I was sorely tempted to pretend today like I had not preached on the Gospel lesson two weeks ago. Part of my temptation was to see if anybody paid attention or if the sermon was memorable. The other part of my temptation was to play it like anybody who mentioned it had had a prophetic dream. I could have played real excitedly like I was CLEARLY preaching the right sermon since you had heard it in your dreams. Visitors are uncomfortable now because I confessed I am a sinner and because y’all are laughing.
If the reading sounds familiar, it is because it should. We read this the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, and we read it here at Advent on Even years of Year A. On odd years we read John 3 in Lent. My sermon on the Transfiguration during Last Epiphany focused more on the Transfiguration, transformation, that is happening to us as we continue in our walk with Christ. God is literally at work changing us into His likeness.
Today, though, I was drawn a bit more to focus on the questions that we hear raised in Christian circles and that we sometimes wonder about ourselves. Sometimes I think Christians fall into one of two camps. One the one side, there are people who think that because they proclaim Jesus is Lord they can do anything they want. No matter what they do or say, God has to save them and admit them to heaven. Unsurprisingly to some of us, their focus is only on the eternal consequence of salvation. In fact, NT Wright caught some flack from Christians for his claim that God cares about this world, too, that we are called to reflect the character of God in this world around us. To use the language of Epiphany, God manifests His character and His being through our ministries or service. I have a bit too much fun talking with people who are confident that God HAS to save them no matter what they do. The Church would label what they claim is cheap grace. And, it seems that a number of those folks have the bully pulpits of our country right now.
The other group of Christians I would describe as those who are unsure all the time about their salvation. They want to know with certainty that God will save them, but they think that certainty is impossible. I am not talking about people who, as they enter their Garden of Gethsemane as they die and hear the voice of the enemy making a last effort to tempt them. I am speaking of those people whose lives and words are full of the anxiety, who really believe God may mean His covenant with others, but not with them.
How do we know, then? How do we know whether we are glorifying God in our lives and reflecting the hope and grace that is within us? God gives us the answer for the third time since Epiphany 1.
Just to refresh our memory, the cloud has come down, Jesus has been Transfigured, Moses and Elijah have appeared, and Peter has offered to erect a tabernacle for all three of them. How does God respond? Just as He did at Jesus’ baptism, God speaks “This is My Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” We know the stories well enough to realize there are a number of times that the Apostles and disciples of Jesus do not understand Him. In fact, though He teaches them that He must die and be raised from the dead on the third day, they do not understand what He is saying. Like us, the early disciples have a hard time listening to Jesus.
There are lots of fights in our context today. Many claim to be arguing for or doing the “Christian” thing. The problem, if we are to listen to the Father’s voice today is that the “Christian” thing proclaimed or done is not always Christ-like. You are all Anglicans / Episcopalians, so most of this will seem like a “duh” moment. We need to teach the poor how to make better choices, so we need to cut the social safety net. We need to cut taxes on the rich because they need more . . . dollars, yachts, incentive to make more money, whatever the excuse is. We need to drive out all illegals because they are criminals. Pick up a Tennessean or just pay attention to social media, and you will find all kinds of “Christian” wisdom and exhortations that does not sound Christ-like at all. In fact, for those of us who are truly struggling with the question of whether God will save us or admit us into heaven, Jesus’ voice is easy to hear. In the famous parable of the sheep and the goats, what is His teaching? “What you have done to the least of these, you have done to Me.” The struggle is real and has existed for as long as there has been a people of God. The instruction sounds to easy to be true, yet how many of our friends, our neighbors, even members of our own family forget that what we cheer on being done to others means we are cheering on it being done to Christ?
In one sense, of course, it is not surprising. We intentionally remind ourselves year after year that we helped put Christ to death. Our sins, our mockery, our indifference to human suffering necessitated His saving work on the Cross. We remind ourselves intentionally on Palm Sunday and Good Friday that we are part of that crowd that mocked Him as He died. Still, His love for each one of us caused Him to beat that shame, that pain, and that death, that we might know His love of and for each one of us and every single human being we encounter out there in the world.
But in another sense it is incredibly disappointing that people who claim to be Christian allow themselves to be deafened to His call, to His instruction, and to His love. This is My Son, the Beloved. With Him, I am well pleased. Listen to Him.
And yet, part of our job is to help others hear His voice. Those who serve the forgotten, the lost, the needy, the poor, the sick, and the lonely are called to be their voice. Just as we are called to remind them of God’s love for them, just as we are called to be living examples of that transforming process God has begun in us, we are sometimes called to remind our brothers and sisters of His love of them. We remind them of His Words and His example; we instruct them about our experience serving others in His Name. And we pray. We pray that their ears may be unstuck so that they, too, might hear the voice of Christ and serve Him in serving others, that all might be gathered into His saving embrace from the Cross!
In His Peace and Love,
Brian+
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