Delivered 26 August 2006, the Saturday service based on the readings for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.
Welcome
Good evening! Here we are at the close of this day, the beginning of a new
week. We gather beside the waters of baptism, we gather at the foot of the
cross. This is the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, tonight we'll be looking
at the gift of choice, that we have it, how scripture relates others have dealt
with it, and how we respond to it ourselves.
The Lectionary
Look them up
The Sermon
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from his son Jesus the Christ, and from the Holy Spirit. Amen
Those who wish to participate in polite society have long been told never to discuss religion and politics. I, on the other hand, do not aspire to polite society, to the dismay of my lovely wife who will gladly tell you that I am barely housebroken. The number of times she has responded to one of my comments by rolling her eyes and asserting "I can't take him anywhere" is right up there with the number of Abraham's descendants or the stars in the sky.
It happens that I spend a lot of time online in discussions that observe no limits other than the interests and curiosity of the members. In the last few days, an ongoing discussion about the recent history and current trauma of the Middle East has turned to the question of apostasy, which is the sin or crime of turning away from your faith.
Earlier this year the case of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan came to light. Rahman, born into a Muslim family of course. He converted to Christianity about fifteen years ago while doing relief work among Afghan refugees in Pakistan. This spring he was on trial at Kabul on charges of apostasy, for leaving Islam, and a conviction would have brought the death sentence. In the course of a custody dispute over his children, he was found with a Bible. Off with his head. Well, as it happens his attorneys convinced the court that he was insane, so the death sentence was not actually pronounced. He was spirited away and is now living under an assumed name in Italy, where apostasy isn't a capital crime.
Azlina binti Jailani, a woman in Malaysia, converted to Christianity, was baptized, and had the courage to legally change her name to Lina Joy. The only problem was that her identity documents continued to list her as a Muslim. Well, that and the death threats she has received for her conversion. Now she wants to marry a Christian man. In Malaysia, many areas of a Muslim's life are controlled by Sharia, Islamic law, so she is suing to change her religion of record to Christian so that she can marry.
Now, how many of you were raised in the Lutheran church? I wasn't born a Lutheran, but my parents had compromised between my father's Congregationalist upbringing and my mother's Anglican roots and settled on the Lutheran church before I could walk. I left the Lutheran church a couple of times, first in my late teens when I just sort of fell away from the church completely for a couple of years, and later when a Quaker girlfriend led me to join the Society of Friends. I don't recall any death threats on either occasion.
To be fair, this did come up in the Christian church in medieval times, so we aren't completely without this error in our history.
Those of you who made a choice to leave another church and become a Lutheran, were you threatened? Was it actually dangerous to choose this faith?
Our own life experiences and today's lessons deal with how we choose our faith. It can be custom, as for those of us who have spent most of our lives in the same church. It can be appreciation, as was the case in the OT reading. For Peter, it's almost a matter of desperation. And for those who had been following Jesus, it was difficult.
What Jesus was saying, what the disciples said was difficult, calling them "skleros logos", literally hard words, were things that it has taken thousands of scholars hundreds of years to make sense of. I don't pretend to have a logical understanding of what happens to bits of bread and wine and how that is eating the flesh of my Savior. This is hard to comprehend, I can only imagine what it meant to the Jews of that time to be faced with both the idea that this carpenter claimed to have come from heaven and that they were to eat his body.
But in the midst of this, Jesus makes no apology. He admits, or perhaps proclaims, that coming to accept these hard words is a gift from the Father, provided by the Spirit. But there it is. Take it or leave it. For that matter, take it or leave. And many left, turning back and no longer following Jesus as he walked and preached, presumably no longer following at all.
And then there's Peter. We're never quite sure if Peter gets it in some deep and profound way or if everything he does is an accident. Here, it sounds desperate. We are used to hearing the words in isolation, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." In context, I can hear Peter saying, Well, where else can I go? What else could I do? Who else would have me? Besides, nobody else is even talking about eternal life.
As the wandering tribes of Israel had arrived in the Promised Land, Joshua calls on them to make a choice, to put aside their faith in other gods. They made a crude bargain. It was Yahweh who had led them out of Egypt. It was Yahweh that provided for them in the wilderness. It was Yahweh that did mighty signs along the way. In other words, they knew which side of their bread was buttered. We, who have probably received far more from the hand of God than they, don't have the clarity that comes from seeing those signs, nor do we have the clarity of seeing things come directly to us from divine intervention. This is a world of plenty for all, whether we believe in God or not.
But note again that Joshua reminds the Israelites of their choice. Go back to the gods your ancestors served if you wish, or serve the gods of the Amorites, or, presumably, go make up your own gods. Humans have been making up gods since time out of mind. Joshua's resounding "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord" only makes sense in the context of choice. It is tragic to make the wrong choice, but how sad it is to not have the choice to make.
How do we make the choice? How did we end up in this place, hearing these words? The Gospel goes right to the heart of that, as Jesus says "no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father". And the Epistle is clear about the armor of God, the sword of the Spirit, the value of prayer to know and to make known the mysteries of the Gospel. Not because we are bright and clever and have the intellectual prowess to see the right path, but that the Father opens the way for us and the Spirit helps us walk that way.
At every point of that walk, however, we still have the choice. We can turn away, cut ourselves off from the gifts and the love of God. If we do, no pastor or bishop will denounce us in front of the community, or drag us before a judge. If we just stop showing up, there isn't a Lutheran Truant Officer standing by to track us down, although it's unlikely that the Spirit will stop offering us another chance. The hundredth sheep is never forgotten.
In some ways this is terrible. We're frail and easily misled. We're sheep, if you have any experience of what that actually means. It isn't like we fall into a Christian path or a Lutheran slot and then just proceed without doubt or distraction to the end of our days and through the gates of pearl.
At the same time, accepting God's grace, the counsel of the Holy Spirit, and the warmth of this community, it's magnificent that we have something to do with staying on the path. How meaningless it would be to live the life of a railroad car, never able to deviate from the tracks laid down for us. There is wisdom in the quip that reminds us that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the length.
Is today the day you lose faith and no longer walk with Jesus? Clearly it wasn't, you're all still here. Could tomorrow be that day? Of course it could be. But your victory will be clear next Saturday, when you'll be here with open hearts and minds once again. It will be a triumph three years from today when these lessons are before us again. Not that we can claim full credit for the victory, not that we can celebrate the triumph thinking we did it all by our selves.
God gives us the choice. Then He gives us countless examples, His own Son and legions of saints. He provides the Spirit to comfort and counsel us. If we stay the course, there is no promise that the world will honor us as champions or that the road will be easy. But beyond the grave, because we have a choice, we shall have a victory.
And this is what we call Good News. This is the Gospel of the Lord. Amen.