Last week, in talking about the way we are called to
live as Christians, I said that “being a true Christ-follower is a different
kind of foolishness.” I’d like to say that I planned that for this week’s
reading, but if you believe that then you obviously have a higher view of my
sermon preparation right now than I do. I didn’t read 1 Corinthians 1 until,
oh, this past Friday, and only then I came across those words that we all have
probably heard, but were already on my mind from the actions of Paul and Silas
last week: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
The secret of that line, which is really no secret at
all, is that we are all perishing and we are all saved. We are all sinners; we
are all saints. We are all redeemed; we are all not yet. But I think when I say
that your eyes gloss over. I think it doesn’t resonate, because the both/and
language of Lutheranism sounds beautiful but it’s sometimes difficult to translate
that into our life experience. Just because our theology is good doesn’t mean that
it’s inspiring, and if our beliefs do not spur us on to something better then I
don’t think they’re very helpful.
Now I know this was a busy week around these parts, but
how many of you saw Bob Upgren talk either at Lancaster or at Maria on
Wednesday? Awesome speaker. Great artist. The kind of thing that moves you and
that gets you thinking. Hopefully the kind of thing that gets people to look at
their own lives and re-orient them toward something better. But I have to
confess one of my first thoughts, which isn’t necessarily very good. Upgren was
coming at God from a perspective I hear a lot, and probably you do too. In
fact, probably a good majority of you are right on board with what he was
saying, which is that God gives us a gift of salvation and all we have to do is
accept it. This, alongside the idea that we need to accept Jesus Christ as our personal
Lord and Savior, is one of the most widely held beliefs about what makes a
person a Christian today; so much so, in fact, that many people just take it
for granted that all Christians would agree with that. Well, I don’t. And,
actually, a long history of Christian theologians stretching back further than
you imagine also has a problem with that. There are very few new beliefs, just
repacked old beliefs, and the idea that we have to accept the gift of
salvation, or that we have to accept Jesus, is a form of semipelagianism, which
was condemned as heresy in the Second Council of Orange in the year 529.
So
here I was thinking some of these things on Wednesday night and for a moment I
was despairing about it, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard
fantastic speakers with great messages cheapen grace by suggesting that it is
dependent on our response to it. And here was another one.
But then I realized something. This is not a problem with
what only people are saying about God. This is a problem with Lutherans
ourselves, because we have done a terrible job of articulating what salvation
means to us. In our stead, every other faith tradition has told us what
salvation is and so our people have no language to talk about salvation apart
from what others are saying. This is our fault and it is our problem. Our way
of talking about our faith has become saying that we are not like them. They tell you that you need to accept Jesus Christ
as your personal Lord and Savior. Well, we’re not like that! They tell you that
you need to be a good person in order to be saved. But we’re not like that!
Then, when pressed, we answer the question “What are you about?” with the word “grace,” which
is great but kind of vacuous. I mean, accepting Jesus is a very active event;
grace is passive, by definition. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true—in fact, I
think it is—but for too long we have fallen back on grace without caring to
show the world what grace in action looks like.
Which brings me to the last thing I realized listening to
Upgren speak on Wednesday. I truly believe the Lutheran understanding of
salvation is more dramatic, more revolutionary, and more Christ-centered than
what other churches believe. Of course, I believe that because I’m one of us.
We already have an understanding of salvation that should pick us up and
inspire us and move us. And that understanding is this: You are saved by grace
through faith apart from the works of the law, and that faith is not your
own. You don’t control it; you didn’t earn it. God gave it to you. Your
righteousness is alien, which means it comes to you apart from anything you do.
So, you are saved apart from everything
you do and it is not contingent on your acceptance of that gift, but here’s the
problem: Too many Lutherans have stopped there, feeling comfortable in their
own skin because of grace when grace should have the opposite effect. It must
push us to change the world in ways big and small, to become servants to our
true master, Christ, and not the shameful worship of the self.
You are saved; now go and
show the world what a saved person looks like. Show the world how to live.
Salvation is a gift from God but it is not the kind of
gift that you find under the tree on Christmas Eve—a gift you have to open to
realize. The gift of salvation comes more like falling in love. If you are loved
by someone—really loved—that gift is coming to you whether you want it or not.
Now, you can try to spurn that love, you can try to ignore that love, you can
try to minimize it or rationalize it, but at the end of the day you cannot
accept love any more than you can accept grace. You can only live in response
to it. Now, imagine a God who has that kind of all-consuming love not just for
one person but for the whole world—for every one of us. No exceptions. Not the
people who are terrible or rotten, not for the people who fail to believe in
him. This is a God who is obsessed with you, as flawed as you are. It’s a God
who is consumed with those who decide they are atheists, those who decide they
want to hurt others, those who make all kinds of choices to be anti-Christ—the
love of God does not change for them, whether they accept it or reject it. In
fact, I think God finds it adorable that we think our acceptance of the gift
matters. This God, who is rejected not by some or most of us, but by all of us,
loves the whole creation so much that he will not let it go.
So, how are you going to respond to that?!
Because the classic Lutheran response of doing nothing is
worse than bad theology. This needs to change you. This has to change you. Not
because your salvation is dependent on it—we get hung up on that—but because
you are given the biggest gift the world has ever known, whether you like it or
not, and your response is going to show the world what kind of person you
really are.
Then, we have to remember that we sinners and saints;
that our righteousness in God’s eyes doesn’t yet cover the sinful choices we
make. When Paul writes to the church in Corinth about division I imagine the thoughts
that I had on Wednesday night, because, ultimately, the message you heard on
Wednesday and the message you hear today is only subtly different. What matters
is Christ. What doesn’t matter are these stupid distinctions we make. I’m as
guilty of this as anyone. And if we spent half the time showing the world what
it looks like to be loved by God as we do parsing our differences from one
another the world would truly be a better, more Christ-like, place.
You do not belong to Paul or Apollos. You do not belong
to Grace or to the Covenant church. You do not belong to me or to previous or
future pastors or other church leaders. You belong to Jesus Christ. Your
membership is in him. Every division only distracts from the gift of salvation
you have been given, which is so obscenely extravagant that you will never be
able to repay it, and even more strangely than that, by grace your response to
the gift will not change it. What will change is your life. That’s something
Bob Upgren and I will 100% agree on. This is absolutely about the way that you
live in response to the gift of grace you have been given.
What are you doing with it?
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