May 29, 2005 - Second Sunday after Pentecost - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Genesis 6: 9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
PSALM: 46: 1-8
SECOND READING: Romans 1: 16-17; 3: 22b-28
GOSPEL: Matthew 7: 21-29

(Audience participation will be noted in bold print and italics)

I love the sound of that line, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel". Are you ashamed of the Gospel?

NO!

No!? That's good! That's good! With an Episcopal group, you are never exactly sure! You are never sure exactly, because it sounds a little Baptist - you know, something like that. But one of the reservations that I have about this and one of my concerns is that, sometimes, I don't know what people mean when they say "Gospel". There are people who, when they say, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel", have a lot more going on in it than I do! They have not just what I consider the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, but they have a list of pet peeves that I may or may not be in favor of - and, frankly, my list of pet peeves is probably different than, and maybe even longer than, theirs!

What is the Gospel of which we are not ashamed? Do you know what that is? If you read on in Paul's letter there to the Romans, Paul lays out for us the very kernel of it - "that they are now justified by God's grace as a gift". That is the Gospel of which none of us need be ashamed - that salvation is not something that comes to us by our efforts, by our good deeds, however good they are, or by our lack of them, but by God's gracious gift, which we connect with through faith. Now, that is the Gospel. That is what it takes to get in. All of that effort is on God's part and is a gift for us to receive.

Jesus is speaking to His disciples. In the Gospel that we read today - meaning that book of Matthew that we are reading, which includes the story of Jesus, and from which we get the Gospel that Paul was talking about - Jesus is not speaking to a huge group of folks. This is the Sermon on the Mount. It began in Chapter 5 and ends here at the end of Chapter 7, and it was not for 5,000 people, not for 3,000 people, not even for the 120 that hung around with Jesus. It was probably just the twelve that went away with Jesus from the crowds, and He began to teach them. So, the character of this teaching in the Gospel is different than that message that Paul had. Paul is laying out for the people in Rome what he believes to be the minimums that we can accept and call ourselves Christians. Paul actually likes to do this. There is another place where Paul says, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him, you will be saved". Paul likes to give you those little nuggets that you can work from. I wouldn't be ashamed of that one either, by the way. But, in this one, Jesus is not talking to His disciples about how they get into His Kingdom. These are folks who have been working with Jesus and have been a part of His ministry for some time, at this point, and He is talking to them about what it means to live as if you were a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

This is one of the places where I think a lot of Protestant Evangelicalism, and what I consider Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church, differ. A friend of mine was an American Baptist, and he used to complain that, every Sunday, the preacher was preaching as if nobody in the Church was saved, and that every Sunday was leading to a particular altar call for people to make their first commitment to Christ. This guy had been in that congregation for a long time, and he looked around, and there wasn't anybody new. These were all people who had walked down that aisle before, but the preacher was preaching as if they had never heard about Jesus.

Well, Jesus is preaching to His disciples today, and Jesus is teaching them about what they need to do to stay people who are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not about getting in. Jesus has two things that those who are part of the Gospel need to do in order to stay a part of the Gospel. Those who hear the Word of God and do it are the ones who are doing the work of the Kingdom. The ones who hear the Word and do it - two pieces.

We have to hear the Word.

Now, this is another problem that is not unique to Episcopalians. We read more Scripture on Sunday mornings than most other denominations will read in a month, but do we hear it? We often organize what we hear and what we recognize according to our preferences and our own pet peeves. For example, as I mentioned, this is the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the end of Chapter 7. In the beginning of Chapter 7, Jesus talks about "Love your neighbor as yourself. This fulfills all the Law and the prophets". I like that! I hear that! I am excited about that! I love preaching that! And then, further on, Jesus says, "The road to perdition is wide" - a veritable eight-lane highway - "but the way into the Kingdom of Heaven is a narrow door" - and not everybody fits. I don't like that! I don't like to hear that story! I don't like to preach it, and, so, often, I find myself ignoring it and not hearing it.

So, we have to hear the word first. We have to open ourselves to the idea that God might be telling us something other than what we already want to hear. Check yourself on this. Do you come to Church hoping that you will hear the message that you really like, or do you come to Church to hear what you believe God has in store for you and that you desperately need for your soul's health? My hope is that at least a certain amount of the time, each of us is desirous of hearing that word from God that we haven't looked forward to, but that we desperately need. So, it is important to understand that we have to figure out ways to be in tune to what God is saying to us.

Now, remember, even that narrow door doesn't mean you can't get in. I have occasionally run into a door that was a little bit too narrow for me, even without vestments on, and it required some effort on my part to change myself, to adjust myself, so that I fit. Or, more likely, I have found myself at a door with excess baggage, and I was carrying something that didn't fit. Maybe I had a chip on my shoulder that was too big. Maybe my ego was too large to get through. The Scriptures are very important, because God wants us in the Kingdom, and God wants us living as members of the Kingdom. So, enough said. I think you have the idea that we need to pay attention, especially to the stuff we may not want to hear.

But then Jesus says that it is not enough to hear it. The person who hears it and then doesn't do anything about it is like somebody that builds a house in the middle of an arroyo on nice soft sand that digs easily, and the house looks great - until a rainy season - and then you can watch the house looking great as it flows down the arroyo!

Jesus desires that His disciples, and those who live in the Kingdom of Heaven as its citizens, would also hear the Word, have that connection with Christ, and then go out and embody that Word in their lives - they would go out and do it.

Now, that is the tough part for us. It is not enough to hear it and go away without doing it, in the same way that it is not enough to go out and do all sorts of good things and to escape from any close connection with Jesus or His teachings. We have to do both. That is the challenge for us as people who are desiring to live as citizens in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Gospel of which we ought not to be ashamed is a Gospel that is, indeed, open to all and is fully inclusive, because the nature of all sin is the same to God. God isn't looking at us like we often look at each other and suggesting that Andrew's sin is a little higher order of sin than so-and-so's sin. God is saying, "I took care of that sin with the offering of Jesus on the cross", and all of us, by that gift, are able to receive the forgiveness of sin and be justified before God.

And then, God asks us to get on the move. God asks us to be regular in being in Church and in the Scriptures, where we can hear Christ's words, and to be in community with one another and with those who are Christ's hands and feet, and even Christ's heart. If we don't have relationship with one another, we can't be really connected with Christ. If we do that, and we take steps to organize our lives to actually accomplish the things that Jesus asks of us - just taking the two examples that I mentioned today, loving our neighbors as ourselves and striving to enter by the narrow door - if we do those things, then our experience as Christians will be authentic, and people will see our witness as having authority just like Jesus' witness. Jesus' witness was not authoritative because He was louder than anyone else. Jesus' witness was not authoritative because He was rich, or because He was particularly eloquent. Jesus' teaching was authoritative because it was authentic to Him. It connected to the Word that people recognized was from God, and they could see it lived out in His life. And I have to tell you that, when all is said and done, whatever we say about being ashamed of the Gospel or not, the world is looking to you and I . . .

You and me! Sorry! A grave Episcopal sin, grammatically speaking!

. . . . . the world is looking to us to embody that authentic, authoritative faith in Jesus, not people who hear and do nothing, nor people who do lots of things without any larger purpose in mind, but people who hear the Word of Christ and live it out and embody it in everything we do, from our worship, to our service, to our caring for one another, to our caring for the least in our community. That is the call that God has for us, and that is the Gospel of which we are a part, and of which I hope none of us is ever ashamed.

AMEN