I.N.I.
a sermon to be preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, VA on the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, 30 June 2013, and based on the Gospel for the day St. Luke 9:51-62, with illustration and explanation from the Epistle for the day, Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord!
Dear Friends in Christ,
This morning there are, I'm quite sure, a lot of sermons being preached in this country about this past week's Supreme Court decisions, whether the rolling back of part of the Voting Rights Act, or the declaration that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. This isn't one of those sermons. This sermon, like all of my sermons -- like all of our sermons -- is about Jesus.
You've gotta love these disciples! James and John, especially. The two sons of Zebedee the fisherman. The two whom Jesus nicknamed the "Sons of Thunder." Our Gospel for today shows one of the reasons why they deserved and earned this nickname: they seemed to have lightning quick fuses when they proposed immediate action to 'remedy' (as they saw it) situations that faced them.
But when you think about it, thunder doesn't really seem to do anything, does it? Except maybe startle us. It's the lightning that does something. And the wind. And the rain. The thunder, however, is just noise. It's loud. It's threatening. But while it accompanies the violent storms of summer, thunder itself doesn't seem to do anything.
And these two disciples were called "Sons of Thunder." Little echoes of thunder. Look at today's Gospel for an example of how they operated.
Jesus and company were on their way to Jerusalem and they had the option of stopping over in a Samaritan village. The disciples and their Master were not Samaritans themselves. So the villagers did not receive Jesus because they could tell he was headed for Jerusalem. And then James and John step forward with a proposal to fix things, and fix them good. They said "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Because, you know, that would really help convince these Samaritans of the goodness of the Gospel message Jesus had been preaching all this time.
You can sort of wonder two things when you read this passage. One is to ask yourself "How in the world did Jesus put up with these characters?" And another is to think about how these disciples would so easily fit into present-day American society. Isn't their snap reaction, their thunderous proposal, just the sort of thing that our country is overfull with? In this DC region where national politics is our local news, we know this all too well, don't we? One politician makes a statement or proposal or suggestion. And we all know that the immediate reaction from someone on the other side of the aisle will be to command fire to come down from heaven to consume that politician. Swiftly, decisively, before there can even be time to digest and understand the first politician's suggestion, the impulse is to strike back and reject the proposal out of hand.
Talk radio commentators seem to do the same, as do the people who phone in to their shows. People writing on the internet, too. Tweeters and Facebookers. Everyone in our culture seems infected with this desire to call down fire from heaven to consume other people whom we picture as members of some group we aren't in.
It happens in politics. It happens in sports with trash-talking athletes at all kinds of levels. It happens in business. It even happens in the Church. Yes, there are factions and party spirit in the Church. If you look in your history books you can find a lot of calls for fire from heaven to consume the other side in religious controversies. Whenever someone seems to step outside the strict boundaries of whatever orthodoxy is at center stage, the other party calls down condemnations. Sometimes it was mass excommunication of whole countries or empires. Sometimes it was executions of individual believers from the other side. Sometimes it has meant getting the political leaders to call up armies to bring their lightning and thunder to bear against the opposition.
These days we seem a little more refined in the Church. When someone heads in a little different direction, there are accusations and threats and condemnations that appear first in tweets and blogs on the internet, then in publications, then in resolutions and declarations, open letters, the secular media, and wherever else someone can get their fire to catch and burn. Yes, even in the Church.
And in all these cases -- in politics and sports and business and the Church, in high school and on the Internet, through private conversations or public declarations -- in all these cases, the usual immediate reaction is to strike back, calling down fire from heaven on the first party. And back and forth and back again.
Jesus proposes another way.
To James and John, wanting to call down fire on the Samaritan village, Jesus gave a rebuke. He reminded them of their mission. And He took them on to another village. But what about the first village? What about the general Samaritan wandering away from Jewish orthodoxy? What about their rejection of Jesus? In our world where conservatives attack liberals, where liberals attack conservatives, where both attack the middle; in our world where different parties of Muslims launch wars on other parties; in our world where many of us can remember Christian on Christian violence in places like Northern Ireland, and where we can easily find (or be either victim or perpetrator of) violent language where Christians attacks each other over all sorts of issues; in this world of hurt and misunderstanding, in this world of sinful action and reaction ... Jesus proposes another way.
Here in our Gospel Jesus distills it to two words: "Follow Me." In quick succession along the road to village number 2, Jesus directs his followers how to follow: 1) be aware of the cost (while the animals have homes, know that such security is not promised to disciples); 2) focus on the living by proclaiming the Kingdom of God to them; and 3) if you're going to follow Jesus, then do it and do it wholeheartedly (with an allusion to today's Old Testament lesson wherein Elisha received the call to follow Elijah and immediately gave up his old life by slaughtering his oxen, cooking them on a fire made of the pieces of his wooden plow, and took to the road following the prophet Elijah).
And then St Paul, in the lesson from Galatians, reminds us of another central theme in the Bible by recalling for us that both in the Old Testament and in the teaching of Jesus the whole Law is summarized in the statement that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. Love is the fulfilling of the Law. What is NOT the fulfilling of God's plan for us are those "deeds of the flesh" Paul mentions. A large group of those deeds are the failings that seem to describe our culture of knee-jerk wanting to call down fire from heaven to consume our opponents. Listen to these items strung together in the heart of Paul's list: "strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions." (Gal. 5:20-21). Isn't this a description of the culture we live in?
Even if you don't agree there, you have to agree that much of American society, much of our economic system, and much of our culture does not display the fruit of the Spirit that Paul lists next: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23) Those traits are so out of the ordinary for us that if you wrote a story about, say, politicians exercising only these fruits, your story would be placed in the fantasy section of the fiction shelves. Your editor would tell you "People don't do that. People don't live that way. It isn't believable. It's not natural."
Exactly. What is natural are those works of the flesh. What isn't natural to anyone born into our sinful world are those fruits of the Spirit. But the fruits of the Spirit are everyone's ideal, or should be. People just try all sorts of odd ways to get there. Some try to get to love, joy, peace and the rest by forcing other people to come around to their own way of thinking. Some try to find those things by spending impossible amounts of money. Some, I guess, have decided that since they don't feel these fruits in their own lives, that nobody else should either.
So how do we get from our culture where the impulse seems to be calling down fire from Heaven, to a culture where the fruit of the Spirit seems normal?
Jesus counsels love. He tells us through St. Paul to "walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 3:16, 25). Which is hard to do. On our own, anyway. No, actually, it's not "hard" on our own; it's impossible on our own. We would die before we actually walked in the Spirit if it were only up to us. We're pretty well enslaved by our old nature.
But, thank God, Christ has set us free. We've been called to freedom. Our old sinful flesh with its passions and desires has been crucified because we belong to Christ (Gal. 5:2), Saint Paul tells us. So, yes, we have died. And now we do walk by the Spirit. Just not by our own reason or strength.
Living and walking in Christ is something that comes to us from the outside. Being called to discipleship isn't ever our own idea. Jesus calls us with his simple "follow me". His call comes to us through his Word and the gifts of the Sacraments. Then the desire and power to walk in the Spirit by loving our neighbor as ourselves comes from the same Word and Sacraments.
Here we are on Sunday morning wrapping ourselves in these gifts, these means of grace. But we don't need to wait for Sundays to be in those gifts. God's word comes to us in the Scriptures which we are fortunate enough to have available to us in our own languages. We are fortunate enough to be able to own printed copies of the Bible, as many as we want. We are blessed to be able to read God's Word whenever we want to, or to listen to others reading it. We can recall passages, verses, or phrases that have struck our hearts. We can see artwork inspired by Scripture, hear or sing songs inspired by Scripture, maybe create our own artwork inspired by God's Word. We can study the Word with others or by ourselves. We can read, mark, learn, and take it to heart.
And while our Sacramental lives usually spring forth out of congregational life, the effects of the Sacraments carry us though the week, too. Wherever we go, we are baptized. Whether we are walking under the trees God created or down the city streets laid out by people, we are baptized. When we are are sick or healthy, when we are traveling or at home, whether we are working or unemployed, we are still baptized. In all our states and condition, whatever our momentary emotion or passing thought, we are baptized. God's grace never leaves us. His Spirit, who washed us clean at our Baptism is in us every moment. So we never have to try to bear the fruit of the Spirit on our own. You and I are never called to fight off by ourselves the urge to call down fire from Heaven on people who offend or attack us. The Holy Spirit empowers us. We are always filled with the Spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Sometimes, however, we seem to forget that the Spirit is in us. When we feel weaker, or when we think for some reason that we need to put that yoke of slavery back on our shoulders, we've got still other tools always available to us. The Eucharist feeds us Christ Himself. Our prayer life enriches our thinking with the thoughts of God. Taking those helps into us we live as God would want us to live, serving Him. No longer do we want to call down fire from Heaven to consume others. Rather we seek ways to share God's love and our love with them. Jesus died and rose to life to make this all possible.
We look forward to the fulfilling of all God's promises to us in Heaven, but we are given the chance to have a foretaste -- an appetizer, if you will -- of the heavenly banquet already here on earth when we live by the Spirit, loving our neighbors as ourselves. The quiet, peaceful, loving environment that creates around us is where we find God in our world, it is where others are led to their own lives in the Spirit. Elijah found this out in today's Old Testament lesson. He was certain he was the only believer left on the planet. Then the Lord called Elijah to seek Him out. The Lord wasn't in the great strong wind. The Lord wasn't in the earthquake. The Lord wasn't in the fire that followed. The Lord was in the quiet.
I pray today that all of us here rejoice in the freedom of the Spirit that is already ours by Word and Sacrament as we learn to stop calling down fire from Heaven, but instead practice those quiet fruits of the Spirit which show that we belong to Christ.
Amen.
May the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.