Pentecost 6 - Romans 6:15-23

A number of years ago there was a film by Clint Eastwood entitled “the Unforgiven”. Eastwood played the role of a gunslinger who was trying to put behind him the life of violence that he lived in his younger years and live his life as a family man. Yet his past caught up with him. Because of his history as a gunfighter, he was asked to travel to a town and right a wrong that had been done and then swept under the rug. The film was ultimately about a man who had done bad things trying to come to terms with those things, hoping to find some goodness and worth in the life of violence he had lived in his younger days.

While not all of us have been wild west gun slingers and lived a life that skirted the edges of the law, we have all done things that we are not proud of. We have all done things that we know are wrong. Every one of us has skeletons hidden in our closet that we would like to keep locked up tight and put away where we don’t have to see them or hear from them or deal with them. All of us carry around guilt from our former actions and would like to find some sort of redemption from those past sins.

Our Epistle text from Romans 6 speaks to this very topic. In our text Paul talks about our past, about who we were as compared to who we now are. It is about those skeletons that we have in our closets, it is about our previous way of life as compared to the life that we now live, the life that we have now been given, the life that is a life of holiness and sanctification, a life that is lived in the service and slavery of God and leaves behind slavery to our sinful impulses.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. [21] But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. [22] But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

And, what is most wonderful is that all of this takes place within the context of a discussion of baptism. Romans chapter 6 is the place where Paul offers a theological treatment of this wonderful doctrine so that he might teach us just how complete a job God has done to set us free from our sin.

This discussion is also quite timely, seeing as today was the baptism of my own daughter, wich is the second of 3 baptisms this month with more scheduled for the next. We have had a good number of baptisms here at St Paul, we have an awful lot of babies.

Romans 6 begins with these words, “What shall we say then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer! For don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

Our text, that talks about our new life of holiness and sanctification – who we were and who we now are is built on of the foundation laid down in the opening verses of chapter 6 that all have to do with baptism. You who were baptized, your old sinful self was crucified. The skeletons that you have in your closet are dead and washed away. Christ has made you clean. Christ has set you free from sin. Christ has made you holy!

You wanna talk about skeletons? You wanna talk about sin and living a life that is ruled by sin? You wanna talk about past mistakes and baggage and a closet filled to the top with skeletons? (This is the place to do it). According to Paul, you who were baptized died to these sins. He says don’t keep doing them, don’t live in them, don’t live with them. Kill them, crucify them, confess them to Christ and kill them on the cross and don’t live in them any longer. Yes, but oddly enough, if baptism is about cleaning out your closet and doing away with your past sins, then why do we baptize babies? As I said, today I baptized my daughter. We have had a run on baptisms lately and will have a few more in the coming weeks.

Ever since Tori was born I have been a very proud father and I wanted to show off my new baby girl. I printed off a picture of her that I taped to the office window so that anyone who was interested could see our new addition to our family. At least in my opinion it’s a pretty good picture. We managed to snap the photo while she was sleeping (obviously then taken during the daylight hours – if we would have taken it at night she would have been wide awake). But she looks so peaceful! She looks beautiful, perfect, one of the best looking, most beautiful babies I have ever seen – definitely in the top 3, anyway. (I might be a little biased) What skeletons can she have? She is barely old enough to have a closet, let alone skeletons to put in the closet! What sins does she have to die for?

You and I might not be able to see them in the photograph, but they are there! When I am slightly delayed in preparing her bottle and hear her impatient cries, I can hear that sinful heart,(that old sinful flesh, the dead works and dead thoughts and dead flesh of her sinful members that Paul talks about here in our text) ringing in her voice. But even that is not the most convincing evidence. The best and most convincing evidence of Tori’s sinful heart, of my sinful heart, your sinful heart, the heart of the goodest goody two shoes is that we all die. Paul says in our text that the wages of sin is death. If Tori was perfect, if you were perfect, if I was perfect then we wouldn’t die. We would live forever, we wouldn’t have wages to be compensated for. As such we sin, we are sinners, the just compensation for that sin is death. People of all ages, races, religions, and persuasions die every day – it doesn’t matter who you are. We are all sinners, we all die, we all deserve to die and as such we all have skeletons in our closets, we all have sins hidden away in our heart, we all are guilty and all deserve the worst of what Christ our righteous judge would give. Even the perfect little baby in the peaceful and serene photograph pasted to the window of the church office is a hardened sinner who deserves from God nothing but death.

And were it not for Jesus that death would be forever. Were it not for Jesus that death, that people die would be an eternal death, a punishment that would last forever. That would be a never ending suffering and separation from God. But because of the promise of salvation, because of Christ’s sacrifice for us and for our sin when he died on the cross our death is not an eternal death, it is not a death that occurs under the full wrath of the law, it is a death that occurs under the gift and thus we are rescued from this death and given the hope of life that we will live forever and ever without end.

Jesus died for us, in our place on the cross. Jesus suffered that separation from God that we have earned because of our sin when he cried out to the heavenly father who had forsaken him. We were slaves of sin – our bodies of walking death were trapped in that death, the way all dead things are.

If you are dead you are dead and there is nothing you can do about it until someone comes along to revive you. When Jesus suffered our death, he earned the right to be the one who revives us. He can take our death away from us because he has already suffered our death for us. And so he does, in baptism we die with Christ, his death becomes our death so that he can then give his life as our life. The life we live we live to Christ!

The beauty of this biblical truth is that you and I who have a closet so filled up with skeletons we can barely keep the door closed – it bursting at the scenes like in one of those old cartoons – someone goes to open a door and as soon as they do they are buried with all of the stuff that was crammed into it – our closets are so filled with our sins that we want to keep the door shut, we know the risk of opening it up and revisiting everything that we have stuffed in there. But then Jesus comes along, opens the door, is buried underneath the pile of sins that spill out and picks them all up, not to stuff them back in but to carry them out to the cross so that he can suffer the penalty for them.

Lately every time you turn on the television there is a report of the devastation that has occurred because of the flooding in the Midwest. The massive rains have flooded farm lands, have swept away homes and businesses. The waters have picked up roads, they have broken levies, taken out bridges and left in their wake a mass of destruction. The power of the water has wiped out and washed away so much of the livelihood and infrastructure of so many people.

Water is certainly powerful, powerful enough to wipeout and wash away. But that is water in mass quantities. One drop can’t do much – unless it is combined with the life giving and life saving word of God. When that water is poured over the head and the heart of every sinner who comes for baptism that sinner, that man woman or child who is brought here to the font is swamped, is overcome, is drowned in a river of God’s forgiveness and grace. Water, together with the detergent of God Word creates a flood that no sin can stand in the way of. Some sins seem so big, they seem like mountains of immovable granite and we feel that there is no getting around them. Some sins seem so small that they cling to us so tightly that we feel that even those can’t be cleaned. But Every sin, no matter how big or how small gets washed away in the raging flood waters of your baptism. You are inundated and overcome, you are swamped with the floodwaters and everything gets swept away.

And this flood is one that never crests and never recedes. The bible calls it a spring welling up to eternal life. It is a flood that keeps rushing, that keeps raging, that keeps washing and cleansing so that every time your sins try to pass the current they are swept away.

As Paul writes our text, he is writing to address the feelings of some that Paul is encouraging sin or excusing sin, that once you are baptized you can go ahead and sin as much as you want because there is enough forgiveness to go around. If you try hard enough you can build an island in the floodwaters, you can pile up enough sins to anchor yourself in your unrighteousness. But why would you want to? Those sins, those ways of unrighteousness only lead to death. The flood waters that would sweep you away lead to righteousness, to holiness and to eternal life.

Today God has swept away the skeletons in Tori’s little closet. In your life Christ has done the same for you. In your baptism, you have been filled up and flooded out with God’s forgiveness and love. Let’s not build islands of sin, lets resist the temptation to weigh anchor hold on to our old ways that lead to death, lets ride the wave, be overcome in God’s forgiveness and be overcome in living in his righteousness that leads to eternal life.

Amen.

Pentecost 5 - Romans 5:6-15

They say that it does not so much matter what you know as much as it matters who you know. Sometimes, having all the right qualifications and training for a position does not so much matter if you are competing for the same position with someone who has the inside track. Or sometimes, perhaps the shoe is on the other foot, and you are the one who knows someone on the inside who can vouch for you and put in a good word for you. Knowing the right people can be a great advantage when it comes to looking for a job and looking to get hired into a certain firm for a certain position.

Unless of course you are the vouch-er. It is nice to be the vouch-ee, that is, it is nice to have someone put in a good word for you, but if the shoe is on the other foot, if you are the one asked for a recommendation and the one asking you is undependable, if they are unreliable, if you know that they will perform poorly in the position, then, vouching for some one can almost be like putting your own reputation on the line, it can be almost like setting yourself up for the reputation of one who keeps bad company or judges character poorly. There can be times when vouching for someone can be risky.

That is precisely the thing that makes our text so mind blowing. Because our text talks about Jesus vouching for us, recommending us, standing up for us and beside us. That is what Jesus has done for us. Jesus is our man on the inside, the one who has put in a good word for us and who has made us a shoe in for heaven because of his personal recommendation for us. And not only has Jesus vouched for us, he not only put his reputation on the line for us –knowing full well that we were godless and unconscionable Jesus laid even his life on the line. When you think about it, it is unbelievable! For, our text says, “While we were yet weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

The message of our text is one of God’s surpassing grace and mercy and generosity. It is one that demonstrates the outlandish and lavish and even excessive nature of God’s forgiveness. God doesn’t just forgive a little bit. He doesn’t just forgive those who are of a certain stripe or worthiness –he loves and he forgives those who are unlovable and not even anywhere close to being worthy to be loved. God loves everyone with this outlandish and over the top kind of love and therefore God loves you and me with an over the top and outlandish kind of love. For us, for sinners, that message is nothing but good news.

You and I have a tendency to guard our reputations very closely. We try to be very selective about those who we choose for our friends and about those who we allow to be members of our inner circle. There are times that we look around us in judgment of the ones who could be a part of our community. We would prefer to pick and choose the ones who are allowed to join with us. We do this in our social relationships – at times we can be exclusive and snobbish. We do this in our churchly relationships.

Certainly we know and have read Christ’s command that we are to go into all nations with His Gospel. We are to tell the world that Jesus has died and risen again for them and for their sin. Yet how many times are we guilty of desiring that the nations stay “out there”. They can go to heaven, God can clean them up and find a place for them there, put I would prefer that they not come here, to my church, to sit in my pew, next to my family. Are there perhaps times when we want to be selective about the people we will invite to become members of our own church fellowship?

Or are there times when we just don’t invite anybody? When was the last time you spoke with someone new and thought to yourself, “I wonder if they have a church home?” “I wonder if they would like to come with me to St Paul.” When was the last time you actually invited a friend to come with you here to your church? When was the last time that you vouched for someone to join the fellowship that you inherited from your grandfathers?

But Christ has vouched for us. While we were still sinners, while we were still godless and irreligious, while we were still chasing after the impulses of our sinful flesh Jesus stood by us. That is what the phrase means. Paul says that “Christ demonstrates his love for us in this, while we were sinners Christ died for us” he is saying in that phrase that Christ stood by us, that he stood up for us, that he stood next to us. Our reputations were bad, as they could be, but Christ said, “yes that one there I will vouch for him, I will vouch for her. I will lay my reputation on the line that they are worth saving he should be included, she should be included. Lay their charge to my account.” So God did. And not that we were deserving, but He was so willing to vouch for us that it didn’t matter what the cost would be. It didn’t matter how much we would soil and tarnish his reputation. It didn’t matter how greatly we would spoil the perfect world that he made – he wanted nothing more than to have us and so he stood by us and stood up for us even when it cost him his life.

And now we have that treasure. We have been brought in. We are on the inside! We have that amazing, priceless, invaluable gift. It hasn’t cost us a dime and it is ours to share! Why don’t we share it! Why don’t we take the gift and spread it around and share it with everyone we know. Jesus has vouched for us, given us his own personal recommendation, we ought to vouch for each other!

But even that is not all that Jesus has done – there is more, much more, so much more. God has not stopped with his love and his forgiveness by simply standing beside us and standing up for us. He hasn’t just offered his hand to help us out a little bit along the way. Paul goes on to tell us,

“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by His life.” So we were enemies. Christ didn’t just think to vouch for someone who he got along with, someone who he knew deep down really cared. We were enemies – bitter foes, standing on opposite ends of a conflict. And it was while we were in the middle of our opposition to God that he came to us and found us and stood next to us.

Perhaps you have been there before – stood on either side of an argument with another person. A disagreement or dispute. Well that’s the scenario Paul mentions here – we were enemies, standing on opposite sides with God himself. (Who do you suppose would win that argument?)

And even then, God sent his son to stand by us. In His incredible love, he sent Jesus. And Jesus came to reconcile us to God.

Now put yourself back in to that conflict that you can remember having with someone else. Maybe it was your spouse, maybe it was your neighbor, maybe it was your boss or your co-worker. And suppose you didn’t do anything wrong. Suppose all the guilt was squarely on the shoulders of your antagonist. They were in the wrong. They said something, did something, far beyond what is right and proper, you were mistreated and you had every right to be upset or angry. They owed you. Your conscience was clear and the ball was in their court to make things right.

Now ratchet that up a few notches, as far, even further than it will go, understand that you and I were the ones totally in the wrong because of all that we are guilty of and God was totally in the right, the ball should have been in our court but even then it wouldn’t matter because there was nothing we could do to make it right. And it was there that God sent Jesus to us to reconcile us – to take responsibility for the dispute and to make right the wrong so that the relationship between us and God could be resolved.

And look at what God did to accomplish that. What’s the worst someone could do? Take your child, kill your son or your daughter? There is nothing that we hold more dear than our children. Today is father’s day – a day set aside for honoring and thanking our fathers for their love for us. Fathers would never give up their children, they would defend them even if it cost them their life. But God volunteered his Son, his Only Son for you to settle a dispute that you started, a dispute in which he had no responsibility and in which he shared no guilt. God gave up his only son so that the dispute between you and he could be made right. We are reconciled to God because of the sacrifice of Jesus.

Can we even begin to imagine the gift? All that God has given, all that God has done to wash away our sin, to restore us in our relationship to him. All of our guilt all of our sin and shame and overlooked it to stand beside us, he vouched for us as our advocate and friend and then he laid down his life as the price for our reconciliation so that we could be back “in” with God. Think of all that God has done for us.

And then think of all that we now have not only the freedom, not only the responsibility, but the joy, the sheer and utter and complete joy, to go out into our neighborhoods, down our streets, into our schools out on the ball fields and be the witnesses for God on behalf of this veritable goldmine of eternal riches.

Can you imagine being the researcher who eventually cracks the cure for cancer. With as many people who suffer every year from this so often unstoppable disease, with the many people who suffer from not only the disease, but even the treatments for cancer are painful and debilitating. Imagine if you were the one who after years of research got to announce to the world that no one would ever have to suffer from this disease again. You were the one, you found the wonder drug. You found the cure to make it all go away. You would shout it from the roof tops. You would want the world to know the amazing discovery you made.

Friends you and I have found something much better much more valuable much more exciting. We have discovered a cure not just for cancer, not just for a disease, we have found the cure for death itself! We have been given the cure for sin – we have received the key to unlock eternal life. It is ours, signed sealed and delivered. Earned by Jesus himself when he surrendered his own life for us on the cross. Given when that forgiveness was handed over to you free of charge when Jesus baptized you and sealed you for eternal life forever.

You are sitting on a goldmine. Don’t sit on it any longer. Pull out your treasure chest, unlock the lid, let your inheritance spill out on the floor to be picked up by everyone who walks by. Don’t worry, there’s plenty to go around. After all, God grace and forgiveness is over the top, it is extreme, it is excessive!

Pentecost 4 - Matthew 6:24-34

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things will be added to you as well.

You can barely turn on the news these days without hearing something about the economy. The high price of gas. Home foreclosures. The struggling Airline industry. The continued weakening of the dollar in foreign markets. We keep hearing all about our lagging economy. It is with the hope of correcting this trend that the government has decided to issue tax payers a refund. Each eligible person will receive their share of the economic stimulus package. As we speak checks are being mailed out with the hope that putting money back in the hands of consumers will encourage us to spend our way back into a strong economy.

So has your stimulus check arrived yet? Have you decided what you are going to do with it? Are you going to save it or spend it? Will you use it to strengthen your portfolio or perhaps use it to pay down some other debts? Use it to buy gas? Take a vacation? Update your home? I am sure you have given it some thought and have already considered how you will spend it. I know I have.

The big question is, of course, whether or not this economic stimulus program initiated by the government is going to work. Will it actually solve the problems or will it only be a temporary fix? Will the extra cash provide the push to fuel the economy or will it just be a small blip on the overall downward trend. Time will tell.

After all, the cost of living continues to be going up. Of course the price of gas is higher at the pump, but that means overall energy costs are higher, which means production and transportation is higher, which means everything is costlier to produce and sell which means we have less money to do the same things. People are feeling pinched. Some are beginning to rely on credit to meet expenses. Debt is piling up. People are defaulting on their loans. Homes, cars, and other items are being repossessed. The economic times are seeming to be more and more uncertain.

It is to us that Jesus speaks these timely words: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’. For the Gentiles seek after all these things and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them.” At times like these that can be exactly the message that we need to hear. Knowing that the God who has in his hands the ability to steer economies, to raise and lower prices, to provide food and clothing and shelter, that this God is your God. That He loves you and that he cares for you and He will provide for you. How easy it is for us to see the mouths we have to feed and the bodies we have to clothe, how easy it is for us to see the bills we have to pay and become anxious, worried, afraid. How easy it is for us to make this very mistake that Jesus warns against in our text. To us who await our economic stimulus package, already have plans for how it will be spent Jesus offers to us great words of comfort and great words of consoling.

“Seek first the kingdom of God,” says Jesus, “and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well.”

“Seek First the Kingdom of God” says Jesus. Seek first the place where God has come to be King, where he has brought his Kingdom near for you.

That is what it is all about. Jesus commands us to seek first His Kingdom. In all that we say, in all that we do, the very goal of our life, the reason that we get out of bed in the morning, the last thing that we think about before we go to bed at night, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

“Okay”, we tell ourselves. “That means I have to Seek God first. So how am I going to do that? What am I going to do that will seek God first? I know. I have to put God first. I have to do my best to be like God, to do what Jesus would do. I have to be a better person. I have to be a better Christian. If I do that, if I can pull that off, then I will be seeking the Kingdom of God and I will be seeking His Righteousness.”

What a frightful way to live! Have you ever tried to live your life to be like Jesus? Have you ever tried to live you life to be perfect? How did you do? Did you pull it off? Did you come anywhere close? Were you perfect in your actions, in the things that you said and the things that you thought? Not if you were honest with yourself. If you were honest with yourself you made the same conclusion as the Apostle Paul – “Oh wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death!”

Judging from how richly our heavenly Father has blessed us, judging from how generously he has “added all these things to us as well” we can only conclude that there must be some other standard for God’s blessing. If you compare how sinful we are to how greatly we have been blessed we can only conclude that “Seeking first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness” must involve something other than how well we behave.

The good news, in fact the great news, the news that is so good that it is even better than hearing your stimulus check has been doubled or even tripled is that Seeking first God’s Kingdom and God’s Righteousness means simply that you seek the places where God has promised to be for you. All it means is that you drink from his cup, that you eat from his hand, that you return to his house over and over again to be given His gifts of love and grace and mercy and forgiveness. You don’t do a thing. You just show up and takes care of the rest.

You know what – what we are doing right now, sitting in church, listening to the Word of God read and preached and proclaimed – that is Seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Opening up your bible to begin your day in His Word. That is seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Having devotions and prayer time with your family. That is seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Taking communion. That is seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

God’s Kingdom is that place where he gives out for free His righteousness. That is way better than any economic stimulus package. You don’t have to do anything to get it! The government isn’t just handing out free money. You have to earn it. In order to get your check you have to be a tax payer. In other words they are simply giving you back what you earned in the first place. God doesn’t do that. He gives you what He earned. He gives you what he bought and paid for. He gives you what cost him his own body and blood. He gives you the forgiveness that Jesus won for you when he died on the cross. Forgiveness of sins. Eternal life. Salvation. That is God’s stimulus package! You were dead. Now you are alive! How’s that for stimulus?

But God is practical. He knows us so well. He knows our every need. He knows that first and foremost the thing that we need is forgiveness. But that is not all that we need. We still have to eat. We still need clothes to wear a place to sleep, we have bills to pay. We need to put gas in the car and food on the table. So God gives to us those things as well. As we are seeking first His Kingdom and His righteousness, he is busy adding to us all of those other things that he sees that we need.

God loves all of his creation. Every part of it. From the birds in the air to the very grass that covers the ground. God loves it and it is beautiful. So God takes care of it. God finds food for the birds. He makes sure that there is plenty for them to eat. He finds food for the bugs, the ants, the earth worms, the field mice. He makes the grasses that grow out in the fields, Even the weeds that we spray with round up when they grow where we don’t want them to grow, He makes them beautiful. He cares about them so much that he colors them all shades of green, he makes them flower with beautiful vibrant colors and delicate shapes. He loves and takes care of his creation. And you? You are a part of that creation. You are His crowning achievement. And so while he has given you the primary task of simply seeking first His Kingdom he is busy adding to you everything that you will need to support your body and life.

We get that so turned around. We get that all mixed up. We seek first all that other stuff. We have plans for just how we are going to spend that stimulus check and all of the extra stuff that is going to pile up in our homes simply because we all of a sudden have a windfall of a thousand extra dollars. We get so worried and fearful because the cost of doing business has gone up that we stress out and loose sleep wondering if we will keep our heads above water, wondering if we will have enough money to provide for ourselves and our families. Of course we will. Even if you were loose your house, your car, even if you were to be downsized and your position at work were to be eliminated, God would find a way to put food in your mouth and clothes on your back and a roof over your head. He loves you. More than birds of the air and grass in the fields He loves you and he will take care of you. Don’t worry.

Seek first the Kingdom of God. Seek first the place where God has provided for you His righteousness free of charge. After you have done that, get up. Go to work. Earn your living. Pay your bills. Pay your taxes. Spend your stimulus check, if you must and serve your neighbor. Let Him take care of the rest.