Sermon archive

This blog contains sermons listed by date, Bible passage and title

Name:
Location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Pentecost 4 4/16/13

Pentecost 4 6/16/13 Text: Galatians 2:15–21; 3:10–14 Title: Life after Death Over the last few weeks we have had a lot of dying in our congregation. You have heard me say that the Bible is about preparing for your death, so that you will have a good death. So today using God’s Word I want to talk about more dying; the dying that happens in our baptism. Paul writes in verse 20 of his letter to the Galatian Christians, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” These are some of the most compelling of humbling words that have ever been written. Crucified with Christ, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Proud self-righteous Paul, an enemy of God, although he would have argued the point back when he was persecuting Christians, was struck blind by God on his way to persecute Christians at Damascus. Paul, an enemy of God, actually at this time he was still named Saul, blind and helpless, and probably terrified, waited and waited in a house he was not familiar with, for something to happen. And then it did. God touched him again, not like he did the first time when he blinded him and knocked him off of his horse. God touched him in a softer, gentler way through the trembling words of a reluctant Christian named Ananias. Ananias, who flat out did not want to talk to Paul was the conduit of God’s grace through Paul, for you see up to Ananias coming to him Paul was living under the law of God. Living under the law, as it is for many Christians today, did not bother Paul, for, as we are told elsewhere in God’s Word he thought he was doing a good job living under God’s Law, especially as it had come to be defined by the priests. Paul terrified and helpless after his encounter with God that day felt through the words and touch of Ananias, the grace of God. Physically he regained his vision. For the first time in his life he Spiritually Paul now saw things more clearly than he had ever seen them before. Paul saw the pointlessness of his life lived up to that point. He saw the emptiness that life was without the crucified and resurrected Jesus. Paul went from being spiritually blind to spiritually seeing. In other words Paul saw that Jesus, is truly the only way, the truth and life. Paul was ready to be baptized and brought into God’s Church. So when Ananias called for some water and poured it on his head and spoke the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit over him, Paul died. He had been crucified with Christ. He no longer lived. And yet the story continues, for Paul needed to learn more about Jesus. Ananias taught Paul about Jesus. Paul then went out into the wilderness area for a period of time, to be taught by God. We know that he spent three years after that in Damascus. And when God was ready, it is thought to have been about 8 years after his conversion Paul rightly understood what it meant to die and live in Christ, for it is the story of the God of the Resurrection. The old life is gone and the new life has begun. Paul during that time came to know how closely death and life are intertwined in Jesus. When Ananias was with Paul, he told him how much he was going to suffer for Jesus. And he did. Paul wrote down for us how much he suffered in his ministry and then tells us, the strangest thing, how much he rejoiced in the suffering, because he learned that God through suffering reshapes weakness and brokenness and fashions it into something special. He forms it into cross-shaped service, the life of a Christian. Maybe you’ve seen it. Here are some examples of cross shaped service that I have seen through the years. Somewhere near the back of a sanctuary sits a woman who would have once called herself “his wife” and now lives a life mostly defined by being “his caretaker.” On her darkest days, she could easily say, as so many do today, “This isn’t what I signed up for.” You don’t usually hear her talk like that, though you wouldn’t blame her if she did. Her friends and family members, once they got tired of saying how proud they were of her, to know a woman like her, started saying, “I couldn’t live like that. I mean, in sickness and in health is one thing, but how long can you just give up your life like that?” But she continues to care for her husband; for you see she knows what it means to be crucified with Christ, to have died with him in her Baptism. She recognizes like Paul that Jesus “loved me and gave himself for me.” That my dear brothers and sisters in Christ makes difficult things into sacred tasks, into opportunities to sacrifice and lay down one’s own life and serve God by serving someone else. She no longer lives, but Christ lives in her. She gets only a couple hours a week to herself, and surprisingly to some, she spends one of those hours in God’s house praying that God would forgive her for her weakest thoughts and empower her weakest moments. And she knows he always does, for Christ was first crucified for her. He always takes care of her needs. And she lives in the joy of Christ’s love even as others pity her and her burden. Then there is probably somewhere else in that same sanctuary a pair of grandparents who had worked hard their whole lives. Who had made tremendous plans for their retirement. They worked hard to get their own children through school. And as soon as they renovated those extra bedrooms into a study and workout room and made plans to travel extensively, they got that call from their child. Their marriage was falling apart. And because of this reason and that reason help was needed so that food and shelter could be provided for their child, and there was a need to have the grandparents to baby sit during the day. Grandma’s purse hadn’t carried Cheerios to church for almost thirty years. Grandpa liked hanging with the guys in the narthex until just before the bell rang. They both had gotten accustomed to a clean and quiet pew. They liked sitting, just the two of them, holding hands and listening to God’s Word and singing hymns. Now they spend that hour wrestling with their grandchild. And though once in a while they wonder why all proverbs found in the Bible concerning the raising of children don’t seem to apply all the time. They saw the importance of speaking the creeds and saying the Lord’s Prayer into the ears of another generation. They are, not surprisingly, usually tired on Sunday afternoon. And though they would confess that this is not how they pictured life after kids, they give thanks in their opportunity to join in the confession of faith that Paul teaches today, that though they no longer live, Christ lives in and through them. Futures are planned and prepared for. And then in one blink of an eye; a phone call is received. One phone call, one diagnosis, one interrupted journey and the world seem to be turned upside down and falling apart. Most of you know what I mean, for if you have lived any length of time you know how the best-laid plans go so unpredictably awry. We know how life can be and yet, standing at the foot of the cross and kneeling before God at his holy Supper we see the truth of Paul’s confession, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” We see that lives lost in Jesus get resurrected and formed into something actually worth living. We see that encounters with the risen Jesus changes people. We see those things for good reason, for at the cross Jesus redefines things like forgiveness, strength, love, and service. At the cross he reshapes you and me. At the cross he listens to your confession of sins and forgives you, setting you free to live the life he wants you to live, a life of living in his grace. You too can now proclaim as Paul did, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Amen.