3^rd Sunday after Pentecost / June 5, 2005

Hosea 5:15-6:6; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Rev. Gayle M. Highness

Keeping the Faith

In the book, Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt tells the story of his life growing up as a poor Catholic boy in Ireland. In one scene, he recalls seeing a bunch of Protestant kids outside their church playing and laughing and just having a wonderful time. And he remembers thinking, “How can those kids be having so much fun? Don’t they know they’re lost?”

Frank had been thoroughly conditioned to see Protestants as lost sinners bound for hell.

By the time I was growing up in Fargo, this teaching was a little less severe. There was some room to think that God might allow non-Catholics into heaven. But I DO remember being taught that anyone who was once Catholic and “fell away,” was surely condemned to hell.

I had a friend named who had once been Catholic but wasn’t anymore, and I felt really bad to think that she would be going to hell. That didn’t seem quite right.

I’m sure most of the adults here can recall a time when a Catholic dating or marrying a Protestant was considered a scandal. My folks had gotten past that and didn’t mind too much that my little sister and I were dating non-Catholics, as long as we went to church together – that was the important thing to her.

Well, my little sister and the man she eventually married certainly DID go to church together. In fact, they became missionaries. Not only did my little sister leave the Catholic church after becoming a ‘born again’ Christian, she also questioned whether the rest of us were really “Christians” at all, since we couldn’t point to a particular time when we could say we had accepted Jesus Christ as our personal savior.

She and her husband were married the day after my parents’ wedding anniversary and so the night of the rehearsal we were gathered in my parents’ hotel room having a drink with them to celebrate. Her husband’s family didn’t believe in drinking, and my sister was quite upset with us because we didn’t abstain from drinking out of respect for their beliefs.

What all these situations and many, many more like them have in common is a concern for righteousness – for holding to the truths of our faith as we understand them, without compromise – for doing the right thing based on a belief that God has revealed the right thing and God would expect us to obey the rules.

Knowing how easy it is to get drawn into sin, we believe we must keep up our guard and avoid contact with anything that might tempt us or draw us into sin. We especially need to guard against the temptation to relax our standards and call evil good and good evil.

Isn’t that what we SHOULD be doing? Well, yes. But the issue gets clouded for us sometimes when the “right thing” seems to be a moving target.

For example – not too many people think it’s wrong for Lutherans and Catholics to date or get married anymore. Quite a few people – though not everyone – still think it’s wrong for people to live together before marriage. But generally we marry them anyway and we don’t tell them not to come to church.

And now our denomination is headed for a big controversy over whether to ordain men and women in committed, monogamous, same-sex relationships and whether to bless their unions. I think the majority of Lutherans would stand on the conservative side of this question and, indeed, many can’t even believe there IS a question.

But those on the other side are just as passionate in their belief that changing the policy is the right thing to do based on their understanding about a gracious, loving and live-giving God.

Even when the “right thing” in a given situation is pretty clear to most any person of faith, we can still have some uncertainty about how to apply those standards to others. We don’t want to be judgmental.

We want to welcome people whose lifestyle we disagree with in the hopes that we will have a positive influence on them. On the other hand, we don’t want them to have a bad influence on US.

This sometimes comes up when you don’t like the kind of kids your own kids want to hang around with. Do you forbid them to play with that friend? Or do you welcome the friend into your home, but forbid your son or daughter from going to their house?

Here in Nauvoo, we face questions about how to relate to our Mormon neighbors. In the Ministerial Association, we have a pretty open stance – even sharing in VBS, the passion play and some special worship services. Some would say this is compromising our standards and beliefs. Others would say it’s being open and accepting, or that it gives us opportunities to share our faith with Mormons.

Today’s Scriptures have something to say about these questions, though they don't necessarily give us easy answers.

In the gospel reading, we have the Pharisees with their understandable concern about righteousness and purity, questioning Jesus’ disciples about their master’s association with tax collectors and sinners.

It’s easy to see the Pharisees as right-wing religious fanatics who are judgmental and self-righteous and not like us. We’re glad that Jesus wasn’t like that and we’re glad that he associated with sinners, as long as we see ourselves in the boat with the sinners.

But we shouldn’t be so quick to identify the Pharisees as the bad guys. After all, they didn’t know if Jesus was really from God – they were trying to uphold hundreds of years of tradition that was very, very clear in their minds. In our debates about sexuality, sometimes those who stand against change seem to me to have more in common with the Pharisees than with Jesus, and that’s what makes me a little uneasy with my own more conservative position.

When Jesus responds to the Pharisees, he quotes the Scripture that was part of our first reading from the Prophet Hosea. “Go and learn what this means,” he said, “ ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’.” In our NRSV translation of this Scripture, it says, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice; the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

What that scripture and others like it in the Old Testament is about is the tendency of the Israelites to point to their adherence to rites and rituals as proof of their right standing before God, while they flagrantly disregarded God’s commands to care for widows and orphans and to act with justice and mercy toward the oppressed, or while they participated worship of other gods.

Hypocrisy angers God greatly. It’s like a slap in the face. It would be like a husband who is cheating on his wife and so buys his wife lovely presents to show what a good husband he is. Or like parents who never make it to the kids’ activities or programs or never take time to just sit and talk or play with them because they’re too busy with other important stuff, but they do buy them whatever they want in clothing, electronics, cars or toys.

To think that we have God’s favor or that we are right with God because we follow rules or do certain right things like go to church, or we don’t do certain wrong things, is very dangerous ground for us – especially if we start to identify those who DON’T do the right things that we do, or who DO DO the wrong things that we DON’T do, as being outside of God’s favor and thus reinforcing our own favored position.

It is very clear in the Scriptures that our favor with God has nothing to do with our adherence to the law but has everything to do with our faith in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for our sins and his resurrection to new life. For us to claim self-righteousness by adherence to laws is like saying that Jesus’ death was unnecessary.

Therefore, the first thing our Scriptures call us to today is an understanding of ourselves as sinners in need of God’s grace and of faith in Jesus’ death alone for our salvation. That faith brings us into a living, vital relationship with God in Christ – a relationship in which we receive the Holy Spirit and share in God’s life.

The second thing we are called to do is then to BECOME the means by which God’s grace is extended into the world. So that, through us, others may know the good news of God’s love.

From there, we can then ask ourselves, are my actions and the actions of my church serving to bring God’s love and grace and forgiveness into the world? Are people being healed and reconciled and growing in their relationship with God because of what we are doing? Or are we merely serving ourselves and maintaining our own status in the Kingdom?

Each of us needs to ask ourselves those questions every day and we need to ask that of ourselves as a community of believers, too.

Jesus is all about bringing us back into relationship with God through the forgiveness of sin. That’s why Jesus said, “I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners.”

So, as followers of Jesus, that’s what we should be about, too. Therefore, the decision about whether we uphold a standard or relax a standard should not be based on keeping ourselves pure and righteous, but should be based on what will be most effective in extending God’s Kingdom here on earth – what will help to reach the most people with the good news of God’s grace and love for sinners in a broken and imperfect world.

The answers may vary and they may not always be as clear as we’d like. What seems good in the short run, might be harmful in the long run. Or what appears heartless and judgmental to the one, might be lifesaving for the many.

But let’s at least be asking the right questions and listening to one another and praying for God’s Spirit to lead us to the answers and the actions that God desires. Amen.