The Outcome Of Faith
Sermon
ACCESS TO HIGH HOPE
Second Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter
The United States of America has earned the reputation of being the most violent culture in the world. That really is an oxymoron. How can one speak of culture as being violent? Yet the problem of violence is so widespread in our nation that Gavin De Becker, an authority on violence, notes that we are a nation with more firearms than adults, and twenty thousand guns enter our commerce every day. His book, The Gift of Fear, is about our fear which furnishes us survival signals to protect us from violence. We should not be shocked that anyone is capable of violence. The psychiatrist Karl Menniger said he did not believe in the criminal mind, because everyone's mind can produce criminal thoughts. Freud and Einstein once exchanged notes on violence. Einstein wrote that man has in himself the need to destroy.
De Becker's book is to help people develop an awareness of how their own intuitions can make them alert to how they can protect themselves when the threat of violence in any form is present. This is a very important book for our day. If we are to be equipped to handle this major problem, we must be grateful for a knowledge of the human situation and the gift of fear. At the same time we also get help from another direction. In the Second Reading appointed for today we hear the Apostle Peter explain what resources we have in the gift of our faith in dealing with the problems we must face in the world. The Apostle gives a good description of how we can rely upon the protection God affords us through the faith God furnished us in Christ our Lord.
A Living Hope
The word which we have in the Second Reading is an excerpt from the First Epistle of Peter. What is significant about the letters from Peter is that he writes with great confidence about the faith. Remember this is the same Peter who started to sink when our Lord permitted him to walk on the water. This is the same Peter who had been so brash as to boast that he would die with our Lord rather than to deny him. Yet he was the one who cowardly caved in and denied any relationship with Jesus when a maid suggested that he had been a disciple of our Lord. Peter had been thoroughly chastened by that experience. He had been forgiven and reinstated by the Risen Christ. Out of the experience of God's grace Peter could write firsthand about the hope that is ours in Christ. By the initiation into the power of forgiveness and grace Peter became known as the Apostle of Hope. He could write, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Note again: we experience "a new birth into a living hope."
The hope we have is not something belonging only to the future. Now we have a hope that is alive and is working for us. We have hope like Peter, who was the shaken, frightened, tearful spectacle running from the palace of the high priest, who woke to the news on Easter day that his Lord was alive. The Lord at the seashore publicly forgave Peter and made a new man of him. So it was Peter who also rose from sin and shame to live life anew. We share that experience with Peter each day as we confess our sins and pray that God forgive us. Each day we are born anew as we know we are forgiven. That is a living, lively hope we have. We can have life restored and renewed each day by the God against whom we have sinned. God gives us the hope and the courage to live and manage our lives in spite of the fact that we know all too well how our weaknesses and our frailty can be a drag on our daily lives. Good intentions are not enough. We need to know God can and still does use us.
An Imperishable Inheritance
Not only has God given us a living hope as daily assurance for us of God's grace, but our future is also assured. Peter can say the resurrection of Jesus Christ confers on us "an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading." It is significant how the Apostle felt compelled to describe the inheritance we receive through Christ is "imperishable, undefiled, and unfading." In our language today, we might say, "uncontested." One might feel uncomfortable about the business of having to write a will to designate the distribution of one's estate. However, every lawyer could tell you that the best of families have been torn apart by squabbles over contested inheritances. Then, too, the performance of heirs who inherit great fortunes generally is not exemplary. Many inheritances have been squandered like the fortunes which slip so often from the hands of those who win the lotteries. Or lives may have been ruined by the inheritances some heirs have received.
Doris Duke, the world famous heir of the Duke tobacco empire fortunes, led a lonely, miserable, and psychotic life, because her father had warned her that people would always be after her money. She was super sensitive to the fact that people did not like her for her own person, but only because of her wealth. The Apostle Peter wants us to be sure that the inheritance we receive has none of the flaws, temptations, weaknesses, or bad effects that worldly inheritances have. This inheritance is made sure and effective for us by the source from whom it comes. Our Lord Jesus, the Risen Christ, is the One who is the guarantor of our inheritance. The inheritance is imperishable, because Jesus made good on the last will and testament he wrote with his own blood and verified by his resurrection to establish its distribution.
Reserved In Heaven
As certainly as the Apostle Peter wanted us to be assured that we are the heirs of an imperishable inheritance, he also added that this inheritance is "kept in heaven" for us. Of course, the heavens in Peter's day were known as the realm of the gods. This is meant to say to us that we shall dwell in the presence of God. In our day it is more difficult to point to the sky and speak of the heavens. Our young people know all about space and the infinity it suggests. There is no way we can become literalistic in describing the heaven or the space in heaven which is being kept for us. What we can say is that we know that we shall be in the presence of our Risen Lord Jesus Christ. Peter's purpose in sharing this good news with us was not to offer a bromide to hold us over until we get to heaven. He was being far more practical than that.
Because our inheritance has been guaranteed and we have a place with God, this enables us to act freely. We should not have to be concerned or worried about those matters. They have been settled. We know we now are a part of the company of heaven. We are free to serve and wait on others rather than to try to win heaven by giving our undivided attention to ourselves. It is like a young person who has the freedom of knowing that the inheritance awaits. That person has the freedom of choosing to serve in life without the burden of worrying about how the future is going to work out. To be sure, the young heir who does see the advantage of that good fortune could be a wastrel and make nothing of life. The one who understands the benefits is free to explore life, to make it interesting, to give of oneself completely for the sake of others or for a meaningful cause. Peter would certainly want us to understand that. However, Peter perceived the blessing of our inheritance in Christ as a deeper and more profound way of understanding life. Being realistic about life, Peter saw the advantages of our relationship with God as being very special.
Protected By God's Power
Peter did not confine the advantages of being heirs to the inheritance in heaven as only being inspired to serve under the conviction that our future is secure. He adds that we are "being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Peter is saying God is actively working in our lives to keep us in the true faith. Luther would say the same. In an explanation of the Third Article of the Creed concerning the Holy Spirit, Luther says that God not only calls us and enlightens us in the faith, but then God keeps us in the faith. That takes a lot of doing. There are all kinds of forces out in the world that work against the faith. Those who have grown up in the faith can recall how simply and quietly one could learn about the faith and accept the profound truths about God's grace and love in the most trusting manner. However, as we grow older each phase of our lives brings new disturbances, new ideas, new doubts, and new fears that are hindrances and threats to the faith.
As certainly as those challenges to the faith come, God is present to strengthen, guard, and protect us against those enemies of the faith. In word and sacraments God is willing to strengthen us through faith. God is ready and willing to go all the way with us. God is willing to guard and protect us with divine power to see us through to the end in the same way God guarded and protected our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter puts it this way. God is willing to protect us by power "through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." We will get to see the results of our faith in the same way our Lord Jesus was revealed as victor over sin and death. Peter, who was one of the Twelve, describes the experiences of faith in the same way faith had to work in the life of Jesus. We are always exposed to a tried and true method in the life of our Lord. Faith is the proof positive that God is working for us.
Joy For Tough Times
Peter says that ought to be enough to rejoice about. Yet Peter adds more. We can rejoice in the fact that God is present to guard and protect us in the faith. That is true even in the worst circumstance. Peter writes, "In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials." That is the way it is. Life is filled with all kinds of bumps and bruises, hardships and trials. There is no escaping that. Peter knew that well. Peter did not have to invent or add troubles in order to try to make a point. The fact of the matter is that there are troubles in the lives of every one of us. Just like the demonic forces that attack, belittle, and threaten us, various other trials come along to test the faith. Peter says, "The genuineness of your faith - being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire."
Trials and troubles, whether they are health, economic, or emotional traumas, can wear on the faith like the worst kind of demonic enemy. We certainly can realize there are tests for the most precious gift we have, our faith. We can get it straight. We can employ our faith to deal with these various trials and treat them as being only temporary, no matter how long they last. Or we can give up on the faith and let the troubles and hardships take over and destroy the faith. When we let faith be the means by which we deal with and handle the troubles and the trials, then, Peter says, our faith "may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." Once again our faith is identified with our Lord Jesus Christ. Edward Schillebeeckx, a Roman Catholic theologian, wrote an excellent text on the nature of Jesus. The book is called Jesus. In it he explains that it is a mistake to think formulas about Jesus are the faith. We must understand that Jesus, the Son of God, identified himself as One who could call God "Abba," so that we, too, can call God "Abba" by faith under the worst trials.
Love Positive
Schillebeeckx implies it is important for us to understand how Jesus made his real identity known by being able to call God "Abba." As the Son of God, Jesus could call on God as Father. As a true human being, in prayer or distress, Jesus called on God as Abba, that is, Father. God would deliver him. Peter would want us to appreciate that the love between the Father and the Son revealed as God's love for the world is the hope which Peter describes for us. Peter maintains that the same relationship which exists between the Father and the Son is what we experience in Christ. Peter writes, "Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy."
Most of us find Peter's language familiar. We may talk the same way about cherished deceased parents who continue to have a powerful influence in our lives. As we reflect on what they have contributed to us, we love them all the more, even though they may have been gone from us for many years. We may feel the same way about dear teachers or professors who have left indelible imprints upon our lives. We may have been removed from them for many years, yet we love them as though they were ever present. Or there could be people in a variety of professions who may be models for us. We may never have met them, nor ever have seen them, but we are grateful for their contributions to our lives. Peter recognizes our Lord Jesus Christ as the one who has done the most for us. We know our Lord as our Shepherd, Redeemer, Savior, Teacher, Friend, and our God. Though we have not seen him, we live on intimate terms with him through the word and sacraments and prayer. This intimacy is nourished through the sacrament in which we know his presence in a unique fashion. We receive him by faith and know his presence for us. He becomes a part of our very being. Like Peter we can say we "believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy."
The Outcome
We began this discourse with an appreciation for the thesis of Gavin De Becker, who says we should take advantage of "the gift of fear" for living in a violent culture. One can certainly agree that our fear can produce "survival signals which protect us from violence." Riding home in the evening one regularly hears the screech of sirens that move on to tragedy wrought by violent people. The recital of abusive treatment of men as well as women and children is monotonous. One wonders how tired God must be of looking in on the human situation. Our own intuition should warn us how fallen the world is and that we must be alert to defend ourselves against these threats of explosive people.
At the same time, we have the good word from the Apostle Peter that in this messed up creation we have divine protection of another sort. As we face various trials we must endure with suffering, we are guarded by the power of God through faith. As we heard the Apostle explain the advantages faith in our Lord Jesus Christ work for us, he assures us that we can live with confidence and joy. Peter concludes you can have this joy, "for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." Our salvation is not only that we have the inheritance reserved for us in heaven. Right now we enjoy the blessing of knowing our salvation is working for us as the means of coping with, defending against, and overcoming whatever suffering and trials we have coming our way. Viewed that way, we can understand why Peter says it'll be only "for a little while."
De Becker's book is to help people develop an awareness of how their own intuitions can make them alert to how they can protect themselves when the threat of violence in any form is present. This is a very important book for our day. If we are to be equipped to handle this major problem, we must be grateful for a knowledge of the human situation and the gift of fear. At the same time we also get help from another direction. In the Second Reading appointed for today we hear the Apostle Peter explain what resources we have in the gift of our faith in dealing with the problems we must face in the world. The Apostle gives a good description of how we can rely upon the protection God affords us through the faith God furnished us in Christ our Lord.
A Living Hope
The word which we have in the Second Reading is an excerpt from the First Epistle of Peter. What is significant about the letters from Peter is that he writes with great confidence about the faith. Remember this is the same Peter who started to sink when our Lord permitted him to walk on the water. This is the same Peter who had been so brash as to boast that he would die with our Lord rather than to deny him. Yet he was the one who cowardly caved in and denied any relationship with Jesus when a maid suggested that he had been a disciple of our Lord. Peter had been thoroughly chastened by that experience. He had been forgiven and reinstated by the Risen Christ. Out of the experience of God's grace Peter could write firsthand about the hope that is ours in Christ. By the initiation into the power of forgiveness and grace Peter became known as the Apostle of Hope. He could write, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Note again: we experience "a new birth into a living hope."
The hope we have is not something belonging only to the future. Now we have a hope that is alive and is working for us. We have hope like Peter, who was the shaken, frightened, tearful spectacle running from the palace of the high priest, who woke to the news on Easter day that his Lord was alive. The Lord at the seashore publicly forgave Peter and made a new man of him. So it was Peter who also rose from sin and shame to live life anew. We share that experience with Peter each day as we confess our sins and pray that God forgive us. Each day we are born anew as we know we are forgiven. That is a living, lively hope we have. We can have life restored and renewed each day by the God against whom we have sinned. God gives us the hope and the courage to live and manage our lives in spite of the fact that we know all too well how our weaknesses and our frailty can be a drag on our daily lives. Good intentions are not enough. We need to know God can and still does use us.
An Imperishable Inheritance
Not only has God given us a living hope as daily assurance for us of God's grace, but our future is also assured. Peter can say the resurrection of Jesus Christ confers on us "an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading." It is significant how the Apostle felt compelled to describe the inheritance we receive through Christ is "imperishable, undefiled, and unfading." In our language today, we might say, "uncontested." One might feel uncomfortable about the business of having to write a will to designate the distribution of one's estate. However, every lawyer could tell you that the best of families have been torn apart by squabbles over contested inheritances. Then, too, the performance of heirs who inherit great fortunes generally is not exemplary. Many inheritances have been squandered like the fortunes which slip so often from the hands of those who win the lotteries. Or lives may have been ruined by the inheritances some heirs have received.
Doris Duke, the world famous heir of the Duke tobacco empire fortunes, led a lonely, miserable, and psychotic life, because her father had warned her that people would always be after her money. She was super sensitive to the fact that people did not like her for her own person, but only because of her wealth. The Apostle Peter wants us to be sure that the inheritance we receive has none of the flaws, temptations, weaknesses, or bad effects that worldly inheritances have. This inheritance is made sure and effective for us by the source from whom it comes. Our Lord Jesus, the Risen Christ, is the One who is the guarantor of our inheritance. The inheritance is imperishable, because Jesus made good on the last will and testament he wrote with his own blood and verified by his resurrection to establish its distribution.
Reserved In Heaven
As certainly as the Apostle Peter wanted us to be assured that we are the heirs of an imperishable inheritance, he also added that this inheritance is "kept in heaven" for us. Of course, the heavens in Peter's day were known as the realm of the gods. This is meant to say to us that we shall dwell in the presence of God. In our day it is more difficult to point to the sky and speak of the heavens. Our young people know all about space and the infinity it suggests. There is no way we can become literalistic in describing the heaven or the space in heaven which is being kept for us. What we can say is that we know that we shall be in the presence of our Risen Lord Jesus Christ. Peter's purpose in sharing this good news with us was not to offer a bromide to hold us over until we get to heaven. He was being far more practical than that.
Because our inheritance has been guaranteed and we have a place with God, this enables us to act freely. We should not have to be concerned or worried about those matters. They have been settled. We know we now are a part of the company of heaven. We are free to serve and wait on others rather than to try to win heaven by giving our undivided attention to ourselves. It is like a young person who has the freedom of knowing that the inheritance awaits. That person has the freedom of choosing to serve in life without the burden of worrying about how the future is going to work out. To be sure, the young heir who does see the advantage of that good fortune could be a wastrel and make nothing of life. The one who understands the benefits is free to explore life, to make it interesting, to give of oneself completely for the sake of others or for a meaningful cause. Peter would certainly want us to understand that. However, Peter perceived the blessing of our inheritance in Christ as a deeper and more profound way of understanding life. Being realistic about life, Peter saw the advantages of our relationship with God as being very special.
Protected By God's Power
Peter did not confine the advantages of being heirs to the inheritance in heaven as only being inspired to serve under the conviction that our future is secure. He adds that we are "being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Peter is saying God is actively working in our lives to keep us in the true faith. Luther would say the same. In an explanation of the Third Article of the Creed concerning the Holy Spirit, Luther says that God not only calls us and enlightens us in the faith, but then God keeps us in the faith. That takes a lot of doing. There are all kinds of forces out in the world that work against the faith. Those who have grown up in the faith can recall how simply and quietly one could learn about the faith and accept the profound truths about God's grace and love in the most trusting manner. However, as we grow older each phase of our lives brings new disturbances, new ideas, new doubts, and new fears that are hindrances and threats to the faith.
As certainly as those challenges to the faith come, God is present to strengthen, guard, and protect us against those enemies of the faith. In word and sacraments God is willing to strengthen us through faith. God is ready and willing to go all the way with us. God is willing to guard and protect us with divine power to see us through to the end in the same way God guarded and protected our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter puts it this way. God is willing to protect us by power "through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." We will get to see the results of our faith in the same way our Lord Jesus was revealed as victor over sin and death. Peter, who was one of the Twelve, describes the experiences of faith in the same way faith had to work in the life of Jesus. We are always exposed to a tried and true method in the life of our Lord. Faith is the proof positive that God is working for us.
Joy For Tough Times
Peter says that ought to be enough to rejoice about. Yet Peter adds more. We can rejoice in the fact that God is present to guard and protect us in the faith. That is true even in the worst circumstance. Peter writes, "In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials." That is the way it is. Life is filled with all kinds of bumps and bruises, hardships and trials. There is no escaping that. Peter knew that well. Peter did not have to invent or add troubles in order to try to make a point. The fact of the matter is that there are troubles in the lives of every one of us. Just like the demonic forces that attack, belittle, and threaten us, various other trials come along to test the faith. Peter says, "The genuineness of your faith - being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire."
Trials and troubles, whether they are health, economic, or emotional traumas, can wear on the faith like the worst kind of demonic enemy. We certainly can realize there are tests for the most precious gift we have, our faith. We can get it straight. We can employ our faith to deal with these various trials and treat them as being only temporary, no matter how long they last. Or we can give up on the faith and let the troubles and hardships take over and destroy the faith. When we let faith be the means by which we deal with and handle the troubles and the trials, then, Peter says, our faith "may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." Once again our faith is identified with our Lord Jesus Christ. Edward Schillebeeckx, a Roman Catholic theologian, wrote an excellent text on the nature of Jesus. The book is called Jesus. In it he explains that it is a mistake to think formulas about Jesus are the faith. We must understand that Jesus, the Son of God, identified himself as One who could call God "Abba," so that we, too, can call God "Abba" by faith under the worst trials.
Love Positive
Schillebeeckx implies it is important for us to understand how Jesus made his real identity known by being able to call God "Abba." As the Son of God, Jesus could call on God as Father. As a true human being, in prayer or distress, Jesus called on God as Abba, that is, Father. God would deliver him. Peter would want us to appreciate that the love between the Father and the Son revealed as God's love for the world is the hope which Peter describes for us. Peter maintains that the same relationship which exists between the Father and the Son is what we experience in Christ. Peter writes, "Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy."
Most of us find Peter's language familiar. We may talk the same way about cherished deceased parents who continue to have a powerful influence in our lives. As we reflect on what they have contributed to us, we love them all the more, even though they may have been gone from us for many years. We may feel the same way about dear teachers or professors who have left indelible imprints upon our lives. We may have been removed from them for many years, yet we love them as though they were ever present. Or there could be people in a variety of professions who may be models for us. We may never have met them, nor ever have seen them, but we are grateful for their contributions to our lives. Peter recognizes our Lord Jesus Christ as the one who has done the most for us. We know our Lord as our Shepherd, Redeemer, Savior, Teacher, Friend, and our God. Though we have not seen him, we live on intimate terms with him through the word and sacraments and prayer. This intimacy is nourished through the sacrament in which we know his presence in a unique fashion. We receive him by faith and know his presence for us. He becomes a part of our very being. Like Peter we can say we "believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy."
The Outcome
We began this discourse with an appreciation for the thesis of Gavin De Becker, who says we should take advantage of "the gift of fear" for living in a violent culture. One can certainly agree that our fear can produce "survival signals which protect us from violence." Riding home in the evening one regularly hears the screech of sirens that move on to tragedy wrought by violent people. The recital of abusive treatment of men as well as women and children is monotonous. One wonders how tired God must be of looking in on the human situation. Our own intuition should warn us how fallen the world is and that we must be alert to defend ourselves against these threats of explosive people.
At the same time, we have the good word from the Apostle Peter that in this messed up creation we have divine protection of another sort. As we face various trials we must endure with suffering, we are guarded by the power of God through faith. As we heard the Apostle explain the advantages faith in our Lord Jesus Christ work for us, he assures us that we can live with confidence and joy. Peter concludes you can have this joy, "for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." Our salvation is not only that we have the inheritance reserved for us in heaven. Right now we enjoy the blessing of knowing our salvation is working for us as the means of coping with, defending against, and overcoming whatever suffering and trials we have coming our way. Viewed that way, we can understand why Peter says it'll be only "for a little while."
