Sermon for 13th Sunday after Trinity, 2020
Sermon for Trinity 13
September 6, 2020
Fr. Tony Melton
Giving a birthday cake is an old liturgy. I’m not referring to the song, which is certainly liturgical, but probably not very old. The act of giving a cake is more complex that you might think. Those who are throwing the party bake a cake and present it to the birthday girl. In the past, when food was more scarce, it was understood that the birthday girl had the prerogative to keep all of the birthday cake for herself. It is her cake after all. I doubt that this ever happened. It was understood that in addition to receiving a gift from friends, it was also a chance to celebrate the birthday girls generosity in giving back what was truly hers. Everyone is happy. This is “the cutting of the cake” is such a big deal, and is always done by the one whom the party is for. Now, given that context and liturgy, imagine how odd it would be if the one throwing the party sliced off a piece of the cake, hid the rest of cake away, and present the birthday girl with “her portion.” In the end, everyone, including the birthday girl would get the same amount of cake as they would have, yet this limiting of what is yielded up, and this reservation of the rest, is an ugly thing.
Our subject today is the requirement of God as TOTAL. He is never satisfied with a partial life. Our whole life must be given to God, like the cake. Doesn’t it truly belong to Him? Whatever portion of freedom we receive back is a gift of His generosity.
This theme is so needed in our time. We are a democratic people. We are used to thinking of things as belonging to us, namely our rights, our property. This is true, but imagine someone living in feudal Europe, where everything belonged to the King by right, and whatever was given was gift, this person would perhaps have an easier time understanding our relationship to God. “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own, have we given thee.”
Our text today is Luke 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan, but we’ll also make a pit stop in Galatians 3. These are our Gospel and Epistle for the day, found on page 207.
We will see three things. The Gospel shows us that the lawyer limited his obligation to God by confining it to the required actions of the Law. In the Epistle, we will look at how Paul relates the Law to the Abrahamic Covenant. Finally, we will explore what total faith means for us in this time and place.
So let’s dive into Scripture. Luke 10, the passage is on page 207 of your Prayer Book. You probably know the parable of the Good Samaritan well, so I won’t belabor it. The context here is that a lawyer approaches Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds with “Love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Catch the drift here. The lawyer asks a limiting question, “What must I do?” Jesus responds with a total answer. But the lawyer doesn’t get it. The text says that the lawyer, seeking to justify himself asks another limiting question. “Who is my neighbor? Define it for me, Jesus. What’s the quota, the target. Let’s get practical here, Jesus.”
In other words, the lawyer sought to justify himself by defining his obligation. And the parable of the Good Samaritan is given in response to a man’s desire to justify himself, not necessarily because the lacked compassion on the poor. Jesus told the story to correct the man’s faulty view of His obligation to God as limited.
In the parable, a man is beaten by robbers, left half dead on the side of the road. Fearing him dead, and at risk of becoming unclean by a corpse, a Levite approaches and passes by on the other side of the road. Soon, a priest does the same. The Levite and the Priest pass by the man because to them, their obligations to God are so defined, so limited, that a man in need of their help is easily excluded from their duty. Do you see how the story is matching with the original question from the lawyer?
Now, the Samaritan was someone who already fell outside of the neat parameters of the Law. Jesus chooses this character to accentuate that the approval of God is nothing like what the Pharisees thought it was. The Samaritan wasn’t righteous in God’s eyes because he fulfilled a finite set of obligations: the Law. The Samaritan was justified by God by embodying Christ’s total commitment. His care for the wounded man set no limit. “…whatsoever thou spend more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
The story ends, and Jesus looks at the lawyer, and he inverts the question. Instead of asking a limiting question: “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus accentuates the contrast of Law and Faith by changing the question to “Who proved to be a neighbor?”
This morning, this Gospel passage is paired with the great chapter from Galatians 3 where Paul talks about the Law and its relationship with the Abrahamic Covenant. It is significant for our understanding of God’s total requirement for us. Very simply, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day sought to justify themselves by the Law, but Abraham was justified by God by Total Faith. But before we go further, I’d like to clear up a common misunderstanding. Many people when explaining the Abrahamic Covenant (and the New Covenant, for that matter) say that these covenants were based on faith, whereas the Law was based on works, things that you did. But this is the wrong way to understand the difference between the Covenants, between Law and Gospel. Think about the Abrahamic Covenant. God gave the promises to Abraham of land, descendants, and the Seed which would redeem the world. He confirms this promise with a self-maledictory oath, that strange passage where the stove pot passes through the carcasses alone. Essentially saying that if either God or Abraham’s descendants break the Covenant, it is God Himself that will die for it. So God’s commitment is total. Most people get that.
But think about the rest of the story and what Abraham’s part meant. He believed God totally. God commanded Abraham to circumcise himself and all his men, and then to take his only son, Isaac, lead him up to Mt. Moriah, bind him up with cords, place him on an altar, kill him, and offer him as a burnt sacrifice to God. The Bible explains both his trusting and his actions as Faith. Faith is total. You can’t define your obligations. This example of faith was in the backdrop when the lawyer asked Jesus the question. You might think also of the rich young ruler who asked the same question. “What must I do?” “Go sell everything and give to the poor.” Why the changing answers? “Sacrifice your son…love the Lord with all your mind, soul, mind, strength…sell all you have.” The answers change because you cannot limit what God’s requirement of us to a definition. The requirement of Faith is TOTAL.
Okay, with that in mind, now lets look at the role of the Law. Paul asks, “What is the purpose of the Law? It was added because of transgressions.” The Law was given because the hearts of the people were so far from God that a more detailed way was given for following God. It wasn’t that the requirement of total faith was replaced with a defined set of obligations, though this is how the lawyer and the Pharisees in Jesus’ day saw it.
A good way to understand the relationship between the Old Testament Law and the Abrahamic promise based on Faith is to bowling. Kids, when you go to the bowling alley, and you chuck your ball down the lane, where does it go a lot of the time? [the gutter] Right, and that is because you still need to practice. You’re not very good at it yet. So, what do some bowling alleys do to help you? [guard rails] Exactly. The people of God were so bad at devoting their whole hearts to God, that Jesus gave them guard rails. But is bowling with guard rails real bowling? No! Can you bowl a whole game without hitting the guard rail, and hit only a couple of pins each frame? Yes! So to confuse the parameters of the Law as the real game, and to define the perfection as simply avoiding a violation of those parameters, is just as silly as to think that bowling is simply trying to avoid hitting the guard rails. The Pharisees had turned the Law, which originally was intended to merely point the way to the total life of commitment, into the limited requirement that determined their righteousness. But righteousness has always been by total faith.
To summarize, Faith is the total commitment of the soul to God, and a total commitment to neighbor for God. Lawyer: What must I do to inherit eternal life? Paul: Believe. Jesus: Thou shalt love the Lord… Lawyer: What are the boundaries of my obligations? Paul: look at Abraham. Jesus: look at the Good Samaritan. They both show us that salvation is total. The Sin is Total. The Forgiveness is Total. The Requirement is Total.
Christ the King, why must we hear this?
Christ the King’s faith must be total…
…so we are not like the lawyer.
We ask questions which seek to define and limit our duty toward God.
Who is my neighbor?
Which day do I have to worship God?
Do I really have to go to church to be a Christian?
How much of my life, my time, my privacy, my money, my plans, my hopes, my retirement do I have to give to God?
How many people do I need to lead to Christ?
How many children should we have?
How much do I have to care for the poor?
How outraged should I be about the genocide of abortion?
How much risk do I have to take for the mission of God?
But following Christ’s example, we should turn these limiting questions into identity questions.
Who is a neighbor?
Who is a worshipper?
Who do I belong to? Is there anything that doesn’t belong to God?
Who is an evangelist?
Who cares for the poor?
Who is outraged at injustice?
Who risks all for the mission of God?
The answer to the limiting questions is Law, but the answer to the identity questions is always Christ and His total commitment. Christ is a neighbor, so am I. Christ belonged totally to God, so do I. Christ belonged risked all for the mission of God, so must I.
…so that we can please God.
God hates lukewarmness. He spews the lukewarm out of his mouth. He is pleased with the whole burnt offering. Even from our Gospel lesson, you shall love the Lord thy God will ALL thy heart, and with ALL thy soul, and with ALL thy strength, and with ALL thy mind. The very repetition of it emphasizes that the only thing that pleases God is a faith which is TOTAL.
…so we can be effective in mission.
The Church has often existed in pagan or secular cultures. These times are hardly unprecedented in that respect. In times when the culture is highly antagonistic to the kerygma of the Church, the preached Gospel of Christ, the message, the mission moves forward where there is authentic, total commitment to God within a community. A shared ethic, a common vocation, a singular focus.
Within a pagan or secular culture, people come to Faith by seeing the beauty of a Gospel life long before they are persuaded by the Truth of the Gospel message.
…so that we can establish a healthy church culture.
The story of southern mainline church has been a continual slide into that partialism that so plagued the lawyer in the Gospel reading today. Church occupied a very defined and limited place and time. Perhaps this is most true within the Anglican or Episcopal churches. But we’ve seen where that leads, and we don’t want that! I assure you that Christ doesn’t want it either! We are at the very beginning of a church plant. What we do now sets the culture. What type of church will we be? Will we be a church like Abraham and the Samaritan, representing the TOTALITY of FAITH? or will we be like the lawyer, or the Levite, or the Priest, who define and therefore confine their obligation to God within a certain set of rules and duties?
Jesus ends his conversation with the lawyer with “Go and do likewise.” Half the point of the story was to destroy his need for a definite set of steps to follow. God forbid I would end in a way different from Christ. My job is not to tell you what to do. I don’t always know. Most people keep the cake of their lives all to themselves. If they are Christian, they might extend a portion to God. My job is to communicate the Gospel and the story of Scripture which shows that God requires it all, He gave it all through His Son, Jesus Christ. With that, there are some things which I commend to you in light of this homily.
First, we must discern if we are leaving our obligations unmet. Paul is clear that the obligations that God gives are not bad, or ought to be ignored. The Law is not contrary to the promises of God, neither is it contrary to Faith. What is contrary to Faith is believing that the Law is the limit and definition of our requirement to God, and not the first steps, the guard rails. But there is an opposite danger which ignores even that which God does require. And in assessing if we have given our whole lives to God, it is wise to start with the first baby steps of what He commands.
God does require things of His people. We have certain obligations. The Office of Instruction in your Prayer Book is clear. “What is your bounden duty as a member of the Church? My bounden duty is to follow Christ, to worship God every Sunday in his Church, and to work and pray and give for the spread of his kingdom.” We’ll talk more about this in catechesis today.
Second, We must ask God where our Faith is partial. Christ’s command to the lawyer was not the call to a specific task, but an invitation to a reassessment of his entire life. We must ask God to show us where we have been like the lawyer and the Pharisee, confusing the guidelines, or the required actions, as the absolute requirement.
God, what do YOU want me to do with the life that YOU have given me?
…money
God, what do YOU want me to give up, quit, give away, leave behind, destroy, etc.?
God, show me how my faith is partial.
Third, and lastly, Desire of God His Grace. It is true that the requirement of God is total, and this fact drove the apostles to ask, “Who then can be saved?” But, never forget that the grace, also, is total. It is not by his own strength that Abraham climbed Mt. Moriah. The requirement of God is so high that it would crush us unless two things were true: 1) our failures were covered by the precious blood of Christ, and 2) that His grace sustains us, lifts us, totally transforms us. By ourselves we can do nothing, but “with God all things are possible.” So take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort and to your strength. It is the Body and Blood of the One whose devotion to the Father and love for you is TOTAL. Amen.