The Truth Never Changes

Easter Sunday 2017

     Lately, I’m becoming more aware of my age. I feel my trousers (that used to fit neatly around a 33-inch waist) falling down. I tighten my 42-inch belt another notch in hopes of holding on, but the exercise in belt tightening proves useless. What I really need are suspenders. No, what I really need is to lose thirty pounds. No, it’s not that either. What I really need is to be thirty-five again. If I were thirty-five again, only with the benefit of sixty–five years experience, I would use the added wisdom gained from having made a thousand-and-one mistakes to new advantage. I’d do things differently. I would eat less pizza and drink less wine. I see my body changing and I feel like I’m treading water in a whirling sea trying to stay afloat against the odds that maybe, somehow, I’ll be young again and as fit as I once was. Oh well, it’s the common inheritance of humankind; the world keeps moving on, and the further it goes, the younger everyone else becomes. Change, like death and taxes, is an intrinsic feature of life. Like the weather about which we can do nothing, you either accept change or you’re miserable on this planet.

      On the other hand, some things never change. God visited this earth, incarnate in a man. We found his presence among us objectionable so we hung him on a cross making us guilty of deicide. You’d think for that crime he’d punish us, but he did not. To the contrary and beyond our wildest expectations, he rewarded us for it. He raised himself from the tomb in which we laid him, and then he set out the terms by which we too might share in his divine life, an immortal life more powerful than death. “Be baptized everyone of you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall be saved” (Mt. 28.19; Acts 2.38; Mk.16.16), he said. “Saved” means that we will receive a reward from God, that when we die, rather than leave us to perish in a grave, God will do for us what he did for Jesus (Ps.16.9-10). He will raise us up immortal in a new and glorious body, a body free from the limits of time and space; in other words, a body that does not age or bulge in all the wrong places, a body that is tailored made for life in heaven. Christians call that promise “the gospel” because that is what Jesus called his message: “the good news” (Mk.1.15). That has not changed. That was the message he delivered to Israel when he first emerged from the waters of baptism in the Jordan River filled with the Holy Spirit; that was the message that Saint Peter preached on the day of Pentecost in his first sermon; that is the message I delivered to you last Easter Sunday from this pulpit. The message is the same today, as it was then. And if you return next Easter, it will be the same message: all who believe and are baptized will be saved and all this is from Jesus Christ who won our salvation by dying for us on a cross and by raising himself afterwards from the grave revealing his divine nature and leaving no doubt about it in the mind of his chosen witnesses: God really did this.

      I can see by the wizened expression on some of your faces that you’re disgruntled. You’re thinking, “That settles it. You won’t see me here next Easter, if that’s how it’s gonna be. Why don’t you try something new? That’s what’s wrong with this church; you serve up the same old dish over and over again and people don’t buy it. You have to innovate; you have to change with the times. Get with it.” “Get with it” is essentially what Peter said to Jesus after Jesus told him that “the Son of man must suffer many things, be rejected by the chief priests and the scribes, be killed, and on the third day rise again”(Mt.16.21). After hearing that, Peter said to Jesus, “Don’t say that. No one wants to hear about your death and resurrection. Preach about “the lilies of the valley” and “do not judge.” That’s what people want to hear. You gotta meet people where they are. Come on. Get with it.”

To which Christ said, “Get behind me Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are not on the side of God but of men” (Mt.16.23). In other words, Jesus said to Peter—and through him to the Church and to us today—that some things must never and can never change. The Gospel is what God has made it. Christ has died and he is risen, and all who are baptized in his name have died to sin and are risen with him. The Gospel is from God and therefore the truth of Christ’s message does not change.

        You would think that a world weary of violent revolution and soulless evolution would be grateful for the gospel of God (Rom.1.1–4), and yet, the world remains ungrateful. The world rejected Christ then. The world rejects him still. Like His mother and the other women and Saint John who followed him to the cross, and like his disciples after seeing him resurrected and eating a meal with him and touching the wound in his side, there are some here and there who believe. But the majority of humankind has an attitude toward Jesus like that of Pilate. Pontius Pilate, after interviewing Jesus, was thoroughly unimpressed. Pilate knew he was an innocent man, undeserving of death, but he had Jesus flogged anyway just for good measure, just to show him who was boss. The world, like Pilate, just doesn’t get it. Pilate said to Jesus, “So, I hear you’re a king?” And Jesus replied “I am, and for this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” “Imagine that,” Pilate must have thought to himself, “A king of truth leading an army of truth seekers.” Pilate’s response was to shake his head, condescendingly smile, and ask Jesus, “What is truth?”(John 18.36–38). He meant, “What is truth worth? Where’s that gonna get you. A king needs power, real power. Truth is for philosophers.” Worldly people like Pilate are contemptuous of Jesus, they may not think he’s a bad man but he seems to them irrelevant. He offers nothing of substance for people trying to survive and thrive in the real world. Who needs truth? A king needs power. Pilate rejected Jesus because he looked at a broken and, seemingly, impotent man wearing a crown of thorns and he thought Jesus was a joke. And so do most of the people in the world today—think Jesus is a joke. Very few take him seriously. Why respect a “king” who allowed his enemies to torture and kill him? They do not understand either the scriptures that foretold his death or the power of grace by which he was able to roll away the stone and break free from the tomb. God’s grace is the greatest power in the universe. Christ’s resurrection from the dead showed that God’s grace belongs to him. The Word by which God created the universe became flesh and dwelt among us. Now that’s power. Go on believing that Jesus Christ is irrelevant, my friends, and you’ll remain as clueless as Pontius Pilate.

       Some things like our frail bodies change with age, scandals rock the church, new sects sprout up like spring weeds, elections bring in new politicians with new ways of doing the same old things, the government grows bigger, the weapons of war improve, life is what it is; there’s not much we can do about it. But the most important things in life remain the same. The most important thing in life is not a thing but a person: Jesus Christ. And he is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb.13.8). What he accomplished by his sacrificial death and resurrection is permanent. Nothing can ever change that.

        But what about you? Everyone in this world is defined by where he or she chooses to stand in relation to Jesus Christ. Do you stand with him or do you stand with Pilate, thinking of him as a joke? Are you like Nicodemus who sort of believed in Jesus but only came out to see him at night because he was embarrassed to be seen with him in daylight? He was afraid of what other people would think, if they knew he was Christian. Are you like the rich young ruler who praised Jesus and wanted to follow him, until Jesus asked too much of him? He turned away and went home. Are you like Peter on the night of Jesus’s arrest, afraid to admit that you love him? Or are you like the men who stood at the foot of the cross and made fun of him? Or worst of all, are you like the temple priests who believed he had risen from the dead but who paid the guards off to spread the rumor that his disciples had come in the night and stolen the body? Are you among those who simply are not going to believe him no matter what? If you are, I have good news for you. You’re among the majority. The world is on your side.

       I was speaking to a person recently about Our Lord. She did not attend this church and said that she would not be attending any church on Easter. With her it was a matter of principal. When I asked her why, she said, “Because the church is filled with hypocrites. I have my own beliefs,” she said. She didn’t mean this parish in particular is corrupt, just the church in general. Her attitude seemed to be, “Who needs organized religion? I have my own ideas about God. That’s enough for me.” Her criticisms of the church and of the Gospel reminded me of something Fr. Andrew Greely, a Catholic priest, wrote in a book called Why Catholic?. He addressed a Catholic readership, but his comments apply to all Christians. He said this: “The reader can make up his own litany of injuries the Church has done to him. I do not care how horrendous the litany may be, it does not provide a valid excuse for disengaging from the church and from the faith. Indeed it is irrelevant. I attempt no justification and offer no excuse for what the Church may have done to you: I simply assert that the failures of Christians and the failure of Christian leadership have nothing to do with the validity of the faith. If you use those failures as an excuse for not facing the essential religious demands of the catholic and apostolic faith to which we pledge our souls in baptism, you are engaged in an anti-intellectual dishonest cop-out. The question is not whether Christian leadership is enlightened but whether the catholic faith is true. A whole College of Cardinals filled with psychopaths provides no answer one way or another to that question.  Search for the perfect church if you will; when you find it, join it. And realize that on that day it becomes something less than perfect.”

       The world is forever looking for reasons to deny Jesus Christ. There are millions of them. If you want to find one, you will. But I’ll give you one good reason to believe in him, one good reason to be baptized in his name and to make it your priority to keep your baptismal vows. It is this: because he and he alone can change you and make you what you’re not. Because of sin, neither you nor I am acceptable to God. We are imperfect. He alone is perfect; his resurrection from the dead is revelation of his integrity as a man in full possession of the divine nature.  And he has promised to infuse his perfection into our souls in baptism making us as acceptable to God as he is. “He is the perfect offering for our sins.” Saint John said, “and not our only but for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2.1–2). In other words, what we lack, he supplies. That is why everyone needs him. That is a fact of life that will never change. Why should we belong to his church and believe in him? Because he is God and his Gospel is the truth: that’s why. You can have all the beliefs you want, but there is only one belief that counts. Faith accepts Jesus Christ for who he is, stands by Him, doesn’t waver, doesn’t falter, and does not change.

       In a moment we are going to receive a child into the church through the sacrament of baptism. From the beginning, the church has welcomed the newly baptized on Easter Sunday, the day of Christ’s resurrection. As part of this service I will ask you who are Christians to renew your own baptismal vows. As we stand here today, Christians around the world from India to Egypt to England to Nigeria, to the Central African Republic to Virginia have recently paid for their faith with their lives. This is serious business. There is a spirit in this world that hates Jesus Christ, hates his church and everything about him (John 15.18–19). If you stand up for him you become as he is, a target. But if you receive his baptism you also become as he is, a child of God as much a son or daughter of the Father as is Jesus who alone was privileged to call God “my Father.”(John 5.17–18). In baptism the only Son of God, unites us to himself in his Spirit, thereby giving us the right and privilege to call God “Our Father” also (John 20.17; Mt.6.9). And that, my friends, is why we stand with him, and will always stand with him, because through him we have full and unfettered access to God, Our Father, and that privilege is worth everything (ITim.2.5).

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Ps.22.1

Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017

     Christ’s first recorded words are those spoken to his mother. He was only twelve, when on their way home from Passover celebrations in Jerusalem, he went missing. After searching for him frantically for three days, Mary and Joseph found him in the Temple discussing scripture with the rabbis. When asked, “Son, why did you treat us so? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you,” the youngster replied irenically, “Why were you worried; did you not know that I would be in my Father’s house, doing my Father’s business?” (Lk.2.49).

     Luke tells us that after that incident, “he returned to Nazareth and was obedient unto them”(Lk.2.51), living quietly at home until age thirty, when suddenly he burst onto the scene with dramatic power, quickly capturing the attention of the nation. He came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, and when he came up out of the waters a voice from heaven did proclaim:“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. (Mt.3.17)” From that moment on, it was plain to see that Jesus of Nazareth was something much more than a quiet momma’s boy from a rural village. Some doubted, but many in Israel believed that the Son of God was on earth doing his Father’s business. And what a business it was: healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, raising the dead throughout Galilee and Judea (Mt.11.4-6; Is.35.5-6; 61.1). Doing it all by the power of his word alone. His was a stunning performance, to say the least. In the town of Bethany, he raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11.38-44). A week later, as he rode into Jerusalem to shouts of, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!” it appeared that Israel was ready to receive him as their king (John 12.13).

        But then, almost as suddenly as it began, the drama of God’s Son came to a screeching, gruesome, blood-soaked end. There he was less than three years after his prophetic baptism, hanging helplessly on a cross between two thieves, condemned as a blasphemer by his own people and as a traitor by the governor of the province. It wasn’t enough that the Roman guards had whipped and beaten him nearly to death. They also mocked him by jamming a crown of thorns on his head. They then poured salt in the wounds by making him carry the very instrument of his death up a hill. The Jewish scriptures that he knew so well even in his youth prophesied that “the one whom you see hanging on a tree is cursed by God” (Dt.21.23; Gal. 3.13). And there his life ended, hanging on a "tree"; condemned by men and cursed by God. Saint John tells us his last words were but one in Hebrew, “It is accomplished” (John 19.30). The business he was about in the temple at age twelve he completed at age 33, on a cross outside the city.

      But what, exactly, had he accomplished? The world looking on Jesus crucified saw not a great accomplishment but an abject failure. Some of his opponents scoffed at him saying, “If you are the Christ come down from the cross, save yourself” (Mt.27.40). Surely, he who raised Lazarus from the dead the previous week could pull himself free from the nails that held his wrists and feet to a cross. That he did not do this, they took as evidence confirming their suspicions that his messianic mission had been nothing but a magic act by a clever deceiver, a sleight of hand. He was not God’s Son, they thought, and his death on a tree confirmed it. This charlatan was at last getting what he deserved, good riddance (John 8.48-52; 11.45-53).

     Or so it seemed to some. Three days later, God would vindicate his Son, raising him from the dead and by so doing reveal what the meaning and purpose of his violent death was. He said he had come to his Father’s business. What exactly was that? Early in the mission, he told his disciples what it was: “The Son of man has come not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many”(Mk.10.45). “For many” is a reference to Isaiah.53.11, “My servant, the righteous one, shall make many righteous.”  In other words his death, he said, would accomplish the redemption of humankind. Those who were exiled from God because of sin would be reconciled to God because the Son of God paid with his life the price of their redemption. And this was not his doing alone. This was God’s plan from the beginning (Gen.3.15): that the Christ would come to his people and die, “according to the scriptures” (1Cor.15.3).

"In spite of that, we call this Friday good."   —T. S. Eliot

   This is part of the mystery of Christ that puzzles all who try to understand him. How could his death on a cross be a good thing? His death seems so senseless, so pointless. And yet Christianity makes his death the foundation of the message and even calls it “good news.” How could the brutal death of an innocent man be good news? Again, Jesus told his disciples early in the mission that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the chief priests and the leaders and be killed (Mt.16.21). All other religious leaders come to teach. If Jesus too had come to teach, after giving the Sermon on the Mount he could have sat down satisfied and said, “It is finished.” He then could have written a book, collected the royalties, built a house on a hill outside Jerusalem and lived a long and full life, enjoying his wealth. But Jesus did not come into the world to live well. Jesus alone came to die, to die on a cross, accursed. This was the business which the Father sent his Son to do because he alone being perfect man and perfect God could offer himself up as the perfect offering for sin. And on the cross he did exactly that. He sacrificed himself, shedding his blood, for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2.1-2).

   This is difficult to understand. Indeed we can only understand it by returning to the beginning of Israel’s long history and remembering what God said to Moses. God told Moses that Israel’s priests could offer up lambs in sacrifice to him and that God would accept the blood of those lambs as atonement for their sins (Lev.17.5-11). As Jesus hung on the cross on the eve of Passover he could hear in the distance the cries of hundreds of the lambs being slaughtered. How ironic that the Jews did not see that that lamb of God, a sacrifice that would end the need for all further sacrifice, was offering himself to God on our behalf on a hill outside the city (Heb.10.1-18). John the Baptist, when he first laid eyes on Jesus, cried out prophetically, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1.29; 36). This is the mystery of atonement: that Jesus on the cross is both priest and victim. He is the one offering up the sacrificial victim and the victim is Jesus himself (Heb.9.11-14).

   At the time no one understood this. Not even his mother and Saint John who faithfully stood by him to the end knew fully what was happening. It all looked to the human eye like such a tragedy. Peter, the one Jesus called his “rock” fled in fear and cowardice. None of his disciples as yet had received the Spirit (John 7.37-39). But in due time, Christ would pour out his Spirit upon the church with wisdom and understanding and the coward Peter would be empowered to preach boldly to the church the message of the cross: “You know that you were ransomed from your futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pt. 18-19).

    And so to this day Christian preaching is a message to the world about the meaning of the cross and the sacrifice of Christ. And the church proclaims with boldness that Jesus did not die in vain but he suffered and died for us. We owe everything to him. It is by the precious blood of Christ shed on the cross that atonement is made for our sins, his self-sacrifice is fully acceptable to God, and because his sacrifice is perfect, by virtue of his divine nature as the only son of the Father it could be no less than perfect, it need never be repeated. Christ by his death has saved us from our sins. Christ by his death has reconciled us to God (2Cor.5.17-21). And all he asks of us who would be saved is faith. “For God so loved the world” he said, “that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3.16).

    In the Garden of Eden there was a man, Adam, a woman, Eve, and a tree. The man and the woman ate the fruit of that tree in disobedience to God who told them not to eat it. For their sin, God punished them. They paid the penalty for sin, which is death—physical death and separation from God. Spiritual death came into the world through sin. On Calvary there too is a man, a woman, and a tree. The man is Jesus, the new Adam. The woman is Mary, the new Eve, and the tree is the cross. The difference is that what the first man and woman lost by their disobedience to God, Jesus and Mary restored by their obedience. Those who ate the fruit of the first tree died. But those who eat the fruit of the second tree have life restored to them in full. The second tree is the cross, and the fruit of that tree is Jesus Christ. By receiving him through faith, in baptism and in the Holy Eucharist, literally, but also in a spiritual manner, inviting him to make a home in our souls, we who were consigned to death because of the first man's (Adam's) sin have life returned to us as a consequence of the second man’s (Christ's) perfection. And we owe our salvation entirely to him who went about his Father’s business; a business that took him all the way to the cross.

   But knowing this makes us wonder all the more, what happened between him and God while he was on the cross that he should cry out in haunting anguish words of such awful abandonment that have become the most famous last words of any dying man ever, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps.22.1; Mt.27.46)  Surely Jesus who from his youth was an expert in scripture knew the promise of God, “'I will never fail or forsake you,' says the Lord" (Dt.31.6-8; Heb.13.5-6). Had Jesus lost his faith? Would God have abandoned him whom he called at his baptism and again on the mount of Transfiguration, “My beloved Son”? Surely not. So what happened to Jesus that caused him to sink into the depths of despair and for one awful moment feel the horror that Adam felt when the gates to Paradise were closed behind him? This is what happens when you take upon yourself the sins of the whole world. The nails holding him onto a tree were the least of it. He had to suffer. He had to feel not only what a lamb being ritually slaughtered feels, but he had to feel the guilt Adam felt when the death sentence was imposed upon him and upon all his heirs to come. He had to feel what a man feels when everyone, really everyone, blames you.

    It’s hard to imagine what Jesus felt in that terrible hour of abandonment. But here’s the thing. And this makes his willingness to endure this torture all the greater and mysterious. Scholars have wondered what scriptures he was discussing with the rabbis when he was with them in the temple as a boy. We’re not told. But I would venture he discussed with them the 22nd Psalm. And he told them that, “This is how it will happen. The Savior, when he comes, will be brutally killed according to the scriptures.” No one of course believed the young lad. “He is bright but he has much to learn” they told his mother afterwards. Do you see my point? Did you listen to that Psalm? Read it again, if you didn’t get it. Written a thousand years before the event, it prophesies in detail the gruesome death of the Savior (Is.53.1-11; Lk.22.37). Jesus, even in his youth, understood exactly what it meant. It was written about him, and his business with God was to submit to His will.

    In light of this we see how extraordinary his crucifixion was. He knew what was coming, but he ran not away. On his knees in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed “My soul is sorrowful unto death. Father, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done” (Lk.22.42). The plan for mankind’s redemption was laid out in scripture, though none but Christ foresaw it: if the Son cared enough for sinners to die for them on a cross after being tortured, the Father would forgive them. What did we do for him, that he should do this for us? As Saint Paul put it in so many words: nothing, we did nothing to deserve it. “Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom.5.7-8). That’s what makes the crucifixion amazing. He saved us by his grace, thereby revealing the true nature of the divine heart as infinite pity, infinite mercy, infinite peace. God is love (1John 4.7-11). And all he asks of us is that we honor His Son, Jesus Christ, who took the curse of death and the punishment of sin upon himself, for one reason and one reason only: that we who are dead to God because of sin might live and love eternally (John 6.40).

Today is the Day

Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2017

2 Corinthians 5.20–6.10                                             

     People come to church for all sorts of reasons and with a variety of expectations. Some come looking for a church that offers their children Christian education and fellowship. Some choose to attend services at a particular church because they like the music there. Others choose a church that has a beautiful liturgy. Still others just come because their wives make them come. If there are a hundred people in the congregation, those same people have a hundred different reasons for being there. But whatever motivation leads people to come to church, be it on Ash Wednesday or any given Sunday, I believe that all of us have one expectation in common. We come to church hoping to hear a good sermon, a sermon that inspires faith and hope in us and draws us closer to God and leaves us feeling like we learned something.

       You’d think that writing and delivering a good sermon would be an easy task. Like a nurse giving a flu shot, how tough can it be? But judging by the number of sermons that miss the mark, I’d say that writing and delivering a good sermon is a challenge that compares to batting in Major league baseball. If a player can keep a batting average of 300, getting a hit one of every three tries, he’s doing really well. Likewise, a preacher who can hit a home run from the pulpit once a month is doing very well. Let’s be honest, most sermons are not big hits. Preachers try their best, but it doesn’t always work. Preachers often wander without making a clear coherent point, while the poor souls in the pews drift with the meandering sermon into a slumbering twilight sleep born of the tedium of listening to something that makes no sense.

       This happened once to me, in Westminster Abbey, London, of all places.  It was a dark December evening during Christmas week about thirty years ago. I had come five thousand miles to attend a service of evensong in this hallowed shrine of Anglicanism. My expectations were high. The choral music was magnificent. The aesthetics of that setting are unrivaled in the Western world. Just being there was an inspiration. But then the young Canon to the Ordinary began to speak. On and on he droned, about what I don’t know. The last thing I remember is that he was reading to us from a book of cannon law; then I suddenly I found refuge in sleep. I mean, I went out like a light—not very polite to do when you are a guest in a foreign country, but a boring sermon is a boring sermon. I fought sleep but I could not stay awake. Then, it happened. The sermon ended without my knowing it. The organ bellowed. Trumpets blared. The congregation stood to sing, and as they did it startled me from sleep. You know what I mean. It’s one of these when you’re sound asleep and then suddenly it’s like, “Woo, woo, woo woo, Where am I?” My arms and legs were flailing about. I was so embarrassed. The gent beside me gave me a dirty look. I looked at him appealing for Christian forgiveness and understanding, but none was forthcoming. I could have shriveled under my seat. “It’s not my fault!” I wanted to say, “He was reading from a book of canon law!”              

        I’m sure that preacher was a good man, but he would have had a better sermon had he taken Saint Paul’s advice. Paul told Timothy how to preach. “Preach the word,” he said, “be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and teaching…do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4.2–5). Billy Graham was an evangelist. What does an evangelist do? The work of an evangelist is to tell the world about Jesus Christ. Not meekly but boldly. Not passively but urgently. Not quietly but loudly so all can hear the message of the gospel that salvation comes by the cross of Christ, that sin is the problem, and the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us on that old rugged cross is the answer; it is the antidote as Saint John said, “not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world.”

       You say the whole world is turmoil today and the country is divided and we need action to heal our wounds. When the world repents of sin and turns to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and when we turn to the Prince of Peace for salvation, he will mend those divisions, and that turmoil that seems intractable will cease. You say he can’t do that. No one can do that. You’re right.  No one relying on human power and reason alone can do that. But Christ does not rely on human power but on the grace of God and grace, as he revealed when he worked among the people in Galilee. It is a power that can heal the sick with a word, open the eyes of the blind, and raise the dead to eternal life. Grace is the greatest power governing the universe and it belongs exclusively to him.

       There is no political party that can deliver the salvation we need. Salvation belongs to Christ and it long past time for this county to admit that we blew it when we took prayer out of the public schools and turned Sunday mornings over to little league soccer. If God doesn’t come first in a nation’s life he doesn’t come at all. It’s no mystery what is happening to this country. We have treated Our Lord, the world’s true redeemer, as if he were some sort of pariah. We need the salvation that only he can deliver, a salvation that is in his precious blood and his alone, a salvation he gives to those who repent of their sins and beg his forgiveness. And God knows we have a lot to beg forgiveness for.

      “Repent, and believe the gospel,” Jesus proclaimed, “The kingdom of God is near.” (Mark 1.15). That is how Jesus preached: simple, straightforward, alarming, bold; always pointing the listener to the world’s true governor: God.

       But in pointing the listener to God, Jesus could not help but point also to himself. He had the courage to tell them what they did not want to hear: that in order to enter God’s kingdom they would first have to repent of their sins and then follow Him. “Take up your cross and follow me,” he said.

       That was Jesus’s message then. And still today, two millennia later, the message has not changed. And that is the work of the preacher: to proclaim that message. A good preacher proclaims not his own word but Christ’s. Saint Paul said that he was—and that the preachers are—“ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor.5.20). The preacher’s job is to deliver a message to us from the Lord. An urgent message that comes down to two little words, “the cross.” What is Christianity about? The cross. Where do we look for salvation? To the cross. Where did Christ die? On the cross!” The message never changes. That is why every true sermon is a variation on this one theme: “Today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor.6.2). Today is the day to repent of sin, change your life, and determine once and for all to live for Jesus and let him live in you.

        The preacher may be up in a pulpit and the congregation may be seated in the pews but we all, alike, stand under the authority of God’s word. All of us are called to conform our lives to the pattern of holiness that Christ has set before us.  That is why the best sermon ever is the one I make of my life and you make of your life.  When it comes to the gospel, actions speak louder than words.

       Nevertheless, words matter and preaching is vitally important. As Saint Paul put it in his letter to the Romans, “How are people to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? …” As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!” (Romans 10.14-16). 

     What’s he saying? There is nothing more important in life than that we faithfully proclaim the word of God and obey it. He is saying that we do not come to church for entertainment. Nor is this a lecture hall where we debate current issues. This is a church whose business is to proclaim the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ who died on a cross for our redemption. And the word is this: “Today is the day. The time of salvation is now” (2 Cor. 6.2). Confess your sin to Jesus Christ, commit your soul to his eternal care, cling to him who alone is our redeemer, as you would to one who rescues you from a burning building. Cling to that old rugged cross on which the young prince of glory died, and having turned your life over to him don’t ever, ever turn back.

The Reverend Jansen String
St. George’s and St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
Dundalk, Maryland