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“1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
I have a good friend, who every so often comes up with the same joke during a meal, mostly at formal parties. This is what he does: You sit next to him having a normal, sometimes even serious conversation with him, and the next moment, when you’ve just turned away for a second, you look back and try to continue your conversation, but you can’t. It is impossible, even though he seems to try his best to keep it going in a serious way. It is so funny to see, how people get distracted again and again, and how they react: Either they try to point out to him discreetly that there is something wrong with his face. However, this normally gets even funnier, because then my friend plays the innocent not understanding clumsy fellow. Or people simply start to laugh out loud, which is – bearing in mind the formal setting – also quite funny and sometimes at least as awkward as his face. Why do I actually tell you this? I do it, because the behaviour of my friend contains all important aspects of today’s word for the sermon: It contains hope. In my friends case the hope to cheer up the atmosphere of a stiff party. It contains embarrassment and the fear of it, by which people get distracted. And it contains joy; in my friends case as a result of his behaviour.
In today’s word for the sermon Paul describes the antagonism of a human life’s issue – and with it of your and my lives issue – by means of the two opposites: embarrassment and joy. Either we get disappointed; or, if we more literally translate Paul’s words, we spoil the look of and disgrace ourselves, which means something much more severe than just to blemish ones face. We spoil the look of how God actually wants us to be as his most cherished creatures. And thus we also fall out of his grace. Or we rejoice; which is also translatable as: to praise or to take pride in. One can even say: to boast; meaning we will laugh as God’s children and live in peace with Him, our heavenly father. How people on the one hand disgrace themselves, we have heard in today’s Old Testament and Gospel Reading. You do remember the two stories about a man and his vineyard don’t you! And how they tell us about God, and how HE created, cared, lost, and repeatedly tried to win back His people Israel. Israel disgraced itself by forgetting God as the one who had brought it into existence in the first place. Israel forgot that God was the one who had redeemed them out of slavery and led them into the freedom and prosperity of an own country – like a man, who plants and builds a vineyard on the fertile hillside. At some stage Israel must have taken everything good for granted and forgot about God and His loving care. Yes it even blamed God for all the bad things that happened, rather than to confess its own faults and sin, and to bring forth good fruit like they had promised. Because: They also forgot about the covenant and that they – as God’s people – had promised ‘to love and fear God more than anything else, and to love their neighbours as themselves.’ Israel disgraced itself by means of this self-righteous attitude and behaviour, which we as Christians can also very easily adopt. But not enough: Israel’s spiritual leaders, the priests and the Pharisees, rejected God’s authority in an even more ironic way. It is a way that also we as Christians are often tempted to set course for: It is the way of Hypocrisy. What Jesus described in the picture of the vineyard with the evil reaction of the tenants, is nothing else than the dashing idea that we could manage to live a God pleasing life, that we could run the vineyard on our own, without God; and that we could eventually earn all the fruits for ourselves. This attitude is the reason, why Jesus eventually was killed. And as we hear these stories, we shouldn’t think they have just been told in view of Israel. As I indicated, these readings are actually also talking to, and about us Christians. They are our stories. Because: Whenever we fall back into self-righteousness or hypocrisy, we are disgracing ourselves rather than to live according the ‘grace in which we now stand’, because we ‘have been justified through faith, [and] we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace’. This is the great evangelical message of today’s Epistle. In Jesus Christ, in his self sacrifice for our sins as well as in his resurrection, in which God confirmed His will to save and to care for all people out of his fatherly and divine love; in this Jesus Christ we have the most certain reason to rejoice. And with rejoice Paul means to praise God’s love by trusting in his forgiveness and care – even in difficult and challenging situations. For not to give up hope in faith, but rather to remain proud of being God’s child bringing forth good fruits in faith, even in challenging situations of life, might look stupid for others at first, but eventually and actually it is more like being in the situation of my friend, about whom I told you at the beginning of this sermon. Because: Trusting in Christ we are on the safe side already. We have freedom with God. Nothing can really hurt us, dishonour us as God’s children, or rob us of our seats at the heavenly banquet. And due to this certain hope, due to this spiritual self confidence in Jesus Christ, it should not matter at all, if we seem to lose countenance in faith, because it might seem that God has forsaken us and left us to the hardships of life. Paul says: Challenging situations will more likely show our God given character, and God will use us in our persevering faith as an instrument that aims for joy rather than to disappoint us. Like my friend, who isn’t bothered, if people stare at him, because he knows, eventually they will realize what he is aiming for by destroying the formal, stiff and big front with a blob on his nose, and they will join in laughter.
Last week, I had an amazing encounter. We went to get petrol at a station. After greeting each other, I asked the attendant, how he is. And he said: I am blessed. I have never heard something like that in Germany, and not at all from a fuel station attendant. And to be honest, I wouldn’t expect it from a guy like him. More likely from a better situated person. So his answer hit me like a hammer. I don’t know why, but I asked him to share his blessings with me. And he said: Let me share my blessing with you by giving you some words – and he didn’t know that I was a Christian. He said: Everything you say, everything you do or think, let Jesus always be the beginning of it. Let Jesus be the first thing in your job, let him be the first thing in your family or wherever, because then you will see, what the blessing is that I have received. I think this is, what Paul meant, when he wrote about praising and priding ourselves of the hope that we have. May God enable us therefore to follow this invitation by rejoicing in the grace of Christ! AMEN |
