Swine Skins and the Savior's Skin

This sermon is the final in a series of sermons based on Galatians and the assigned gospel readings for the day. Read the passages at Galatians 3:23-29 and Luke 8:26-39. The sermon was preached at St. James Lutheran Church in Johnston, Iowa, on June 18-19, 2016, while I was filling in for their pastor who was on a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago de Campostela in northern Spain.

I apologize in advance and provide you with a trigger warning. There’s nudity in this sermon today. But that’s how it has to be. If Paul’s going to talk about being clothed in Christ in his Galatians letter, we’re going to have to deal with our sartorial state before Christ wrapped himself around us. And just in case you were wondering, this weekend marks the annual World Naked Bike Ride. In 70 places around the globe, people strip and go for a ride on a course through the city to protest the automobile culture and car emissions, build awareness of how dangerous it is to bike around traffic, and, of course, keep potential thieves from ever wanting to touch their bicycle saddles. Although the guy in our gospel reading shares his lack of attire with the naked bike riders, that’s about as far as we can go in spotting similarities.

There he is in the same state he came into the world, but he had made no choice to be unclothed. What’s more, he’s also got a demonic spirit that’s taken him over, and he’s been shunted out of town to keep the danger away from good folks. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the only place he has to live in the tombs. Two weeks ago we saw what being around a dead body could do, when we heard about Jesus approaching the bier of the dead man in Nain as his funeral processed through town. To touch a dead person was to be declared unclean, unfit for human company. But Jesus had no fear of it in Nain, and he doubles down when he comes to the man possessed of evil and as good as dead. We keep getting these stories from Luke in which the characters are either headed to the grave or are already dead. When it comes to being able to present something worthy to Jesus, they've got nothin': the centurion, the dead son of Nain, the sinful woman with the alabaster jar of oil and now the Gerasene demoniac whose life is so over that he spends his days in the tombs.

As we’ve seen in Galatians these past few weeks, for Paul there’s nothing we can do to get it right with God. When he says we’re not saved by works of the law, he’s arguing that if salvation is to be had, it has to come by the sheer grace of God in the person of Jesus. The only thing the law can do is to protect our neighbors from us, keeping us and them safe by acting as a disciplinarian. All the law can do is put a leash on us and guide us. But it can’t get us over the finish line. If we think being good or nice or religious, voting Clinton or voting Trump or even voting Libertarian, or any other action on our part can save us – even the best thing we can think of – we’re sadly mistaken. For Paul, we’re dead in sin and can’t raise ourselves. We may be breathing and our hearts may be beating, but other than that we’re a bag of bones waiting to be packed off to the nearest two-and-a-half foot by eight-foot hole.  We can’t dress ourselves up in anything that meets the high demand of the heavenly dress-code. Those of you who are old enough may remember the ads for the Dream Date game when we were kids. The girls in the commercial would ask the question, “Will he be a dream date? Or will he be a dud?” That’s us: the dud. But even if we got dolled up, a corpse in a prom dress is still a corpse. A tuxedo won’t make a dead guy live. The demands of this world and the requirements of the law can only take us to the point where, once again, the only thing the characters in Luke can say is "Got nothin', God." They’re as naked as the guy in the Gerasene tombs. And so are we.

But once we know our situation, now comes the “Rock of Ages” moment for all involved. You may remember the words to the old hymn that we’ll sing in a few minutes: "Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to Thy cross I cling; / Naked, come to Thee for dress; / Helpless, look to Thee for grace." Jesus won't let us dress ourselves, because every bit of apparel we could find to put on reeks of the tombs. The naked guy, hounded by demons and lost in the tombs, stands there with not enough power to climb out of the tomb, push the demon out of him, and go home. And ironically that’s the point when the Gerasene man and the Galatians are clothed and fully free of the bound will that possessed them.

The possessed guy in the Gerasene territory isn’t the only one in the story who’s getting a change of attire. Legion – that host of demons possessing the nude, tomb-resident? Legion, who controls the man to the point of tossing places into places where injury is only the best result, was wrapped up in the man, controlling him from the inside. But Jesus gives evil a new skin inside a raft of barrows and gilts — a herd of hogs. The swine were unclean for the Jews, as untouchable as the dead son in Nain and the demoniac living among rotting corpses. And Jesus sends them over a cliff to drown, as dead as the bison piled up at the bottom of a Native American buffalo jump. Where Jesus is present, evil dies. And so do the legalistic dividing lines between Greek and Jew, slave and free, male and female, and any other demarcation between insiders and outsiders, godly and ungodly, iustus et peccator (as Luther said). But you? Now you are wrapped up in Christ's skin. He pulls open the spear wound in his side and slips his skin over you. There's no longer any you old you left. You're as done as a left-for-dead demoniac. The life you now have is hid in Christ. There's only his purity, his life, his utter faithfulness, his place at God's right hand, his very name that is now yours.

Our friends Bob and Carole are visiting us this weekend. Bob is the pastor at St. Dysmas Lutheran Church. That’s our sister congregation behind the walls of the South Dakota State Penitentiary. It’s named after St. Dysmas, the thief crucified next to Jesus and who hear the Lord say, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” All the congregation’s members are inmates. Every single one of them has run afoul of the law. They’ve committed crimes against the state and against their fellow human beings (some of them pretty horrendous). If you attend worship with the prisoners on a Thursday evening, you’ll shake about ten hands as the men of the church council greet you, and you’ll see that everyone who’s rung out of their cells and shuffles past the guard to check in to be continually accounted for is wearing tan scrubs. There are four-inch letters on back of their shirts and on down their pants legs that say either “inmate” or “maximum security.”

One of the prisoners whose name is Christopher talks about how in prison you never get away from a sense of worthlessness, because you put on those clothes and instantly feel like nothing. Christopher says it can overwhelm you. People feel it in the cell halls and bring everyone around them down. Outside of the chapel where worship happens or with an encounter with their pastor, my friend Bob, or with another faithful prisoner, they can never escape being identified by the worst thing they’ve ever done. Inside those walls your life no longer belongs to you. It’s over. The law holds sway. You go where you’re told. You eat the worst food you can imagine, at the least cost to the Department of Corrections, and the citizens of South Dakota. When a corrections officer demands something of you, you do it or you get sent to the SHU, the special housing unit where you’re kept isolated and where you can’t do any harm. These men of St. Dysmas would read Galatians and get what Paul’s talking about. They’ve put on tan scrubs that essentially the death of them. Worship at St. Dysmas is the only hour each week where they’re called by their first names. Otherwise they’re known by their surnames, by a number or by “Hey, Inmate!” Christopher himself looks back on his time prior to prison as a dead-end going nowhere and without any kind of life. Another prisoner named Justin says you don’t get where they are by living in the light. They’ve lived darkness. Hard, hard darkness for lots of them.

I’ve been privileged to preach and teach at St. Dysmas, and I have to say there’s no easier place to proclaim the gospel. What makes it easy is that no one there is under the illusion that there’s some part of them that’s immune from judgment. Wearing those tan scrubs is a constant reminder. They don’t get to pretend like we do that the face they present to the world is find-and-dandy. They’re inmates, plenty of ‘em lifers. They’re just the kind of sinners Paul liked preaching to. And they’re especially the kind of people Jesus loved: an unworthy centurion, a dead man in Nain, a sinful women with a jar of oil, a demon-possessed guy in Gerasene, and you. This word of God from Luke and Galatians becomes a story about you, not when your starting point is how good you are. It begins at the place where you finally recognize the emptiness of sin and death.

What happens to those brothers in Christ at the South Dakota Pen when they climb up the stairs to the chapel up on fifth floor is remarkable. Walking into worship for them is like walking out of a tomb once a week. When Christopher was baptized a couple years ago, he became part of the body of Christ. That’s the place where the law can have no say. It can no longer strip them bare of identity, take away hope, or demand utter obedience, for now they are clothed in Christ. And Christ will brook no other competition when it comes to you. If you are in Christ, Paul says in Romans, nothing can separate you from the love of God, neither height nor depth, things present nor things to come, nor angels, nor principalities, nor anything else in all creation. Where before you were wrapped in grave clothes or tan scrubs at best, now Paul says you are clothed in Christ. And in those splendid resurrected duds, you be lookin’ mighty fine.

When Jesus tells the newly-freed man and you to go home and declare what God had done, it's no mission to fix the world. And it certainly isn’t some job description for how to stay cleaned up and purdy. The both of you are being sent back into the world that knows no resurrection, that knows no new life, that cannot be released from life under the law’s thumb. Instead what Jesus bids us to do is exactly what Luther talked about in the first of his 95 Theses: "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ bids us to repent, he intends an entire life of repentance." To declare what God has done is to continually confess: "I got nothin'. I couldn't get it right. I couldn't fix it. I still can't. The old me? There but for the grace of God do I now go. Christ has come to me when I was still dead and keeps giving me life. Helpless, I was given everything. Since my life comes in him alone, I can't be honest if I don't point to him. I may have come home, but it's life from Jesus that's striding through the front door."

I have to say that St. Dysmas Lutheran Church is one of the most vital ministries of the entire ELCA. And it’s certainly the warmest, most welcoming congregation I’ve ever worshiped in. Though it we in the church have been sent behind the walls of the prison to declare what God has done. (And let me tell you, if you’ve got money you want to be used for good, St. Dysmas is a place where it’ll matter. You don’t get a lot in the offering plate when most of your church members make twenty-five cents an hour.) But every place where we member of the body of Christ engage the world, we do it not to fix the world. We simply don’t have the wisdom or the willingness to really do that. But what actually do in the church with our service to our neighbors is to give witness to the freedom that’s been given on account of Christ. We declare by our letting go of the things we idolize like power and money, security and status, that Christ has clothed us.

That’s why we dress babies up in white gowns when they’re baptized. That’s why pastors wear a white alb. That why, when we are at last rolled into this place on our backs for one final worship service, our coffin is draped in a white funeral pall. It’s why the color of any church festival dealing with the resurrected Jesus or with our resurrection is white. Again and again and again, as we open our closet doors to look for something that’ll make us look nice and declare us acceptable, the gospel calls us back to say, “Nope. You’re dead. But now you’re alive in Christ. You’ve got better clothes by the best designer ever to get suited up in. You were naked, but now you’re clothed in Christ. Those are party clothes. Let’s go declare what he’s done.” Amen.

Calling a killer what he is

Following the Orlando terrorist attack, there's been plenty of social media and political hay made of whether we call the killer an "extremist Islamic terrorist" or an "extremist homophobic terrorist." In the midst of the conversation someone argued that we have to use the former label because it accurately represents who the attacker was and because we Lutherans (to use a phrase of Luther's) "call a thing what it is."

It's important to address things directly. But using Luther's words as a rationale is to bend his phrase to a purpose he didn't intend. Luther wasn't talking about truth-telling in regard to matters of the kingdom on the left. If we want language for that, it's better to take up the 8th commandment where testifying honestly is the focus. But Luther is after bigger fish (theological sturgeons, I think).

The language of calling a thing what it is comes from Thesis 21 of Luther's Heidelberg Disputation. He's referring to an earlier thesis in the disputation where he discounts the assertions that works ("doing what is in you to do" — especially doing the good work of participating in the church's sacramental life to gain merit) apply to salvation and that free will is anything other than a fiction..

So in Thesis 21 when he says "The 'theologian of glory' calls the bad good and the good bad," he means that they see good works as meritorious and the Cross is foolishness, They can't imagine that God could work in Christ's suffering or in ours. He continues that "the 'theologian of the cross' says what a thing is." This theologian regards Christ as having taken care of it all on Calvary. Then in Thesis 25 he shows himself to be a theologian of the cross: "The one who does much 'work' is not the righteous one, but the one who, without 'work,' has much faith in Christ."

So what Luther does with this language is to draw the distinction between what is Christ (the only one who saves) and what is Not-Christ (everything else in all of Creation including the best things we could think of, none of which can save). And it all comes down to who it is that receives your trust.

That's Luther for you. He takes me right to the brink of needing a preacher. He forces me to admit that none of my schemes that I think are going to secure my future (whether, in the current conversation, they come from either the Left or the Right, including eliminating a certain category of weapon or bomb the hell out of the Islamic State) has the power to do what God's will really is or provide any real, trustworthy safety.

So Luther moves in the direction of Romans 10 by delivering Christ in a way that creates new hearts and the new obedience that come with faith — and which engender the fruits of the spirit on the part of my enemies that are what I'm really after in dim vision of peace through vengeance. Thus, Luther tells us, "The law says: 'Do this!', and it never is done. Grace says: 'Believe in this one!', and forthwith everything is done."

If I truly want a change in my enemies, although they seek to use the Law of terror, threats, and murder to force me into their religious camp, for instance, the faithful response is not more of the same (the move of a theologian of glory) but a bestowal of the gospel (the calling of a theologian of the cross) that brings the barely imaginable future of the lion lying down with the lamb, toddlers playing safely near Florida alligators, and me and my neighbor being raised from the dead.

John Oliver, Christ-figure, and Jesus, debt-forgiver

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight

This continues a sermon series on Paul's letter to the Galatians preached at St. James Lutheran Church in Johnston, Iowa, on June 11-12, 2016. It's based on Galatians 2:15-21 and Luke 7:36-8:3.

 

Grace to you and peace my friends, from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I’m thankful for the chance to preach all these weeks in a row on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. As I’ve worked through Paul’s argument with my Grand View students in my Christian Faith and Life course at least two or three times a school year, it’s become my favorite book of the Bible. It’s all because Paul makes an argument that tears away any pretense I have of confecting my own future or of putting together my own set of proofs for why God should look at me and be what the psalmist says, “Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

That’s because, as we’ve seen the past two weeks, Paul established that it’s Christ and Christ alone who saves me. Christ does it without my own merit, effort, or understanding. What he endured on the cross was absolutely for me, and I’m now the beneficiary who’s destined to receive the inheritance of new and eternal life with him. Two weeks ago, we heard Paul talk about the “false gospel” of trying to add something to what Christ accomplished for me. Even if it’s something as good as circumcision was for a Jew like Paul or personal devotions and weekly worship are for Christians today, if it’s Not-Christ we’re looking to for our life, our future, our hope, then you’ve lost it all. Christ is enough, Paul says.

And when Paul’s opponents who came to Galatia from Jerusalem demanded his credentials, last week we heard Paul counter that, when Christ is all in all for us, we don’t need no stinkin’ credentials. Paul’s response to the demand for proof of his authority is that he has none. Paul understood himself as being dead in sin, and all he has to present is Jesus himself. For Paul, doing nothing and having nothing means that Christ’s glory can break forth.
C
Now in today’s reading from Galatians, Paul gets to the heart of the matter. He uses a phrase that has marked Lutherans since the 16^th century. “We are justified by faith.” Paul's Jewish Christian opponents from Jerusalem told the Galatians that they needed to follow Jewish religious laws. Jesus and the disciples were Jews, and if you’re going to belong to Jesus you need to become one as well. Task number one for the Galatians, then, was for the uncircumcised pagan men among the Galatian believers to submit to the knife.

Paul is brilliant in his response. If his opponents are going to trot out some supposed religious requirement from Jewish law that Jesus supposedly wants you to fulfill, then Paul will use his opponents’ own scriptures and history to show that they’ve got it all wrong. That’s why he begins this section of the letter by saying, “We ourselves are Jews by birth, and not Gentile sinners…” He’s saying that he and his fellow missionaries to the Gentiles are Jews. They’re no fools. They know exactly what’s required and what isn’t. So he puts a different spin on his opponents’ case. They want adherence to the law. They want the Galatians to act rightly to get what Jesus has to offer. Paul calls that “works of the law.” They’re functioning according to an if/then view of the world: If you do this, then you’ll get the reward. If you don’t do it, then you’ll receive the punishment, if only having the good thing you want withheld.

In this case, what we want is Christ’s benefits – his life, forgiveness, and deliverance from sin, death, and the devil. Paul uses the legal term “justification” as short hand for all those good things. And he says you don’t get ‘em by being good enough, nice enough, strong enough, financially sound enough, religious enough, buff enough, pure enough, or anything else enough. To ask you to do anything for your justification and salvation would be to do the same thing Paul’s opponents did to him. It would require you to come to the throne of God and present a credential, in this case a to-do list for so-called “good Christians” with all the required boxes checked off.

The problem with doing good works to get what Christ has to offer is that it shifts the focus from what Jesus did on the cross to what you do in your life. It basically says that our Lord’s crucifixion is not enough. God needs something glorious and wonderful from someone glorious and wonderful like you. It says that the promise Christ gave on the cross to the thief and to you, that you would see him in paradise, is not enough. Some proof is needed that you’ve decided you really want it or that you deserve what he came to give. But Paul says, “No. Don’t even start down that road. It’s Christ or nothing at all. He needs nothing from you and wants you to keep your good works for someone who can use them. But if you want to try to make your case to God, then let me warn you that every word of your argument will turn out to be just another way of declaring that Christ died for no good reason. Why should he have bothered with all that gore and suffering and pain if your actions were what really did the trick?”

Then Paul says an odd thing. He says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul declares he’s as dead as the widow’s son in Nain last week and as unworthy as the centurion the week before that. “When it comes to the proper proof that I deserve what Jesus says I have coming to me, I’ve got nothing. My pockets are empty. My bank account is in arrears. And I’m as good as dead. The only life I can count on belongs to Jesus.” It's an admission of unfaith and a confession of faith at the same time. 

Paul knows that his past, his history, his abilities, and his religious good behavior (or lack of it) all add up to one thing: a bottom line that’s in the red. No matter what he does, it’s all going to end up in the emptiness of the grave and Paul left wanting. But Paul also knows that in Christ he has something better than anything he could concoct himself. He preached to the Galatians about it when he was among them. And now he gives that one good thing again. He gives them a Lord whose modus operandi is forgiveness. Where’s he’s headed in the letter is to tell the Galatians that they’re home free. They’ve won the salvation lottery, and whatever debt their sin left them owing to God has been erased.

This wasn’t just pie-in-the-sky-in-the-sweet-by-and-by for Paul. It was actual life for him, because that’s how forgiveness works. When your sin and your past have added up to nothing and marked you as undeserving of anything from any good god, then Christ’s forgiveness comes to bestow a future on you. When someone forgives you, they’re basically saying to you that your past actions and undeserving character will not bind them. The one who forgives tells you that you have a new future and a new life that is not tied to your history or your present circumstances. Now the future of your relationship together will be determined by the forgiver. Your life from this point on is not ginned up by your abilities or good intentions or ruefulness and regret. It now comes solely from your forgiver. And if Christ is the one who forgives you, then the life you have from that point on comes not on your own account, which is bankrupt, but from Jesus. The life you live, you now live in him.

Our gospel reading today gets us to the same place. The sinful woman who anointed Jesus feet with oil was spurned by the Pharisees Jesus was eating with, because she hadn’t met the mark of proper behavior. She was one of those people who did things we should talk about in church. She wasn't religious enough or pure enough to enter a Simon the Pharisee’s home and sooth Jesus’ tired feet, let alone to be in good standing with God. But Jesus got right into the face of his religious do-gooder host. By telling his parable about the two debtors that are forgiven, he pointed a finger at the Pharisee's lack of charity toward the woman and their self-regard as religious law-keepers. The only reason he could look down his nose at the woman is that he thought he stood above her on the holiness scale. Not only did that allow him to judge her, but it also kept him from looking to Christ as the very present help in trouble he wants to be. She had all the forgiveness and mercy the Lord has to give, because she had no problem fessing up to being a sinner. The Pharisees missed the mercy boat, and Jesus declared their accounts to be as wanting as the worst sinner's bottom line.

If Jesus wants me to be like the sinful woman, then after 36 years, I guess it’s okay to finally come clean. It can’t hurt me anymore, but it is true. I once contributed my fingerprints and mug shot to the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I bought a James Taylor album without money in my checking account my first sophomore year of college. I got an overdraft notice with its accompanying surcharge. A couple months later, while I was working at Bible camp that summer, I got a registered letter from the record store, telling me my debt would be turned over to a collection agency and they would press charges if I didn’t immediately send them a registered check for the amount I owed. My first day off, I got to the bank post haste and sent them my payment. 

I assumed everything was copacetic. Months later, though, I came back to my dorm room in Granskou Hall at Augustana College, and my roommate Bruce told me the police had been there to arrest me for an insufficient funds check. He said I needed to go to the police station to turn myself in. There a very kind and patient officer rolled my fingers across an ink pad twice in order to send the FBI their copy and stood me in front of a camera. Snap. Turn. Snap. Bail money was paid. A court date was set a month later. I stood before the judge and plead guilty. I paid the fine and court costs, and now, truly, that was that. But I still have a stupid record that comes of lack of impulse control and not knowing how to manage money. And when Jesus talks about the consequences of debt and the hope of forgiveness, it’s not an abstraction. It’s a real thing. I need what he has to give.

The last week or so I’ve seen a viral video that keeps getting shared on my Facebook timeline. It’s a clip from John Oliver’s satirical news program Last Week Tonight on HBO.(Watch the video here.) In it he totally demolishes the multi-billion-dollar debt-buying industry. He tells the story of a couple whose medical needs created $70,000 in unpayable debt over and above what their insurance would cover. With that kind of debt, the creditor you owe money to can sell it to a debt-buyer for pennies on the dollar (and take a hefty tax deduction at the same time). The debt-buyer assumes the debt and can go to extreme lengths to collect on the debt – even if it’s been forgiven by the original debt-holder, paid off, or past the statute of limitations. The tactics the debt-buyers often use are abominable. My family’s finances when I was growing up were shaky at best, and I have unfond memories of fielding debt-collection phone calls. But that’s nothing compared to the threats and underhanded methods debt-buyers can use. But that’s not all. Because debt-buyers can sell your debt to another debt-buyer for more cents on the dollar. The debt-buyers don’t even have to know anything about what the debt was, what your circumstances are, or anything else. All they get is a spreadsheet with your name and address, Social Security numbers, and amount of debt. And they go to town. Anyone caught in the cycle is in real trouble.

So here’s what John Oliver and his crack production team did: They went online, paid fifty bucks to the state of Mississippi, and created a debt-buying corporation. In no time at all they received an offer from another debt-buyer that would let them purchase $15 million dollars in medical debt from Texas that was past the statutory limit. And they only had to pay $60,000 for it. That’s a half-cent for every dollar of debt they bought. By doing it, they had the authority to go after the debtors, even though it was all zombie debt – debt that had no real life but had come back to haunt them. The return on investment could be huge if they wanted to collect. 

That’s the position Jesus says both the sinful woman and the Pharisees were in – and that you are in, too. You’re in arrears with nothing you can do to get out from under the burden. But you’re not without hope, because Jesus is a Grand Master Debt-Reliever. He does to you exactly what John Oliver did with the $15 million in medical debt he now owned. With a push of a button, all the debt of the nine thousand Texans who owed it, was transferred to an organization that eliminated the debt. It was all gone.

There's the promise for you and the sinful woman, and even for self-righteous Pharisees. Jesus slides all the beads on his abacus to one side and zeroes out your bottom line with God. That’s what Paul is talking about when he talks justification by faith. Who in the world would ever do such a thing as forgive $15 million in debt, let alone the eternal enormity of debt that your sin has racked up? Jesus would, that’s who. Where before John Oliver’s debtors’ lives were entirely tied up in past circumstances that left them owing, now his writing off the debt gave them a new future. How much more is it true when Jesus does this for you! Wiping your slate clean means a future determined by the one who is so merciful and loving toward you that he would endure the cross for you. The life you live, whether you recognize it or not, comes from Jesus. He’s taken on a debtor such as you and wiped you clean. When Revelation talks about the heavenly saints having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, that’s what it is. When you’re washed in Jesus’ blood, it’s impossible to see all that red ink.

When the devil, the world, or the worried sinner in you start hounding you about your debt, now you can tell your three nefarious enemies that they're trying to lay zombie debt on you. That's when you treat them like a debt-buyer and say, "Jesus has erased every last thing I owe. My accounts with God were cleared on Gologtha. Go find some other fool who's willing to play into your spiritual Ponzi scheme. As for me, my credit with God is good, and he's told me to rely on his good will to give me everything I need for this life. Jesus promised it, and what he says happens happens." Now my friends, you can spend your good credit with God by serving your neighbors, doling out good works for their benefit, and enjoying all those good gifts.

Coming up next week, Paul will give you and the Galatians good news about the dress clothes God has set aside for you to wear at his eternal celebration of Christ’s victory over death. For now, revel in Jesus debt-elimination scheme and feel how free it is not to owe a single penny or good work to him. Amen.

The Babylonian Captivity Redux

Here's a link to a critique I wrote in response to the report and recommendations of the Theological Education Advisory Council (TEAC) of the ELCA. It was published in the Summer 2016 issue of Lutheran Forum and takes TEAC to task for issuing a document that veers from our theological tradition and doesn't solve the urgent crisis in ministry before the church.

This writing style is distinctly different from what I do in my preaching. The article is a polemic and stands in a strong Lutheran tradition of theological arguments that goes back to Luther himself.

The Babylonian Captivity Redux

We're Dead. We Don't Need No Stinkin' Credentials!

This sermon, preached on June 4-5, 2016, continues a series based on Galatians at St. James Lutheran Church, Johnston, Iowa, while their pastor is on a spiritual pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago de Campostela in northern Spain. It's based on both Galatians and the gospel reading from Luke about the raising of the dead son of the widow in Nain.

This week I was talking to Ryan Cosgrove, a former student of mine who’s now serving as a pastor in Burlington. While I’m an old professor cut off from the ins and outs of weekly preaching, Ryan is a millennial connected to all kinds of social media preaching sites and participates in a pastors’ text study each week. We were talking about today’s reading from Galatians, and he said that he was surprise that the other pastors and posters on social media had declared this passage about Paul’s authority to be pretty thin gruel for preaching. They thought it was inconsequential and boring, with nothing much going on. “I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, blah, blah, blah. But this passage is deceptive in its mundaneness. It’s actually an incredibly big and important part of Paul’s argument in the letter. And it falls right in line with the rest of what Paul is talking about in Galatians.

Remember from last week that Paul had been a Jewish religious lawyer, a Pharisee, and he had persecuted Jesus’ followers – even to the point of helping out at the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. When Paul came to faith with his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, he also became the church’s greatest missionary and most important theologian. He’d gotten permission from the believers in Jerusalem to go tell non-Jews out in the Roman empire about Jesus. He’d already been to the region of Galatia, which would be central Turkey today. Now, as he’s moved on to preach Christ in other places, a group of Jewish Christians has arrived from Jerusalem to investigate, and they’re shocked that Paul hadn’t taught the Galatians to follow Jewish religious laws like Jesus, the disciples, and they themselves do. They demand that the Galatian men who had been pagans now submit to the ritual of circumcision and have what we’ll call “their former life” sliced away. Paul says what the Jewish Christians have been saying is a false gospel, that is, their demands don’t give Christ’s benefits freely. He says that to stake your salvation on something you do, even something as good as circumcision is for Jewish males, takes Christ out of the salvation equation.

Because Paul preached in the Galatian communities and the Spirit brought people to faith through his preaching, in order to undercut Paul’s work there the Jewish Christians called his authority into question. They wanted to know what exactly Paul’s credentials were. That seems like a reasonable request to us. When Grand View’s education majors want to become teachers, the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners establishes requirements for their curriculum. For instance, you don’t get to become a fifth grade teacher if you haven’t taken a class about educating a diverse set of learners. Our nursing majors have to pass a rigorous battery of tests called the NCLEX in order to be certified to serve. The Iowa Bar Association won’t accept you for membership, no matter how good your law school grades if you don’t pass the bar exam. Each profession has specific requirements, and the church’s pastors do, too: You have to have a Master of Divinity degree or its equivalent, and you have to meet the requirements of the ELCA’s “Visions and Expectations” document, which details sexual behavior guidelines, financial guidelines, lifestyle and other qualities of a faithful pastor.

Article XIV of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran church’s primary guiding document from the 16^th century, says no one may function as one of the church’s public proclaimers (that is, as a pastor) without a regular call. Even if you feel an internal call to ministry, in the Lutheran church you don’t get to take up a position in a congregation without the church setting you apart as a pastor. Our brothers and sisters in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is going to take up the issue in its national convention in Milwaukee this summer. They’ll ask if it’s kosher for the church to license lay people to administer the Lord’s Supper or if only pastor should be allowed to do it. When it comes to Paul and Galatians, though, it’s a whole other matter. The Jewish Christians want Paul to have checked off all their required boxes: be Jewish, be circumcised, be a disciple of Jesus or authorized by one.

But for Paul, it’s not about adhering to a set of credentials. He was called by the risen Jesus himself. When Paul was still a bounty hunter tracking down the blasphemous followers of Jesus, he was riding a horse on the road to Damascus 138 miles away in order to make some arrests. Suddenly there was a blinding light, and Paul was knocked to the ground and struck blind. He heard the voice of the risen Jesus ask him why he was persecuting the Lord. And he was told to get himself to the home of one of the believers. In that moment, everything changed for Paul. He began to see Jesus’ appearance to him as the dividing line between his old life in sin and death and his new life taken up in faith in the Lord’s resurrection.

When the Jerusalem Christians who’ve shown up in Galatia demand Paul’s credentials as proof that he’s allowed to tell these converts that they don’t have to follow Jewish law, Paul’s response is, “Credentials? I don’t need no stinkin’ credentials!” That’s because for Paul saving faith is all about a relationship with Jesus. It’s what was established for Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul cares about other questions: Has Jesus made you his own? Has the word grabbed hold of you to give you faith? Has the water been poured over you and the promise proclaimed to you in baptism? Has Christ given himself to you with the promise of forgiveness in the Lord’s Supper? Has God announced forgiveness to you on account of Jesus’? In each of these ways, you’ve had the same experience as Paul: Christ established a relationship with you through no work of your own. So Paul basically says, “Credentials? Ain’t got none. I only have Jesus. And if you have a problem with the Spirit having moved a former persecutor of the church like me to preach to the gentiles, you’re going to have to take it up with Christ. You claim to have such good standing with God on account of your adherence to religious laws. Go ahead and trot that out before God as evidence of your worthiness. See how well that works out for you.”

In last Sunday’s gospel we heard the story of the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant and came to confess his own unworthiness and Christ’s great power and authority. Today we come up against another character who’s even less worthy: the dead son of the widow from Nain. By what worthiness or authority did the dead young man come to be raised? He was dead. He had nothing to bring before God’s judgment seat. What’s worse, anyone who came close to his dead body and funeral bier would have been regarded as unclean and unrighteous. People would have to stay away from them for a week lest they, too, become unclean.

But Jesus seems to care not at all about clean and unclean, righteous and unrighteous. Becoming unclean and being cast out of the community for a week seems to be a trifle for him. And it doesn’t matter to him that the dead young man can’t present credentials for worthiness. In fact, Jesus has the dead guy right where he wants him: lying there unable to move, unable to perform a good work, unable to defend himself, unable to take a breath and puff himself up in pride. The guy is dead, and that’s not just good enough for Jesus, it’s the only thing for him.

At that point, there’s no longer any hope for action, neither a little finger twitching to indicate the guy wanted to be raised or asking the Lord to come into his life or giving his heart to God. Dead fingers can’t twitch. Dead people can’t catch a breath in order to speak. And this guy’s heart just isn’t beating anymore. The only thing you can say the dead guy is able to do is rot. And even that is about as passive as you can get. The dead son of Nain is simply done with life. He has no more he can do. Now it’s Jesus’ own power and authority to raise him from the dead or nothing at all.

Paul pretty much tells the Galatians that his favorite t-shirt says, “Resurrection from the dead: been there, had that done to me.” That’s what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. Jesus grabbed him, and Paul saw that the life he’d led was actually corrupted and rotting from the inside. Paul was as dead in sin as the son of Nain was lying on his bier. The presence of the risen Christ may have knocked him to the ground, but it also raised him to new life.

So once again, we have the same story we had last Sunday when we began to hear about the distinction between what is Christ and what is Not-Christ. Paul’s opponents want to point to his lack of credentials as a problem. But Paul knows that credentials are Not-Christ. When Jesus is the only game in town for Paul, to submit to legalistic credentialing is to deny Christ. And it’s a false gospel every bit as much as the demand that the men of Galatia unzip and be circumcised.

To turn to something that is not Christ seems like it’s just adding a small thing. It’s just a bit of foreskin. It’s just a diploma. It’s a mere exam. It’s simply a class to take. It’s just a decision for Christ. But what Paul’s opponents don’t see, and what he wants the Galatians to open their eyes to, is that adding even the smallest thing is to diminish what Christ has done on the cross and to make him less than Lord of all. Is it Christ who saves or not? If you submit to a demand to be more religious, a better Bible reader, less of a sinner, a more devoted Christian, a stronger fighter for peace and justice, then you have made yourself the hinge of salvation. And what we’re going to hear later in Galatians is that when you’ve allowed that camel’s nose under the tent, it will take over everything, and you will lose freedom and salvation.

When the demand for credentials and proof of authority comes, Paul says he’s unqualified. The only credential he has is the same the dead son in Nain bore: he was dead in sin, and the only life he has is the one Christ gives him. Can anything less be true for you? As Paul says in Romans, while we still were sinners Christ died for us. You who have been baptized into his death are now raised in his resurrection.

When Luther’s prince, Frederick the Wise, died in 1525 after having stood by his local professor and pastor even in the face of the power of the Holy Roman Empire and the condemnation of the church, the reformer preached at the prince’s funeral. He called Frederick’s death the little death. His body was done moving and breathing, and, yes, the people were right to grieve. But Luther said Frederick died the big death, the point when he was loosed from the world’s powers and freed in Christ, when the prince defending the gospel that Luther preached. Luther told the gathered mourners that it was Frederick’s confession of faith via his actions when he died and new life began for him.

It’s a strange thing when that happens to you. You never actually realize you were lying on your bier, traveling through the world dead as nails and unable to move. And yet now by the power of God’s word declared to you, your eyes are opened and, blinking, you think, “Wait! What just happened to me? How did I get here? Wow!” As long as you’re alive enough to hold a credential in your hand, you’re not dead enough for Jesus’ resurrection. Besides, he doesn’t want those papers cluttering up the divine ticket-to-heaven counter. His death was messy enough. He doesn’t need that from you. Keep your good works and use them for your neighbors.

And when your little death comes, and you, too are physically over and done with and of no more earthly good, save as worm fodder, then lie still, because Jesus has a word he’s going to speak to you. He will come to you with sweet somethings for your ears, saying, “Get up. Enjoy the new eternal life I’m giving you starting right now.” You’ll no doubt open your eyes and blink. But you shouldn’t be surprised. Paul has been telling you about it for two thousand years. And he’s announcing it to you again today. Jesus is the only credential you need and the best portable defibrillator around. There’s a new heartbeat, a new life, and a new calling as one of Christ’s own that have been place in you.

Next week get ready because we’re going to come face-to-face with a legal equation that declares your fight to maintain your current death in sin to be over. Of course, it’ll be more of the same, but Paul’s going to take us ever deeper into it. Amen.

True Gospel, False Gospel

This sermon from May 28-29, 2016, begins a series on Galatians preached at St. James Lutheran Church, Johnston, Iowa, while their pastor is on sabbatical doing a spiritual pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago de Campostela in northern Spain. It is based on both the Galatians passage and the story of the healing of the centurion's servant in Luke 7.

In our second reading today, we begin a series of six weeks when we get to hear Paul’s letter to the believers in Galatia. As we move through it in the next weeks, there’s one thing you should listen for. In the letter, Paul makes a distinction between Christ and not-Christ, that is, between Jesus – the one who has the power and authority to save you – and everything else in all of creation (even the best of it), none of which has an ounce of power to right what’s wrong between us and God.

In today’s section of the letter, Paul is spitting nails because the Galatians have been manipulated by Jewish Christians from Jerusalem. Those Christians had grown up as Jews, and their entire lives they’d followed all the religious laws. Now, when Paul had been granted permission to go out into the pagan world and bring people the gospel there, these Jewish Christians waited until Paul continued to other places on his missionary journey, and they had come to Galatia to check on things.

What they found there shocked them: The new believers there weren’t following Jewish religious laws from places in the Old Testament like Leviticus. That means the Galatians weren’t worried about not eating pork or shrimp, not wearing two different fabrics, and not getting tattoos. The big problem, though, was there were foreskins aplenty among the Galatians, and the Jewish Christians knew that circumcision was the thing you needed above all others to identify yourself as one of God’s chosen people.  Paul’s opponents from Jerusalem have told the Galatian men that, in order to become true, full Christians, they had to follow Jewish laws just like Jesus did. And that meant they needed to lift their tunics and submit to circumcision.

For Paul, who trusted that Jesus had done everything needed for his own salvation as a Jew and for the salvation of non-Jews like the believer in Galatia, that signaled a blurring of the lines between what saves you and what doesn’t. For Paul, demanding that someone do something in order to be identified as Christ’s own, meant you had displaced Christ as savior and grabbed onto something else. Even the very best things, including circumcision for a good Jewish boy like Paul, become false gods if you look to them to save you. That’s why in the letter today Paul says the Galatians have been bewitched and glommed onto a false gospel. For Paul, as we’ll see a couple Sundays from now, the only thing that matters in your salvation is that you trust Christ to accomplish it. The actual language he uses is that we’re “justified by faith.”

God’s word keeps the distinction between Christ and Not-Christ clear. There in the word God promises you that Jesus, and Jesus alone, has the power to deliver you from sin, death, and the devil, and that he does it without any effort, strength, or understanding on your part. Old Nick, the devil himself, seeks to have you abandon that promise in Christ and look elsewhere. He prefers that you disregard God’s word and keep it sequestered on a bookshelf or, better yet, away from your house.

If you’d be so bold as to open up God’s word to find Christ’s promise, then the devil will get you to put yourself and your religious activity and devotion forward as the be-all and end-all of your salvation. Look how great and pious you are! And then he’ll twist you into worrying that now you’re in trouble because you’re selfishly thinking about yourself and haven’t come to God’s word with the proper attitude. And before you know it, your eyes are scanning paragraphs without ever really finding Christ, because once again you’ve concentrated on something other than what the Lord has done for you. Just about the time you think you’ve begun trusting Christ, you realize instead that you’ve been trusting only your own ability to trust and need to start all over again.

If you even get that far, then the Tempter will bring in his next trick to get you to trust something that is not-Christ. This bit of skulduggery involves turning the promises of God’s word into shady little demands and petty legalism. He aims to take your eye away from the promises of Jesus’ death and resurrection and, like the Jewish Christians plaguing the folks in Galatia, he has you latch on to Moses and the Commandments as your savior and the way to life eternal. The devil comes under the guise of piety and cloaks this temptation to faithlessness in seemingly good-sounding propositions. He would have you concentrate on your advancing your religious progress, on the quality of your commitment, on the level of your giving, on the number of people in the pews next to you, on the number of commandments any of us has kept or broken. The Evil One may even get you to engage in spiritual exercise and pious activities like opening your Bible for daily devotions. But if he does, watch out, because he wants to make even those things and your very faith as well into the objects of your trust instead of Jesus Christ, God’s Son who died for you on the cross.

It’s a dilemma for all us sinful humans. How can we possibly escape our cycle of trusting ourselves rather than Jesus? How can we turn away from our own power, desire, and will? How can we keep from the real danger of succumbing to a false gospel, especially one that presents us with so many seemingly good and God-pleasing things to do? How might we, instead, as Paul bids the Galatians, begin to trust our Lord and his gracious promise.

In our Gospel reading, Luke provides a picture of faithful trust as he gives us the story of the healing of the centurion’s slave. Instead of trusting something other than Jesus, the centurion clings to the one true gospel in his demand to Jesus to just do something, anything, to help his servant back home. It all begins fairly well on the centurion’s part. He’s got a highly-valued slave who’s lying on the welcome mat of death’s door. And the centurion does exactly what he ought to do: He hears about Jesus and goes to put it all in the Lord’s hands. Now that’s good and faithful start. Scripture tells us to seek after the Lord. Luther says we ought to approach God with complete confidence, just as children speak to a loving father. So here the centurion confidently sends a couple of Jesus’ own Jewish elders out to talk to him.

So far so good. But watch how that old sinful self immediately gets in the way and trips any truly faithful gesture by the centurion. What’s the message that the centurion sends to Jesus? The elders start talking about worthiness, just like the Jewish Christian would do years later with the Galatians. They come up with a list of all the centurion’s good deeds for God and country. Although he’s a soldier in an occupying army, he loves the people under his command. And although he’s another pagan Roman, he’s even seen to the religious life of the community by building a synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus must have had a good chuckle to himself as they rattled off this list of the centurion’s good deeds, because Jesus knows he doesn’t give a whit for the centurion’s goodness or righteousness. He’s not out to shape up the world or even show off the centurion as a fine example. For Jesus, the only worthiness that matters is his own, and he’s about to prove it. For the time being he lets the messengers and the centurion keep their illusions, and he heads out of the soldier’s quarters.

Now comes the turning point of the story. Now comes the repentance. Now comes the centurion’s eyes opening up in faith to the true gospel rather than the sham gospel that’s been going down up to this point. But if you want to see the repentance, you have to look closely, because our gospel writer Luke keeps it between the lines. The closer Jesus moves to the centurion the harder it is for the soldier to keep on his mask of worthiness. (Notice, too, that it’s Jesus doing the moving, not the centurion. That’s how Jesus works, you know.) The nearer Jesus gets to the center of the centurion’s life, the more clearly the soldier sees the truth about his own life, the more clearly he sees that scope of Jesus’ power, the more clearly he sees his place within that power and authority.

The centurion can’t bear it anymore. He sends out some of his buddies from the NCO club to talk to Jesus this time. He sends a different kind of message, and in it he begins to make the distinction between what is Christ and what is not-Christ. And he starts to tell the truth. He says, “Jesus, don’t bother coming out to me. That was the wrong message when I sent those elders over to kiss up to you. I have to tell you the truth: I’m not worthy to have you step across my doorstep.” But it’s two steps forward and one step back as the old sinful self in him moves in again to try to give excuses. The centurion says, “Oh, yeah, that’s also why I didn’t come out to you myself.” But finally the presence of Jesus does its work. From the centurion come the most faithful words in the whole story. He says, “Jesus speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

Let’s stop and think about that. Now, as he’s brought up short in his worthiness quotient, not only has the centurion figured out that none of this has to do with his own worthiness, but he also knows Jesus has something else he wants to do and how the power to get it done. Now there is faith in the centurion’s heart moving him to speak. What faith asks for is for Jesus himself to do what he says he’s come for. Faith trusts that Jesus’ word has power all to itself, without adding the centurion’s worthiness, without some effort on the part of the dying slave, and without the snipping of foreskins or any other commendable religious activity in Galatia.

Without anything else in heaven or on earth, Jesus’ speaking will get done what he seeks to accomplish. And it’s this asking Jesus to speak and waiting attentively to hear something good that Jesus holds up as faith, greater faith even than all the religious, very religious people among God’s chosen people in Israel, including the folks form Jerusalem who’ve cooked up a salvation scheme for the Galatians. Lo and behold, the servant is healed, and Jesus heads off to the village of Nain to raise form the dead a widow’s dead son who has even less chance of doing some good deed for salvation than the centurion and his servant. Next Sunday you’ll see Luke pushing Paul’s same point to its ultimate, amazing end: The best place to be saved is when you’re dead and don’t have a chance to present any good works to God.

But here today, Luke tells of the centurion’s trust in a word from Jesus and the word’s power all unto itself. Paul wants us to escape our cycle of trusting ourselves. How can the Galatians and we begin to trust our Lord and his gracious promises? Luke shows you how it happens as he fleshes out the promises of God’s word in the gospel reading. The end of your sinful self begins with Jesus’ presence moving in through your life. He likes to do that, you know, move in and through your life. He does this with the Holy Spirit who calls us and gathers us in. As the Spirit opens our eyes to see Jesus more and more clearly, we see our own unworthiness. We see how paltry our goodness is and how week our strength to save ourselves is. But we also see Jesus’ own worthiness, his goodness and all-encompassing grace, his mighty strength to bear what you can’t and save what the world regards as hopeless.

We hear that powerful promise that for your sake Jesus died, that you might be spare the punishment God gives to unworthy sinners. As Jesus comes to you in the water and the word in baptism, in the bread, wine, and proclamation of the Lord’s Supper, in the preaching of the good news, and in his story in scripture, he seeks to make that promise work inside you. Jesus is working to separate himself from all other competitors in the salvation game. He’s opening your eyes to the distinction between what is Christ and what is Not-Christ. He’s working to put these words on your lips: “Speak the word, Lord, and let me be healed.” For to trust in the word is to seek after the true speaking of the word, rather than to look to the NutraSweet imitation of a false gospel of morality and ethics, spiritual exercises and pious activity.

To trust in Christ is to go face-to-face with Jesus. It means looking him in the eye and saying, “Come on, Jesus. I’ve got nothing left to lose. Give me what you have. Nothing else can do the trick. I want you. Bring it on, Lord.” Next October we’ll begin a year-long celebration of the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation that began with Martin Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses. In one treatise that Luther wrote, he talked about the special thing that God allows the baptized to do. He said that not only does your baptism confer on you deliverance from sin, death, and the devil, it also gives you permission to make demands on God. If God has promised you abundant life in Christ and you’re seeing the fruit of that promise, you get to go mano-a-mano with God and demand the abundant life.

That’s an approach that sees Paul’s distinction between a true and false gospel clearly. It knows who it is that bestows life, goodness, grace, and peace. It knows those things don’t come from things you do. They don’t come from whipping yourself into a religious frenzy. They don’t arrive with a stack of good deeds that you can present before the judgment seat of God. What God wants for you comes only from the one who healed the centurion’s slave. Telling Jesus to bring it on is the ultimate act of faith. Go ahead. Try that kind of boldness on for size and then tell the religious law keepers to take their false gospel put it somewhere where the Son don’t shine (that’s Son with a capital S and an o in the middle). Repeat after me: “Just bring it, Jesus. You’ve got it. You want to give it to me. I want it. I need it. Bring it Lord. Bring your promised life. Bring your promised forgiveness. Bring your promised salvation. Raise me from the dead, and number me as your own.” Amen.

A Good Man, Full of the Spirit

This sermon was preached at a monthly Communion service at Scottish Rite Park, a senior living apartment tower in Des Moines, Iowa, on May 12, 2016

Acts 11:19-26

"Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

"News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

"Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."

Pentecost is this Sunday. We celebrate the birth of the church with the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples, Peter’s preaching, and thousands of people who come to believe. This story from Acts this morning is an extension of what happened there.

Saul, whom we later come to know as Paul, has had his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. When he tries to join the disciples they reject him because they don’t trust him. After all, he was one of the persecutors of the believers and when Stephen was stoned he held the cloaks of those who slung the rocks But Barnabas knows differently. He looks at Paul with different eyes.

Acts says Barnabas was “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith.” When he went to Antioch, God used the good news he brought to create faith in a great number of people. Barnabas had no fear of Saul. He goes after him with relentlessness. Like the photographic negative of Saul persecuting Christians, Barnabas pulled Saul into the circle and spent a year teaching him what Christ had done. In effect Barnabas was a one-man seminary.

The scriptures are full of stories of people who are full of the Spirit. It didn’t just happen after the miracle at Pentecost. Time after time in the Old Testament, God calls people to become judges, prophets, and preachers. The scriptures say “the spirit of the Lord came upon them.” We tend to think it’s some mystical experience these people had. But it’s both simpler and deeper than that.

When the scriptures talk about the Spirit it has to do with being connected to God’s Word. When God created the heavens and the earth, God did it with the Word. John, of course, reminds us that Jesus himself is the embodiment of God Word. To be full of the Spirit is to be full of God’s Word, to be full of what Jesus, the Living Word, came to give.

For Barnabas to be full of the Spirit is to be full of faith, rich in his understanding of his own sin and Christ’s deliverance and redemption. It means he’s overflowing with a mercy that can see even the worst enemy of the church with gracious eyes. In Galatians, Paul tells us what being full of the Spirit looks like. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” If you call yourself a Christian and use your religion as a cudgel to bludgeon your enemies – even real enemies – then your store of the Holy Spirit is wanting.

As we come up on Pentecost on Sunday, we ought to pray for that Spirit to bring us such faith that we can go to the Tarsus of this day and age to bring those at odds with God into his loving circle. That can happen in all sorts of places, including here at Scottish Rite Park. It means turning to our neighbors with love and patience. It means bringing mercy and living mercy for others. It means being one like Peter at Pentecost, who didn’t put himself in the limelight but instead pointed to Christ as the source of his life, joy, and hope.

You, too, have been called by the Spirit in your baptism. You were joined to the Word that created the world. You are grafted into Christ’s death and resurrection. You will go where he has gone and receive what your heavenly bridegroom brought you: his life, his name, and his place at God’s right hand. Hear this good news today. Let this Word flow into your ears and fill you with the Holy Spirit. Amen.