October 25, 1998
As we began this service today, we prayed that God would increase in us the gifts of faith, hope and charity. That he would form us and make us into a people who love what he commands, that we might obtain what he promises. We asked God to do those things because it is God's work, not ours.
It is God who makes us faithful. It is God who gives us hope. It is God who makes us charitable people. It is he who forms us like the clay in the riverbank into a people who love what he commands and then who gives us his promises. It is not ourselves, but God who is the giver of these great gifts. All the Bible studies, all the worship services, all the sermons that have ever been preached, all the prayer groups in which you participate, all the scripture reading you do in your own studies at home will not build faith, hope or charity. None of them will make us into a people who love God. It is God who will do the work for us and in us.
The three situations that are presented to us in the scriptures today tell us, in each case, that God is the source of all life. We start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet who lived a long time. He began his work as a teenager, much to his chagrin, and then Jerusalem falls and Jeremiah is taken with the people of Jerusalem into exile in Babylon. Now in the sixth century B.C., he writes to us from exile. In exile in Babylon, Jeremiah laments the faithlessness of the nation. He laments that all of our efforts as a people of God, unassisted by the Lord, gain us nothing. All that we do without God's assistance will gain us nothing.
Another prisoner, Paul, writes to us about 600 years later. In his final letter to Timothy he says, "Timothy, my son, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." He goes on to say everybody has deserted me, every human being has walked away when I am facing Nero on the morrow. Everyone, that is, except the one that really counts, the Lord God. Paul tells Timothy that the support or desertion of his friends makes no difference. It really does not. Paul's trust is not in his friends. It is not in any association of the world, but it is the Lord Jesus who will stand by us and defend us. It is the Lord Jesus who will rescue us in the time of our need. It is the Lord Jesus who will save us and bring us to himself and into the kingdom.
Finally, some fifty years earlier than Paul, Jesus tells his story, a parable, a vivid short play, actually, with only two characters. And in this short play, Jesus shows the attitudes of humility and self-righteousness. The point that Jesus makes is not that one of these men is good and the other is bad. The point he makes is rather that the publican, the tax collector, the betrayer of his people knew where he stood with God and approached God in all humility. The publican compared himself to the holiness of God, and when he compared himself with God he did not even raise his head and look up, but said, "God have mercy on me for I am a sinner."
The Pharisee, on the other hand, compared himself with other people. There is not a person in this room who cannot compare himself to other persons and say that he is better than they are. We just have to choose the right person with whom to compare ourselves. Compared to other people, if we choose well, we will always look pretty good on the balance sheet.
These are not ancient stories, of course. These are contemporary stories. These are stories about today. These are stories in which you and I are walking in our own lives with people we know — sometimes the person closest to us, the person who stares at us in the mirror. And somewhere in one of these stories, we find ourselves. It is very tempting, like the Pharisee, and it is also very easy to measure ourselves against another — to rely more on one another than we do on our Lord. It is very easy, very tempting to trust more in political alliances than we do in the Lord Jesus. In our own age, we, too, need the divine gifts that we prayed for in the collect this morning. The divine gifts of faith, hope and charity.
We cannot build them ourselves. We cannot give them to each other. We can only ask that God would give them to us and to our friends, our neighbors, and our family. All the exhortation from all the pulpits in all the world will not give us faith. All those sermons and all those exhortations will not transmit hope and none of them will make you more charitable people. All the Bible studies and all the prayer groups will not give you faith, transmit hope, or make you charitable, but rather comparing yourselves to the almighty God and opening your heart and your soul to the to the gifts of God, then God will work in you and in me with the gifts of faith, hope and charity. If we approach God with humility, then we can become more open for the gifts of God.
I hope that you will not have to experience captivity like Jeremiah or Paul in order to know the faith of God. I hope that you will not have to experience abandonment and death as Jeremiah and Paul to know the hope of the presence of Jesus Christ in your own life. I hope that you will not have to experience loss of any kind, the loss of friends and family and everything you own in order to know what it is to be freely charitable towards God and your fellow Christians.
Listen to the play that Jesus tells this morning and look at the hearts of the men in the play, then judge yourselves with honesty. Come before God with great humility. In comparison to God, we are all woeful sinners. But we have read the story. We know that God loves us, that he welcomes us, that he wants the best for us. We do not need to slink into church. We can come boldly before the throne of Grace and then we can leave this place to approach everyone around us with the charity of God's love and Christ's overwhelming fullness. As we do so, we will always be mindful that it is a Christian imperative and a Christian joy that we seek and serve Christ in each other. To seek and serve the Christ that is present in our midst, knowing that sinner though we may be, God is working in us to work his purpose out. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Robert G. Certain
rgcertain@aol.com
25 October 1998