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A sermon is a manner of oral communication and therefore words and sentence structure/order would be added, altered, or deleted at the moment of delivery. + In Nomine Jesu + The Rev. Evan Gaertner Sixth Sunday of Easter "Act out of love" Between liberals and conservatives there appears to be a cultural struggle about what the church should focus on. It would appear that on one side you have people who believe that as a church we should work for social justice in our society. Use our moral standing and courage to fight injustice and make political, economic, and social demands on society to change. On the other side you have people that would argue that the church should never get involved in politics, economic policy, or human care. That all of those activities work to distract the church from its real purpose of bringing people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as their savior. I think the reality of what we are called to as Christians proclaim is somewhere in the middle of these two stereotypes. But setting up these two stereotypes gets to the point of how the churches message should be ordered. You might think of this as a "which came first kind of argument surrounding the chicken and the egg." Do we proclaim Jesus Christ and bring people into a relationship with him first before human care and comfort is offered. For instance consider a man who is hungry and ill-clothed. Which would be more proper (1) to first cloth him and feed him, and hope that he learns about Jesus by the Christian example of care you have witnessed or (2) would it be better to first make sure he knows about Jesus and then trust that he will find comforting care for his physical needs somewhere else? Neither of those options sound quite right do they? Start with me at the beginning. I mean the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth and all that dwells in them. God created human beings for happiness. The Garden of Eden was a place of life and union with God himself. He would walk in the cool of the day and seek out Adam and Eve. But Adam and Even disobeyed God by being deceived by the serpent. God desired their trust and they instead lived after their own desires. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and human beings lost their chance of living in union with God. Sin, decay, death all entered into our human story on account of that original sin. We are all born guilty and in need of forgiveness inheriting the trespasses of Adam and Eve. We became no longer captives to the will of our heavenly Father but instead captives to Satan. On our own we cannot escape our captivity to sin and all the evil that this brings into the world. When we look at a world in need of human care because of poverty, hunger, lack of clean water and so many other ills we are witnessing a much larger problem. We live in a world corrupted by sin and so we experience the evil effects of sin. But God is merciful. He brings to our storied lives of sin and despair the promise of salvation. The Old Testament over and over again brings God's judgment against sin and at the same time holds forward the confident hope that God will bring deliverance. Just as an example: In the book of Genesis we learn that God sent the flood to destroy all that lived on the earth. Indeed his flood was quite successful, Genesis 7:23 "He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heaves. They were blotted out from the earth." But even as God brings judgment, he promises hope. That verse continues, "Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark." God preserved and delivered Noah and all those that were with him. The stories of judgment and deliverance in the Old Testament all prepare us for the ultimate judgment and deliverance that is witnessed in Jesus. No greater love is known that God the Father sending his only begotten son to be born into our frail and weak human flesh. Jesus lived, died, and rose again for you. Jesus came to be your advocate with the Father. Jesus came to be our leader and guides us back into communion with God. Jesus has undone through his obedience our disobedience. In so many ways that we got lost and thrown about on account of sin, Jesus stayed obedient to the Father, all they way to the cross. So through the righteousness of Jesus Christ our unrighteousness has been put away from the sight of God. You are no longer born of sin and into death, as John wrote, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God" We know about Jesus as our advocate because of the work of the Spirit of truth. The Holy Spirit was promised by Jesus to be our advocate in this world working through the Word and the Sacraments to bring us to him. The Holy Spirit guides us to know the truth through revealing in the Scriptures the truth of God's love. The Spirit testifies in this world to the truth of God's mercy. As much as we can look out and see around us the effects of sin, the Holy Spirit works through the scriptures to show us that God's plan is merciful and redemptive. The spirit testifies to the love of Jesus. Martin Luther wrote as an explanation of the work of the spirit that "He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith." The primary identify of the Holy Spirit is not understood by charismatic gifts that can confuse and distract the faithful from the gospel of justification by faith through Jesus Christ. The Spirit points you to Jesus and in Jesus you find comfort and are delivered to live in communion with God. We live in a time when people want to be able to determine their own truth and so it is becoming "Whatever makes me feel good must be true?" No … truth comes from God delivered by the Spirit. The Spirit points us to the ultimate truth … that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die on the cross so that all who believe in him will not perish but have eternal life. You were baptized into Jesus Christ. You were baptized into His truth of love and mercy. You are children of God. Daily as you live out the promises of your baptism you are testifying to the truth of God's mercy. When we sin and disobey God we are denying our baptism, denying our identity as children of God. When we work against the purposes of God we are instead of identifying ourselves as children of God we identify ourselves as slaves, slaves to sin. As baptized children of God your words, actions and faith are a living in the truth of God's mercy. As the Son, Jesus Christ, was sent by the father to be our advocate and brings us back into a relationship with the father. As the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, was sent by the Father and the Son to be our advocate and deliver us to communion with God and live in that restored relationship. So you are sent by God to go into this world and become the advocate and guide for those that do not yet have a relationship with God. Testify to the truth of God's love and so bring people to know the truth of God's forgiveness. So what comes first the chicken or the egg? I guess it depends on your perspective. So what comes first works of righteousness, bringing physical comfort to the sick and the dying or saving faith in Jesus. Christ loves you not because you believed in him, but precisely because you needed loved. Inspired by this love we do acts of mercy and charity in this world. We seek to testify in this world to the truth of God's love, mercy and forgiveness. We can obey the command to love God and love our neighbor freely and with desire only because we know that we first were loved by God. We act because we are loved. We do not worry which will come first works of charity or faith in God. Because were we go forward with the grace of God works of charity will follow. We go forward with works of charity only because we know the grace of God. Soli Deo Gloria -->> Home |