Sermon October 28, 2007

When I was a kid, my sister would always create havoc at home because she could never decide what she wanted to be for Halloween. Some year, it would be a witch, other years a princess. Once she wanted our mom to concoct a costume for her based on her conception of an one-eyed, one-eared, Flying Purple People Eater. Sis made us all crazy one year when she couldn't decide, between being a vampire or the good fairy from Sleeping Beauty. Finally, she said to mother. "What I really want is to be the one which will get me the most candy!" At seven years old, she was just being honest!

It's getting close to Halloween and for us Lutherans, it's time to remember and celebrate the Reformation. Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis onto the door of the Wittenburg Church on All Hallow's Eve, the day before All Saints' Day knowing full well that most of the people in town would have to pass by it because All Saints' Day was a day of sacred obligation in the church calendar and all were "obliged" to worship.

In the early 1500's people had become a bit confused about Jesus, and part of the confusion was the church's own doing. In order to combat sin and to remind people of sin's dangers and effects, the face of Jesus had changed from being one of loving savior and redeemer who forgave sin, to being the face of a stem judge who loathed sin, and used the fires of hell to frighten the sinner.

Like my sister who couldn't decide between a sinister threatening image or a benevolent loving one, the church became confused about which face of Christ would draw us to him.

Our lesson from John reminds us of the corrective that Jesus gave to his disciples. Sin enslaves us. It binds us to it. Sin causes us to think of ourselves - either in selfish, pleasure seeking, self-gratifying ways, or else defensively because we feel guilty and inadequate. Sin has amazing power to trap us and keep us in its grip and chains.

Recently, someone came into my office, not a member, but a person who was deeply troubled and looking for help. She was and is addicted to gambling and her life has become a nightmare. She started off years ago with the Maryland State Lottery, graduated to the slots and blackjack in Atlantic City, poker, Pimlico, you name it she's tried it. She figured that she had won and lost somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars and had ruined her marriage and neglected her children and caused tremendous pain and alienation in her family. She was powerless over her compulsion to gamble and when the opportunity arose it triggered in her an overwhelming wave of desire so compelling that it was all she could do to rt!sist it and often didn't. She had joined a 12-step program and it had helped greatly, but she was struggling with her faith. She was a lapsed Lutheran and remembered somehow that

Jesus had taken away the sin of the world. She needed reassurance of that. She needed Jesus, she said.

Her story, more dramatic than most of ours perhaps illustrates Jesus' word "whoever commits sin becomes a slave to sin." That is the human condition. We are slaves to sin. We confess it before we worship. "Weare in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves." We hate others, we envy others, we judge and look down our noses at others, we ignore the needs of the poor and destitute around us, we think mostly of ourselves, without the tender love and compassion of Jesus we would be helpless and hopeless.

Yet, Luther's rediscovery and representation of the faith reminded everyone in the early 1500's and shouts ~ut to us even today that the face of Jesus we are to look at is the compassionate face of Christ. Jesus' face is a human face. He experienced and still experiences with us our temptations and the longings that we know. He knows fear. It is part of his experience. He feels the temptation to hate those who have wronged him - he walks our walk and talks our talk. His humanity didn't end with the resurrection. Jesus identifies completely with us. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "He became sin who knew no sin." In other words, Jesus really does know what it its like to be helpless and trapped in sm.

Yet scripture also reminds us that the cross has taken away our sin. All the evil, the cruelty, the petty selfishness, the angst, anxiety and guilt Jesus has absorbed into his own body on the cross of death, so that we can be free and never have to fear God's punishment again.

The day that Jeremiah predicted - the day of the New Covenant has come to pass. The covenant that Jeremiah speaks of is Jesus. Jeremiah says, "I will put my law within
them, and I will write it upon their hearts. No longer shall they teach one another, or say
'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, for I will forgive their iniquity and
remember their sin no more."

God's word, God's reality comes to us in two basic forms, the law and the Gospel. The law is a hard word, full of demand, full of shoulds and oughts, we can never live up to its standards nor fulfill its requirements. Like a bar on a high jump that is always beyond our reach, we can never jump across without knocking the bar off. Unfortunately, we need the law of God or society would be in far worse shape than it is.

But God's Word also comes to us as Gospel too. The Gospel is a soft word, a kind word, a gracious word. Its word is filled with understanding, patience, love, forgiveness, tolerance, even indulgence. The Gospel word is made concrete in Jesus. "Okay," God said. "I know you can't fulfill my law. You cannot live up to the standard I set. I am going to show you my love in my son who is me - the one I really want you to know. He will love you. Embrace you. Seek out the lost and the scoffers and the
doubters, and he will nurse you all back to health by giving up his life for yours. You
will be free then to love me without hesitation and fear." When we hear that Word and
focus on it, our fears, our guilt, our anxiety about ourselves and our future melts away
and we stand basking in a love that is overwhelming, powerful, inviting, beckoning, reassunng.

Some folks from the parish took a trip to Niagara Falls several weekends ago. They stayed on the Canadian side where you can get right up to the edge of Niagara and look at her majesty. I've been there too. It is an experience so overwhelming that you can hardly describe it. You see all this magnificent power, the water and the light glisten and dance and they mesmerize you. You are drawn to it and yet terrified of its power; you want to reach out and touch it, but are glad you can't because a fence separates you from it.

We have chosen this Sunday, a special Sunday on our church calendar, to be the day when we renew our C(ovenant with the God who remembers our sins no more. Each of you has an envelope before you, and a piece of paper. What the Stewardship Committee and the Leadership of this congregation wants you to do now, is to write a covenant for this year with God the forgiver, God the provider. No one but you and God will see this covenant. We want you to seal it and put it in the offering envelope and it will be mailed back to you the week following Easter. Prayerfully think about what God has done and daily does for you and then gratefully return thanks with a promise of your time, talent and treasure.