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Easter 3, 04/19/2015
That which we are called to proclaim
Sermon on Luke 24:36-49, by Patrick J. Rooney
In my retirement I supply at any number of congregations on Sunday mornings and one of the things I love to do, although admittedly not always for the best of reasons, is to go through the worship bulletins they send me with a fine tooth comb both so that I know what to do but also to pick out the bits I like and the bits that I know are going to drive me crazy. Sometimes I like what I see. But with others I find myself tut-tutting at some things and tisk-tisking at others, with the result that, too often, I end up feeling falsely righteous about my own ways of doing things while too many others are in error! Now it is true that our own Confessions tell us that there need not be uniformity in our liturgies and that, as pastors, we can have genuine disagreements about what should be in our weekly liturgies and what might not. And one of the issues of difference, especially during this holy season of Easter, is whether or not to include the Confession of sin and absolution. Some maintain that this is the time to live in the joy of the resurrection and therefore not place such an emphasis upon repentance and forgiveness and so they drop the confession during the whole of Easter until the Day of Pentecost. Others, including a well-respected mentor of mine, a pastor for over 50 years, told me that I was wrong to follow this practice and that, if I wanted justification for including the Confession in the liturgy during the Easter season, all I had to do was to go and read the Gospel lesson for this Sunday morning which states very clearly, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to these things.” There it was in black and white before me – the good news of salvation in death and resurrection; BUT also the call for repentance and forgiveness of sins which is to be proclaimed to the entire world. Don’t you just hate it when these older and more experienced people in the field catch you out at something like this! Now the words of this beloved pastor never convinced me, while I served in the parish, to put the confession back in during the Easter season, but they did cause me to rethink a major portion of this sermon and to try to figure out just what it is that we are called to proclaim this day as the essence of our faith.
For this is the Easter season and, just as many other preachers have done, I have spoken over the past two Sundays of the promises that belong to all of us as a result of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ…most especially the promise of new life with Him for all eternity. And as I preached, I could see many of the people in the pews nodding their heads when I proclaimed the good news of new life through the One who had been raised from the dead. And why should they not agree with these thoughts, for it is precisely words such as these that you would expect to hear during this holy and joyous season. But then I began to wonder, especially in light of this Gospel text this morning, how many of those same people gathered in those congregations, accept and believe in the Good News of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus and yet never truly experience the forgiving and freeing power of that new life which comes as a result of the resurrection, especially the power of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In other words, it is easy for so many of us to accept the fact of the resurrection, but we have a more difficult time accepting and living the new life in that resurrection and, as a result, we never really know what such repentance and forgiveness truly means in our lives.
In many ways this is one of the problems we have in the Church today. For while the Church is a place to point out, recognize and repent of our sins, it is even more important that the Church be a place where there is forgiveness, a forgiveness that we are called to proclaim to the ends of the earth. The problem is that sometimes in the Church we have more of the judgment and very little of the forgiveness. And in this same regard, the Church has a second problem today which also causes some confusion among us and that is how to preach about morality in an age of constantly shifting moral values. We can probably all agree that on one level the Church should preach and teach about morality, for the Church needs to speak to the world what is right and wrong – whether the issue be sexuality, racism, economic justice, capital punishment, care for our planet, abortion or so many other issues. But it is also true that as the Church speaks to the world about these issues, individual members of the Church may or may not agree with some or all of these positions of our moral proclamations. Indeed, depending upon your own position, you may believe that the Church is either too strong in its condemnation of certain moral and social issues or that it is too wishy-washy on other issues. But perhaps that because, when it comes right down to it, the teaching of such morality is not at the heart of our Christian faith! We are called to speak to the world but we are not the guardians of the world’s morals, although some Christian groups have tried to make it the business of the Church. Rather what is at the heart of our faith, what is at the heart of the Church’s work, is the call to repentance that leads to forgiveness in Jesus’ name.
It may seem strange to say for a faith which has both the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes within it sacred writings, but at its essence the Church is not in the morals business but rather it is society which should be playing that role. Throughout history most of the great nations and empires have written moral codes which have governed their societies and judged their ethical standards and by and large they have done a pretty good job at it, especially when the voice of the Church is there to speak of word of faith in their ears! And while many in our modern American society may decry the decline of morals all around us, it does not mean that we lack a moral code; it fact we have a very good and strong one that still permeates most of our society. But while the world may be good at establishing moral codes, what the world cannot get right is the forgiveness business…and that is the real job of the Church. For the Church is in the world to deal with sin - sin which the world cannot turn off or run away from, sin which permeates and undermines the moral and ethical code of society, sin which is in the very core of our being – “for we are by nature, sinful and unclean.” The Church exists in large part so that it can offer to the world forgiveness for its chronic unwillingness and failure to take its own advice and to adhere to its own moral standards. Instead of being a model of a forgiven sinner, the Church, when it gets into the morals business, becomes the good guy, with all the bad guys out there somewhere. Indeed the Church is in the business of showing the world what it means to lives under the sign of baptism whereby we are washed clean from our sin in forgiveness and offered new life in Christ Jesus Our Lord.
So, while Lent is well and truly over and while we are now deeply immersed in the Easter season, it does not mean that we are called to forget about the necessity of repentance, conversion and the avoidance of sin. As Christians we are always called to remember that in order to share in the life of the Risen Lord, we first share in the life of the crucified Lord. There are no shortcuts to eternal life – if there is no cross then there is no crown! That is why death and resurrection are to take place in each of our lives. We die to self in order to live for God and sin is to be avoided at all costs – for it is sin which separates us from the love of God and the glory He has won on our behalf.
But in the end, the resurrection cannot be limited to an historical fact, to an event that happened to Jesus Christ more than 2,000 years ago. Rather the resurrection is to be a present reality whose light and warmth we experience in our lives each and every day. The Gospel tells us how Christ opened the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures as He explained why He had to suffer and die and to rise again on the third day. But while the disciples were called to be His witnesses they were not just to be preaching a set of historical facts but rather that this resurrection from the dead had led to repentance for the forgiveness of sin. And so this morning, as Christ comes into our lives, our minds and our hearts through God’s holy Word, it is our turn to be witnesses to the Gospel and to show forth what it means to experience the resurrection in our lives. And while we can preach the facts of resurrection, what Jesus is really calling us to do is to proclaim what happens to those who live a new life in the resurrection, a life which consists of the repentance that leads to forgiveness of sins. And just as those first disciples could not keep the Good News to themselves but hurried to share it with anyone who was willing to listen, so, likewise, our call is to communicate the Good News by being models of what it means to offer repentance for the forgiveness of sins to this world which so desperately needs to hear it. We are called to be models of forgiveness for the world, witnesses to Christ’s Gospel of true forgiveness. We are called, especially in this holy season, to preach the resurrection! But we must not forget that we are also called to proclaim that repentance which leads to the forgiveness of sin, for such is at the heart of our faith and our Church “For thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” Amen.