Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness…

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

Sermon Text

 Welcome to a Lenten series in which we try to make sense of God’s grace. Now, at the end of all this I do not think we are going to understand every aspect of God’s grace. You cannot look at something infinitely wide and deep and then say that you somehow understand every part of it. Yet, when we look to our scripture, we are able to see in its words the fullness of what God has to offer. There is something more to God than a divine vending machine dispensing good gifts, and the full depth of God’s goodness is only seen when we really reflect on the grace of God.

Today, we look to the free way that God has given grace to this world. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of that in a second but let us look to two definitions first. Firstly, we have to consider, “What is grace?” Secondly, “What is free about grace?” The first one is best defined in John Wesley’s words. Grace is, “the mere mercy of God, through the merits of his well-beloved Son.”[1] It is any gift of God, given in mercy, to the people through the Son. This means that every good gift is an act of grace, every blessing ever received that relieves the painful parts of existence. It is more specifically a force that accounts for our sins – the impulse to commit them as well as the consequences from them. All of this, according to the merit of Jesus Christ.

This second condition is the one we begin our discussion of grace with. While the exact way Jesus saves us will be discussed next week during our Communion Service, it is important for us to identify our salvation as coming from Jesus, and not from ourselves. Not one thing about our salvation is because of what we have done, except insomuch as we agree to follow God’s guidance. From top to bottom, we are saved by Christ and not ourselves.

Reading our scripture today, Paul discusses the life of Abraham. Abraham was a mess of a man. He frequently fled from God’s call and ruined the lives of several of his children and wives in the process. Yet, God was good to Abraham and to his family. He had two. One son, Isaac, would have two more sons. One of those sons, Jacob, would have twelve sons! The generations would proceed until an entire nation was descended from him. Yet, the full promise to Abraham to, “inherit the world,” was not fulfilled in his lifetime, nor his children’s, nor even fully to this day. God had a more long term plan that required something more than just blood relation to achieve.

Paul is clear that Abraham was able to receive this blessing – incomplete though it was – because he had “faith.” This is that word in Greek we’ve talked about before, “Πιστις,” (Pistis.) It refers, not just to a blind belief but to a fully convinced trust in a thing. Abraham was shown God’s goodness and strength throughout his life and his belief in God’s goodness is what gave him faith to endure all of life’s troubles (especially the ones he inflicted on himself.) His trust, based in evidence of God’s goodness, was more than enough to secure the reality of his blessing and of his children.

Paul spends a good bit of time in Romans balancing the reality of saving faith with the reality of “law.” God’s teachings throughout the books of Moses and the Prophets are not a negative force in the world, but Paul sees them as insufficient in themselves. Moses, Abraham, the Prophets, every faithful person in history was not saved through adherence to the law but through their faith in God. The salvation they received through faith is the thing that allowed them to adhere to any part of the law. Apart from God’s grace, given to those who cling to faith, it would not be possible to complete any aspect of what God asks of us. Faith leads to doing the right thing, not the other way around.

We are inheritors of Abraham’s promise, not individually, but as the Church. Through faith, people of every race, nation, and creed have been given the chance to be children of God. This promise is where we derive our claim to “the world,” not as a conquering army, but as the meek who were promised it by Christ. This is not given to us because of what we do, but because we have faith built out of trust. God gives this saving grace freely in order to allow our response to grace to be motivated only out of love. When we have received something freely, our reaction is also a free gift. In freedom we are moved to be “joyfully obedient,” to the God who has saved us.

I look at my life and I know that I did not earn any of the good things that are in it. I only have my wife and my child because things happened only just so to let us meet. While I chose to follow the path that I was shown, it was only ever given to me through God’s grace. My call into the ministry, my family, every good gift I have received has been freely given by God, because I could never do enough to earn it. In the same way, my personal salvation, the goodness that has grown in my soul, and the ability to follow God’s commands, is not a product of anything I have done, but the free gift of God given to allow me to take action.

As we dig into our series on grace, we will see that there are many things asked of us because of our faith in God. I hope, however, that this serves as the foundation for anything else that follows. We are saved, by faith, through the grace which God has freely given to us. That is the most important lesson we can receive about God’s grace. From there we can build up an understanding of what grace is, what it does for us, and how we are meant to respond to it. Today we affirm, God has given us this free gift to our health, and from this we shall move forward into God’s goodness together. – Amen.

---

[1] John Welsey. “The Means of Grace.” In The Sermons of John Wesley. From the Wesley Center Online, available at: https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-16-the-means-of-grace/

2 Peter 1:16-21

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Sermon Text

“Myth,” is a complicated word. We often use it to talk about something that is false. If I talk about the “Mythical,” event which is buying a perfectly ripe pear from the store, you know I am saying that a perfectly ripe pear is such a fleeting reality it might as well not exist. Likewise, urban “myths,” refer to the stories that are told that are obviously false, but that persist despite evidence. Things like razorblades in apples or fentanyl on dollar bills – stories shared without evidence but believed because they sound like they could be true. A “myth,” is a falsehood… Except when it isn’t.

“Myth,” is also a technical term. Myth refers to stories about interactions between gods and humanity that explain natural phenomena. In this usage, “myth,” does not mean false, it means not scientific or historical. It is a way of talking about the world that is not verifiable through usual means, but is true to the one telling it hrough faith. The first twelve chapters of Genesis are “myth,” insomuch as they are stories that describe interactions like this. They are not untrue, but they are non-scientific or historical. They reveal a truth that is not easily grasped by people outside the faith that proclaims them.

I go through this process of explaining myth because the passage we read today tells the people of God to avoid, “cleverly devised myths.” The myth in question cannot be the second usage of the word – explaining God’s work through a story – so it must be the former usage, a false story. The word in Greek is not overly helpful for us trying to understand its meaning. “Mythos,” can refer to a false story, a rumor, or gossip – it is all contextual what the term can mean. The point of it in our passage today is that God’s people are being tricked into false stories about God that they need to recuse themselves from. A thing that we are equally likely to do today, if we are honest about our own habits.

We have already talked about the need to keep our devotion simple and to be careful in the words we listen to and the words we say. Today, as we wrap up our short series on God’s truth, we come to a more general need. We must refute false myths about God as much as we refute false teachings or narratives. We as a Church are taken in by stories that sound good, but that have no basis in our doctrine, scripture, or faith. We are sold books, movies, and interviews that claim all kinds of things about God that simply are not true.

I begin with a simple example. Every year at Christmas, a story is told in pulpits and online that wows people. It tells of the special shepherds who lived in Bethlehem, and how they would swaddle lambs and place them in mangers to protect them for sacrifice. They then, when they heard the angels say there was an infant wrapped in swaddling cloth, would know he was the Lamb of God and seek him in the place they placed their own lambs – the manger.

It’s a beautiful story… But it’s all made up. We have no evidence of even one part of the story. Yet, it remains popular. Why is that? Because it sound nice. It makes the Christmas story have an element of magic to it that the regular story does not convey. The shepherds come to worship Jesus for an esoteric reason that, now that we know it, we can also share with people. This false knowledge makes us feel like insiders to a deeper truth, even though it pushes us further from understanding.

This is not the only kind of myth like this. I have heard many stories told at funerals that are completely made up, but presented as facts. Each year at Palm Sunday an imaginary parade held by Pilate is talked about from pulpits of well-meaning ministers. Stories of people who “died” and saw Heaven are shared constantly. In our era of AI Slop, stories of miracles and holy meetings of strangers are made up and shared out without pause. We are in love with myths, with false stories that can seriously mess up our view of God and scripture. Yet, we seek them out for the feeling of comfort they give – of secret knowledge and of clearer explanations.

This is also why conspiracy theories are so popular. They provide a clear explanation of the world, while simultaneously making us feel like we know something secret that other people are missing out on. Whether it’s about vaccines, pizza places, or red dye #40; to claim secret knowledge that explains the world as having just a few problems that could be easily dealt with is incredibly appealing. One of my favorite bands, They Might be Giants, has song that explains this now. The singer, being disappointed by life, by elected officials, by the general misfortunes that befall him, cries out, “Where’s the Shadow Government, when you need them.”[1] In other words, the world would be so much less chaotic if only conspiracies were true. The chaos and trouble of this world would not be so bad, if only there was someone to blame for it.

In faith and in life generally, we do not need this kind of myth making. Truth is complicated and messy, it asks an awful lot of us, but it is worth chasing after. It will give us life in a way the easy answers we invent never could. There is freedom in truth, and there is no more beautiful and freeing truth than what our faith reveals to us – not in myth – but in reality.

You see, in truth our life is full of beautiful real stories of God’s work. Scripture tells us about the wonderful things that God has done and they do not need to be embellished. Why do we tell a false story about shepherds and swaddling cloth, when the real story is so amazing! God was born as a human baby, with all the frailty and difficulties that come from such a birth. That is amazing! We meet monthly to come to God’s table and Christ is present in the meal we eat.

We meet God, face to face, at least once a month. That’s amazing! When we die, though we lack details on what exactly it is like, we are present with God and all the Saints. That’s amazing! We do not need to embellish the work of God, because it is amazing without our editorial voice.

We have talked this month about simple truth and the importance of words. I want to tell you now about the importance of story. You have your own stories of what God has done in your life. You may think that they are not important enough or that they do not have the nice narrative structure of the stories you hear online or on the radio. Well, the truth is very few stories are so nicely dressed up as the ones put out in print. Myth creeps in, exaggerations here or simplifications there. A well-polished testimony has been streamlined to make it seem a little more magical, because the rough edges are too real, and do not play to an audience as well.

Our scripture reminds us of the stories that were told in the early church. Eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s glory. Not myths, not blemishless narratives with smoothed out edges, but the full and unedited truth of what God has done. Read the Gospels and you do not get neat stories, they are not cleanly written. There are weird details added, situations that make disciples and sometimes Jesus seem different from what we would expect. Now, look at your own life, look at what God has done. It’s not a clean story, is it? It’s messy and weird and a little complicated. Yet, there is more truth and value in sharing your story, then in a hundred books written to sell a narrative about God. You are eyewitnesses to God’s glory. Share that out.-Amen

---

[1] “The Shadow Government,” track 8 on They Might Be Giants , The Else, Idlewild Recordings, 2007.

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the testimony of God to you with superior speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed. But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”—

God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.

Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.

“For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

Sermon Text

Last week I talked about the need for us to embrace truth and for our faith to especially be rooted in Christ’s truth. This week we continue our run of services focusing on knowledge of Christ by looking at the next step in that. If we believe that the truth of Christ’s life is the foundation of our own ,then we need to come up with tools to evaluate information as we encounter it and our life as we live it. If Christ’s life, death, and resurrection changes everything, then how do we understand that change beyond merely saying “Lord, Lord!” in Church every once in a while.

Words are a powerful thing and the ones we choose can make a difference in how people respond to the thing we say. Put more simply, you can say something that is true in a way that makes people not want to believe it. You can also say something false in a way that people are immediately attracted to. You can dress up horrors unimaginable as a gift to be celebrated and you can take a wonderful thing and make it sound horrible. Words, and the words we choose to use, can make all the difference in the world.

Recently in Sunday School we talked about scripture’s insistence that we are responsible for our words more than just about anything we do. Words pour out from our heart, and if we can control them – not just the words we say but the thoughts and feelings that produce them – then we truly control every aspect of ourselves. Talk is cheap, but talk makes a difference. In it, and in our ability to speak properly of all things set before us, we are able to regulate much of our life.

Beyond what we speak, we have to think about what we hear, and the majority of people are not good at evaluating truth or worth in information. That is why advertising works, why our world is so divided on what is and is not true. It is because we as a species are not good at hearing something and evaluating its authenticity or helpfulness, outside of its presentation to us.

Paul, continuing his teachings to the Corinthians about how they must unite under shared truth rather than quibble over different teachers of that truth, doubles down on the idea that he preached a singular, simple message to them – Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of humanity. Paul adds that, in teaching this, he used as simple language as he could to express his ideas. This is not a criticism of learning or more complex conversations, Paul almost immediately says that more established Christians can have more difficult conversations, instead it is a reminder that words can often get in the way of truth and goodness. Words distract and obfuscate, even as much as they clarify and enable.

Let’s put this more simply with two examples of bad speech. If I stand up here and say, “Christ is the presence of God among us in the hypostatic perfection of deity, expressed in his shared “Theotes,” with the other members of the trinity, produced as the telos of God’s soteriological mission in the world which will be completed in the eschaton.” Then I am not failing to tell you the Gospel, but I am using words that make it infinitely harder to grasp what I mean. That translates, by the way, to “Christ is the presence of God, fully human and fully divine, in perfect unity of being and will with God the Father and the Spirit, who is both the purpose and means of God salvation, as will be completed at the end of time.” See, easier to understand if I choose better words.

The second example of speech is not something which is good being presented badly, but something bad which is presented well. Way back in the history of the world, of the Church, there came a desire to see the Levant – the space between modern day Syria and Egypt – placed under European rule. The reasons for this were part ideological, part religious, part economic. Ruling parties wanted to take the land the Eastern Roman Empire had struggled to hold onto. The result were several successive military campaigns we now call “The Crusades.”

Marching across Europe, groups began to form not only of trained militia men, but peasant soldiers persuaded by national and religious fervor that they should take part in the battles. Entire towns were sacked by these bands of soldiers, not even in their supposed enemy lands, but in their own kingdoms. Reaching the main object of their conquest, Jerusalem, armies tore through the city several times across the conflicts. Killing, indiscriminately, the people cowering within. Across the crusades, many European Christians shed the blood of their so-called enemies defending their home, but also many innocent civilians – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian blood mingled together in the shared brutality of centuries of war.

At the time, and even by some people today, these wars were regarded as holy. They were dressed as heroic attempts to reclaim the homeland of Jesus, as a chance to bring Christian rulers to Eastern World again, and to “liberate,” the people of the area. I will tell you now, no war is holy. I’ll double down on it and say, no war of aggression can be called, “right.” Yet, every war is written as necessary, good, and holy, by the people who will send other people to die for the conflict they began.

Lest we think only world shaking conflict is the source of this kind of deceit, let me tell you a smaller story. Growing up I had a youth minister who made clear to us that, to obey him was to obey God. Why? Because he listened to the Spirit, so any decision he made must be God wanting it, not him. In faith and a desire to be obedient to God, we often fell for it, hook-line-and-sinker. Many churches teach a kind of grace that sounds good, God giving us infinite chances to repent and start again, but that allows us to be critical of other people as though they are not given that chance. “If they would change X, Y, or Z, they’d be real Christians, but since they don’t they are not saved like you or me!” The argument goes, and it sounds good because it lets us be holy.”

I could go on and on, it is easy to talk about the bad parts of life. I can name a thousand different bad faith and badly argued ideas. Yet, we are not called to be better at naming the troubles of the world, although that does come with wisdom, we are called to name and live out the goodness and truth of God. So, what lessons do I have today to hep us discern truth and to speak it?

Firstly, in identifying truth. Check the way the person presenting the information is talking. Are they trying to get you angry? To upset you into turning off your critical thought, or are they asking you to receive information and do something with it? Emotional messages can convey truth, but being emotionally invested in something does not automatically make it correct. Secondly, do not react to any information immediately. Read it, listen to it, and then step away and think about it for a bit. Thirdly, do some additional research into its claims before making any sort of determination on the validity of it.

In matters of faith, there are two questions I think you can add to these steps. Firstly, does it align with a worldview founded on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Secondly, does this teaching contribute to my development of one or more fruits of the Spirit: peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control? If possible, ask two further questions – does it align with scripture? Does it align with the teachings of the Church? But those are harder to apply. Oftentimes bad ideas in the Church are steeped in scripture, and tradition is not automatically correct because it is old.

In our own lives, we must commit to the same pursuit of truth. When we speak, we ought to ask ourselves if we are speaking something true or good, or just something that feels true and good. When we share our faith, it helps to do so in simple terms, not because we cannot use more complicated terms or make more complicated claims, but because the truth of your experience of God, and of Christ crucified is the best witness you could ever offer. Finally, we should speak in a way that is peaceful, patient, kindle, gentle, and that exhibits control over ourselves.

Words, powerful, deceptive, healing, and revealing. Let us hear them, read them, and speak them well. That our words may proclaim the simplicity of our salvation. – Amen.