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.