the barbecues and everything else. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood involve 4th of July celebrations with my family. And even the simple freedom we have to set aside a day to do just that, is reflective of the extraordinary freedom that we as Americans experience.
But as extraordinary and inspiring as this freedom and independence might be, it is still just temporary and the idea of celebrating independence and self-reliance and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps seems very antithetical to many of the words of our Lord from this morning’s Gospel lesson. In this lesson, Jesus is singing the virtues of being yoked and compares His disciples to infants, while He is critical of being ‘wise’ and ‘intelligent.’
This, among many other ways, is how we know that those who would suggest that the United States of America is somehow the most favored nation on the planet are wrong. We know they are wrong first of all because our Lord says that His kingdom is not of this world. We also know that the myth of America as God’s most favored nation is not true because as disciples of Christ, we are not called to be self-reliant and independent.
And, as I said, any independence we experience as Americans in this life is all purely temporary. For indeed our Lord Jesus is speaking of His disciples as being like infants, who are totally dependent upon others for their own needs, and so He calls us to be under His yoke so that we might be free from the myth of our own independence, so that we might be totally dependent upon Him.
You see any independence that we think we experience when it comes to matters of the faith is myth, because even outside of the yoke that our Lord places on us we are still not free or independent. For we read in the lesson from Romans this morning where St Paul describes himself as being sold as a slave to sin. He recognizes that the law is good and spiritual, but because of the sin that dwells within him he is totally incapable of fulfilling even one fraction of it.
And so it is with us. Sin holds us captive. Martin Luther says of this idea of being a slave to sin That is to say, all nature resists the Law of God. This is surely a frightful utterance, whether I like it or not, I am forced to serve sin contrary to the Law of God. Thus we see in young people the movement of passion, which carries them away to sin, willing or unwilling. And there is not enough strength in either reason or will for them to repress this raging drive. Thus greed devours the old folks.
Moreover, just as these vices harass and plague a certain age, so either sorrow in bad days or smugness in good days harass and plague, even completely devour, all Christians. We are all such people by nature.
All our best efforts do nothing in the face of the grip that sin holds over us. This is not to say that we are constantly committing visible acts of sin, although the struggle with sin certainly leads to visible acts of sin probably more often than we would like to admit, but what St Paul and Luther are referring to is the reality of our sinful nature, of constantly being in a state of being assaulted, attacked and deceived by sin and the devil. And every attempt to free ourselves from this bondage, through our best efforts of reason and will just leads to the shackles being clamped on that much tighter as we become more and more seduced by the myth of our own independence.
But nevertheless, independence and self-reliance are highly valued and coveted in the world and so we continue, as we live in the midst of the physical and earthly realm, to chase after our independence. And so this leads to a state where maybe you don’t pray as much as you once did or read the Bible as much or go to church as much. The means of grace that our Lord graciously provides for you and calls you through to complete and utter dependence upon Him are cast aside in order to make room for your quest for independence.
But still, as St Paul makes mention of in the lesson from Romans, it is still within us to recognize the inherent spiritual goodness of God’s law. Like Paul, we agree that the law is good. Like Paul we have the desire to do what is good. But also like Paul, because of the sin that lives within us, we cannot carry them out.
And so we want the best of both worlds. We want the freedom of the earthly realm and the holiness and promise of eternal life of the spiritual. And so we delude ourselves into thinking that we can integrate the two. We actually start to think that there is room in God’s kingdom for our earthly and temporary independence.
And so we become like those mentioned in the Gospel lesson who rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus. We reject the law that John brought because maybe it doesn’t seem reasonable and so we delude ourselves into thinking that, 2000 years later, somehow we have greater insight into God’s Word than the disciples who walked with Jesus and those who had firsthand encounters with them. And so we find ourselves saying things like "Well Jesus didn’t really mean this.. did He?"
But we also reject the grace that Jesus brings by refusing to acknowledge our complete dependence upon Him and so the Gospel is seen as just another pursuit of excellence.
But the astonishing good news in light of this is that we are not independent. We are not left on our own. The Gospel is not something for us to pursue or a goal for us to strive after, it is an accomplished feat. On the cross Christ Jesus took on the burden of your sin, doubt, pride, envy and despair and when He breathed His last He said "It is finished" and He meant it. It is an accomplished feat that sin, death, and the devil have been defeated for you. It is an accomplished feat that in the resurrection of Christ Jesus you have been given eternal life in God’s eternal kingdom.
And that you believe this is a miracle in itself. That you believe this means that you are among the "infants" or "little children," as some translations have it, for whom the Gospel has been revealed to you by your Father.
And so hear the Words of your Lord this morning as He comes to you again, revealing Himself to you through the words of my mouth and in the bread and the wine, in a few minutes as you come forward once again for the Lords Supper to receive the forgiveness of your sins in the body and blood of Christ Jesus. Hear the Word of your Savior as He tells you to come to Him so He can give you rest.
As He calls you in His Gospel and in the Lord’s Supper just know that is nothing short of the Holy Spirit calling you and nurturing you, preserving you and sustaining you in your faith. It is nothing short of your Lord Jesus coming to you in His body and blood and reminding you of the claim that was made upon you in your baptism, and the faith that you receive in baptism as the yoke that removes all the burdens of your sin, self-reliance and mythical independence was placed upon you in baptism. Hear His Word that He gives you grace and forgiveness and all good things.
And so you have heard the plea of your Savior who tells you to come to Him. And the One who came on the foal of a donkey comes to you today bringing not a step-by-step plan to discern God’s special purpose for you, or a new insight into His Word for us to figure out thus implying that "God is doing a new thing." No He comes bringing grace, mercy, the removal of your burdens and the forgiveness of sin. He has revealed Himself to you and He brings you salvation and rest and relieves you of the burden of your mythical independence.
Amen
Brothers and Sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
On Friday, we as a nation, celebrated our independence. We celebrated the work of our fore-fathers who came before us and who sacrificed so much to free us from tyranny and oppression. We celebrate the independence that we are so fortunate to enjoy everyday. And I will admit, I like the 4th of July. I like the fireworks, I like the picnics and the barbecues and everything else. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood involve 4th of July celebrations with my family. And even the simple freedom we have to set aside a day to do just that, is reflective of the extraordinary freedom that we as Americans experience.
But as extraordinary and inspiring as this freedom and independence might be, it is still just temporary and the idea of celebrating independence and self-reliance and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps seems very antithetical to many of the words of our Lord from this morning’s Gospel lesson. In this lesson, Jesus is singing the virtues of being yoked and compares His disciples to infants, while He is critical of being ‘wise’ and ‘intelligent.’
This, among many other ways, is how we know that those who would suggest that the United States of America is somehow the most favored nation on the planet are wrong. We know they are wrong first of all because our Lord says that His kingdom is not of this world. We also know that the myth of America as God’s most favored nation is not true because as disciples of Christ, we are not called to be self-reliant and independent.
And, as I said, any independence we experience as Americans in this life is all purely temporary. For indeed our Lord Jesus is speaking of His disciples as being like infants, who are totally dependent upon others for their own needs, and so He calls us to be under His yoke so that we might be free from the myth of our own independence, so that we might be totally dependent upon Him.
You see any independence that we think we experience when it comes to matters of the faith is myth, because even outside of the yoke that our Lord places on us we are still not free or independent. For we read in the lesson from Romans this morning where St Paul describes himself as being sold as a slave to sin. He recognizes that the law is good and spiritual, but because of the sin that dwells within him he is totally incapable of fulfilling even one fraction of it.
And so it is with us. Sin holds us captive. Martin Luther says of this idea of being a slave to sin That is to say, all nature resists the Law of God. This is surely a frightful utterance, whether I like it or not, I am forced to serve sin contrary to the Law of God. Thus we see in young people the movement of passion, which carries them away to sin, willing or unwilling. And there is not enough strength in either reason or will for them to repress this raging drive. Thus greed devours the old folks.
Moreover, just as these vices harass and plague a certain age, so either sorrow in bad days or smugness in good days harass and plague, even completely devour, all Christians. We are all such people by nature.
All our best efforts do nothing in the face of the grip that sin holds over us. This is not to say that we are constantly committing visible acts of sin, although the struggle with sin certainly leads to visible acts of sin probably more often than we would like to admit, but what St Paul and Luther are referring to is the reality of our sinful nature, of constantly being in a state of being assaulted, attacked and deceived by sin and the devil. And every attempt to free ourselves from this bondage, through our best efforts of reason and will just leads to the shackles being clamped on that much tighter as we become more and more seduced by the myth of our own independence.
But nevertheless, independence and self-reliance are highly valued and coveted in the world and so we continue, as we live in the midst of the physical and earthly realm, to chase after our independence. And so this leads to a state where maybe you don’t pray as much as you once did or read the Bible as much or go to church as much. The means of grace that our Lord graciously provides for you and calls you through to complete and utter dependence upon Him are cast aside in order to make room for your quest for independence.
But still, as St Paul makes mention of in the lesson from Romans, it is still within us to recognize the inherent spiritual goodness of God’s law. Like Paul, we agree that the law is good. Like Paul we have the desire to do what is good. But also like Paul, because of the sin that lives within us, we cannot carry them out.
And so we want the best of both worlds. We want the freedom of the earthly realm and the holiness and promise of eternal life of the spiritual. And so we delude ourselves into thinking that we can integrate the two. We actually start to think that there is room in God’s kingdom for our earthly and temporary independence.
And so we become like those mentioned in the Gospel lesson who rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus. We reject the law that John brought because maybe it doesn’t seem reasonable and so we delude ourselves into thinking that, 2000 years later, somehow we have greater insight into God’s Word than the disciples who walked with Jesus and those who had firsthand encounters with them. And so we find ourselves saying things like "Well Jesus didn’t really mean this.. did He?"
But we also reject the grace that Jesus brings by refusing to acknowledge our complete dependence upon Him and so the Gospel is seen as just another pursuit of excellence.
But the astonishing good news in light of this is that we are not independent. We are not left on our own. The Gospel is not something for us to pursue or a goal for us to strive after, it is an accomplished feat. On the cross Christ Jesus took on the burden of your sin, doubt, pride, envy and despair and when He breathed His last He said "It is finished" and He meant it. It is an accomplished feat that sin, death, and the devil have been defeated for you. It is an accomplished feat that in the resurrection of Christ Jesus you have been given eternal life in God’s eternal kingdom.
And that you believe this is a miracle in itself. That you believe this means that you are among the "infants" or "little children," as some translations have it, for whom the Gospel has been revealed to you by your Father.
And so hear the Words of your Lord this morning as He comes to you again, revealing Himself to you through the words of my mouth and in the bread and the wine, in a few minutes as you come forward once again for the Lords Supper to receive the forgiveness of your sins in the body and blood of Christ Jesus. Hear the Word of your Savior as He tells you to come to Him so He can give you rest.
As He calls you in His Gospel and in the Lord’s Supper just know that is nothing short of the Holy Spirit calling you and nurturing you, preserving you and sustaining you in your faith. It is nothing short of your Lord Jesus coming to you in His body and blood and reminding you of the claim that was made upon you in your baptism, and the faith that you receive in baptism as the yoke that removes all the burdens of your sin, self-reliance and mythical independence was placed upon you in baptism. Hear His Word that He gives you grace and forgiveness and all good things.
And so you have heard the plea of your Savior who tells you to come to Him. And the One who came on the foal of a donkey comes to you today bringing not a step-by-step plan to discern God’s special purpose for you, or a new insight into His Word for us to figure out thus implying that "God is doing a new thing." No He comes bringing grace, mercy, the removal of your burdens and the forgiveness of sin. He has revealed Himself to you and He brings you salvation and rest and relieves you of the burden of your mythical independence.
Amen
posted by Steve at 8:23 AM
1 Comments:
Great sermon. You were relentless in your grinding us down to finally admit that we are helpless and in constant bondage. But then you freed us just as relentlessly. This last paragraph was terrific!
"And the One who came on the foal of a donkey comes to you today bringing not a step-by-step plan to discern God’s special purpose for you, or a new insight into His Word for us to figure out thus implying that "God is doing a new thing." No He comes bringing grace, mercy, the removal of your burdens and the forgiveness of sin. He has revealed Himself to you and He brings you salvation and rest and relieves you of the burden of your mythical independence."
Wonderful
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