Grace as Rest (Galatians 3)

We live in a culture of more.  If you’ve that before it was likely connected to our culture’s materialism.  How we always want more of this, more of that.  And that’s a fair critique.  But I actually mean something else.  I mean that we live in a culture that demands more.  That demands more of you.  That wants more from you.

Back in 2000, while I was in high school, a movie came out called “Dude, Where’s My Car?”  High-art film this movie was not.  The basic premise is that a couple of best friends, Jesse and Chester, wake up one morning to discover their car is missing and they go looking for it.  That’s really all you need to know.

Anyway, in one scene a friend of theirs takes them through the drive-thru at a Chinese restaurant.  After Jesse places each portion of their order, the drive-thru lady says, “and then?”  This goes on for a while, until they’re done.  But the lady won’t relent, saying “and then?”  Jesse gets more and more frustrated as the lady gets more and more threatening and obnoxious with her “and theeeeeeeeeen?”  After a couple minutes of this Jesse snaps and destroys the drive-thru box.

It’s a silly moment in a silly movie, but it’s an idea we can identify with.  Every time we do something, someone is there to say, “and then?”  Every time you finish a project, your boss is there to say, “and then?”  You pick the kids up from school. And then…it’s time for dance or soccer practice.  And then…you have to pick up dinner.  And then…it’s time to pick the kids up again.  And then…it’s time to help with homework.  And then…laundry.  And then…yardwork.  And then…bills need to be paid.  And then…they need to be paid again.  And then…the sink needs to be fixed.  And then…taxes are due.  And then…different taxes are due.  And then…it’s somebody’s birthday and you need to get a card and a gift.  And then…you’ve got a checkup at the doctor’s office. And then, and then, and then, and then, and then.

A God Who Stoops (John 8:1-11)

How many of you enjoy being publicly humiliated?  How many of you look forward to having your most embarrassing moments shared with the world?  How many of you appreciate it when your most shameful actions become the topic of conversation around the water cooler or the lunch table?  Nobody?  Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised.

There’s an old saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.  But I think we all know that’s not really true.  Sure, for a celebrity or a company almost anything can be spun to their advantage as long as they’re name is in the news.  But for you and me, for regular people…there are things we’d like to keep private.  There are things we’d like to keep anyone else from knowing about.  There are things that we might even wish we could forget about ourselves.

Our gospel reading for today deals with a woman who I have to think experienced a kind of mortifying shame and embarrassment that blows anything any of us have faced out of the water.  To begin with, she was caught in the act of adultery.  Even if she had been with her husband, that would have been hugely embarrassing for people to walk in on.  But when it wasn’t her husband…that just made it that much worse.  And then to add to the insult, she didn’t just face dealing with whispers and gossip about her spreading around the neighborhood.  She was dragged out into the public square.  Her shame was loudly made known, possibly even seen depending on how clothed they allowed her to get.  And then to add injury to insult, she was facing the prospect of rocks being thrown at her until she was dead.

Often when we look at this account from Scripture, we approach it a sort of morality tale.  It’s kind of a go-to story for the idea of “judge not lest ye be judged.”  We focus not on the woman, but the crowd.  We look at the Pharisees and those who were preparing to stone her.  We focus on how Jesus’ words convicted them, how it caused them to drop their stones and go on their way.  The primary relationship in the story becomes not Jesus and the woman, but Jesus and the Pharisees.  The woman’s situation, her safety, becomes an interesting epilogue. 

So often when we look at this story, the grace of Jesus is almost an afterthought.  A happy accident brought about by the angry crowd being shamed into leaving.  But that’s just simply not the case.  Grace is central to this story.  It’s the driving, transformative power at work.  It’s Jesus’ grace toward the woman that leads the change, it’s grace that makes all the difference.  Because here’s the thing we tend to overlook for some reason.  She was guilty.

A Change You Can Believe In (Galatians 2:19-21)

I want you to think for a second about your favorite food.  Your favorite dish, whether it’s something homemade or from your favorite restaurant.  Try and remember, if you can, the feeling you got the first time that food hit your taste buds.  The way the flavors mixed and mingled on your tongue.  The way you felt the urge, the need to vocalize to whoever you were eating with about how good it was.  The way your brain immediately said, “give me more!”  Now think of the last time you ate it.  Did it evoke the same reactions?  Or was it now something that was still delicious, still something you enjoyed, but perhaps just a bit too familiar.  A bit predictable.  Maybe even a little more bland than it used to be.

Think about the first time you ever sat behind the wheel of a car as a driver.  Sitting there in the driver’s seat, seatbelt on, turning the key and feeling the rumble of the engine.  Even with as many times as you’d sat in the car with mom or dad and felt that engine hum, felt it accelerate, this time it was completely different.  This time you weren’t just feeling the revs, they purred for you.  The car now for the first time responded to your direction. It was your foot that was pushing down on the accelerator, your pushing down perhaps a bit too forcefully on the brake.  Perhaps you felt as though the speedometer must surely be broken because it said you were going 30, but you were willing to swear you were at least 85.  Did you get any of those feelings when you started up the car to come to church today?

Think about your first girlfriend or boyfriend.  Or your first date with the person who’s now your wife or husband.  Think about how you started to smile just because they walked into the room.  Think about how your heart started racing the first time they sat down next to you, and your knees or your shoulders happened to touch.  Think about how it felt the first time they held your hand.  The electricity that rand up your arm and throughout the rest of your body.  The feeling that this, just holding their hand in yours, might be the greatest thing in the world.  When’s the last time holding their hand made you feel that way?  When’s the last time you even held each others' hands as you watched a movie, or went for a walk?

Good Works are Good Things (James 2:1-10, 14-18)

            Today’s epistle reading from James is really almost two separate readings.  The first is from verses 1-10, where it talks about the sin of particularity.  The sin of showing favoritism, or looking down on certain people who would come into your church because they aren’t dressed properly, or have purple hair, or whatever.  The other starts at verse 14, which talks about the relationship between faith and good works.  The first portion is something worth talking about, but for the sake of time, today we are going to focus on the second.

            As you might have seen in your bulletins, the theme for today’s sermon is “Good Works are Good Things.”  This might seem like an obvious thing, but that’s not always the case.  Since the days of Martin Luther himself, the church that bears his name has been accused of rejecting good works.  Even today, the Lutheran church gets charged with saying that what you do, how you live your life, doesn’t matter.  But that’s just not true.  That charge from others, or that wrong understanding among people within our church, comes from a wrong understanding of what we mean, of what Scripture means, when we speak of salvation by faith alone.

The Armor of God

I love this time of year.  Not so much because of the weather or because kids are back in school or because of anything like that.  I love it because it’s now football season.  Now, baseball is my first love, and I enjoy getting out to play golf or tennis.  But there’s something about football that other sports just don’t have.  I think it’s the equipment.

In high school, when we’d have a road game during baseball season, the only thing you really needed to make sure you personally brought with you was your cap and glove.  To get ready to play you pretty much put on a pair of pants tighter than you wore to school, changed your shoes and walked out there.  Football games though…those were something different.  Getting ready for the game was almost like a ritual.  You’d make sure each piece of equipment was accounted for.  You took the time to make sure each kneepad, each thigh-pad, each hip-pad were properly in place.  You’d lace up your cleats, slide those shoulder pads over your head, tightly strap them on, then pull that helmet down over your head and hear that click that told you your chinstrap was in place and you were ready to roll.

In baseball you go out to take on the opposition protected by nothing but a glove, your own reflexes, and maybe a cup.  But not always.  And you don’t think twice about doing it.  But you wouldn’t dream of going out to face the opposition in football without being properly equipped, properly armored against the attacks they’re going to throw against you.

So often we try to approach our lives of faith like a baseball game.  We step out onto the field to face the opposition equipped with our wits, some broken-in routines and responses and a “let’s get ‘em” attitude.  Only problem is, our enemies aren’t prepared to play nice.

Wives, Husbands, and Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33)

Today’s Epistle text is something of a mixed blessing for a preacher.  On the one hand, this text is loaded with things to preach on.  It’s a text despite how it might at first look has something to say to everyone, regardless of their current situation in life when it comes to marriage.  And when you consider the current public discourse about marriage, and the way marriage is so often described and portrayed, it might be one of the most relevant passages of Scripture.  Because arguably more than any other passage, Ephesians 5 shows us what God created and defined marriage to be.  Lots of good stuff here.

But this is also a text that isn’t all that popular in the current social discourse.  And I bet you can guess why.  It’s because so often people can’t get past those first two words.  Wives, submit.  Boom, right there, two words in and roughly half the population gets upset.

I can understand why.  For one thing, the word “submit” has pretty negative connotations these days.  It tends to carry an implication of inferiority.  Submission tends to become entwined with the idea of subjugation.  And in general the idea of submitting just doesn’t fit in with the prevailing cultural idea of being in control of your own life.

This verse also isn’t overly popular these days because it has so often been grossly misapplied and misused.  So let’s go ahead and address first what this passage is not saying to wives, or would-be wives.  “Wives, submit to your husbands,” does not mean that you’re supposed to be a doormat.  It does not mean that you are expected to be your husband’s sandwich wench, there to serve his every beck and call.  It does not mean that wives are expected to be the silent partner, meek wallflowers standing behind their husbands and speaking only when spoken to.  And it absolutely does not mean that wives are in any way the lesser or inferior partner. 

“Wives, submit to your husbands,” should never be understood as “Wives, you are lesser than your husbands.”  If the husband is the head, consider the wife the heart.  Think 1 Cor. 12, when in describing the church Paul writes, “But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”  Different organs, different roles, but neither rightly can exist or function without the other.  Are you all with me so far?