Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 27, 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.

Sometimes the Bible can be pretty scary, can’t it. Take the last of the several little parables we just heard from the Gospel of Matthew, the one about the net and the fish. The author of the Gospel of Matthew—whoever he was—attributes this parable to Jesus, but according to the Jesus Seminar at least it isn’t really an authentic saying of Jesus. The Jesus Seminar says the parable reflects not the teachings of Jesus but “the necessity of the young Christian movement to mark off its boundaries from the larger world, hence the interest in sorting out the good from the bad.”¹ Be that as it may, there it is, in the Bible, in the New Testament, in one of the Gospels; and it’s really scary. It says that the Kingdom of God is like a fish net that traps both good fish and bad. At the end of time God’s agents will separate the good from the bad and will throw the bad “into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:50 Now, I don’t know about you; but I’m not all that certain that in such a scenario I’d be accounted one of the good fish. It seems to me at least as likely that I’d be one of the bad ones cast into the furnace of fire, left there to weep and gnash my teeth for all eternity. It’s a scary thought; and, frankly, it doesn’t really help all that much that the Jesus Seminar says that this isn’t the authentic voice of Jesus. It’s still scary.

So, I have to ask: Am I left to live in fear of eternal damnation? After all, I know full well that Paul is talking about me when he says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23 And the author of 1 John is talking about me when he says “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8 Which seems to make me one of the bad fish, doesn’t it? Does that mean I’m doomed and maybe all of you are too?

I suspect that most of you know by now that I don’t actually believe that it means that I and perhaps you are doomed at all, and indeed I don’t. The primary reason that I don’t despite the compelling argument that can be made based on Matthew’s parable that I should is found in our other New Testament reading this morning. It is found specifically in Romans 8:38-39. As I was drafting this sermon last Thursday afternoon I called that passage “our other Gospel reading” not “our other New Testament reading”, and I had to correct my text. That was a Freudian slip because, you see, Romans 8:38-39 is indeed for me the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have said on many occasions that those verses are the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that everything else is mere commentary. I put those verses at the very beginning of my book, before I’d written a word of text; and one way to look at that forthcoming book is that all of it is mere commentary on those verses.

We just heard Manny read them, and I put them at the head of your bulletin this morning; but it’s more than worth hearing them again. Romans 8:38-39 says:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Think about those lines for a minute. Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God! Nothing! It’s an amazing claim. There nothing, nothing at all, not anything that happens in life nor even death itself that can separate us from the love of God.

But there’s a problem here, isn’t there? What about those bad fish of Matthew’s parable? It’s a stretch at best to say that when they’re thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth that they haven’t been separated from the love of God. If you say that somehow God casting them into eternal torment is some kind of expression of God’s love for them—and Christians have made that fantastic claim for centuries—it makes God’s love pretty meaningless, or so it seems to me. So isn’t the Gospel of Matthew saying that there is something in all creation that can separate us from the love of God? Indeed that Gospel says—and not only in this parable but in many places—that God will condemn bad behavior at the end of time by casting evil doers and even those who simply neglected to do good into the furnace of fire (or into the outer darkness) where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. “Where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” is Matthew’s favorite phrase. I understand the author to mean that these poor souls will be weeping and gnashing their teeth precisely because they have been separated from the love of God.

And let’s be honest here. Although that way of looking at it may be scary if we apply it to ourselves, on some level it’s rather satisfying, isn’t it. I mean, I’m sure we can all identify people whom we’d very much like to see thrown into the furnace of fire to suffer for all eternity. At least, I know that I have no trouble identifying such people, both people I’ve encountered in my personal life and public figures from both other countries and our own. We might not all agree on who these people should be, but I’ll bet we’ve all got a list of them or could easily come up with one. It’s a natural human desire to see people we think of as bad be punished while we ourselves of course are rewarded for our essential goodness.

But once again there’s a problem with this way of seeing things, isn’t there. I’ve already suggested what it is. If we have to be good, if we really have to be pure and righteous in order not to be separated from the love of God, we’re all in really big trouble. We don’t have to agree with John Newman, the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” that we’re “wretches” to grasp the truth of the Christian teaching that there has ever been only one person completely free of sin—and it’s not one of us. Beyond that, the way the parable of the net and the fish sees things, God’s love isn’t a matter of grace. It’s a matter of punishment and reward. Yet Christianity has always taught that God is a God of grace, and the God of Matthew’s parable, it seems to me, simply is not a God of grace at all.

So what are we left with? We’re left with a choice. We can see God as a judgmental God of reward and punishment who casts those who don’t measure up away from God’s presence and love. Or we can see God as a God of grace who assures us through God’s prophet Paul that nothing we ever do or don’t do, and nothing that ever happens to us, will be able to separate us from God’s love. Put another way, we can choose to live in fear of God and God’s righteous judgment, or we can choose to live in peace, secure in our trust in God’s unfailing love and grace.

Which of course raises the question of how we are to choose. The alternative of grace is a lot more appealing, but that doesn’t necessarily make it true. So how are we to choose? I’ll tell you how I choose. I know that God would have every reason to treat me like one of Matthew’s bad fish. I know that if I have to earn God’s love I’m doomed. I can’t do it, and like Martin Luther I know I can’t do it. Yet I have experienced God’s love for me in my life. I know from my own spiritual experience that God loves me anyway. I have felt God’s love for me in my times of greatest need. I have experienced God holding me in the arms of grace despite my sin. And I’ve heard and read the stories of lots of other people who say the same thing. There is a common human experience that God loves us anyway, and I have shared that experience. That’s how I know that Paul is right and Matthew is wrong. That’s how I know that God’s grace will never fail me and that I can trust God’s love without reservation. I’ve experienced it. Other people have experienced it, and that experience rings true. Perhaps you have experienced it too. Even if you haven’t, I know that you can if you’ll just open yourself to the possibility.

Oh,I know where Matthew is coming from. Maybe the Jesus Seminar is right that this parable is all about the early Christian community’s need to set its boundaries against the world. As an historian I get that. Beyond that, I know how appealing it is psychologically for a community to see itself as the good people and its opponents as the bad people. It’s easy enough to turn that psychological phenomenon into a supposed spiritual truth and to project our dichotomy of the good and the bad onto God—with we ourselves always being the good, of course. But I also know because I and other people have experienced it that that way of thinking is indeed nothing but a projection of our human ways onto God. But you see, God isn’t petty like we are. God is big enough to extend grace to all people. Paul got it right. God has reason to condemn us, but God loves us anyway. I know because I and so many other people have experienced God’s grace despite our glaring lack of purity and righteousness that indeed nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And for that we can truly give God our thanks and praise. Amen.

¹ The Five Gospels, 197