For God’s Sake – sermon on July 2, 2017
Ezekiel 36: 22-29 Say to the house of Israel, “Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify my great name, and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.”
Romans 6: 12-23 Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.
Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living. Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Sermon: For God’s Sake by Rev. Doreen Oughton
A hot summer Sunday… not sure this is the best time to talk about sin and enslavement, but it is where the lectionary brings us. And perhaps it being a Communion Sunday, we can trust there is grace to follow. Paul’s letter contains some advanced theological thought, but I will do what I can to highlight the ideas that matter most in our day to day living. The first reading today from Ezekiel is written centuries before Paul was even a glimmer in his father’s eye. Ezekiel imparts God’s message that God’s people will be cleansed, will be given a new heart to replace their hearts of stone. They will be given God’s own spirit, which will ensure that they follow God’s statutes and ordinances. The reason God will do this is for God’s own sake, for the sake of God’s holy name – so that God’s holiness will shine through all of God’s people. So let’s remember in all our talk of sin and salvation that salvation is wonderful for us, but it is also important for God’s sake. It is our purpose of existence to shine with God’s holiness. It is what we were built for and what we were made for.
Paul is writing to a community in Rome. He has not been there, has not met them, and yet a group of Christians had been formed, some heathens who’d converted, and some Jews who believed Jesus to be the Messiah. Paul wishes to visit them, and his letter is a way of laying the groundwork and sharing his ideas of what is important in the faith. Paul tries to lay out the relationships between law and grace and sin. He says some things that I consider brilliant, some things that are confusing, and some things that I disagree with. He says that because of Christ’s sacrifice, followers of the Way are now free from the law, and, in this letter, takes some pains to talk about the gifts and drawbacks of the law. I would boil it down to ‘the law was good and necessary for a long time, while at the same time it trapped us in sin, and with the gift of grace through Christ’s death and resurrection, we don’t need it. We’ve transcended it.’
Why do we make rules and laws? Usually because someone does something that has a negative impact on others, and someone goes, “Oh… that shouldn’t be allowed.” And a rule is proposed or made, with consequences for rule violation outlined – a fee, a grounding, extra chores, probation, jail, increased supervision, and often, more rules. People may obey the rules out of a wish to avoid the penalties. There has been much research done on moral reasoning, and the avoidance of punishment or seeking reward (chore charts) is the most basic, most primitive reasons for obeying rules. Somewhat more advanced reasoning is about conformity – understanding social norms, wanting to fit in, wanting to be seen in a positive light. Or it may be about respecting authority and maintaining order. The higher levels of reasoning focus on a sense of responsibility to others – the social contract, or about ethical principles. When one is acting out of a sense of care and responsibility to others, the rules and punishment aren’t necessary. Perhaps awareness is important, raising consciousness about behaviors, attitudes and policies that harm others, but even then, it is not about rules. Perhaps this is what Paul means regarding the limitation of the law. The law operates at a lower level of morality.
In his own way, Paul is talking about the difference between spirituality and religion. He asserts that we will obey God’s statutes and ordinances because we have been given hearts of flesh not stone, a spirit of God within us that guides us better than any law could. We were given these things through our baptism, that sprinkling of water that cleanses us, just as Ezekiel prophesied. And yet even we baptized, even we who love Jesus, even Paul himself, we all continue to sin. We are in the time of already and not yet. The gift of grace has been given to us, yet we have not fully received it, have not fully lived into it. For Paul, this does not mean we ought to double down on law, for again, we will only be operating at a lower level of moral and faith understanding.
Paul uses slavery as a metaphor. In a sense, he is saying that in this in-between time, we will be enslaved to something, either to sin or to God. It reminds me of that saying to ‘Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits. Watch your habits for they become character, and character determines your destiny.’ If your thoughts and words, actions and habits are of a more sinful nature, you are bound ever more tightly to the ways and wages of sin. If you develop habits of thought and speech and action that are of God, your character becomes Godly and your destiny is eternal life and full freedom. What starts off as a choice becomes our master. The small things matter – to say that sharp retort or to bite our tongue; to purchase fair trade coffee or go for the cheapest brand; to spend some time in prayer and meditation or spend more time playing computer games. We don’t have to get it perfect every time, but the choices we make consistently lead us someplace.
One of the confusing things, at least to me, is the analogy of slavery and the assertion of choice. Later in this letter to Romans, Paul says he does the things he does not wish to do, and does not do the things he wants to do as a man of faith. Perhaps this is also to the point of the already and not yet. He is still under the power of sin even though he trusts completely in the grace of God through Jesus Christ. He is always careful to emphasize that we have not and cannot earn this grace. It is, again, not about reward and punishment. God doesn’t wait to reward us with mercy once we have made enough Godly choices. There is nothing that has been withheld. According to Paul, the work of Christ broke the bond of sin for all believers once and for all, no matter how we may still stumble. It was God’s work for God’s sake, and as he says, thank God.
This is the point where I find myself questioning some of Paul’s theology. Were people really bound to sin before the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus? Would God have let so many souls be enslaved to sin with no way out, just because of the timing of their lives? Were there no people who consistently made Godly choices, becoming enslaved to goodness and mercy? Is it not possible now for people who don’t know Jesus to have a destiny of eternal life and full freedom? Paul keeps pointing us to Jesus, but Jesus kept pointing us to God, to the Oneness. And other prophets and spiritual leaders have pointed people to that through the ages. If we find our way free through Christ, that’s great, but let us not be so arrogant as to think Christianity is the only way to holy freedom.
I’ve been listening to an audiobook – “A Man Called Ove.†As a child, Ove is with his father at work at the rail yard. Another man finds a briefcase that has been left behind and yells excitedly, “Finder’s keepers.†In his excitement, the case flies open and a wallet lands at Ove’s feet, and 9-yr-old Ove picks it up. The other man is ready to punch the child to get the wallet, but his father intervenes and asks Ove what he wants to do with the wallet. Ove decides to turn it in to the office, and they go do so. There are questions about where it came from, and whether there was anything else found. The father says nothing, Ove follows his lead. Later, as father and son talk about it, the father says, “I’m glad we are not the kind of people who keep other people’s things, and I’m glad we’re not the kind of people who tell tales of what other people do.†For Ove, these values are about identity, not rules. The man he admires so, his father, doesn’t have to set rules for Ove to obey, he sets and example for what Ove wants to become. For me, this is what we have in Christ – an example of love and mercy, of reaching out to those on the margins, of table fellowship with outcasts and wealthy insiders alike. We can love him and want to be like him. And Paul talks about this also. We live into our baptism. We respond to the grace that has been given to us by taking on the identity of a saved people, a people called out to bless other nations, to shine with the glory of God. I was listening to Johnny Cash yesterday, singing, “because you’re mine, I walk the line.†And, I thought, though it doesn’t have the same ring, the truth for me is that I walk the line because I am his. May it be so.
