Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 1, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I’ve told this story elsewhere, so forgive me if you’ve heard it before. I once heard a Fundamentalist preacher on the radio waxing vociferous against the godless heathens who dared to criticize his narrow-minded, I dare say even bigoted view, of Christianity. He was particularly appalled at the notion that some of us have the audacity to express that there are contradictions within the Bible. “I can assure you,” he bellowed, “that there is not one single contradiction in God’s holy word!” My immediate thought was: Has he ever read it? There are so many contradictions in the Bible that one hardly knows where to start to list them all. I certainly won’t try to do that right now, not that I could in any event. I’ll just mention one of them that is contained in our Scripture readings for this morning.

In Romans Paul flatly says: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by [God’s] grace as a gift….” Romans 3:22b-24a NRSV The way we get right with God, in Paul’s technical language the way we are justified, is only through the grace of God and not through anything we do. In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus says “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Matthew 27:21 NRSV (emphasis added) Matthew has Jesus say that the way we get right with God, here expressed as entering the kingdom of heaven, is by doing the will of God. Which is it? Is our getting right with God simply a free gift of God’s grace? Or is our getting right with God the consequence of our own actions in doing God’s will here on earth? If the key is God’s free gift of grace, why do we have to do anything, even God’s will? If the key is doing God’s will, what does grace have to do with it? The notes I made as I pondered these questions this past week say: “This is giving me headache.” Fortunately for you, and for me, this is a Communion Sunday; and I always try to keep the sermon short on Communion Sundays. So in the interest of time, let me just cut to the what I think is the bottom line.

Paul is right. Our being in right relationship with God, our “justification,” is solely a matter of God’s free gift of grace that we neither do, can, nor need to earn. That is always the bottom line for us Protestants, as it was for Luther and Calvin. We are in right relationship with God as far as God is concerned simply because God is a God of grace who has decided to treat us as being in right relationship even when, to all appearances, we aren’t. That’s a radical statement I know, but it is for me the ultimate truth of the Christian faith. Upon that I will insist as long as I have breath.

Yet Matthew’s Jesus is right too, at least if we understand him properly. Matthew has him say that “only those who do the will of my Father in heaven” are in right relationship with God. Yet as I pondered these words last week I came up with at least one instance in which that cannot be true. It is the instance of people who, because of disease, old age, or disability are no longer able to “do the will of my Father in heaven,” or maybe they never were. What of the elderly person who was never a believer who received a terminal diagnosis and then has essentially a death bed conversion that gives her peace and courage as she walks the last steps of her life on earth? Is she not right with God? Of course she is. She always was, although she probably didn’t know it. She doesn’t have to earn her way into the kingdom of heaven by doing anything. She’s already there.

So does that let those of us who are able to act on our faith in the world off the hook? By no means! Jesus’ words in our reading from Matthew say to me that God’s call to us is not simply to sit here and believe when we are capable of doing more. God needs us to do God’s will in the world. Who else is going to do it? When we are young enough, and sharp-minded enough, and able-bodied enough, God does call us to do God’s will in works of caring for those in need and in works of striving for justice and peace in God’s world. When we are able to do them, these works on behalf of God not only advance the Kingdom, they solidify our own faith. When we truly engage the world on behalf of the will of God, our faith deepens and strengthens. A lifetime of sitting idly and passively believing, when we are capable of more, will lead to an atrophy of faith. Then, when we get that terminal diagnosis and need the peace and strength the faith can give, it may well not be there. Our house will turn out to be built on sand, as Jesus says. The trials of our life will wash it away, and great will be its fall. Yes, when we can we are indeed called to do God’s will in the world, for God’s sake and for our own.

So which is it? Well, it all depends. God’s grace is always sufficient, and for some people in some of life’s infinite variety of circumstances simply relying on God’s grace is all that God demands of us. But for other people in other circumstances the call is to action, to doing God’s will in the world. Paul and Matthew’s Jesus are both right, as contradictory as their words may seem. And that is very good news indeed. God’s grace is always our free gift. It is always everyone’s free gift. Yet God calls those of us who are able to do so to work in the world on God’s behalf. When we do what we can, our faith grows; and our house is founded on the solid rock of Jesus Christ. God provides what we need in every circumstance of life, be that the peace that grace brings or the challenge that grace brings. For that we can indeed give God our thanks and praise. Amen.