Sermon 4 Pentecost - Proper 5 A June 8, 2008

4 Pentecost – Proper 5A – 8 June 2008
Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
James V. Stockton

This month, this week, daughters and sons, granddaughters and grandsons, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends, and maybe some of us right here, are graduating. From a school, a college, a seminary, some institution of learning, they will take their experiences and growth and bring them to bear on the question: ‘What now will they do with their lives?’

What will you want you life to be? What kind of person will you strive to be? What will you to do with your life? What are you doing with your life today? They’re all variations on a theme. And most people know that it’s a huge question. Because most people know, on some level, that of all that life brings to us, that life itself is the greatest gift and the greatest responsibility.

What do you want to do with your life? What do I want to do with mine? We have a sense that the answer to this question has somehow to do with God, which is at least part of why we are here in Church on this fine morning.

Recently I was reminded of one of my favorite stories. At a theological conference, someone once asked a prominent rabbi a question. ‘Rabbi,’ he begins, ‘what do you think will happen when we die?’ And the rabbi says, “I think God will ask each of us, ‘why didn’t you enjoy life more?’” How might people respond if God were to ask them, ‘What have you today that you brings joy into your life?’ How might you or I respond?

In the scriptures of the Old Testament, Abraham and Sarah are great figures who respond to God’s call, and who have much in their life that brings them joy. Today we hear a small portion of their amazing story. Before he was Abraham, he was Abram. Before she was Sarah, she was Sarai. Before they hear God’s call and respond to it, they live on land that Abram has inherited from his father in the midst of a people that they know, within a culture in which they prosper. They are people who have much in life to bring them joy. Then God calls them to graduate to a higher knowledge of God’s grace and Love for all.

"Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house,” God says; “to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation,” says God; “and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." It sounds as though the cause for their joy is that God will make of Abraham and Sarah ‘a great nation.’ God will cause this great nation to exalt Abraham’s name in its history and mythology. And it may even be that Abraham and Sarah take God’s message in exactly this way.

But they will learn. They will experience more of God’s love. And they will graduate. They will graduate to the greater knowledge and understanding that God is making of them a divine joy and blessing in the lives of those who will follow, those who, in their own way, will graduate, and so in their own will ask “What now will I do with my life?”

The Church represents and re-presents this question in its sacramental life. Virtually every one of the Church’s seven sacraments involves a question or questions that aim ultimately at asking us, “What really do we intend to do with our lives.” In addition, beyond the rites and ceremonies themselves, when we are candidates for baptism or confirmation, or when we are seeking the blessing of Holy Matrimony, or are asking for unction or reconciliation, or, like our own seminarian Sue Wilimot, are preparing for ordination, there is a period of examination, to ensure that we are prepared to address the questions that are particular to each sacrament. “Into what and into whom are you to about to be baptized in order to become a Christian?” “In the Church that is confirming you, what does the word ‘episcopal’ mean?” “What is the affliction of which you wish to be healed in body, mind, or spirit?” “Are you prepared to amend your sin against God and your neighbor?” Each question alludes to that one question that lies at the heart of every sacrament: “What shall I do with my life?”

It is the question that the Apostle Paul wants to help the early Church answer through the story of Abraham and Sarah. By the time Paul writes his letter to the Christians in Rome, the story of is an icon of faith in God. Teachers and preachers hold him up as the example to follow the personification of ready obedience, the ideal to which the rest of us ought to aspire.

‘What shall I do with my life?’ It’s the question for which the evangelist Matthew tries to provide an answer through his own story in the Gospel. Matthew instantly rises to Jesus’ call, who immediately leaves his old life, to venture onward with Jesus into an unfamiliar new life is, to a less spectacular degree, also an example for Christians to imitate, an ideal of ready faith in Jesus to which all of us may rightly aspire.

The truth is, though, Paul is using the story of Abraham another way. The truth is the story of Matthew is set into a larger context that makes it a story not so much of profound faith, but of a man’s knowledge of himself as a sinner, and of God’s grace reaching into lives around him that no one but Jesus would deem worthy. As a revered figure at the core of the identity of God’s people, Abraham and his covenant with God provide a template for the New Covenant that God makes with people in Jesus. Paul’s point is that the original covenant that God made so long ago with Abraham is not founded upon Abraham’s actions. It is founded upon the trust that Abraham placed in God; trust that preceded and shaped Abraham’s faithfulness in response. The former covenant is the agreement of a promise made between God and Abraham which Abraham’s lineage ratifies throughout their generations primarily through the sign of circumcision, and in other rites and ceremonies.

Paul wants the early Christians to understand that the New Covenant is similarly based in trust. As the Old Covenant is rooted in Abraham’s trust in God, so is the New Covenant rooted in Jesus’ trust in God. This is the agreement of the promise fulfilled, a covenant between God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ, a covenant that Christ’s followers then ratify in their own lives, primarily through the sign of baptism and also in the rites and ceremonies of the other sacraments. And above all, it’s important for them to know, it’s important for you and me to know, that, as Paul says, this promise rests on grace. The story of Abraham and Sarah, the story of Matthew, Paul’s own story, and yours and mine, as well, all are first about God; and only then about our response in faithfulness to God.

What will we do with our life? It’s the covenant question. Biblical scholars have discerned in scripture over 600 specific prohibitions for human behavior, and twice as many prescriptions. And while never God’s intention, people came to understand these as the Covenant they were to keep.

And so, it’s our graduation question: What will you do with your life? What will I do with my life? We may choose to spend this precious gift of life trying to observe what seem to be God’s rules for us. And sooner or later, when we finally realize that there’s no human way for us to keep these laws perfectly, that we are creatures with a flawed sense of good and bad, of right and wrong, that we are inherently unable to be perfect in our faithfulness to God, then do we bring our experience and growth to bear on the question: What will we to do with our life?

Will we follow the advice of a Rabbi and scholar, and enjoy life more today, tomorrow, and the next day? Will we answer God’s call to each of us to be set free from our role in life as sinner, and instead to become a blessing from God in the lives of many? Will we graduate to God’s call to us to desire mercy; mercy for ourselves, in understanding our need for it? and mercy for those around us, those beyond help, those beyond welcome, but those never beyond our knowledge of the Love of God for all.

And now may Almighty God, who has lifted us from what we were due into the richness of grace, equip us to be worthy of our call, that by all our works, begun, continued, and ended in faith, we may glorify God’s holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton