The Wrath of God: John the Baptist Calls Us to Repent

I originally wrote this for the December 2008 issue of The Trinity Tidings.  While some of the references are dated, the heart of the article is still a good one.

Rector’s Reflections

“The Wrath of God and the Son of God”

The last few Sundays of the Christian year and the first Sunday of Advent have readings that are filled with the note of judgment: “He will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;” “Watch, therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house will come;” “Prepare the way of the Lord!”  The Bible says that when the Lord Jesus returns, he will assemble the nations before himself and judge every individual.  To some he will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”  To others he will say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”  God is a God of justice, and there will be a day when all wrongs are ended and everything will be put right.

The judgment of God flows out of the wrath of God.  We often focus on the love of God, and remember his compassion to the troubled and his mercy to the guilty who turn to him for forgiveness.  It is easy to think that God’s love means that he has set aside his wrath, as though God has decided that since he cannot scare us into being good he should try to “schmooze” us into acting as we should.  Most angry people we meet are people who seethe with anger most of the time, or who can erupt into a fit of anger at a moment’s notice.  It is very hard for us to think that both wrath and love can exist in the same person at the same time.

That, however, is exactly what the Bible says is true of God.  His wrath and his love are both present at all times.  Even more, the wrath of God is part of his love.  If you are a parent, you can understand this.  It is not just that you love your child even when you are angry with her or him.  Think about threats to your child: what do you think of leukemia?  What do you think of a bully who would make the life of your child miserable?  What do you think of a drug dealer who would lure your child into dependency simply for the sake of his own financial profit?

You would resist each of these things with all the power you had, because each is capable of doing harm to your child and preventing your child from being what he or she can and should be.  That is what the wrath of God is – a resisting of what is harmful to his creatures and to creation at large.

Human anger can be diffuse and spread over onto elements of life that do not deserve judgment.  Indeed, human anger can be entirely misdirected and have no basis at all.  The wrath of God, however, is always accurate, aimed at what is harmful and not what is good.  God is never “in a bad mood,” when it would be dangerous for anyone to approach him.  He always hates sin and the light of his holiness cannot tolerate the stain of sin for an instant.  However, he always loves the sinner, and seeks what is best for him or her.  God always wants and seeks the best for all of his creatures.

I am dealing with a complex subject and trying to do so as clearly and concisely as I possibly can.  I will not be able to answer all the questions you might have, but want to deal with the heart of the matter as best I understand it from Scripture.  God hates sin because it harms his creation, particularly that part of his creation that was created in his own image, the human race.

That is good news for us.  Sin hurts us.  Indeed, it would destroy us if left to work its complete results upon us.  Consider the recent economic upheavals: the meltdown of the credit system of the last few months came about through a combination of several things – the desire of Congress to increase the percentage of homeownership in the population, which led to loans being offered to people who would never be able to repay them; the huge increase in “bundling” mortgages into investment instruments; the practice of selling and re-selling these bundles for a fee; and the invention of the “default credit swap.”  Any one of these might have caused some trouble if it went sour, but they all went sour together and financial corporations that held much of their assets in mortgages became untrustworthy.  No one would lend them money because they had unreliable assets.  That lack of trust spread, and credit dried up – and our economy is so credit-dependent that has come to a crashing halt.

For the last several decades, creative people were making new investment instruments that promised large returns.  Other people were reaching for “the American dream” of owning their own home.  Real estate values were appreciating very rapidly, and many people tapped into the rising equity of their homes, and were able to buy things – some important, some simply pleasant – that they had long hoped for.  Everything seemed very positive in many ways.  But there were some greedy people in the midst do all this and we now see a painful halt to what had been an expanding economy and increasing wealth for many.

Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and greed has been at work to build a house of cards and then to knock it down.  It is hard to know how many people who were not in any way involved in the activities that led to the credit collapse who have nevertheless been hurt by it – lost homes, lost jobs, perhaps even marriages that collapsed under the financial pressure.  Sin hurts us.  That is why God hates sin.  At any given time, we may think that something God calls sin is really God being a spoilsport – the thing seems pleasant and we do not see how anyone would be hurt.  We, however, are ignorant of the ramifications of the particular activity.  An addict may have a few good experiences with a drug and think that he can use it as he pleases and stop any time he wants, yet the reality is that he is on the way to slavery.  God created us and he knows what is helpful and what is harmful, even though as we see things they may appear exactly the opposite.

God hates sin because sin hurts us.  Our sins may hurt only ourselves, or they may hurt others as well – but sin brings pain and decreases our joy – indeed, I would say that sin decreases our humanity, for, whether we sin against others or are sinned against, we become other than, and less than, what God created us to be.

God’s wrath is not an indiscriminate anger that boils over without explanation or warning.  It is a hatred of sin and of all that sin does to hurt us.  Of course, if we decide that we prefer the way of sin to the way of God, we will wind up clinging to the object of God’s wrath and experience that wrath ourselves.  That indeed is the human dilemma: we were created to enjoy unbroken fellowship with God, but ever since humanity rebelled against God in the Garden and lost that fellowship, we have been trapped in rebellion – wanting to be on our own, and yet aware that something vital was missing.  Left to ourselves, we do cling to sin – and so we are slated to experience the wrath of God, if nothing is done.

You may be thinking, “Here it is, almost Christmas, and he is reflecting on the wrath of God and on the mortgage crisis!”  Well, the mortgage crisis is why Jesus was born, for behind the mortgage crisis is Greed, Pride, and a host of other deadly things.  That crisis is just the latest manifestation of how we human beings hurt one another and ourselves and live apart from God and his loving plans for his children.

God hates sin, but he loves us.  He wanted to break our attachment to sin and restore us to fellowship with himself, so that we will move from being hurt by sin to being joyful in his presence.  He cannot ignore sin because the painful results of sin will last forever unless sin is dealt with.  God the Father, in his love for us, sent God the Son to us.  In a few weeks, we will be celebrating the reality that the Son of God entered his own creation as a human being to experience it from the inside.  God hates sin because sin hurts us – and sin hurt him when he walked among us.  Jesus did not experience the ill-effects of his own sin, for he committed no sins – but he certainly experienced the ill-effects of the sins of others: the pain of betrayal by his own friend, the angry opposition by those whose pride he revealed, the injustice of a ruler for whom peace was worth more than a human life – all these and more Jesus experienced in his flesh.  He knew the pain of sin’s results.

But the Son did not enter the world simply to share with us the pains of living in a broken world.  It is enormously encouraging to know that God the Son knows what life is like not only from observation but from direct experience.  But Jesus did far more than experience the pains of life in a world filled with sin and brokenness.

Jesus was born in great humility, so poor that he was housed in a stable and put to bed in an animal feeding trough.  The humility of God the Son in coming to earth is so amazing and so touching that we rightly wonder at such humility, and we worship and rejoice.  The taking on of human nature by the very Son of God is a weighty and joyful thing.  God was not compelled to enter his own creation; that he did so when we had become sinful is staggering.

What is even more staggering is that he not only took human flesh and experienced the results of humanity’s sinfulness as the results of human sins came upon him, but he also experienced the spiritual results of sin: spiritual death.  Over the manger hung the shadow of the cross, for he was born to die.  Jesus, of all human beings, deserved to live forever – his life was everything it should have been.  Jesus, however, had not come primarily to teach us and to show us how to live a life that honors and pleases God.  Jesus had come to endure what sin deserves, the wrath of God.  Since he deserved no such wrath himself, when he bore the wrath of God, he took what we deserve, so that we would not need to experience such wrath.

In Jesus Christ, the love of God and the wrath of God meet.  God hates sin and its dreadful effects upon us.  He cannot let go of his wrath – if he did, there could be no justice, and the ills of this world would continue on forever.  In his love, he must deal with sin and drive it away from his beloved creation.  Jesus came to earth and on the cross experienced the fullness of the results of sin – suffering from the sinful acts of others who condemned him, and suffering the spiritual results of sin as though he had sinned himself.  He did not sin at all – but he received what we deserve so that we can receive what he deserved in his utter obedience: the joy of being with God forever.

We do not like to consider the wrath of God.  It sounds too negative, and too angry.  God’s wrath, however, is not the same as human anger, but the response of a loving creator to that which harms his creation.  Because of the wrath of God, we have hope of a better life – for God’s wrath will do away with all that harms and distorts his creation – and all that harms and distorts us.  As sinful people, we will either experience God’s wrath, if we cling to sin, or the presence of God, if we cling to Jesus, thanking God that his wrath passed over us and came upon Jesus for us.

Christmas cards will show many beautiful scenes of the stable and the manger, with shepherds and wise men gathered around in adoration.  Jesus is to be adored and worshipped because he came to earth, the Son of God in human form.  But even more, he is to be adored because thirty-three years later, he absorbed the wrath of God for us.  It is not pretty, but it is true – and it is the ultimate source of our Christmas joy.  “Today in the city of David is born to you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord!”

“We Wish to See Jesus”

A sermon preached on 22 March 2015, Lent V at New Hope Anglican Church, Oakville, CT.       

Texts: John 12:20-33; Heb 5:5-10

I.                  The Greeks Come to Jesus

A visiting preacher climbed into the pulpit where a friend had asked him to deliver a sermon while he was on vacation.  As he placed his notes on the surface of the pulpit, he saw a sign in large letters saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  He immediately thought, “There is no better reminder of my task than that!”  As a preacher, he knew that he was tempted to show off his learning, to use flowery phrases to make people praise his skills in writing and speaking, or to use the pulpit to further the causes or ideas that he was most passionate about.  But that phrase, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” was a powerful reminder that the task of the Christian preacher is to point people to Christ, to what he has done for us, and how we are to live in the light of his redeeming love.  As I speak this morning, I want to do the best I can to make sense, but if I do not point you to Jesus, then my sermon is a failure, no matter how well written.  Jesus is the focus of being a Christian; he is the source and the director of our life.  Nothing can replace him, and so our hearts need to center on him.

That statement, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” comes from the beginning of our Gospel reading.  “Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks.  So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.”  The “Greeks” who came to Philip were what was known as “God-fearers,” people who were not ethnic Jews, but who had come to appreciate the Jewish faith and to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel.  They had not formally converted to Judaism, but they still revered the Lord.

One reason they came to see Jesus may have been Jesus’ cleansing the Temple.  In the other gospels, we learn of Jesus cleansing the Temple early in Holy Week.  He drove the money changers and those who sold animals for sacrifice out of the Temple.  The area that the merchants had been doing business was the outermost court of the Temple.  The central area held the Altar and, behind a high, heavy curtain, the Holy of Holies.  A second, much larger area was next, and this was where ordinary Jews worshiped.  Then came the outermost court, separated by a low wall.  This was the Court of the Gentiles, designated by God as the place for worship by those who were not Jews.  With that court occupied by the merchants, the God-fearing Gentiles who wanted to worship the Lord at the feast of the Passover would not be able to do so.  After Jesus cleared the merchants out, however, the God-fearers would be free to worship in the area appointed for them.

It is quite possible that the Greeks of verse 20 wanted the thank Jesus for making it possible for them to worship.  They were no longer excluded by the noise and clutter of the animals, money-changing tables, and the merchants.  Even if all they wanted to do was to thank Jesus, I am sure that they would have learned a lot more as they talked to Jesus about who he was and how he was going to make God even more accessible to them.

II.               The “Other Sheep” Arrive

In John 10:16, as Jesus spoke of being the Good Shepherd, he said, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.  I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.  So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”  The Greeks who came that day were some of the sheep that were not from the fold of the Jews.  As they listened to Jesus, they would be hearing of the one who was their true Shepherd.

In John 11:47-50, we learn that the Jewish Council gathered to discuss what to do about Jesus.  Caiaphas, the High Priest, suggested that they seek Jesus’ death through the Romans – even if Jesus was innocent of wrongdoing, it would be better for the nation that one should die that the rest might live.  In verses 51-52, we learn, “He did not say this of h is own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.”

Indeed, while they did not like it, the Pharisees knew that Jesus’ appeal was far stronger than they wished.  In John 20:19, the verse before our reading, we learn that they complained, “You see that you are gaining nothing.  Look, the whole world is going after him.”  Indeed, they were – the Greeks show up in next verse!

The arrival of these Greeks who wanted to see Jesus shows us that he is a Savior for all the world.  That idea is the reason we are here – if Jesus was just for the Jews, we who are of Gentile background would be out in the cold, bereft of hope and help.  But because the Jewish followers of Jesus understood that Jesus was the Savior sent by God the Father to redeem people from all over the globe, they reached out with the Gospel, not only to their fellow Jews but to those beyond – to Samaritans and to Gentiles of every kind.  Succeeding generations have taken the Gospel to the furthest reaches of the globe.  When we are all gathered in heaven, there will be people from every nation, tribe, and tongue, as Revelations tells us in several places, for God’s mercy will be proclaimed all around the earth.

The reality of “all nations” leaves us with a challenge: what clutter and noise might there be in our hearts that would make it difficult for someone of another race or culture to worship with us?  I know that you all have taken thought about how to enable visitors and newcomers to worship with you the most easily, but I am thinking about where the most resistance comes – not so much from externals, as it does from the hearts of people.  I took a course on church growth a number of years ago and the instructor said, “Any church will tell you, ‘We want to grow.’  What they may not realize is that what they may really want could be said this way: ‘We want new members, as long as they are just like us.’”  We have to do the hard work of taking the clutter out of our hearts that gets in the way of accepting “all sorts and conditions of people,” so that anyone who wants to know Jesus will be warmly welcomed and shown who Jesus is and what he has done for us.  I think that the cluttered heart is the greatest obstacle for those who wish to see Jesus.   From all I have seen here, you all have worked on uncluttering your hearts but it is still something to be aware of.

III.           Jesus’ Hour Has Come

When Philip and Andrew went to Jesus to tell him that some Greeks were asking to speak with him, his response is quite interesting.  He does not say, “Certainly; let them come.”  Rather, as verse 23 says, he replies, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  Then Jesus goes on to speak of a grain of wheat falling into the earth, dying, and then bearing a harvest – with the note that all who serve him must follow him in this path of dying to self.  These statements are puzzling; we wonder how they are a response to the coming of some Gentiles to speak to him.

The request of these unknown Gentiles is a sign to Jesus that a turning point has been reached in his ministry.  He has spoken of his “hour” several times already in John.  In John 2:4, after his mother has spoken to Jesus about the lack of wine at the wedding, he says, “Woman, what does this have to do with me?  My hour is not yet come.”  Then in John 7, Jesus’ brothers encourage him to go to the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem so that his ministry and he can be noticed and affirmed by many.  Jesus replied to this suggestion by saying, “My time is not yet come” in verse 6.  He repeats this in verse 8: “My time has not yet fully come.”  Jesus did go up to the Feast of Booths, however – but as 7:10 says, he went “not publically, but privately.”  Jesus knew that the time for the culmination of his ministry would eventually come, but he was not going to allow his mother or his brothers to force him to take action before everything had reached the proper stage.

Chapters 7 and 8 tell of the events of that visit to Jerusalem.  While Jesus did not go to Jerusalem in order to gather a following through an intentional claim to be the Messiah, as his brothers thought he should, he did engage in some heated debates with the leaders of the Jews.  The Jewish leaders were enraged at what Jesus had said to them, but John 8:20 tells us, “These words he spoke in the Temple treasury as he taught in the Temple, but no one arrested him because his hour had not yet come.”  There was an appointed time, when all would be in place, and then he would be arrested and at the mercy of the leaders.

In today’s reading, the context is that Jesus had entered Jerusalem a triumphant procession only a short time before, had been hailed as the Lord’s Anointed and was expected to deliver the nation from its enemies.  Jesus knew that tensions were high, as those who opposed him were seeking a way to stop him.  With the request by the Gentile God-fearers to speak to him, he knew that all was ready – and his hour had come.

This hour, however, was not a time to seize control of the government, raise an army, and go to war against the Roman occupiers of the land.  That was what many wanted, but it was not God’s plan of salvation for his people.  God’s plan was not one of power, but of weakness and a seeming defeat.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  If anyone serves me, he must follow me, and where I am there will be my servant also.  If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”  (Jn 12:24-26).

That is the plan that God has laid out.  It is not a plan of glory, with trumpets, horses, and great military victories, leading to a triumphal parade as a conquering king.  Rather, it is humble, hidden, and unappealing: it is a way that leads to death.  We can accept the death of Jesus; it is an old story to us.  But there is a frightening part: “If anyone serves me, he must follow me.”  We must follow Jesus into death.

That following into death may be quite literal, as it was for the 21 men who were beheaded by Islamic terrorists a month ago.  They had the opportunity during a month of captivity to renounce Jesus and save their lives – but they would not turn from Jesus, and as a result they were killed.  As they died, each one said, “Lord Jesus,” as they commended themselves to his care.

Our death may not be that literal – but it must still be real.  We are called to call our lives not our own, but God’s.  Rather than tell him, “This is what I would like to do; please bless it,” we are to say to the Lord, “What is your will for me?  Direct me, and I shall do it.”  That is a daily struggle.  I am always encouraged when I come here and talk with people, and learn of the various non-Sunday ministries that are carried on by people who cheerfully give up time, energy, thought, and often money to do them.  That is falling into the earth and dying – and it will bear fruit.  But it is still true that every day we need to say to the Lord, “What is your plan for me?  Lead me, and I will follow.”

We have not come to the time in this country where being a Christian can mean losing your life at the hands of the authorities or of some powerful group that the authorities allow.  That is not a danger, at least not yet.  But we live in a culture that is letting go of its roots in God, and so anything might happen.  Practice by dying daily to yourself and coming to God for life.

IV.           The Glory of the Cross

As Jesus speaks further of the consequences of his hour being present, he reveals that the hour will be a challenge.  In verse 27, he says, “Now is my soul troubled.  And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But for this purpose I have come to this hour.  Father, glorify your name.”

The agony that came fully when Jesus prayed at the Garden of Gethsemane touches Jesus briefly here.  He knows that he will endure the agony of the cross and the even greater agony of abandonment by his Father.  It is an appalling thought.  In our reading from Hebrews, we find these words, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.  Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.  And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.”  (Heb 5:7-10)  Just as an aside, Jesus did not move from imperfection to perfection or from disobedience to obedience.  Rather, just as a perfect rosebud can bloom and turn into a perfect rose, as he lived out his life Jesus’ perfection and obedience deepened and was actualized in the midst of challenges.  There were times when he was tempted to quit – but he never did.

After Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify your name,” a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”  This was the third time Jesus was encouraged by his Father’s voice from heaven: the first time was at his baptism at the beginning of his public ministry, and the second time was at the Transfiguration, as he entered the stage of his ministry when he taught his disciples that he was going to die and be raised to life, and as he began the slow journey to Jerusalem for his Passion.  Now, as the challenging events of Holy Week are about to unfold, Jesus is encouraged again.

As the crowd wondered at the sound from heaven, Jesus said, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine.  Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”  He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.”

That being “lifted up” is of course being nailed to a cross and lifted up on it.  Back in John 3, when Jesus was speaking with Nicodemus, he said in verses 14 and 15, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  During the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites after they were freed from Egypt, they had grumbled against God.  He sent poisonous snakes among them as a punishment for their lack of trust and gratitude – and when they repented of their grumbling, the Lord instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and lift it above the people.  Whenever a person was bitten, if he looked up to that bronze serpent, he was healed immediately.  When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, he will become the remedy, not for snakebite, but for something far more deadly: sin.  As sinners, rebels against God, we deserve his rejection.  We should be banished from his presence.  But on the cross, Jesus was banished from God’s presence.  We know that from his anguished cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Most kingdoms do anything they can to protect their king.  A notable example comes from the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill desperately wanted to join the expeditionary forces and watch the invasion from the bridge of a battleship in the English Channel.  U.S. General Dwight David Eisenhower was just as desperate to stop him for fear that the Prime Minister might be killed in battle.  When it became apparent that Churchill would not be dissuaded, Eisenhower appealed to a higher authority: King George VI.  The king went and told Churchill that if it was the Prime Minister's duty to witness the invasion, he could only conclude that it was also his own duty as king to join him on the battleship. At this point Churchill reluctantly agreed to back down, for he knew that he could never expose the King of England to such danger.

King Jesus did exactly the opposite.  With royal courage he surrendered his body to be crucified.  On the cross he offered a king's ransom: his life for the life of his people.  He would die for all the wrong things that we had ever done and would do, completely atoning for all our sins. The crown of thorns that was meant to make a mockery of his royal claims actually proclaimed his kingly dignity, even in death.

Crucifixion was the most horrible way to die that the Roman world knew.  It was a punishment reserved for only the worst of crimes, murder and treason.  And it was used only on those who were not Roman citizens.  Those who were crucified were regarded as the scum of the earth.  The death that Jesus faced was going to be utterly dreadful.  He would be regarded by the world as a wretched, worthless man, worthy only of the most painful and degrading death possible.  And he would be regarded by his heavenly Father as a worthless, despicable sinner.  In 2 Cor 5:21, we read, “For our sake, [God] made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus took our sin and bore the consequences of being a sinner, even though he was perfectly righteous.  The cross is the place of the great exchange: Jesus took our sin, and offers us his righteousness.  When we look to him, we are freed from the guilt of our sin, and are blessed to have the Father regard us as beings as perfect as Jesus was in his earthly life – and so we are accepted in Jesus Christ, and become children of God.

On Good Friday, most people in Jerusalem would think of Jesus’ death as the death of a dreadful man.  He would occupy the depths of shame and horror in their regard.  But what the world regarded as the depths of shame was actually the height of glory.  Philippians 2:5-8 says, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

That God the Son would leave the glory he enjoyed in heaven in order to redeem us by the agony of the cross shows the amazing love that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have for us.  God has no need for us, and had every right to reject humanity entirely once humanity had rebelled against the Kingdom of Heaven.  But while God does not need us, he loves us and reaches out to us – indeed, he stooped down to us.  This is God the Son’s glory – that he willingly endured shame and horror for our sake.  No greater love, no greater gift, can be imagined.  And so Philippians continues, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The Greeks, the Gentile God-fearers, came to Philip and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  As we look at the cross, we see Jesus, degraded in shame yet in the fullness of glory, offering his perfect life for imperfect sinners.  He is our hope, our only hope, of eternal life, and in him we find release from our sins and fellowship with the God who loves us and wants us for his own.  To Jesus, high and lifted up on the cross, be glory now and evermore.  Amen.

“The Challenge of Forgiving”

A sermon preached on 7 Sept 2014, Pentecost XI, at New Hope, Oakville, CT, on Matt 18:15-20

I.                   Looking Out for One Another

For fifteen months journalist Sebastian Junger followed a single platoon of U.S. soldiers stationed in a dangerous part of Afghanistan. Living and working in the midst of a warzone made Junger realize how much the soldiers had to rely on each other. What you do or don’t do as a soldier affects everyone else in your platoon. Junger writes:

Margins were so small and errors potentially so catastrophic that every soldier had a kind of de facto authority to reprimand others—in some cases even officers. And because combat can hinge on [small] details, there was nothing in a soldier's daily routine that fell outside the group's purview. Whether you tied your shoes or cleaned your weapon or drank enough water or secured your night vision gear were all matters of public concern and so were open to public scrutiny.

Once I watched a private accost another private whose bootlaces were trailing on the ground. Not that he cared what it looked like, but if something happened out there—and out there, everything happened suddenly—the guy with the loose laces couldn't be counted on to keep his feet at a crucial moment. It was the other man's life he was risking, not just his own .... There was no such thing as personal safety out there; what happened to you happened to everyone.

I remember hearing a talk early on in my ordained ministry in which the speaker reminded us that we Christians might like to think that, as church members, we were passengers on a cruise ship – but the reality is, we are crew members on a battleship.  There are tremendous joys, great satisfactions, and enormous benefits to being a Christian, but they come to us not because we are relaxing in an atmosphere dedicated to giving us pleasure, but because we are part of a great expeditionary force to free captives and release prisoners held by the enemy.  We are at war.

It is, to be sure, a spiritual war.  As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6:9, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  Our weapons in this warfare are not bombs, bullets, and propaganda, but rather the spiritual weapons of prayer, love, and truth.

We are to use prayer, love, and truth as we reach out into the community around us in evangelism and service in Jesus’ name.  We are to use prayer, love, and truth as we worship the Lord on Sunday mornings.  We are to use prayer, love, and truth as we go to work on Monday morning.  And we are to use prayer, love, and truth in all our relationships.

II.                The Need for Church Discipline

It is with this in mind that I want to look at our Gospel reading from Matthew 18.  This is a passage where Jesus is looking ahead to the days when his ministry will be carried out by his people, gathered in local congregations.  He knows the human heart, and so he knows that we will hurt one another in various ways.  He provides a godly way to deal with those hurts – not with anger and revenge, but with care and compassion, so that relationships are healed and the body is restored to health.

Every denomination and most independent congregations have used this passage as the core of their church laws on church discipline.  “Discipline” is not a word that we particularly like, and few people want to be disciplined – but the truth of the matter is, we all need a word of correction now and then.  When Paul wrote of Scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17, he said, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”  Note that Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, assumes that people will need reproof and correction.

The rules that Jesus gave for church discipline are often used in a harsh and heavy-handed way, as people, trying to be obedient to the structure Jesus has given us, read this passage – and often only this passage.  But the reality is that there are many other passages in the Bible that speak of how we are to deal with the reality that we are sinners who are forgiven but not yet perfect.  If we simply look at the context of the passage we read this morning, we see that it is surrounded by compassion and mercy.  Chapter 18 opens by noting that the disciples are engaged in a discussion of which of them is the greatest – and I suspect that it was not a calm discussion, but possibly one in which each put forth his virtues and pointed out the shortcomings of his fellow disciples emphatically.  Jesus intervened, telling them that their discussion was pointless, for, he tells us, we are to be like little children.  He goes on to remind them that presenting others with temptations is a dreadful thing to do, worthy of divine punishment.  He tells us that we are to avoid tempting situations even if the cost of doing so is great: “cut off your hand…”  Then Jesus goes on to give the Parable of the Lost Sheep, in which he says that each one of his people is of such great importance to him that he will search high and low to restore them, like a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep in the fold to go find one that is out in the wilderness.  Then following this passage on dealing with a brother or sister who has sinned against you, Jesus tells the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.  He reminds us that we have been forgiven far greater offenses against a loving God than any person could offend against us, and that therefore the only possible thing to do is forgive as we have been forgiven.

The context of the passage reminds us that church discipline is to be carried out in compassion and love.  We are reminded of this need by what Paul says in Galatians 6:1-2, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness, lest you too be tempted.  Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  Correction must be clear, but it also must be careful and caring.

During the Reformation, many of the Reformers said that the three marks of a true church are the preaching of the Word, the celebration of the Sacraments, and the administration of church discipline.  They saw discipline as needed for several reasons.  One is that false teaching had to be pointed out, and the false teacher either corrected or removed from a teaching ministry.  Secondly is that sins against one another harm the Body of Christ – certainly those immediately involved, but also others nearby.  If you have ever been in a work setting where two of your co-workers were at odds with each other, you know how their bad relationship affects the whole workplace.  It is much harder to get the job done when tension fills the air.  Thirdly, a person cannot grow in the knowledge of the Lord and in faith unless they are able to know their sins and faults and deal with them.  Hopefully, we are sensitive to our own sins, but we can be blind and need another person humbly to help us to see our weaknesses.

Church discipline is not the easiest thing in the world.  It is, however, something that is needed for the health and growth of the church, individually and as a community.

III.             If You Are the One to Go to Another

The Gospel reading begins with Jesus saying, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between him and you alone.”  There are two things I want to note about what Jesus says here.  The first is that we are to go to the person in question – we are not to go to someone else and say, “I am so hurt!  You won’t believe what Sam did to me…”  I know that it is tempting to go to someone else and gripe, for talking to someone else about their sin is a very difficult thing, and it is comforting just to complain and not confront.  Jesus is clear, however: if we have been hurt, there is only one person to speak to, and that is the person who hurt you.

The second thing I will note is that Jesus is providing a way for the other person to recognize his sin, repent of it, be forgiven, and all the while keep his dignity.  If it is just between the two of you, then those who are not directly affected by the sin need not know about it.  The two of you can deal with it, it can be forgiven, and then you can both let go of it.  You and the other person will have grown in the process.  If he cares to share how he grew with others afterwards, that is fine; it is his choice – but do not share the situation with anyone else beforehand, and only with the other’s permission afterwards.

We are to go to the other person – and that to me raises another question: how are we to go?  It is important that we go in the right frame of mind, or we may do more harm than good.  As the passage in Galatians says, if we see another in sin, we are to go “in a spirit of gentleness.”  We cannot go in a spirit of anger, or in a desire to make the other person feel miserable.  Anger will only raise the other person’s defenses and make it impossible for him to receive a call to repentance.  A desire for someone else to feel miserable is also something that raises defenses and prevents a godly response to a word of correction.

There is only one way to go, and that is in the spirit that the unforgiving servant should have had: in humility.  You may well have been grievously hurt by your brother or sister in Christ – but what that person has done is nothing compared to what you have done to God.  To sin against the living God means that at a legal level, we have broken his law, and deserve death from him because of that.  Every sin is an act of treason against the Kingdom of God.  More than that, at a personal level, we have in effect said to God, “You may consider yourself wise, but you are not as wise as me – I know better than you.”  We have said, “If you really loved me, you would have allowed me to do this – and because you told me not to, it is clear that you do not love me.  Some ‘Father’ you are!”

Our sins are both a legal offense against the laws of the King and a personal affront to our loving heavenly Father.  We have broken both his law and his heart with our sins.  Yet in Romans 5:8 we read, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  We have done nothing to earn or deserve God’s mercy in forgiving us our sins and his grace in granting us the very righteousness of Christ so that we may stand before him as sons and daughters, fully accepted and called beloved.  We have not and we could not have earned such an enormous blessing – so when we go to another who has sinned against us, we go as forgiven sinners.

We need to go to someone who has sinned against us; we need to forgive, and they need to repent.  We both need to grow through doing so.  But there is only one way to meet an erring brother or sister: at the foot of the cross, for only in the cross do either of us receive God’s grace.

If your first, private, interview does not bring repentance, then you would need to follow with the remaining steps, of bringing two or three others to bear witness to the conversation and to encourage the erring person to repent – or, if needed, bring the matter before the whole congregation, since the sin affects them as well, if only indirectly.

If worst comes to worst, then the person will need to be excluded from the communion.  Jesus tells us to treat such an unrepentant person “a Gentile and tax collector,” which means that they are to be outside table fellowship.  But at the end of Matthew, Jesus sends us “into all the world,” to the Gentiles, to make disciples, so we are to treat them with love and respect, seeking to win them back to a full-fledged faith in Christ, so that they can be restored to full fellowship and enjoy the Christian community again.

I heard the story of a man who was a member in good standing of a church and who committed adultery.  He rejected all attempts to correct him and refused to reconcile to his wife.  Indeed, he divorced her.  He told the elders of the congregation to go away; the last thing he wanted to do was to darken the doorway of that church again – and he vanished.

Two years later, he called the pastor, anxious to restore his relationship to the church – and to his wife.  His wife was astonished.  She had been reluctant to trust him, but the obvious changes in his priorities and in his life opened her heart to him.  This man was active in the Army Reserves, and his unit had been sent overseas to process the bodies of the military who died in Iraq and prepare them for their return to the States. God's hand was working in his life as he was confronted on a daily basis with the brevity of life and permanence of eternity. Following this tour of duty, and upon returning home, he met with the elders, confessed his sin, and asked to be forgiven for his arrogance and the impact his life had on the local body.

The church had humbly and lovingly followed the directions of the Lord Jesus – and in due course, at a time when no one expected it, the Lord used their discipline and the man’s experiences to restore a heart to the Kingdom.

IV.              If You Are the One Approached

Let’s look at this idea of going to the one who has offended you from another angle: suppose YOU are the one who is approached and asked to repent.  What then?  It is hard enough to go to someone who has transgressed against you – what if you are the one who is thought to have done wrong?

As Pastor John Ortberg has said, “Trying to grow spiritually without hearing the truth about yourself from somebody else is like trying to do brain surgery on yourself without a mirror.”  If somebody comes to you and tells you that you have done something to wrong them, accept them and hear them out.  After all, we are all sinners and we sin every day in ways both large and small.  It is quite possible to do something to hurt someone else and never notice that we did.

Of course, perhaps we have done something wrong and recognized that we have harmed someone else a bit later – or, sadly, we have seen an opportunity to help ourselves at the expense of another person and taken that opportunity, hiding our actions as much as possible.  In Matt 5:23, Jesus tells that if we are aware that we have sinned against someone, to set aside even worship and go to the person we have harmed and ask their forgiveness.  But if we have ignored that instruction, and someone comes to us, we need to listen carefully to what they are saying.

Perhaps the perceived offense is really a misunderstanding.  In that case, if you have received the other person graciously, it will be much easier to see if it is indeed a misunderstanding and if so to clear it up.  As Proverbs 15:1 says, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”  After all, even if the person is mistaken about the offense, or comes with some anger or a desire for revenge, the intention is still to make things right, and that is commendable.

In the course of my walk with the Lord, I have had people come to me a number of times and say, “There is something we need to talk about.”  What followed has never been easy, and the first few times I entered into such a conversation, I fought their assertions tooth and nail.  I was blessed those first few times to be dealing with people who were patient and determined and who wore down my wall of resistance.  When I heard what they had to say, it was not easy, but it was good for me.  Sometimes I had offended them, and other times, the person noticed a pattern of behavior in my life that was harming others or getting in the way of my effectiveness as a servant of God, and they wanted me to know about it and repent of it.

It is a blessing to be corrected.  We do not like to think that, but it is true.  Part of what goes on within us sinners is that we believe, in our heart of hearts, that we are acceptable to other people and to God based on our performance.  We see people being applauded for achievements in school, or sports, or in other areas of life, and it is easy for us to believe that God operates in the same way, so that we must perform in order to be commended and accepted by him.  If we think that the basis of our acceptance before God depends on what we do and how well we do it, we are certain to protect our images by refusing to hear any criticism.  We will resist strongly, and what began as an effort to help us grow in grace and in love becomes a shouting match.

But if we recognize the reality is that we are indeed sinners whose only hope of acceptance before the living, holy God is the matchless work of the Lord Jesus as he laid down his life as a sacrifice on our behalf, then we can receive correction with graciousness.  We know that he has taken our sins and given us life and his own righteousness, so we need not defend our own accomplishments.

Jesus gave us these commands in Matthew 18, along with those in Matthew 5, because he knew that we are, like the disciples, prone to step on one another’s toes.  Since we are his chosen vehicle for reaching the world, he wants us to stay in fellowship and be partners in the Gospel, using our gifts to bring others to Christ, to train them, and to enable them to reflect his glory and reveal his character.  We need one another to fulfill the great commission that the Lord Jesus has given us.  We are in the midst of a great expedition to rescue captives and to free slaves – and it requires teamwork by a team who cares for one another.

There is great joy in being a Christian, for we are becoming what God created us to be as we grow in Christ.  We can know the Father, who loves us and cares for us, because of Jesus, his Son, who died for us, and we can serve him in the power of his Holy Spirit – but we do so not as a collection of individuals, but as a team.  As I said at the beginning, we are not passengers on a cruise ship but the crew members of a battleship.  Our weapons of warfare are not bombs and bullets, but prayer, love, and truth.  If prayer, truth, and love characterize our relationships with one another in the local congregation, they will also be seen in how we reach out to those who do not yet believe.

As crew members we encourage each other to be our best – to bring growth to one another and honor to Jesus as we become more and more like him.  It is for this reason that Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.”  When we speak the truth in love to one another, we are like Jesus, who always spoke the truth, and always spoke in love.

To the Lord who came to us when we had sinned against him be glory now and ever more.

"You Are The Salt of the Earth"

Preached at the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd, Forestdale, MA 

9^th February 2014; Epiphany V

Matthew 5:13-22

I. “You are the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World”

Thirty some years ago, when Mary and I lived in Virginia, we bought a Smithfield Ham.  If you have ever tasted one, you know that they are delicious.  Smithfield hams are not like most of the hams you buy at the grocery store, which are chemically cured and need to be refrigerated to stay fresh.  A Smithfield ham is cured the old-fashioned way.  It is rubbed thoroughly with a mixture of salt and spices, and slowly cured by hanging and smoking for six months.  It will keep indefinitely in a cool, dry place – and it is incredibly delicious!

In Matt 5:13, Jesus tells his hearers, “You are the salt of the earth.”  In verse 14, he adds, “You are the light of the world.”  In using these two comparisons, Jesus is telling us what results he expects from those who follow him.  Just as salt preserves perishable food from decay, so we are to act against the corrosive effects of an ungodly culture.  Just as light expels darkness and reveals things as they are, Christians bring the truth about sin and about salvation to a world that is sin-sick and filled with sorrow.

I want to look at two things this morning.  The first is what Christians can do, according to Jesus, to act as salt and light to a decaying and dark world.  The second thing is to look at how we are enabled to act as salt and light.  When you consider that we are not dealing with simply the few people right around us, being salt to the earth and the light of the world means we have a large and formidable task given to us.  We need more than human methodology to do that.

II. How Our “Salt” and “Light” Can Bring Change

American culture has changed a great deal in the last 50 years or so.  Mary and I watch a number of old comedy shows with Netflix – things like The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.  They are creative, hilarious shows.  We really enjoy them.  We do not watch currently produced comedies, and haven’t for quite a few years.  The level of sarcasm, denigration, and explicit sexuality is horrendous.  They may be somewhat funny, but if so, it is in a sick way.  The comedies that are broadcast now would never even been considered for production in 1965.  Many of the other shows on TV, such as crime shows, specialize in the bizarre and outlandish.

Of course, the corruption of our culture is not limited to TV shows.  It shows up all over the place – the rise in single-motherhood, the idea that marriage is the invention of the state and can be defined and re-defined at will, the rise in drug use, the legal acceptance of abortion, the idea that religious liberty is restricted only to how we worship and not to how we live, and many other changes show the decline of our culture.

In many ways, this decline should not be a surprise to us.  Human beings are inherently sinful and have been since the rebellion of Adam and Eve.  We cannot expect those who are in rebellion against God to welcome and obey his way of doing things.  We who have been redeemed, forgiven, and restored to a positive relationship to God with the aim of living in obedience to him should indeed stand out in the world and be an influence for good, helping to preserve from corruption and showing the light of God’s love.

How do we do that, however?  I know that one way that has been popular is to be politically active, seeking to have Christian candidates for office, forming lobbying groups, groups to educate the public, and so on.  I get mail from half a dozen such groups on a regular basis.  This method has had some effect; we have seen progress in the area of making abortion less popular and less accessible.

In the early 1800’s in England there was a group of people who became known as the Clapham Sect.  They were people from the nobility and upper classes who had become Christians through the Evangelical Revival that had begun under John Wesley and which had continued for some time afterwards.  William Wilberforce was a member of the group, and he led a movement that first stopped slave trading in Great Britain and throughout the British Empire in 1808 – and by 1835, ended slavery completely.  The group also worked to revise labor laws, provide a variety of educational opportunities, and provide for the poor.  They prayed hard and long, and worked well within the political system of the time.  They did an amazing amount of good out of their Christian concern for their nation.  Political action is one way to be salt and light.  But it is not the only way, and may not be the best way.

When one considers the situation at the time of Jesus, it is clear that political activism was not the means which Jesus had in mind as the primary way his followers were to be salt and light.  Political activism was not an option for the early Church.  They lived in a dictatorship, not a democracy, so they had no voice in governing.  We in America do live in a democracy, so we have political involvement as an option – we can use it but we must keep other means in mind and use them as well.  The political process can tempt us into pride, stubbornness, and the lure of power for its own sake.  Politics subjects us to pressure to find money, and tempts us to raise it by devious means.  We can become angry, mean, and deceptive as we engage in political action.  To try to influence the culture by political means is a tool that we can use, but it does have dangers.

Jesus had something else in mind than the political process when he spoke of Christians being the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  The Beatitudes come just before the passage we read today, and I believe that the Beatitudes tell us how to be light to a dark world and salt to a decaying one.  The concluding verses of the Beatitudes tell us that we shall encounter opposition in our seeking to live in a way that honors Jesus.  Indeed, we shall be persecuted if we determine to be loyal to Jesus in a culture that seeks to ignore him or honor him as simply one good man among many others.

In the first nine verses of Matthew 5, Jesus tells us the qualities of character that are blessed by God.  The one who belongs to God will exhibit these qualities: 1) a poverty of spirit, knowing that one is unable to please God and has failed him often; 2) a mourning for one’s own sins; 3) a humble spirit; 4) a deep desire to have righteousness in one’s heart, thought, and action; 5) a forgiving and merciful attitude towards those who hurt one; 6) a heart that is totally fixed on God and his glory; 7) one who works for peace between others and between themselves and others when they have relational problems of their own; and 8) a heart that will prefer suffering for God to disloyalty to God.

Let me read those qualities again: (repeat).

The main reason that the Clapham Sect was able to be effective in their political efforts within England was not only that they were politically astute, but because they were men and women of prayer who cultivated the attitudes of the Beatitudes within their own hearts.  They were good at politics – but a large part of their political success was not because they were devious, underhanded masters of the political move, but because they were people of unimpeachable character, great humility, and a love for God that let people know they sought only to honor the Lord.

As we seek to let our lights shine, not for our honor but for God’s glory, with humility and patience, our character will do more to change lives and hearts than any political action we might undertake in our own merely human wisdom and strength.  Those who are poor in spirit and who long for righteousness for the honor of God make an impact upon those around them.  Sometimes it is an impact that brings persecution, but often it is an impact that brings positive change, at least in individual lives, and quite possibly on a wider scale. 

III. Tempting to Blend In

In speaking of our role in the unbelieving world as salt and light, Jesus lets us know that we need to actively engage the world.  We must be humble, but we also must be intentional.  In the latter half of verse 13, he says, “If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?  It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”  Then in verse 15, he says, “Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand.”

In Jesus’ day, the salt people used came from the Dead Sea, and that salt was not only sodium chloride, but also other chemical compounds.  Sodium chloride, the salt we use and our bodies need, is very soluble, so if a batch of that “salt” got wet, it could lose the table salt part but still look as it did before – and be utterly useless to preserve food or even flavor it.  If a Christian fears persecution or even simply does not want to be regarded as a “religious nut,” it can be tempting to hide his light in order to blend in with whatever the larger society is doing, whether that is pleasing to God or not.  And in today’s culture – it won’t be.  A century ago, our culture was based on a Christian worldview.  Today, it is not – and often intentionally not.

Jesus warned us that we would be tempted simply to blend in and adopt the views and values of the unbelieving world around us.  And he told us that we must not succumb to that temptation, or we would be worthless to the Kingdom.

IV. Being Enabled By God as Salt and Light

In verses 13-16, Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world – and that we must remain salty salt and a light that is in the open.  We can’t blend in or hide.  We know from the verses which precede our reading today that the way we are salt and light is to have what is described in the Beatitudes becoming more and more true of our character and lives.

Our reading continues in verses 17-20.  In these verses, Jesus tells us that the Law will continue to apply, for all time.  He has not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.  Until the world ends, the Law will stand.  We must teach the Law to one another, because it has come from God and he has not set it aside.

That is a tall order – and to underline how greatly he means it, in verse 20 Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  Since the scribes and Pharisees were regarded as the holiest and best of people in all Jewish society, the people who heard this must have felt their hearts sink.  To use a sports metaphor, it would be like being told, “All you have to do to win a gold medal in figure skating is to score a perfect 10.”  Even the most-practiced skater would feel how high a standard that was.

While we haven’t read the rest of chapter 5 or chapter 6 this morning, Jesus goes on to explain what the requirements of the Law really are – one is guilty of murder not only by committing the actual physical act of killing someone on purpose, but simply by nurturing hatred in one’s heart.  One is guilty of sexual immorality not only by engaging in sexual relations outside marriage, but by day-dreaming of doing so.  Jesus goes on for most of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, telling how high the standards God has, and how deeply we must observe them – not only in action, but in thought and desire.  The Pharisees were outwardly obedient to the Law, but what Jesus says reveals that no one, not even the Pharisees, are perfectly pure and holy from the depths of their hearts on out.

The Sermon on the Mount is a beautiful description of Christian values.  It tells us what God expects of us.  The trouble is, mere information is not really a help.  I’ve heard some people say, “In my life, I seek to follow the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.”  They speak as though they were basically successful in this attempt.  I know that such people may talk about the Sermon on the Mount, but they only know the name, not the actual teachings.  They could not speak so glibly about following the Sermon on the Mount if they really understood it.

Jesus tells us the absolute purity required to please God for a very simple reason: the very first Beatitude is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  If pondering the requirements of the Sermon on the Mount does not make you recognize your own poverty of soul, your own incapacity to do what God requires, then you simply do not know the Sermon and your own heart.  C. S. Lewis has said, “No man knows how bad he is until he tries really hard to be good.”

The Sermon on the Mount brings us face to face with the reality that we have nothing in ourselves to commend ourselves to God.  We are so far from righteousness that we are hopeless.  We could not get close to even the outward holiness of the Pharisees, let alone the inner purity that God requires.  When we know God’s requirements and our own hearts, it drives us to our knees.  If we must be that pure, what hope do we have?

In knowing our spiritual poverty, we can begin to be blessed by the riches of God’s grace.  We mourn our sins, our defiance of the God who created us and who loves us.  We become meek and humble, for we know we have no standing before God in ourselves.  We long for righteousness as a thirsty man seeks water, a starving woman looks for food.  We recognize that we have nothing to call ourselves better than others, and so stand ready to give mercy to our fellow sinners.  We long for our hearts to be made pure and holy.  In all this, we are opened to the blessings of God’s grace and mercy.

Earlier, we read from 1 Cor. 2, in which Paul said of his time in Corinth, “I was determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified.”  Later on, in 2 Cor 5:20-21, the Apostle Paul speaks of that crucifixion and tells us, “Be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus Christ, God incarnate, lived the perfect life that God demands of us.  He was utterly obedient to God’s will from the depths of his heart.  But our sin was laid on him, and he became regarded as a sinner when on the cross.  When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” on the cross, he was bearing the due results of sin, being banished from God’s presence – not for his own sins, but for ours.  When Jesus rose from the grave, his perfect life and perfect sacrifice were vindicated as acceptable to the Father.

God the Father counted our sinfulness to Jesus on the cross – and as we rely not on our own righteousness but on Jesus in his death and resurrection, his righteousness is counted to us.  We have, by God’s mercy and grace, not the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, but the very righteousness of Christ himself, which far exceeds any human accomplishment.  Therefore, we may enter the kingdom of heaven with confidence and joy.  As Jesus says in John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.  He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life.”

The Sermon on the Mount is a good guide for life – but the more fully we understand it, the more we recognize that we have no hope whatever in ourselves to live out its requirements.  That leads us to recognize our spiritual poverty, and from that recognition the blessings of the Beatitudes can begin to flow.  It is only when we know our own helplessness that we find the help we need – and we find it in abundance.

It is when we know the reality and the depth of God’s mercy to us that we become the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  Our very lives and how God is changing them to be more like Jesus enables us to have a quality that preserves against the corruption of society and an inner light that glows with the loves and glory of the Lord Jesus.  We may get politically involved to try to stem the tide of a further falling away from good order and decency, but simply being more and more like Jesus in his humble, prayerful strength will have a powerful effect.  It changes how we interact with others, how we view them, how we care about and care for them.  No one of us can change the entire culture – but each one of us, through prayer and mercy, can be the Lord’s agent of change in the life of another person.

Mary and I thoroughly enjoyed that old-fashioned Smithfield Ham we bought long ago.  It was over six months old, yet the salt had preserved it from decay.  And it was delicious!  As we discover our need for God’s mercy and grace, we find that he is fully faithful in extending that grace and mercy to us – and as he does, he “salts” us with the Holy Spirit so that we become salt and light to the world, transformed from being selfish to being men and women who are more and more like Jesus, and who touch the lives of others with the love and truth that Jesus extended to all.  We light the world with the love of Christ in us.

To the Lord who preserves us and keeps us whole and safe for his kingdom be glory now and evermore.  Amen.