Sermon for Pentecost Eve

                                                                        Pentecost Eve

                                                                        Rom 8:12-17

                                                                        6/7/14

            People want to belong.  They don’t want to be completely isolated.  They want to be part of a larger whole, because that larger group of people provides us a sense of identity and security.

            And so we identify ourselves as members of different groups.  The largest group is that of our nation. We are Americans, citizens of the United States.  If you go to some other nation, you take along a passport to demonstrate the legitimacy of this claim.  Because of this status we assume that if something were to happen to us overseas the government of the United States, and if need be its military, will do everything it can to assist us.

            We identify ourselves on the basis of where we live – or where we have lived in the past.  It’s been more than twenty years since I have had an Indiana mailing address, but at heart I still think of myself as a Hoosier.  I spent three years living in Texas, and let me tell you, those people identify themselves on the basis of their state first and foremost. We think of our status on the basis of the town in which we live – thus Marion or Carterville or Herrin helps to provide some of our identity. We are part of the shared experience of living in the town and the things that go on there like the building of new schools, festivals and homecoming parades.

            And of course, we identify ourselves on the basis of sports teams. For many, the fact that a person is a Cardinals fan helps to define who they are.  It joins them together with “Cardinals’ nation” – it provides belonging and a bond with people they meet who are otherwise perfect strangers.

            Tonight is Pentecost Eve.  We are here because this evening is the beginning of a major feast in the life of the Church.  It is the beginning of our celebration of Pentecost – the event in which the risen and ascended Lord poured forth the Holy Spirit upon the Church and announced the arrival of the Last Days.  In Paul’s words from Romans we hear about the work of the Spirit.  We find that the presence of the Spirit within us has given us a status – an identity.  And because the Spirit is present in us, we find that we are called to live in ways that are true to our status even as we look forward the Spirit’s work on the Last Day in raising our bodies from the dead.

            In our text this evening Paul writes: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”           The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

            The Feast of Pentecost announces that the Holy Spirit – whom in this chapter Paul refers to as both the “Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Christ” – is now uniquely at work in the Church.  Pentecost is a watershed moment.  Something new and different has happened and in this event God has announced that the Last Days are here.

            The unique presence and work of the Spirit is tied to the unique presence and work of the Son of God that has occurred in his life, death, resurrection and ascension.  Paul says at the beginning of this chapter, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”

            God condemned sin – your sin – in the flesh of Jesus Christ on the cross.  And then on the third day through the work of the Spirit he raised Christ from the dead. Because of this, you now have no condemnation before God.

            But the meaning of all of this for you goes far beyond the fact that you no longer face condemnation from God. Instead, you who were enemies of God have now become his children in Christ. Paul tells us that Spirit of Christ poured out on Pentecost is the “the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  The Spirit bears witness that you have the status – the identity of the children of God. The Spirit is the One who enables you to live out this status by calling to God in faith, “Abba! Father”

            This is good news – the Good News of the Gospel.  We live life as people who are in Christ; as people are the in the Spirit and so are children of God.  But we also still live as people who are in the flesh. We are people who still have the presence of the old man within us. 

            We are called to recognize this daily. We are called to confess those places in our life where sin guides our life instead of the Spirit.   And we are called to struggle against those sins by the work of the Spirit.  In our text Paul says, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  Paul expresses himself here using a present tense: “you are putting to death the deeds of the body.”  The Christian life through the work of the Spirit is one of an ongoing struggle against sin in our life.  The Spirit calls us to this struggle and makes the struggle possible.  But it is a struggle that we must also see a being part of our life – as something that we take up as our own.

            It is a struggle that will only end when we die or Christ returns.  But because the Spirit dwells in you, that end is one that you know will be victory.  In the verse just before our text, Paul says, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” The Spirit who dwells in you; the Spirit who enables you to be putting to death the sin in your life is the Spirit who was at work in raising Jesus Christ from the dead. And because the same Spirit dwells in you, you know that he will also give life to your bodies on the Last Day. The life giving work of the Sprit now that enables the struggle against sin, will bring about the final victory when he raises and transforms our bodies to be like Christ.  He will bring about the final transformation by which sin and death will never trouble us again.

            Tonight we begin to celebrate Pentecost.  We rejoice that Christ poured forth his Spirit upon the Church.  Because he has done this, the Spirit is powerfully at work within us.  It is the Spirit who has worked regeneration and faith by which we have received adoption – by which we have come the children of God and cry out “Abba! Father.”  It is the Spirit who enable us to take up the daily struggle against sin as we are putting to death the sin within us. And it is the Spirit who will bring about the final victory when he raises our mortal body and gives us as share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

           

           

           

           

  

Commemoration of Boniface of Mainz, Missionary to the Germans

Today we remember and give thanks for Boniface of Mainz, Missionary to the Germans. Boniface was born in the late seventh century in England. He became a monk, and was ordained as a presbyter in England, where he was inspired by the example of others to become a missionary. Upon receiving a papal commission in 719 to work in Germany, Boniface devoted himself to planting, organizing, and reforming churches and monasteries in Hesse, Thuringia, and Bavaria. After becoming an archbishop, Boniface was assigned to the See of Mainz in 743. Ten years later he resigned his position to engage in mission work in the Netherlands. On June 5, 754, while awaiting a group of converts for confirmation, Boniface and his companions were murdered by a band of pagans. Boniface is known as the apostle and missionary to the Germans.

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, You called Boniface to be a witness and martyr in Germany, and by his labor and suffering You raised up a people for Your own possession. Pour out Your Holy Spirit upon Your Church in every land, that by the service and sacrifice of many Your holy name may be glorified and Your kingdom enlarged; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Mark's thoughts: The Church, the world and sex - there can be no compromise

In what is one of the first New Testament books written, St. Paul says, “Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.  For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (1 Thess 4:1-7).

It immediately becomes obvious that Paul focuses upon sexual conduct as he talks about walking in a way that pleases God. What we find in this early letter is something that is repeated again and again in the letters of  the New Testament (Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 5:1-13; 6:9-20; 7:1-9; Gal 5:19-21; Eph 5:3-6; Col 3:5-6; 1 Tim 1:8-11; Heb 13:4; 1 Pet 4:1-6).  The New Testament writers admonish the early Christians against adultery, fornication and homosexuality.  Sexual purity stands out as a significant part of the Christian life.

This emphasis is the all the more obvious because of what has happened in our world since the “sexual revolution” arrived during the 1960’s.  We live in a world that this awash in provocative and sexually explicit images – in print, on television and on the internet.  Pornography has embraced each new technology, and now online use has exploded.  Much of the music in our culture focuses upon sex.  It is considered “normal” for couples who are dating to have sex.  Cohabitation has become common and ordinary.  Homosexuality receives ever growing acceptance as institutions such as the media and higher education promote it, and marriage is “redefined” to include same sex couples.

The Church faces incredible challenges a she seeks to be faithful to God’s Word.  She faces the challenge of catechizing youth in a world where everything around them says that they should use sex in any way they want.  Cohabitation presents tremendous pastoral challenges, and in many places pastors for all intents and purposes ignore the problem, because to do otherwise risks the angering of the couple (and their parents) and the loss of congregation members to the congregation down the road whose pastor is willing to ignore it.

Can the Church really be expected to hold to the instruction provided in Scripture about sexual conduct in a world that overwhelmingly contradicts this teaching?  Isn’t this asking too much?  When considering this issue, it is helpful to consider the setting in which the New Testament texts were written.

Kyle Harper has written a book entitled From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexuality in Late Antiquity.  In his glowing review of this important work, noted scholar Peter Brown has provided a helpful summary of Harper’s research.  In the Greco-Roman world sex outside of marriage was extremely common and acceptable, as long as it was sex with the right kind of person. Brown writes:

What mattered, in Roman law and in Roman sexual morality, had little to do with sex. It had everything to do with whose bodies could be enjoyed with impunity and whose could  not be touched without elaborate formulas of consent.

The joys of sex were there for all. Harper shows how the puritanism of the Romans in relation to their own spouses has been greatly exaggerated. But the primary school of sexual endeavor remained, to an unusual degree, the bodies of slaves—along with the bodies of the poor and of prostitutes, who were all too easily sucked into the gravitational field of dishonor associated with outright slavery. Then Harper sums up his feelings: “The laws deflected lust away from the freeborn body, and slaves provided a ready outlet.”

This is the setting the New Testament writers addressed. And their message was uncompromising, even though it directly contradicted the operation of the culture. Brown goes on to say:

It no longer mattered, to Christians, with whose bodies, from which social categories, and in what manner sex might happen. From Paul onward, for Christians, there was right sex—sex between spouses for the production of children; wrong sex—sex outside marriage; and abhorrent sex—sex between same-sex partners. Wrong sex of any kind was a sin. And a sin was a sin. It was not a social faux pas, deemed an outrage in one situation and accepted in another.

Seldom has so great a simplification been imposed on a complex society. The unexpected  victory of Christian norms in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries was so thorough that any alternative ordering of moral frontiers within a society became unthinkable.

 At the beginning of the twenty first century an alternative ordering of the moral frontiers within society has become not only thinkable, but it has in fact become dominant.  Once again, the Church preaches and teaches a message about sex that opposes the culture.  But that fact does not change what the biblical texts say.  It does not change God’s will and ordering of creation.  If we are to be faithful to God’s Word, then we must once again be uncompromising.  We must accept the costs of doing so because “success” can only be measured on the basis of our fidelity to God’s Word. 

  

 

         

Church news: Pope Francis and the culture of comfort that rejects having babies

Pope Francis recently addressed a truth that should be uncomfortable for many Christians.  He urged Roman Catholics to reject the culture of comfort that avoids having babies.  We lament a shrinking Church. And yet the reality is that many in the Church choose not to have babies, or to have just one or two, because to have more would inhibit the level of economic comfort they desire.  Such an approach ignores the inherent purpose of marriage and its one flesh union of sex.  It is also built on an inherently selfish model which ignores the manner in which children turn us outside of ourselves and direct our lives in self-giving service to others that follows in the way of Jesus Christ.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter - Exaudi

                                                                                    Easter 7

                                                                                    Jn 15:26-16:4

                                                                                    6/1/14

            A great deal of parenting involves telling children what they don’t want to hear.  It comes down to telling children things that they don’t believe are true.  We tell children that they need to eat vegetables at dinner – even though children say they are yucky and that they don’t want to eat them.  We tell children that they need to go to bed now – even though children say that they should be able to stay up later and that they will be fine the next day.  We tell children that they can’t spend all of that money they just received on a toy – even though our children protest in tears and tantrums that they must have that toy now.

            And of course, the reality is that we as parents are right. Children don’t want to hear these things.  Children don’t believe that they are true.  But none of that changes the realities of life that we as parents have learned – often by our own experience.

            So, vegetables have vitamins that bodies need to stay healthy.  Children who stay up too late, end up being crabby and difficult the next day.  Habits of saving must be fostered and developed if children are to manage their money successfully when they are older. The list of these kinds of things goes on and on.  Saying these things wears on parents because we are saying things that are true, only to have our children respond in ways that demonstrate they don’t want to hear it and don’t believe it is true.

            However, as we listen to our Gospel lesson today, it is we who are the children.  We don’t want to hear what our Lord has to say.  We don’t really believe that it is true.  And so for our own good, the Lord speaks the truth to us once again.

            Our Gospel lesson this morning is part of Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” that covers chapters fourteen to seventeen of John’s Gospel.  The setting for Jesus’ words is the trip from the Last Supper to the Garden of Gethsemane.  Our Lord is about to be betrayed and arrested.  He will be tried and tortured, and at 3:00 p.m. the next day he will be dead on a cross.  By the time the sun goes down the next day he will be buried in a tomb.

            All of this is just about to happen.  Yet here Jesus talks about what will happen after it.  He talks about his resurrection and return to the Father.  He talks about the sending of the Holy Spirit. And he talks about the opposition that the disciples will receive from the world.

            In our text Jesus says, “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.”   Our Lord says that he will send the Spirit who will bear witness about Jesus.  And the witness of the Spirit will be accompanied by the witness of his disciples.

            In our text, Jesus then goes on to explain that he has been telling them about this in order to prepare them.  He adds, “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.”

            Throughout this portion of John’s Gospel, there are three themes that repeat.  The first is that Jesus is leaving them and going to the Father.  The second is that Jesus is going to send the Spirit.  The third is that the world will persecute them.

            Now that Jesus will be leaving them is clear.  He says in this chapter, “I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”

This is of course Jesus’ ascension into heaven that we celebrated on Thursday.

            Jesus will be leaving them.  He will no longer be present in the manner that they had known him during the last three years – in the manner that they had known him since Easter and the resurrection. As Jesus explains to the disciples what will happen after this, the second and third points are twin themes that run together.  It is something that is announced the first time Jesus mentions the sending of the Spirit.  He says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”  The opposition of the world and the work of the Spirit are two sides of the same reality.

            Immediately before our text, Jesus had said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

            Our Lord is clear about what awaits the Church. We will receive the world’s hatred. Jesus tells us that his answer to this situation is the Holy Spirit whom he will send.  He says, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

            Now frankly, we see many reasons to be afraid.  We live in a changing world – a world that seems to be undergoing a seismic shift.  Where there was once the simple matter of right and wrong, now there is only your perspective and my perspective.  Where once it was entirely normal to say that something was wrong and a sin, now this can draw the accusation that you are intolerant, bigoted and have a phobia. Where once Christians felt comfortable in their world, now they feel threatened as culture and the government begin to exert coercion against Christian beliefs and practices.  And the threat isn’t only on the outside.  We see many who claim to be Christian inventing new ways to abandon God’s Word and embrace the world around us.

            Our answer to these things would definitely not be for Jesus to leave us.  Yet that is not the way Jesus sees things.  Just after our text he goes on to say, “But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”

            Jesus declares that it is to our advantage for him to go away, for only in this way can the Spirit be sent.  If we ask why this is, we don’t get an answer. And that doesn’t satisfy us.  Like small children we whine and carry on because we don’t want to hear this; because we don’t think it is true.

            But Jesus says otherwise.  And so on this morning we need to put on our big boy and big girl pants, and listen to the Lord.  We need to admit that God is God and we are not.  We need to recognize the truth that the Lord Jesus knows what he is talking about.  And so we need to listen to what Jesus says the Spirit does in our midst.

            In our text Jesus says, “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.”  Jesus says that the Spirit bears witness about him.  And he sets the witness of the apostles parallel to this. 

            The reason is that the Spirit is the One who was at work through the apostles.  Jesus says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”  It is Jesus’ promise that the Spirit will be at work in the apostles to teach them and to cause them to remember the things Jesus said.

            The work of the Spirit will be to deliver Jesus.  After our text the Lord says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

            Jesus Christ says that in the face of the world’s opposition, what we need is for the Holy Spirit to give Jesus and his saving work to us.  And that is what the Spirit does through the apostolic Scriptures he inspired. The Spirit breathed Word of God continues to be the means by which the Holy Spirit bears witness to us about Jesus.

            The Spirit takes what belongs to Jesus and makes it known to us.  He makes it known to us in ways that create and sustain faith in the crucified and risen Lord in spite of the world’s opposition.  He sets before us the truth about Jesus, that, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 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.” The Spirit assures us that because the ascended Lord was lifted up on the cross, we now have eternal life.

            We don’t claim to understand fully why it is better that the Lord Jesus has departed to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit, the Helper.  We can see that where the incarnate Lord was located in one place as he lived our human existence, the Spirit is now at work throughout the entire globe wherever the Gospel is shared.  He is at work in millions of places through the Scripture he inspired – the Scripture that continues to be the vehicle for his work.
            Yet, surely, there is more to it than this.  In our text, Jesus declares, “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.” “These things” are both the fact of persecution and also the sending of the Spirit.  Jesus says the Spirit of the ascended Lord is what we need in order to face a world that is hostile to Jesus and the Gospel. 

            There is a mystery here that we don’t fully understand. And really, that should not surprise us because in this Gospel our Lord says that the work of the Spirit is mysterious. In chapter three of this Gospel Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

            And so rather than saying that we don’t want to hear it; that we don’t believe it; or that we don’t fully understand it, we simply rejoice that our Lord says it, and therefore it is true.  We give thanks that the Spirit sent by Jesus has given us new life as we were born again of water and the Spirit.  We embrace the Scriptures – the inspired Word of God – through which the Spirit makes Jesus known to us.  As John says near the end of this inspired Word of God: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”