This Story is About Jesus - Romans 3:19-28

October 29, 2017
Commemoration of the 500^th Anniversary of the Reformation
Zion Lutheran Church – Mission Valley, TX
Rev. Jonathan F. Meyer, Pastor

This Story Is About Jesus– Romans 3:19-28

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

He was a contractor who was hired to do some work at the church. Let’s call him Carl[1]. Carl the AC tech. Carl was working on Monday – my day off – so when I met him at church, I told him I was in the middle of something at home.  I would go home and leave him to do his job and then he could call me when he was finished. 

Four or five hours later, he called and said the job was done; could I come back up to the church and inspect his work and sign off on his work order. So, I brushed the dust off my grubby clothes, wiped the sweat off of my unshaven face and, without changing my shirt, drove up to church. When I got up to the church I discovered he was equally dirty and sweaty – crawling around in a hot attic will do that to you. Carl started explaining what the problem was, what he did to correct and fix it, and then what we needed to do to keep our units functioning better down the road.

As Carl was packing up his tools, he said, “You know…this is the first time I’ve been in a church since I was a kid and went to church with Grannie.” He went on to tell me about Grannie’s love of Jesus, her example of the Christian life to him as a boy, how she read – and wore out – her Bible, and how he used to love to go to church with her to hear her sing next to him. But, as Carl grew up and set out on his own as a young man, he started down a path of living that filled him with regret as he got older. As he described to me his wild lifestyle, I think he hit all of the Ten Commandments to greater and lesser degrees, with a few of them being more thoroughly broken than others, let’s say. Through his narrative, he attitude was contrite; his words were filled with remorse; and his body showed the guilt that the words just couldn’t convey. To cap it all off, he was convinced he was a disappointment to Grannie. “I just wish I could be as good a Christian as Grannie,” he said.

Carl was a prisoner of his sins, convicted by the Law of God. The Law demands holiness. The Law demands perfection. The Law offers neither excuse nor options. If you are not holy, if you are not perfect, you are in opposition to the will of God. And, to those who break God’s Law, the Law stands in full accusatory power, and much like the old Uncle Sam glaring over his pointing finger, points straight at you. The Law condemns, damns, and leaves the sinner terrifyingly alone in the world with nothing to hold onto but his sins and the conscience that condemns.

Carl knew this: he was living it. He didn’t need me to preach it. He knew he was far from God’s command to be holy. He knew he was guilty of that long, laundry list of sins he committed against God, his neighbor, and even against his own conscience. The Law, with all of it’s Divine weight, was crushing this man to the core. Despondent of his sins, terrified of God’s wrath, completely broken by his past lifestyle, and over-loaded with guilt upon guilt, he began to cry. “I can’t fix what I did. I can’t forgive myself. I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said. “I’ll never be as good of a Christian as Grannie..."

As we stood there, I was seeing Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector being partially played out in real life. Here, standing in front of me, was Jesus’ tax collector in the form of an HVAC tech. He couldn’t look up; he stood with his back towards the altar and the cross above it. So, standing there in my sweaty, dusty, dirty shorts and T-shirt, covered in cobwebs, smelling of grass clippings, sawdust and sweat, there was only one thing for me to do.  I told him the message that he used to hear when he was a boy sitting next to Grannie in church. I told him about Jesus.

“Carl, you’ve spent the last decade of your life living outside God’s Law. You have broken God’s Law. And, when the Law is broken, we are to be punished under the Law. We deserve God’s wrath. You know this – the guilt you feel, the sorrow you expressed, the pain in your voice tells me that you recognize you have sinned and you are far from being righteous in God’s eyes. This is true of all of us – you, me, even your Grannie.

“Thank God, He has troubled your conscience with the Law so that you might hear and believe that Someone did something about this problem. God – who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love – chose instead to send Jesus into the world to be your Savior. Jesus Christ, who truly was perfect, holy and without sin, was perfectly righteous for you. Jesus took your sins into himself and carried all of them to the cross, this sinless man who was made to die the sinner’s death. At the cross – I gently turned him, pointed to the cross on the wall, and waited for him to look at it – Jesus took your place. Your unrighteousness because His; His righteousness became yours. While, yes, you are a sinner, you have an even greater Savior. His blood was shed for you and covers all of your sins, so that when God look at you, he no longer sees a sin-stained person who deserves condemnation; He sees a beloved son whose sins have been covered by Jesus’ blood. That’s what propitiation means, by the way – blood covering. You have been blood-bought and blood-covered by Jesus. Your sins – and I repeated a few of them for him – all of these sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus. You have done nothing to deserve this; it is all out of God’s Fatherly divine mercy and Jesus’ love for you., This gift is yours, received by faith in Jesus as your Savior. Your Grannie taught you this.

“You know and believe Jesus died for you.” He nodded. “Carl, you have confessed your sins to me. This isn’t about you forgiving yourself. This is about Jesus forgiving you. So that you might know this and believe this…” And, there, in the sanctuary, vested not in alb and stole, but in ratty shorts and a stained T-shirt, I lifted my dirty hands and with my thumb, traced the sign of the cross into the dirt on his forehead as I said, “As a called and ordained servant of Christ, I announce the grace of God unto you, and by the command of Jesus Christ I forgive all of your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“You said you want to be as good a Christian as Grannie. Do you know what a “Good Christian” is? A good Christian is someone who knows they are a sinner but they have an even greater Savior. A good Christian trusts the baptismal promise given them by God in Water and Word even when they fall far short of the glory of God. A good Christian comes to the Lord’s Supper – knowing they are unworthy in and of themselves; but worthy in the baptismal washing of Jesus – to receive the medicine for the soul. A good Christian trusts Jesus promises that their sins have been taken away and, even though they wrestle with temptation and falling into sin this side of heaven, they know their eternal reward in the resurrection is certain because Jesus opened the tomb on Easter morning. It’s not about being a “better” Christian – as if you were a fine wine, getting better with age - it’s about being a faithful one. If you want to be a good Christian, Carl, like Grannie, then be faithful, and live in the merciful forgiveness of Christ.

“Now, depart in peace, Carl. Your sins have been forgiven.”

Today is the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation and I hope you notice that, so far, I haven’t even mentioned Martin Luther at all from the pulpit. There’s a good reason for that. The Reformation isn’t about Luther, or me or Carl either, for that matter. Author Chad Bird says, “The Reformation is not about 95 theses nailed to the door; it’s about one Man nailed to the cross.[2]” 

Jesus died for sinners like me. In this true story, Carl received what Luther discovered: Jesus died for sinners like him. I have told you this story, today, so that you may know that Jesus died for sinners like you, too.  In Christ, you have the freedom of the Gospel from sin and a guilty conscience. This is what the Church is called to do: preach Christ and Him crucified for the sins of the world; that in Him is forgiveness for our sins.

That’s what the Reformation is about, even 500 years later. It’s not about Luther. It’s still about Jesus.

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[1] The name is changed, and the story is conflated to protect a confidence, but the conversation took place as indicated.

[2]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10214608892359479&set=a.2262330521222.2131745.1337232755&type=3&theater. Used with author’s permission.

Dear Veteran: Thanks

This is the field where the battle did not happen.
No blood was spilled; no lives were taken away.
The only gunfire heard is in the memories of men
As they search among the engraved for a buddy lost long ago.

I wrote that opening quatrain of a poem in my senior year of high school. The summer before I saw the Vietnam Memorial in Schuyler, Nebraska. It wasn't the "real" monument. That one is in Washington, D.C. I saw the traveling Monument, a replica of black aluminum panels, engraved with 58,000 names of men and women who did not return alive from Uncle Sam's RSPV-not-necessary-but-attendance-is-required invitation to Vietnam. The traveling Wall is in perfect, reduced scale. But, for the men and women who served - and especially for those who stood in the Nebraska city park and stared through the black panels back into their youths that disappeared into the jungles, swamps, rice patties, skies and rivers of South Vietnam - the memories and the names are still larger than life.

I remember reading in a book that Veterans frequently speak about the sounds of Vietnam: the strange, high-noted sing-song language; the bugs (always, always there were bugs); the distant rumble of an aerial bombardment; the sharp bark of artillery; the chatter of automatic rifle fire; the growl of a deuce-and-a-half truck transmission.

But the iconic sound of Vietnam is the "chop chop chop" sound made by the Bell UH-1 Iriquois helicopter, better known as, simply, the Huey. The Huey was to the Vietnam War what pickups are to Texas. They hauled everything from men to materiel; from FNGs (ahem..."fresh" new guys) heading to a forward operating base to body bags heading back to graves registration.

No matter the load, one thing was consistent: hunkered in the open side door was a man charged with defending this 20th century stagecoach: the door gunner. Armed with a .30 caliber M-60, he laid down suppressing fire while a half-dozen troopers bailed out of or into the bay doors, putting himself in harm's way for the sake of those troopers entrusted to his watchful eye and trigger finger.

Uncle Ron - 1971, South Vietnam.
Note 101st Airborne Screaming Eagle Patch on his right arm.

My uncle, Ron, was one of those door gunners. He served, first, as a mechanic in the 101st Airborne division (note the Screaming Eagle on his right shoulder) and then in the First Aviation Brigade in 1971-1972. He said he was fortunate: even though his first station of duty was near the DMZ, and it was "out in the boonies," he never really saw the really nasty stuff that is so often written about or portrayed in the movies. His second duty station - the one where he served as door gunner - was mostly flying between Dion and Cambodia. I don't know - I am not about to ask - but he probably did see some stuff he would rather not talk about or remember too closely (that's why I am not about to ask).

A Son Who Does the Father's Will

Matthew 21:28-32
Zion Lutheran Church
Mission Valley TX

A Son Who Does the Father’s Will

A father asked each of his two sins to go to work in the vineyard. The first son says no, but later changes his mind and goes to work. His actions spoke louder than his words. The second son told his father, “I will, Sir,” but then never got around to it. His actions also spoke louder than words, but for a different reason than with his brother. So, Jesus asks, posing the question to those who hear the parable, who did the will of the Father: Son #1 or Son #2?  

Logic says Son #1 is the answer. After all, Son #2 never got out the door, even after starting things off so well with a nice, polite answer to his father. Perhaps he got busy; maybe he was winning his X-box game and lost track of time; maybe he just forgot. Whatever the reason, his promise is broken and his feet never got dirty in the fields of the vineyard. Pretty easy to see how he failed do the father’s will.

Contrast him with Son #1. Yes, Number One started out pretty rough – his extremely curt ,rude and disrespectful, “I will not,” earned him no favors. But, his conscience became troubled. Our translation says “he had a change of mind.” So, Son #1 heads out to the fields to do what his father had originally asked, and do what he originally refused to do.

So – who would you say did the will of his father, and why?

You probably say it’s the first – after all, that is the answer given in the parable. As to the “why,” we like to focus on what we do. We speak about job performance, school accomplishments, academic achievements and so on. So, it is tempting to take that same mind-set and focus on what it is that this son has done. He has finally gone out into the vineyard and done what was expected – not asked, but expected as a son. That must be the reason he did the father’s will, right?

Let’s talk about what he did. Did he really do the will of his father? Speaking for myself, when I tell my children to do something, my will is that it is done the first time, lovingly and as I asked. He dishonored his father by not going out the first time (4^th Commandment). He did not help improve or protect his father’s business, therefore he “stole” part of the harvest from being successfully completed (7^th Commandment). By dishonoring his father, he also dishonored his Heavenly Father, breaking the first and second commandments. So, did he really do his father’s will?

But, he went, you say. Yes, he did. His mind was changed. But, how was it changed? The Greek sentence structure helps understand what it is that caused that change of mind to go work: he was feeling regret and remorse. This is the same word that is used to describe Judas Iscariot’s change of mind when he saw Jesus arrested. Remember: when he saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests. In both instances, of the son and of Judas, the motive wasn’t love; it wasn’t repentance; it wasn’t the desire to help his father. It was guilt that he had not done what his father wanted. So, thus moved by his troubled and burdened conscience, Son #1 hit the fields. 

So, let me ask you again: which of the two did the will of the Father? Neither.

But there is one who does do the will of His Father. He’s not a hidden character in the story. He is as obvious as the narrator Himself: that is the Son, standing in the midst of the Jewish leaders, who is speaking the parable to them. Here is the Son of God, who is come into human flesh, so that He can rescue and redeem the world of sinners. The will of the Father is that His Son would set aside His full divine power so that He could live as a boy, a teenager, and a man. As a human, this Son would experience every temptation you and I wrestle with. He experiences physical pain and mental sorrow and spiritual attack just as we do. He is rejected by His own people and abandoned by His own disciples. He is arrested, whipped and beaten, and crucified. He is abandoned by His own Father in Heaven. He dies miserably, alone and abandoned in the sinner’s death that is the damning consequence of the fallen world’s sin. He is buried in a pauper’s grave.

Why does this Son do all of this? Why does this Son give up everything for the sake of those who want nothing to do with Him? Where Son #1 acts only out of guilt, Jesus acts out of His great love for you. Where Son #2 failed to do what he pledged to do, Jesus is willing to go all the way to His own death, giving Himself as an innocent sacrifice for sinful people. He does this for you. He does this for the times like, the two sons in the parable, when you dishonor God with your actions and inactions. He does this for the times when you fail to support your neighbor and his property and possessions. He does this for the times that you fail to show love and compassion to those around you. He does this for when you fail to do what God asks of you, or when you break your promises you make to God Himself. He dies for those moments when you think you can somehow do this all on your own strength, merit and worth. He dies for the times when you sin against your brother and sister in Christ. Jesus does all of this so that He is able “to give Himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,” (Gal 1:4).

Which Son does the will of the Father? Jesus.

But, that’s not the end of the story. That you may know this and believe that Jesus died for you, He also rose from the grave, demonstrating that that Jesus accomplished the Father’s will for you. With your sins paid in full, your redemption price paid completely, your justification declared perfect in the eyes of God, Jesus said this: “For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day,” (John 6:40).

Enabled by the Spirit of God to believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you do the will of the Father when you know, believe, trust and rely on Christ alone for your salvation. Baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ Himself who enables you to do the will of His Father as you love your neighbor as Christ first loved you. Forgiven by the death and resurrection of Christ, you seek to do the will of God as you forgive those who have hurt and harmed you. Having received the mercy of God in Christ, you do the will of God by demonstrating mercy to the weakest and least among us who, you remember, in the eyes of God are the greatest in the kingdom.

So, let’s answer the question one last time: Who did the will of the Father? Not Son #1; not Son #2. It was Son #3 - Jesus.

Who does the will of the Father? You, sons and daughters of God, you have done the will of God by believing Jesus perfectly fulfilled the will of God for you, thus enabling you to share His love with those around you in His name.