Sermon, October 27, 2002
23 Pentecost -- Proper 25, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Sermon, October 27, 2002
23 Pentecost -- Proper 25, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Gospel – Matthew 22:34-46 The Great Commandment
Friedrich Wilhelm ruled Prussia in the early eighteenth century. He was known to be a short-tempered man. He also detested ceremony, so it wasn’t unusual for him to walk the streets of Berlin unaccompanied. But if anyone happened to displease him — a not infrequent occurrence — he wouldn’t hesitate to use his walking stick on the hapless offender. So, when people saw him at a distance, they quickly left the vicinity.
Once Friedrich came pounding down a street when a Berliner caught sight of him too late. His attempt to withdraw into a doorway was foiled.
"You there!" said Friedrich. "Where are you going?"
The man began to shake. "Into this house, Your Majesty."
"Is it your house?"
"No, Your Majesty."
"A friend’s house?"
"No, Your Majesty."
"Then why are you entering it?"
The man feared that he would be taken for a burglar, so he blurted out the truth. "To avoid your Majesty."
"Why would you wish to avoid me?"
"Because I am afraid of Your Majesty."
At this Friedrich Wilhelm became livid with rage. Seizing the poor man by the shoulders, he shook him violently, crying, "How dare you fear me! I am your ruler. You are supposed to love me! Love me, wretch! Love me!"
There are expressions of the Christian Gospel that present a god not unlike Friedrich Wilhelm. A ruler of such holiness and purity he cannot allow any sin in his presence. Therefore, he condemns the entire human race to everlasting punishment in hell, because, after all, every human has sinned. "The wages of sin is death." So, all sin; all die. Forever.
But, according to this version of the Gospel, then Jesus comes and does not sin. So he doesn’t have to die. But he does die by taking on all our sin vicariously. And if you’ll believe in Jesus, he’ll get you a ticket into heaven. But anyone who doesn’t... everlasting punishment.
Christianity reduced to a transaction. God the Son comes to save us from God the Father. Maybe some of you grew up in a church with this tradition. Maybe some of you still believe something like this because you haven’t heard anything better. Stories of this kind of salvation are not told only in other denominations. Listen to this illustration from a publication of the popular Anglican Alpha program as a way of introducing atonement.
"In his book Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest Gordon tells the true story of a group of POW’s working on the Burma Railway during World War II. At the end of each day the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion, a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which
man had taken it. He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. "All die! All die!" he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with a rifle while he stood silently at attention. When they returned to the camp the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing." (Nicky Gumbel, Questions of Life p. 48)
Now that’s a compelling story of noble sacrifice, indeed an image of Jesus. But what kind of god does that story portray? A tyrant shouting, "All die! All die!" unless some innocent takes the punishment. Why would anyone love a god who shrieks, "All die! All die!" That is not the God that Jesus calls Abba.
This Tuesday night I’m expecting to experience a presentation that will try to scare me into loving God. Our youth director Hershel Hartford and I are taking a group of the teens to the Halloween haunted house at a local evangelical church, and then we’ll talk about it together. I imagine we will be frightened by vivid images of hell and the sounds of the eternally tormented. There should be devils and pitchforks and fire; horrible screams and agony. The message will be clear. That’s what God will do to you..., unless. And we’ll be invited into what by that time will be a rather self-serving transaction. Give your life to Jesus and go to heaven; anything else, its back to the Halloween house with the rest of the sinners and Jews and Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus and humanists. All burn, unless you love God, wretch! Love God! Or else. Using fear to try to motivate love is abuse.
People who will bristle self-righteously at the use of the word "hell" as a mild profanity of speech will turn around and use the word to manipulate and frighten vulnerable children and other creatures of God into submission to their coercive judgmental legalisms that they call getting saved. Jesus cannot be pleased by such spiritual violence.
Today’s gospel speaks of fear’s opposite. Jesus throws away all of the legalisms and transactions and tells us that love is everything. Jesus came teaching love and living love to reveal God as love. His life is reflective of a love so vast that it enters entirely into the sordid mess of human life and embraces it fully. Far from being isolated from sin, God in Jesus enters into the real conditions of real people like you and me and brings healing and love. He has a special soft spot for those called sinners. The only people who seem to rile him are those who say they know the rules and are confident of their relative goodness. The ones who think they are special are the ones he challenges. The ones who know their need of unqualified love are his particular friends.
Everything he reveals about God points toward eternal love. This is not a picture of a condemning ruler sitting in regal judgement and wrath. This is a tender Abba who reaches into the depth of human evil and suffering, and receives it at its violent worst, the crucifixion of the innocent. In Jesus, God continues to love us unto his own death and in doing so shows us the divine heart. At the heart of ultimate reality is incredible, eternal, unquenchable love, a power revealed in the resurrection stronger than death. This is a God we can love, because God first loves us. God is love. Perfect love. And perfect love casts out fear.
Jesus invites us into this alternate reality. The reality of love. A love that begins with God’s unqualified love for us. So when Jesus invites us into relationship, it is with Love already given. He says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." And so you can, because God is wonderfully lovable, not fearful. And being so embraced, so secure, so loved, makes it possible for us to "love our neighbor as our self." These are the two great commandments. On these, and not fear, hang all the law and commandments.